Law, too, is a technology.

The items we never learned in our high school history classes. From 20-30Million down to 8Million was certainly one of them for me.
So far I am not discerning a difference between Haliburton in Iraq and British East India in the Congo. What could the absense of state collusion mean in the context of imperialsm? Piracy?
It is clear that getting control of information was as important then as it is now. The technology,(Internet et al), in its increasing sophistication, lends itself more to those who are in control and have the resources rather than the general public who are generally not sophisticated.
To tie to John's post, the recent distinction made by/for the AT's office that a soldier is different from a terrorist strikes me as an example where the law is determined by it's political suitability rather than any moral considerations one could bring to bear on the issue. Law, as a legal instrument, is used to calm what used to be regarded as 'over-riding moral considerations'. As in "yes it is not pleasant but it is legal."

The population decline is from the Encyclopedia Britanica, and cited in the Wikipedia article on the CFS. Hothschild (King Leopold's Ghost; review) mentions an estimate of 10 million, which--if true--would still leave the CFS and the 3rd Reich in the same class of genocidaires. Roger Casement, who led the most famous commission of inquiry into the matter, arrived at a [conservative] estimate of 3 million in 1904; he was, no doubt, constrained by the danger of prosecution for lese-majestie if some tranches of the dead could not be reliably documented.