Iraq was all over oil!

[trooper]

Rwanda was first controlled by Germans but Belgians had it for themselves in 1916. They separated hutus from tutsis and gave them unequal rights. Tutsis were considered superior and they enjoyed better education and jobs. That was the basis to attrocities which started around 1960.

[Flashermac]

The Belgians really screwed things up in Africa. Quite an accomplishment for so small a country.

 

 

[elef]

Stanley trusted the belgian king too much and gave Kongo to him as the kings private company, biggest slave farm ever actually until Belgium took it over. The dutch were not better in Indonesia. UK learned after losing some unimportant areas in north america to treat colonies with english population as equals but were same shit as the belgian and dutch with native population. The country which still has the closest connections with their old colonies is actually France.

[Steve]

So it was the Belgians! I thought I heard that the French had some influence there. In any event everyone looked the other way.

 

 

[FreeTime]

The U.S. is building what will be the largest embassy in the world in Baghdad; a complex of 21 buildings on 104 acres. It is supposed to be about 6 times the size of the U.N. compound in New York, and will have it's own defense force, power, water supply, etc. Seems like a plan for the long haul.

 

[elef]

The US embassy in Phnom Penh is also very big with over 500 employees.

[Flashermac]

 

"In the 1870s, Belgiumâ??s King Leopold II set up a private venture to colonize what was then known as Kongo. He commissioned British explorer Henry Stanley to explore the Kongo River and later to establish areas of control along the river basin. European powers recognized Belgian King Leopoldâ??s claim to Congo, as the Belgians spelled the name, at the Berlin Conference, 1884-85. In 1885, Leopold announced the Free Congo State, headed by himself. He then expanded the areas under his control. Millions of Congolese are believed to have died during this period, either killed or worked to death. In 1908, the country of Belgium annexed Congo."

 

http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/online/congojournal/glossary/

 

[elef]

The belgians were worse than Dracula

 

The Congo territory was acquired formally by Leopold at the Conference of Berlin in 1885. He made the land his private property and named it the Congo Free State. Leopold's regime began undertaking various development projects, such as the railway that ran from the coast to Leopoldville (now Kinshasa) which took years to complete. Nearly all these projects were aimed at increasing the capital Leopold and his cohorts could extract from the colony, leading to atrocious exploitation of Africans. In the Free State, the local population was brutalized in exchange for rubber, a growing market with the development of rubber tires. The selling of the rubber made a fortune for Leopold, who built several buildings in Brussels and Ostend to honour himself and his country. During the period between 1885 and 1908, between five and fifteen (the commonly accepted figure is about ten) million Congolese died as a consequence of exploitation and diseases. A government commission later concluded that the population of the Congo had been "reduced by half" during this brutal period.[6] To enforce the rubber quotas, the Force Publique (FP) was called in. The FP was an army, but its aim was not to defend the country, but to terrorise the local population. The Force Publique made the practice of cutting off the limbs of the natives as a means of enforcing rubber quotas a matter of policy; this practice was disturbingly widespread.

wikipedia

 

[Sukhumvit]

The country which still has the closest connections with their old colonies is actually France.

 

Really?

May interest you to know that the Department of Social Security, DSS, the department of the Brit governement that deals with welfare benefits paymenbts, have an office in New Delhi which deals specifically with returning Indians who have been living in UK. India was a huge part of the empire.

 

I don't think the French have a Commonwealth - which is still active for former UK colonies. I think the Aussies and Canucks still call the Queen the Queen and they're longer colonies. Plus some Caribbean countries still rely upon the Privy Council in London as their final court of appeal against the likes of capital convictions.

 

 

And what about all the cocksucking, sorry "special relationship" that's going on between the US and UK government?

[elef]

Sure there is a french commonwealth and the former french colonies in Africa has special trade treaties with the EU giving those exempt from customs fees.