Not sure how recent these are, but I've been watching some deeply depressing documentaries recently about the impact of cultural anthropologists on remote/uncontacted tribes.
Secrets of the Tribe:
This documentary explores the allegations, first brought to light in the book Darkness in El Dorado, that anthropologists studying the Yanomami Indians in the 1960s and 70s engaged in bizarre and inappropriate interactions with the tribe, including sexual and medical violations. Scientists accused in this film are among others James Neel, Napoleon Chagnon, Kenneth Good and Jacques Lizot.
Napoleon Chagnon stereotyped the Yanomami as an innately violent and warlike people, in constant conflict with other tribes and any outsider who might venture into their territory (except, presumably, him and all his mates) which has given the authorities in the country an excuse to maltreat them ever since.
Jacques Lizot did far worse than that. He was a serial paedophilic abuser of Yanomami boys, using French government funds to bribe them into performing sex acts on him. The way this is revealed to the viewer is pretty shocking.
Medical experiments were also conducted on the Yanomami on behalf of the atomic weapons establishment, particularly that of the US, since they were believed to have had no exposure to the raised background radiation from bomb testing that the rest of us have already had to accomodate in our genetics.
Watch here on Vimeo:
http://vimeo.com/29807445-----------
The second documentary is The Genius And the Boys, also about a paedophilic anthropologist using his position of authority and respect to abuse hundreds of young boys in a very remote area. He is the Nobel prize winner Carleton Gajdusek, who discovered kuru, a form of prion disease similar to BSE, on Papua New Guinea in the Fifties. I have often wondered if his research had defence funding and possible defence applications. He adopted 57 children from the tribes he lived with and continued to sexually abuse them in America until he was convicted, then no doubt after that as well.
It is quite shocking to see other academics defend him and his actions, much in the same way that Roman Polanski was defended: "But you don't understand! He's a genius! He's
a great man!" Gajdusek has an outburst towards the end of the film which leaves the viewer in
no doubt at all about what he is, but it is still sad for him in a way - he is clearly very damaged himself.
Here is the part I'm talking about (trigger warning! and NSFW, nor safe for the mind). There is also a
very loud noise that plays at one point in the video to cover some words, it is annoying but there is nothing I can do about it. Can be a bit startling if you're not ready for it.
VIDEO REMOVED, there is just something not right about it. Better to watch the whole documentary, it's available online.
Some have speculated that Gadjusek's prion work was used in the "invention" or weaponisation of HIV and other bioweapons. I don't know about that, but his paedophilia, like Lizot's, would certainly have made him vulnerable to full control by the national security state if they
had seen fit to use him.
The larger story of course is one of advanced states sending their scientists to exploit and abuse people who have no cultural or political defence against them - imposing our philosophical structures and thought processes on them, bribing them with gifts, grooming them, then holding them down and ruining them. The paedophilia of the scientists serves as a metaphor for the larger rapes we are inflicting on these cultures.
"The universe is 40 billion light years across and every inch of it would kill you if you went there. That is the position of the universe with regard to human life."
