Colonization

I was reading The New Yorker this morning and noticed an article on Equatorial Guinea. Apparently, it's the only country in the world resistant to recession at the moment due to the fact that it's a giant oil pit. It's the only former Spanish colony in Africa, and an absolutely tiny, martial-law, country with less than a million people. The reason the article stuck out to me so much is because a few weeks ago I was reading the Forbes "most dangerous countries" list (Somalia #1) and practically all of them were former colonies-- and the number 1 most "oh my god I'll never go there!" country was a former British colony. Well, we all know how those turn out. A country is raped for its resources, people are pitted against each other and exploited by the foreign power, then the power takes off and the country is left in social, governmental, and environmental ruin. If it weren't for the pot of dinosaur soup under E.G., they would be in crisis too.

But all is not well in Paradise. The country was taken control of by Teodoro Obiang Nguema thirty years ago in a coup, and apparently is constantly under threat of more seizures, including a past one by a British Eton-graduate named Simon Man, now in prison. The country is also rife with human rights infringements and the like... so it's not such an unusual former colony after all.

It's amazing how history repeats itself. Pakistan and India, Somalia and Rwanda... countries destroyed by the fat man's want for more.