TheSourcerer's Posts
Nairaland Forum › TheSourcerer's Profile › TheSourcerer's Posts
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 ... 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 (of 436 pages)
 Celebrities › Re: Happy Birthday Queen Of Queens Dominatrix by TheSourcerer(op): 4:52pm On Nov 21, 2022 |
Chaos14:Well that’s why there’s tomorrow , to right our mistakes of today , may you have a great day still |
| Christianity Etc › Re: I Don't Need Any Religion - Wole Soyinka by TheSourcerer: 4:31pm On Nov 21, 2022 |
TakeNigeriaBack:  1 Like |
| Christianity Etc › Re: I Don't Need Any Religion - Wole Soyinka by TheSourcerer: 4:29pm On Nov 21, 2022 |
Ajay7411:One day ! 4 Likes |
| Christianity Etc › Re: I Don't Need Any Religion - Wole Soyinka by TheSourcerer: 4:29pm On Nov 21, 2022 |
davodyguy: |
| Christianity Etc › Re: I Don't Need Any Religion - Wole Soyinka by TheSourcerer: 4:28pm On Nov 21, 2022 |
theenchanter:Awesomely put, a True National Treasure that Man 1 Like |
| Christianity Etc › Re: I Don't Need Any Religion - Wole Soyinka by TheSourcerer: 4:27pm On Nov 21, 2022 |
fasho01:Very Confused , what do we do now to make him less confused |
| Christianity Etc › Re: I Don't Need Any Religion - Wole Soyinka by TheSourcerer: 4:26pm On Nov 21, 2022 |
EKONGKING:They say if I was a Buffalo God would be a Bigger Buffalo if I’m a man ........... |
| Christianity Etc › Re: I Don't Need Any Religion - Wole Soyinka by TheSourcerer: 4:25pm On Nov 21, 2022*. Modified: 4:55pm On Nov 21, 2022 |
wiseone28:i wish no offense in quoting you but what then will be the essence of needing God when he cannot move his body nor open his eyes again? So God can then heal him ? I’m asking because God (YWH) has literally never healed any man of any ailment since man evolved on Earth at least documented instance 5 Likes |
| Christianity Etc › Re: I Don't Need Any Religion - Wole Soyinka by TheSourcerer: 4:23pm On Nov 21, 2022 |
3 Likes |
| Foreign Affairs › Re: Magnitude 5.6 Earthquake Hits West Java Province, Indonesia. 56 Dead, 700 Injure by TheSourcerer: 4:13pm On Nov 21, 2022 |
Righteousness2:Do you know your children and even Grandchildren will keep saying ‘ The end is near , Jesus is coming soon !? 2 Likes 3 Shares |
| Crime › Re: Male Prostitute Who Disguises As Woman Arrested In Lagos (Videos, Pix) by TheSourcerer: 3:23pm On Nov 21, 2022 |
babadigu:Random hello , and do remember to smile and have a wonderful wonderful day |
| Crime › Re: Photo Of Notorious Kidnapper 'Lion' With Security Operatives Shared Online by TheSourcerer: 3:22pm On Nov 21, 2022 |
SAD007:hi this is a random text to remind you to smile , unclench your fist , relax your jaws and smile , trust me it helps , no matter what it always gets better , no matter what , just keep holding on do have a wonderful day |
| Sports › Re: Nigeria Vs Central African Republic : World Cup Qualifier 2 - 0 On 10th Oct 2021 by TheSourcerer: 3:21pm On Nov 21, 2022 |
chiiraq802:hi this is a random text to remind you to smile , unclench your fist , relax your jaws and smile , trust me it helps , no matter what it always gets better , no matter what , just keep holding on do have a wonderful day Love your dp btw |
| Celebrities › Re: Bbnaija’s Christy O Acquires A G-wagon Worth ₦100m by TheSourcerer: 3:17pm On Nov 21, 2022 |
mhiztaNexy:hi this is a random text to remind you to smile , unclench your fist , relax your jaws and smile , trust me it helps , no matter what it always gets better , no matter what , just keep holding on do have a wonderful day Btw you really are awesome |
| Family › Re: My Moms Tears Weaks Me Each Time I Try To Find My Way Out by TheSourcerer: 3:11pm On Nov 21, 2022 |
pansophist:hi this is a random text to remind you to smile , unclench your fist , relax your jaws and smile , trust me it helps , no matter what it always gets better , no matter what , just keep holding on do have a wonderful day Plus went through your comments, you’re awesome |
| Romance › Re: #SilhouetteChallenge: What Is The Silhouette Challenge? How To Do It (Video) by TheSourcerer: 3:09pm On Nov 21, 2022 |
freethinker01:hi this is a random text to remind you to smile , unclench your fist , relax your jaws and smile , trust me it helps , no matter what it always gets better , no matter what , just keep holding on do have a wonderful day |
| Politics › Re: Why Should Peter Obi Take Blames For Investment That Obiano Mismanaged? by TheSourcerer: 3:08pm On Nov 21, 2022 |
FatherOfJesus:hi this is a random text to remind you to smile , unclench your fist , relax your jaws and smile , trust me it helps , no matter what it always gets better , no matter what , just keep holding on do have a wonderful day |
| Culture › Re: An Inquest Into Pre-Oduduwa History Of Yoruba People by TheSourcerer: 3:08pm On Nov 21, 2022 |
TAO11:hi this is a random text to remind you to smile , unclench your fist , relax your jaws and smile , trust me it helps , no matter what it always gets better , no matter what , just keep holding on do have a wonderful day |
| Celebrities › Re: Sidikat Odukanwi 'Iyabo Oko' Dies, Veteran Nollywood Actress Dies At 61 by TheSourcerer: 3:07pm On Nov 21, 2022 |
TheStarsAlign:this is a text to remind you to smile , unclench your fist , relax your jaws and smile , trust me it helps , no matter what it always gets better , no matter what , just keep holding on do have a wonderful day |
| Travel › Re: My First Time Outside Nigeria by TheSourcerer: 3:06pm On Nov 21, 2022 |
Naijasinglegirl:this is a text to remind you to smile , unclench your fist , relax your jaws and smile , trust me it helps , no matter what it always gets better , no matter what , just keep holding on do have a wonderful day |
| Autos › Re: Toyota Corolla Sport For Urgent Sale!! by TheSourcerer: 3:06pm On Nov 21, 2022 |
MrOreo:this is a text to remind you to smile , unclench your fist , relax your jaws and smile , trust me it helps , no matter what it always gets better , no matter what , just keep holding on do have a wonderful day |
| Romance › Re: Men:stop Licking Pvssy Other Men Spit On And Cum Inside by TheSourcerer: 3:04pm On Nov 21, 2022 |
realestate99:this is a text to remind you to smile , unclench your fist , relax your jaws and smile , trust me it helps , no matter what it always gets better , no matter what , just keep holding on do have a wonderful day |
| Crime › Re: History’s Most Wicked Men .(histogore) by TheSourcerer(op): 3:01pm On Nov 21, 2022 |
realestate99:hmm power of the media , Great insight , Thank you. |
| Crime › Re: Sammy Larry Denies Starting 'One Million Boys' With Portable by TheSourcerer: 2:59pm On Nov 21, 2022 |
Candidlady:hey Candid , wouldn’t mind having your contact on my WhatsApp |
| Crime › Re: History’s Most Wicked Men .(histogore) by TheSourcerer(op): 2:55pm On Nov 21, 2022 |
powerhouse3:Truly interesting fact I’ve noticed , Good day and hope you have a lovely Monday 1 Like |
| Celebrities › Re: Happy Birthday Queen Of Queens Dominatrix by TheSourcerer(op): 2:42pm On Nov 21, 2022 |
Chaos14:I hate that I had to do that , I remember each quote anytime I open this site , what trolls make you do , How’s your day going though ? |
| Crime › Re: History’s Most Wicked Men .(histogore) by TheSourcerer(op): 7:04pm On Nov 19, 2022 |
Other parts of the Congo economy, from road building to chopping wood for steamboat boilers, operated by forced labour as well. The effects were devastating. Many of the women hostages starved, and many of the male rubber gatherers were worked to death. Tens, possibly hundreds, of thousands of Congolese fled their villages to avoid being impressed as forced labourers, and they sought refuge deep in the forest, where there was little food and shelter. Tens of thousands of others were shot down in failed rebellions against the regime. One particularly notorious practice grew out of the suppression of those rebellions. To prove that he had not wasted bullets—or, worse yet, saved them for use in a mutiny—for each bullet expended, a Congolese soldier of the Force Publique had to present to his white officer the severed hand of a rebel killed. Baskets of severed hands thus resulted from expeditions against rebels. If a soldier fired at someone and missed, or used a bullet to shoot game, he then sometimes cut off the hand of a living victim to be able to show it to his officer With women as hostages and men forced to tap rubber, few able-bodied adults were left to hunt, fish, and cultivate crops. Millions of Congolese then found themselves suffering near-famine, which made them vulnerable to diseases they otherwise might have survived. Furthermore, as in any society where men and women are separated, traumatized, or in flight as refugees, the birth rate dropped precipitously. No one will ever know the precise figures, but, from all these causes, demographers estimate that between 1880 and 1920 the population of the Congo may have been slashed by up to 50 percent, from perhaps 20 million people at the beginning of that period to an estimated 10 million at the end The forced-labour system for gathering rubber was swiftly copied by French, German, and Portuguese colonial officials with equally fatal results. Because the system’s effects in the Congo could so easily be blamed on one man, who could safely be attacked because he did not represent a great power, an international outcry focused on Leopold. That pressure finally forced him to relinquish his ownership of the territory, and it became the Belgian Congo in 1908. Leopold, however, made the Belgian government pay him for his prized possession. He died the following year. Because his only son had predeceased him, Leopold’s nephew Albert I succeeded to the throne. By the end of his life, Leopold was unpopular with his people, but, ironically, that had much less to do with his actions in Africa than with his conduct of his personal life. He spoke contemptuously of Belgium’s small size, could not speak proper Dutch, the native language of more than half of its citizens, spent long winters in luxurious quarters on the French Riviera, and was estranged from two of his three daughters. Moreover, he had a well-known penchant for teenaged girls, and, when he was age 65, he began a liaison with a teenaged former prostitute who bore him two additional children. He is remembered in Belgium for some of what he built with his Congo wealth, such as the monumental Arcade du Cinquantenaire in Brussels, and for his advocacy of strong fortifications in the eastern part of the country, which slowed the advance of German troops in 1914 at the beginning of World War I. His most important legacy, however, remains the human catastrophe that the rubber forced-labour system brought to the Congo—a heritage that continued to echo in that region more than a century after Leopold’s death. 1 Share
|
| Crime › Re: History’s Most Wicked Men .(histogore) by TheSourcerer(op): 6:57pm On Nov 19, 2022 |
Although Belgium’s government felt that colonies would be an extravagance for a small country with no navy or merchant marine, that situation suited Leopold perfectly. He persuaded first the United States and then all the major nations of western Europe to recognize a huge swath of Central Africa—roughly the same territory as the modern-day Democratic Republic of the Congo—as his personal property. He called it État Indépendant du Congo, the Congo Free State. It was the world’s only private colony, and Leopold referred to himself as its “proprietor.” The king then embarked on an ultimately successful effort to make a vast fortune from his new possession. Initially he was most interested in ivory, a material that was greatly valued in the days before plastics because it could be carved into a great variety of shapes—statuettes, jewelry, piano keys, false teeth, and more. For some years ivory was a principal source of the great wealth that Leopold and his associates drew from the new colony. In his novella Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad, who spent six months in the Congo in 1890 as a steamboat officer, gives a searing picture of the brutal and voracious European quest for Congo ivory. By the early 1890s a new source of riches had appeared. A worldwide rubber boom was under way, kicked off by the invention of the inflatable bicycle tire and spurred on by the rise of the automobile and the use of rubber in industrial belts and gaskets, as well as in coating for telephone and telegraph wires. Throughout the tropics, people rushed to sow rubber trees, but those plants could take many years to reach maturity, and in the meantime there was money to be made wherever rubber grew wild. One lucrative source of wild rubber was the Landolphia vines in the great Central African rainforest, and no one owned more of that area than Leopold. Detachments of his 19,000-man private army, the Force Publique, would march into a village and hold the women hostage, forcing the men to scatter into the rainforest and gather a monthly quota of wild rubber. As the price of rubber soared, the quotas increased, and as vines near a village were drained dry, men desperate to free their wives and daughters would have to walk days or weeks to find new vines to tap. Other parts of the Congo economy, from road building to chopping wood for steamboat boilers, operated by forced labour as well. The effects were devastating. Many of the women hostages starved, and many of the male rubber gatherers were worked to death. Tens, possibly hundreds, of thousands of Congolese fled their villages to avoid being impressed as forced labourers, and they sought refuge deep in the forest, where there was little food and shelter. Tens of thousands of others were shot down in failed rebellions against the regime. One particularly notorious practice grew out of the suppression of those rebellions. To prove that he had not wasted bullets—or, worse yet, saved them for use in a mutiny—for each bullet expended, a Congolese soldier of the Force Publique had to present to his white officer the severed hand of a rebel killed. Baskets of severed hands thus resulted from expeditions against rebels. If a soldier fired at someone and missed, or used a bullet to shoot game, he then sometimes cut off the hand of a living victim to be able to show it to his officer. 1 Share
|
| Crime › Re: History’s Most Wicked Men .(histogore) by TheSourcerer(op): 6:53pm On Nov 19, 2022 |
Leopold II, Leopold II, French in full Léopold-Louis-Philippe-Marie-Victor, Dutch in full Leopold Lodewijk Filips Maria Victor, (born April 9, 1835, Brussels, Belgium—died December 17, 1909, Laeken), king of the Belgians from 1865 to 1909. Keen on establishing Belgium as an imperial power, he led the first European efforts to develop the Congo River basin, making possible the formation in 1885 of the Congo Free State, annexed in 1908 as the Belgian Congo and now the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Although he played a significant role in the development of the modern Belgian state, he was also responsible for widespread atrocities committed under his rule against his colonial subjects. Domestic policies The country of Belgium itself was only about five years old at the birth of Leopold II, who became the eldest surviving son of Leopold I, first king of the Belgians, and his second wife, Louise-Marie of Orléans. Then, as they would be into the 21st century, most of the royal families of Europe were related. For instance, Leopold II was a first cousin of Queen Victoria of Britain. He became duke of Brabant in 1846 and served in the Belgian army. In 1853 he married Marie-Henriette, daughter of the Austrian archduke Joseph, palatine of Hungary, and became king of the Belgians on his father’s death in December 1865. Most of the monarchs in western Europe had been forced to largely yield political power to the electorate by the late 19th century, so Belgium’s parliament and cabinet were the real locus of power, but Leopold used the prestige of the monarchy to lobby for pet projects. Although the domestic affairs of his reign were dominated by a growing conflict between the Liberal and Catholic parties over suffrage and education issues, Leopold concentrated on developing the country’s defenses. Aware that Belgian neutrality, maintained during the Franco-German War (1870–71), was imperilled by the increasing strength of France and Germany, he persuaded parliament in 1887 to finance the fortification of Liège and Namur. The royal coffers would become a central focus of Leopold’s life, and he once grumbled to German Emperor William II while watching a parade in Berlin, “There is really nothing left for us kings except money!” Leopold soon decided that the best way to acquire wealth would be by establishing an African colony, at a time when the great European “Scramble for Africa” was under way. In 1870 more than 80 percent of Africa south of the Sahara was under the rule of indigenous chiefs or kings. Forty years later virtually all of it had been transformed into European colonies, protectorates, or territories ruled by white settlers. Presenting himself as a philanthropist eager to bring the benefits of Christianity, Western civilization, and commerce to African natives—a guise that he perpetuated for many years—Leopold hosted an international conference of explorers and geographers at the royal palace in Brussels in 1876. Several years later he hired the explorer Henry Morton Stanley to be his man in Africa. For five years Stanley traveled up and down the immense waterways of the Congo River basin, setting up trading posts, building roads, and persuading local chiefs—almost all of them illiterate—to sign treaties with Leopold. The treaties, some of which appear to have been subsequently doctored to Leopold’s liking, were then put to use by the Belgian monarch.
|
| Crime › Re: History’s Most Wicked Men .(histogore) by TheSourcerer(op): 5:46pm On Nov 19, 2022 |
Russia was at war for the greater part of Ivan’s reign. Muscovite rulers had long feared incursions by the Tatars, and in 1547–48 and 1549–50 unsuccessful campaigns were undertaken against the hostile khanate of Kazan, on the Volga River. In 1552, after lengthy preparations, the tsar set out for Kazan, and the Russian army then succeeded in taking the town by assault. In 1556 the khanate of Astrakhan, located at the mouth of the Volga, was annexed without a fight. From that moment onward, the Volga became a Russian river, and the trade route to the Caspian Sea was rendered safe The Livonia War With both banks of the Volga now secured, Ivan prepared for a campaign to force an exit to the sea, a traditional concern of landlocked Russia. Ivan felt that trade with Europe depended on free access to the Baltic and decided to turn his attention westward. In 1558 he went to war in an attempt to establish Russian rule over Livonia (in present-day Latvia and Estonia). Russia was at first victorious and succeeded in destroying the Livonian knights, but their ally Lithuania became an integral part of Poland in 1569. The war dragged on; while the Swedes supported Poland against Russia, the Crimean Tatars attacked Astrakhan and even made an extensive incursion into Russia in 1571; they burned Moscow, leaving only the Kremlin standing. When Stephen Báthory of Transylvania became king of Poland in 1575, reorganized Polish armies under his leadership were able to carry the war onto Russian territory while the Swedes recaptured parts of Livonia. Ivan at last asked Pope Gregory XIII to intervene, and through the mediation of his nuncio, Antonio Possevino, an armistice with Poland was concluded on January 15, 1582. Under its terms Russia lost all its gains in Livonia, and an armistice with Sweden in 1583 compelled Russia to give up towns on the Gulf of Finland. The 24-year-long Livonian War had proved fruitless for Russia, which was exhausted by the long struggle.
|
| Crime › Re: History’s Most Wicked Men .(histogore) by TheSourcerer(op): 5:33pm On Nov 19, 2022 |
Ivan the Terrible Ivan the Terrible, Russian Ivan Grozny, byname of Ivan Vasilyevich, also called Ivan IV, (born August 25, 1530, Kolomenskoye, near Moscow [Russia]—died March 18, 1584, Moscow), grand prince of Moscow (1533–84) and the first to be proclaimed tsar of Russia (from 1547). His reign saw the completion of the construction of a centrally administered Russian state and the creation of an empire that included non-Slav states. Ivan engaged in prolonged and largely unsuccessful wars against Sweden and Poland, and, in seeking to impose military discipline and a centralized administration, he instituted a reign of terror against the hereditary nobility. Ivan was the son of Grand Prince Vasily III of Moscow and his second wife, Yelena Glinskaya. He was to become the penultimate representative of the Rurik dynasty. On December 4, 1533, immediately after his father’s death, the three-year-old Ivan was proclaimed grand prince of Moscow. His mother ruled in Ivan’s name until her death (allegedly by poison) in 1538. The deaths of both of Ivan’s parents served to reanimate the struggles of various factions of nobles for control of the person of the young prince and for power. The years 1538–47 were thus a period of murderous strife among the clans of the warrior caste commonly termed “boyars.” Their continual struggles for the reins of government to the detriment of the realm made a profound impression on Ivan and imbued him with a lifelong dislike of the boyars. Early reforms On January 16, 1547, Ivan was crowned “tsar and grand prince of all Russia.” The title tsar was derived from the Latin title caesar and was translated by Ivan’s contemporaries as “emperor.” In February 1547 Ivan married Anastasia Romanovna, a great-aunt of the future first tsar of the Romanov dynasty. Since 1542 Ivan had been greatly influenced by the views of the metropolitan of Moscow, Makari, who encouraged the young tsar in his desire to establish a Christian state based on the principles of justice. Ivan’s government soon embarked on a wide program of reforms and of the reorganization of both central and local administration. Church councils summoned in 1547 and 1549 strengthened and systematized the church’s affairs, affirming its Orthodoxy and canonizing a large number of Russian saints. In 1549 the first zemski sobor was summoned to meet in an advisory capacity—this was a national assembly composed of boyars, clergy, and some elected representatives of the new service gentry. In 1550 a new, more detailed legal code was drawn up that replaced one dating from 1497. Russia’s central administration was also reorganized into departments, each responsible for a specific function of the state. The conditions of military service were improved, the armed forces were reorganized, and the system of command altered so that commanders were appointed on merit rather than simply by virtue of their noble birth. The government also introduced extensive self-government, with district administrators elected by the local gentry. One object of the reforms was to limit the powers of the hereditary aristocracy of princes and boyars (who held their estates on a hereditary basis) and promote the interests of the service gentry, who held their landed estates solely as compensation for service to the government and who were thus dependent on the tsar. Ivan apparently aimed at forming a class of landed gentry that would owe everything to the sovereign. All the reforms took place under the aegis of the so-called “Chosen Council,” an informal advisory body in which the leading figures were the tsar’s favourites Aleksey Adashev and the priest Silvestr. The council’s influence waned and then disappeared in the early 1560s, however, after the death of Ivan’s first wife and of Makari, by which time Ivan’s views and his entourage had changed. Ivan’s first wife, Anastasia, died in 1560, and only two male heirs by her, Ivan (born 1554) and Fyodor (born 1557), survived the rigors of medieval childhood.
|
| Crime › Re: History’s Most Wicked Men .(histogore) by TheSourcerer(op): 5:29pm On Nov 19, 2022 |
Trail and Death of a Tyrant In October 2005 Saddam went on trial before the Iraqi High Tribunal, a panel court established to try officials of the former Iraqi government. He and several codefendants were charged with the killing of 148 townspeople in Al-Dujayl, a mainly Shiʿi town, in 1982. Throughout the nine-month trial, Saddam interrupted the proceedings with angry outbursts, claiming that the tribunal was a sham and that U.S. interests were behind it. The tribunal finally adjourned in July 2006 and handed down its verdicts in November. Saddam was convicted of crimes against humanity—including willful killing, illegal imprisonment, deportation, and torture—and was sentenced to death by hanging. Saddam’s half brother (an intelligence officer) and Iraq’s former chief judge were also sentenced to death. Days after an Iraqi court upheld his sentence in December 2006, Saddam was executed.
|
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 ... 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 (of 436 pages)