This sort of reminds me of William Golding's allegory, The Lord of the Flies.....
PORT-AU-PRINCE — Angry Haitian mobs have lynched at least 45 people in recent weeks, accusing them of spreading a cholera outbreak that has killed over 2,500 people across the country, officials said Wednesday.
The number included at least 14 suspected sorcerers previously known to have been lynched in the far southwestern region of Grand'Anse as local people feared they were spreading cholera with a magical substance. The area has been largely spared by the outbreak.
"We have counted 40 people dead in Grand'Anse department alone, where people are attacking natural healers they accuse of cholera-linked witchcraft," said communications ministry official Moise Fritz Evens.
"The victims -- most of them voodoo priests -- were stoned or hacked with machetes before being burned in the street."
The tendency of humans to descend rather quickly into anarchy, chaos, and savagery in the absence of any regulatory forces is chilling.
I am regularly shocked to hear about entire nations who still believe in witchcraft, sorcery, and magical substances. It's 2010! Will somebody bring these barbarians forward into the modern world? They behave as if it's 1410 in stead of 2010.
4 comments:
Haiti is a very sad case. I believe they're the only country in the Western Hemisphere that had a successful slave rebellion. The French were notoriously terrible slave-masters, far worse than the English (Americans) and even the Spaniards. The business model was work them to death and replace as needed. The behavior of those rebelling is about what you'd expect in such a case. History has not been kind to Haiti.
I accept that they've had a tough time of it for generations but, it's not like they aren't exposed to the modern world. Voodoo? Witchcraft? Sorcery? The French should either develope Haiti or abandon it's association altogether and let somebody colonize it the way colonization should be done.....by Americans. Haiti has been independent for over 200 years. You'd think they could've gotten it together by now.
The only decent colonialists in "modern times" have been the Brits. Look at what they left behind - U.S., Canada, Australia and N.Z., India, South Africa. All have done very well relative to surrounding areas.
My point about Haiti was not to excuse their horrible state, but to suggest that it's all about "culture" in the largest since of the word. You can pour vast fortunes into countries with bad cultures (no rule of law, no property rights, no freedom of conscience, etc.) and they will still fail. Haiti got off to a very bad start and has never developed a culture that can sustain a civilized society.
If we could colonize, in an economic sense, Haiti, assuming we could establish the rule of law, it would transoform that half of the island. The same could be said of Cuba. Let American private enterprise loose and Haiti could become a vacation Mecca in a few short years with tourism as the #1 jobs provider.
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