Celebrate Columbus Day if you take pride in genocide

If the Winter Solstice 2012 means anything it is the return of the Great American Spirit.
They will greet us as they did on the first Thanksgiving.
To save our sorry white asses!

Slavery is thousands of years old - it existed in China thousands of years ago, in Egypt thousands of years ago, in Mesopotamia thousands of years ago, in India thousands of years ago, in South American countries too.

Montana has pride in its education system . Well done Montana .

Right on. Custer was an egomaniac during the cival war and a genocidal maniac in the west.

Well, the Natives "discovered" it 50,000 years before Christopher Columbus, too.

Leif Ericson, if i recall correctly .

Redheads. Always wandering about on tour with their rowdy band causing trouble.

( Probably even found some natives with a pipe and inhaled ) +^d

Thank you for this. Tears.

The woman is an angel.
And this album (her first in 14 years) is phenomenal!

I have been sharing the late Howard Zinn with my students throught several editions of "The Peoples History of the United States"...He and Noam Chomsky have been truth tellers whose voices were often crying in the wilderness for all most people were concerned...great Americans...honest Americans...true Patriots...not the bagger Sunshine crowd....

For decades these two have been tellin' it like it is and in doing so have earned the "tripe"...too bad you don't see that.

You need to try some decaf man. You are twisting this out of context and all understanding. Get a grip.

Let me explain this for you...If your read the complete post you should be able to see that its an in-your-face satirical juxtaposition of the language as a put down to the Palins etc.... now follow this tag to the post ..."not the bagger Sunshine crowd..." Reread it as it was intended and even you should be able to see how that works. If not...oh well.

I have been posting here for a while and I would guess you have read other stuff of mine. If so, you know where I am coming from...if not...

It wasn't just the diseases. It was the raping, pillaging, murdering and obliteration of their culture with the express intention of taking "gold" and making them slaves. Sure sounds to me like they were just such nice people.
This is an excerpt from the link I posted below:

"Columbus wrote:

"As soon as I arrived in the Indies, on the first Island which I found, I took some of the natives by force in order that they might learn and might give me information of whatever there is in these parts." The information that Columbus wanted most was: Where is the gold?

The Indians, Columbus reported, "are so naive and so free with their possessions that no one who has not witnessed them would believe it. When you ask for something they have, they never say no. To the contrary, they offer to share with anyone...." He concluded his report by asking for a little help from their Majesties, and in return he would bring them from his next voyage "as much gold as they need . . . and as many slaves as they ask." He was full of religious talk: "Thus the eternal God, our Lord, gives victory to those who follow His way over apparent impossibilities."

Because of Columbus's exaggerated report and promises, his second expedition was given seventeen ships and more than twelve hundred men. The aim was clear: slaves and gold. They went from island to island in the Caribbean, taking Indians as captives. But as word spread of the Europeans' intent they found more and more empty villages. On Haiti, they found that the sailors left behind at Fort Navidad had been killed in a battle with the Indians, after they had roamed the island in gangs looking for gold, taking women and children as slaves for sex and labor.

Now, from his base on Haiti, Columbus sent expedition after expedition into the interior. They found no gold fields, but had to fill up the ships returning to Spain with some kind of dividend. In the year 1495, they went on a great slave raid, rounded up fifteen hundred Arawak men, women, and children, put them in pens guarded by Spaniards and dogs, then picked the five hundred best specimens to load onto ships. Of those five hundred, two hundred died en route. The rest arrived alive in Spain and were put up for sale by the archdeacon of the town, who reported that, although the slaves were "naked as the day they were born," they showed "no more embarrassment than animals." Columbus later wrote: "Let us in the name of the Holy Trinity go on sending all the slaves that can be sold."

But too many of the slaves died in captivity. And so Columbus, desperate to pay back dividends to those who had invested, had to make good his promise to fill the ships with gold. In the province of Cicao on Haiti, where he and his men imagined huge gold fields to exist, they ordered all persons fourteen years or older to collect a certain quantity of gold every three months. When they brought it, they were given copper tokens to hang around their necks. Indians found without a copper token had their hands cut off and bled to death.

The Indians had been given an impossible task. The only gold around was bits of dust garnered from the streams. So they fled, were hunted down with dogs, and were killed.

Trying to put together an army of resistance, the Arawaks faced Spaniards who had armor, muskets, swords, horses. When the Spaniards took prisoners they hanged them or burned them to death. Among the Arawaks, mass suicides began, with cassava poison. Infants were killed to save them from the Spaniards. In two years, through murder, mutilation, or suicide, half of the 250,000 Indians on Haiti were dead.

When it became clear that there was no gold left, the Indians were taken as slave labor on huge estates, known later as encomiendas. They were worked at a ferocious pace, and died by the thousands. By the year 1515, there were perhaps fifty thousand Indians left. By 1550, there were five hundred. A report of the year 1650 shows none of the original Arawaks or their descendants left on the island.

The chief source-and, on many matters the only source of information about what happened on the islands after Columbus came is Bartolome de las Casas, who, as a young priest, participated in the conquest of Cuba. For a time he owned a plantation on which Indian slaves worked, but he gave that up and became a vehement critic of Spanish cruelty. In Book Two of his History of the Indies, Las Casas (who at first urged replacing Indians by black slaves, thinking they were stronger and would survive, but later relented when he saw the effects on blacks) tells about the treatment of the Indians by the Spaniards. It is a unique account and deserves to be quoted at length:

"Endless testimonies . . . prove the mild and pacific temperament of the natives.... But our work was to exasperate, ravage, kill, mangle and destroy; small wonder, then, if they tried to kill one of us now and then.... The admiral, it is true, was blind as those who came after him, and he was so anxious to please the King that he committed irreparable crimes against the Indians..."

Yeah and that existed too but disease was the deciding factor that repressed the indigenous population. In the end, Europeans were cruel to the indigenous but disease remains the most devastating factor to the indigenous more than anything else.

"Yeah and that existed too." Well, don't give yourself away as being too apathetic.

You're totally right in every statement right there. An Aztec once told Cortes why he was here and Cortes responded by saying, "We have a disease of the heart that only gold can cure".

If you think I put this here because this is about Italians, you are showing true ignorance.

"Being Italian I am always amazed at the vitriol"
" I, again being of Italian descent "

Take your wounded pride elsewhere, since you haven't a clue as to what this is really about.

Though it was not necessarily Columbus who did this, let us not forget that Native Americans were intentionally given blankets that carried small pox in trades.

Great stuff! I was going to say just that. No matter what era in history, it has always been about human greed, and wanting to be the big shot.The golden rule, who ever has the most, rule's.And history is written by the winner.

And they always had priests with them to sanction and give their blessings to this brutality. They did this because they were "civilized" and the natives were "filthy heathens".

I think you put it here because you have an inflated sense of importance. you couldn't dispute what I had to say so you resorted to an Ad hominem attack, calling me ignorant...I will gladly take my wounded pride elsewhere if you will also take your self appointed authority elsewhere as well.

No worries , someone posts something like it on current every year , and rightly so ! being misled about history , is no way to go about life !

Schools and banks are closed here.

They are open here , even the library is open . It is a humbling day , if we keep getting the word out , perhaps the humility will have positive effect ?

Thankyou, and I agree.

You're welcome, Jan.

Thank you so much for that clip!

You're welcome, Bmad. People need to know about this.

Yeah, it happened in my state as well. Truly a pathetic moment for my states history.

Pathetic indeed, Nick19.

Horrific .

Yes it is, aretemis.

Thanks. This form of racism and imperialism still exists today, only it is under the names of multinational corporations.

Who is "they?"

"they" don't exist -tiz but a bit of ironic humor, no one actually says that,....as far as I know.

I dont even hear the one about omelets requiring broken eggs much, as a spoken thing,....very occasionally perhaps in print.

. When it comes to the "Holiday",....well,....I think it ranks somewhere below "talk like a pirate day" in the popular consciousness. ( I guess if you actually WORKED at the post office,.....still,.....I don't think they actually "celebrate" , so much as simply "get off, go home, and do laundry" and suchlike.

Yes, rediscovery of our souls. Don't expect the government to do that ever. They're too busy giving them cancer while digging for uranium or some other "profitable" goal.

And dear Jan, this is where I must disagree. Our failure to date has been our willingness to swallow the canard whole that "government is the problem". Dear Jan (a mark of respect m/f which I hope is OK with u), we have in our grasp the social media which can make direct democracy possible and reveal the "man behind the curtain" has been US all along. In the old days we had a bunch of punches and levers to run the creaky old machinery of government and it often broke down or seemed to be in the way. Now we have learned that we can control the land (OWS) and some have started to see that the tea baggers while given the intel by the rich (sorry for the diversion, but note the irony of the right spending billions to figure out stuff about taking control of all branches of government and the judiciary, but having it all fall apart because of the bozos they have to choose from as their "confidence men", then the "brainwashed mobs" of the left pick that shit up and turn it into political power gold!) God, I don't believe in, it's good to be alive!) cont. the glaring incompetence on the right is hilarious except when you stop and think just how much we have allowed ourselves to become enslaved! We, 'the land of the free' has to ring just a little bit hollow when you see just how determined the right is to control every aspect of our lives. And why do they lull themselves to sleep with the idea that if, like prison guards, they are obedient to the wishes of their masters they will receive positions of high favor or they may be jailed, tortured and eventually murdered because they cannot be 'trusted'! Ah, god, I do not believe in, I breathe each breath of air feeling just a little bit freer when I think of my brothers and sisters Occupying The World for humanity. what can we not do if we stand UNITED! Is this what it felt like when "the shot was heard round the world"???

I agree with you. Social media is one of the keys to changing this and holding government accountable if we truly use it in the right way.

The beauty of a true democracy is that ther is no "one true way"! We will forever be uncertain of what the future may hold for US and the little blue marble we inhabit in a distant corner of a modest galaxy, but we will KNOW that we will be there as a result of the application of our combined will alone! Maybe a little too much ego, but why do we live as "good neighbors" in a place where some have 5 mansions and think nothing of demolishing one to "add some space" while hunger is at an all time high? Do we "the land of the free" see no problem with people who have profited from our nation's material wealth to keep the benefits to themselves while demanding that we share or bear the major part of the expense when one of their ventures fail? And finally, have we no real compassion in our heart for the plight of our brothers and sisters? At long last "far right" have you no shame?

THAT , is a very fine idea !

a fine idea" may also be that we demand a "space race" 4 social media & privacy that will allow US to take a giant step towards direct democracy and we could pay 4 good apps "work from anywhere any one?

Excellent post Jan, when I saw your post today it reminded me of a blog that I wrote a few years ago, in that piece I used a quote of Eckhart Tolle, I hope you don't mind me quoting him here, as I feel it fits with this; " ”The collective racial pain-body is pronounced in Jewish people who suffered persecution over many centuries. Not
surprisingly, it’s strong as well in Native Americans, whose numbers were decimated, whose culture all
but destroyed by the European settlers. In black Americans too, for whom the collective pain- body is
pronounced. Their ancestors violently uprooted, beaten into submission, and sold into slavery. The
foundation of American economic prosperity rested on the labor of four to five million black slaves. In
fact, the suffering inflicted on Native and Black Americans has not remained confined to those two
races, but has become part of the collective American pain-body. It is always the case that both victim
and perpetrator suffer the consequences of any acts of violence, oppression, or brutality. For what you
do to others, you do to yourself.”

Eckhart goes on to explain, that we can neither deny away our pain body, nor can we just ignore the fact that things such as this [slavery, genocide, destroying a culture] happened and that since it was a long time ago, (not really) then we should just move on. Just like he says “what you do to others, you do to yourself”. When we begin to face this injustice and let go of the myths which have been spun, we can begin to heal. It takes looking at the truth first even begin this process. My hat is off to you as usual! thank you!

“what you do to others, you do to yourself”.

Pure wisdom. Thank you for posting this.