the witnesses to colonialism; The Horror The Horror

The peace deal negotiated by the US/(Rubio) and Qatar has elicited a yawn by the western Mainstream media

 but the history of atrocities in that area from western colonialsm are also ignored , as are the Arab slave trade to Muslim countries that went on for centuries before the west decided to stop that slave trade, but then let a vacuum for western sociopaths to do the same thing). 

We know about these atrocities because western witnesses, often missionaries, documented what was going on. Bernardo DeLasCasas comes to mind but the Catholic Mambo press doumenting the civil rights abuses under the white regime when I worked in then Rhodesia comes to mind. (the publishing house is Mambo press: Mambo means Lord, not the dance of the west). Alas the horrors didn't stop with getting rid of the white Smith Government: the Gukurandi and Operation Murambatsvina come to mind. But next to the atrocities in Rwanda and central Africa, one has to admit that these are not the worst things happening in post colonial Africa.

Hence my interest in the new peace deal there.

a good summary of the sins of colonialsm can be heard in this podcast which has a series about King Leopold's fiefdom that decimated what is now the DRCongo. Listen and shudder. 

and what stopped it was the courage of a bureaucrat who saw it and became a whistle blower, inspiring others to check what was going on:

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the story has gotten some publicity thanks to a recent non fiction book. King Leopold's Ghost, but it is the novel by Joseph Conrad that might make it harder to bury history, because novels are forever:

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the famous quote from that book: The Horror The horror could be applied to many other horrors of the twentieth century, as was done in the film Apocolypse now which was inspired by Conrad's book.

of course, atrocities were not only done by the west nor were atrocities against innocent civilians limited to colonialist powers: The horrors of the Gulag, the many civil wars and atrocities of Chinese imperial and nationalist and communist governments, come to mind....and don't forget the Islamicist massacres: Armenia anyone?

twentieth century horrors abound.

Among all the democide estimates appearing on this website, and in the table on the lower right, some have been revised upward. I have changed that for Mao's famine, 1958-1962, from zero to 38,000,000. And thus I have had to change the overall democide for the PRC (1928-1987) from 38,702,000 to 76,702,000. Details here. I have changed my estimate for colonial democide from 870,000 to an additional 50,000,000. Details here. Thus, the new world total: old total 1900-1999 = 174,000,000. New World total = 174,000,000 + 38,000,000 (new for China) + 50,000,000 (new for Colonies) = 262,000,000.  

 

 Plenty of horrors in history.

Link

Never again.