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From: donn@utah-gr.UUCP (Donn Seeley)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: Re: Re: 3rd world savages
Message-ID: <1265@utah-gr.UUCP>
Date: Wed, 5-Dec-84 02:54:55 EST
Article-I.D.: utah-gr.1265
Posted: Wed Dec  5 02:54:55 1984
Date-Received: Sun, 9-Dec-84 02:43:25 EST
References: <432@fisher.UUCP>
Organization: CS Dept., University of Utah
Lines: 43

From David Rubin:

	Nice theory that the colonial powers are responsible for third
	world civil wars by playing up animosities between various
	factions. Let's conduct a quick thought experiment to check
	it.  If this were indeed the case, it would be expected that
	third world countries without lengthy domination by colonial
	powers would be relatively free of factional violence. There
	are a few of those countries, (e.g.  Ethiopia, Thailand), and
	they appear as violent as the third world in general. Thus, we
	can conclude that the EVIDENCE does not warrant assigning the
	blame exclusively to Imperialism.

Assuming my argument is the one being discussed here, I want to say
first that I never claimed that the blame for factional violence
belongs 'exclusively to Imperialism.' I simply said that imperialism
aggravates post-independence violence.  Perhaps I should make it clear
that the kind of violence I am referring to is the kind of massive
bloodshed that makes people go out and kill their neighbors because
they belong to a different religion or political party; society goes
temporarily insane and people get butchered right and left.  The kind
of violence based on regional differences has gone on for centuries and
will undoubtedly continue as long as men make war.  Societies often
fight each other, but they typically don't commit suicide; it's the
latter kind of violence that seems to be the result of colonialism.

To take one of your examples, Thailand has suffered from the violence
of secessionist hill tribes in the north and secessionist Malays and
Chinese in the south, but it has avoided the mass slaughter that took
place in Indonesia during and especially at the end of Sukarno's
'presidency', or the bloodbaths in Bangladesh or Cambodia or Uganda or
Zaire, etc.  Thailand is far safer than any of its neighbors.  It seems
to me that Ethiopia has suffered mainly from secessionists in Eritrea
and the Ogaden, but I don't know as much about the country.  I notice
you didn't mention Japan or Tonga or Nepal in your examples...

I will agree that it's easy to oversimplify these problems, and I
perhaps I have done so to a small degree, but these responses are
attempting to treat the extreme oversimplification of the original
postings...

Donn Seeley    University of Utah CS Dept    donn@utah-cs.arpa
40 46' 6"N 111 50' 34"W    (801) 581-5668    decvax!utah-cs!donn