Much of SA gold was looted and premined to create the current system. Cecil Rhodes was the Elon Musk of his day. He died without aires and left his fortune to set up the modern world. "He who controls the press, controls the minds of men", he believed. We live in his world, now.
Discussion
100%, also gold coming out of Zimbabwe and is being melted and rebranded UAE gold or other countries
Rhodesia! Worth reading Caroll Quigley.
Is “looted” the right word?
I cant think of a stronger word than that 😉
Some good documentaries about this (bot the BBC gloss piece). Worth watcching.
Looting implies a violation of someone else’s property rights.
That wasn’t what Rhodes did - he used the lack thereof and the newly imposed colonialist systems to his advantage.
I’m not saying what he did was ethically right but that looting is not the right way to describe it either.
Exploiting seems more appropriate.
Dig deeper. We definitely agree on exploiting. But I think it
was more, granted, my knowledge is not encyclopedic here.
Look at Shangani and various claims of ethnic cleansing. Also, he said, "The native is to be treated as a child and denied the franchise. We must adopt a system of despotism in our relations with the barbarians of South Africa."
It's hard to know the exact details from back then. If the news is fake, then what is history?
Yeah I’m not an expert on this but I’ve got experience and knowledge of Australian Aborigines that puts me in the 0.01%.
It’s easy to claim the Aborigines were exploited. They were nomads with no property rights, just territorial claims and their technology was Stone Age coming up against Industrial era when Britain colonised.
I’ve seen what the Aborigines in their massive landmass (they’d be the 10th largest nation by area globally based on what they control under native title) have achieved - absolutely fucking nothing.
Everything they have, whities ‘taxes’ paid for.
Their rates of DV and child sexual abuse and general crime and drug abuse, if actually understood by the Australian public, would lead to a revolution tomorrow. I’m talking criminality on a completely unacceptable level. That they’ve been allowed to do this shit and we’ve paid for it is absurd.
I’m extrapolating here, but I’m not going to demonise Rhodes for being productive with a population who did nothing and never got themselves technologically able to resist.
The Aborigines didn’t, they later aligned with leftists and now the rest of us pay for them to rape each other whilst they’re regularly high and produce literally zero. 90% unemployment in their communities; they live off welfare.
We shouldn’t pretend like these people were hard done by when they’ve managed to keep their culture and it’s absolutely abhorrent. It shouldn’t have been maintained. It should have been stomped out when it was as easy as shooting fish in a barrel because they’d achieved nothing worthwhile saving.
The English only ethnically cleansed Tasmania. They could have easily done the rest and didn’t. If it were the Japanese who colonised Aus the Aborigines would be a footnote in history.
The tribes who sat on gold and never produced wealth until colonialists came - too bad, so sad. They lucked out that it was the English who colonised them and not a proper ruthless people as was more typically the case throughout history.