MS
Mark Shore
@markshore.bsky.social
Interested in lots of things from climate and Earth sciences to politics and art
banner photo: red sun setting seen from northwest coast of Hawai'i
751 followers687 following8.6k posts
The headline is poor and you always have to be careful with The Atlantic, but the article seems reasonable enough.
![In 1960, the colonial Belgians were ousted from power in the Congo, and in the decades since, the rainforest has been subject to nearly every variety of political instability. That the region’s national borders were drawn by and for imperial powers has made tensions worse, as has continued meddling by quasi-colonial outsiders. During the Cold War, a coup backed by the United States assassinated Patrice Lumumba, the first democratically elected leader of independent Congo. A brutal dictator, then named Joseph Mobutu, eventually seized power. Even by local standards, Mobutu’s regime was extraordinarily corrupt. He embezzled his way to an enormous personal fortune, depleting the state’s strength.
When the Hutu perpetrators of the Rwandan genocide sought refuge in the eastern rainforest during the late 1990s, the region ignited into the First Congo War. It lasted only six months but set the stage for the Second Congo War [out of alt-text space]](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_fullsize/plain/did:plc:yerhul3hyaki4jyahbcfavk4/bafkreif6wsm3adeoyyq3xqli3j2mntcko4yt6cefqjgdypyqilrsrfbs2e@jpeg)
Gotta love that the options capitalism has left us with are 'endless war in the region' vs 'end the wars so that we can go in and pillage the land for all its resources'.
You think it's reasonable to say this was a good thing? Yikes.
The only thing this article says is that the Lorax should have had a fucking gun apparently. Who knew that business men weren't bulletproof
MS
Mark Shore
@markshore.bsky.social
Interested in lots of things from climate and Earth sciences to politics and art
banner photo: red sun setting seen from northwest coast of Hawai'i
751 followers687 following8.6k posts