"...The original Europeans in the Americas were not immigrants, but colonists. And the US is not a nation of immigrants - it is a white colonial settler state, like Israel, South Africa under Apartheid, the former Rhodesia, Australia..."
 Juan Santos
A Nation of Colonists - and Race Laws
http://the-fourth-world.blogspot.com/2006/08/immigration-nation-of-colon...
 

THE INDIANS HAVE BEEN FIGHTING TERRORISM SINCE 1492
"The greatest single acts of terrorism to date were not perpetrated by Osama bin Laden, but by the US military when it dropped atomic bombs on the people of Hiroshima and Nagasaki."
Speech by Moonanum James
32nd National Day of Mourning, 2001
http://home.earthlink.net/~uainendom/moonanum2001.html

THE SUPPRESSED SPEECH OF WAMSUTTA (FRANK B.) JAMES, WAMPANOAG
To have been delivered at Plymouth, Massachusetts, 1970
http://home.earthlink.net/~uainendom/wmsuta.htm

Speech by Moonanum James, Co-Leader of United American Indians of New England at the 29th National Day of Mourning, November 26, 1998
http://home.earthlink.net/~uainendom/Mnanum98.htm

The Truth About Thanksgiving
http://www.vernoncoleman.com/thetruth.htm

The people who now describe themselves as `Americans' actually stole their
country from the Native Americans. They put the Indians in reservations
(which got smaller and smaller). The Indians were civilised and spiritual
but they had no guns and were an easy target. America was stolen by force.

At a meeting in New England in 1640 the following motions were put to the
assembly.

1. The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof.
2. The Lord may give the earth or any part of it to his chosen people.
3. We are his chosen people.

Naturally the assembled bunch of smug, barbarians voted `yes' to all these
motions, and thereby sanctified (in their minds) the theft of a nation.

It was generally agreed that the Indians were savages with no rights and yet
both the American constitution and the Declaration of Independence were
based on texts devised and used by Native American Indians - texts which
included fundamental ideas on liberty, freedom and even legislature.

The American Government signed 370 treaties with the Native Indians but
violated provisions in every one of these treaties.

The Americans now celebrate the theft of the country they call their own with a feast called Thanksgiving.
Taken from `Rogue Nation' by Vernon Coleman, published by Blue Books

SAME SHIT DIFFERENT CENTURIES (Part Five)
Malcom Lagauche
A Native American author, William Apes, of the Pequot tribe wrote Eulogy on King Philip and delivered the speech in Boston in 1836 to a group of descendants of the original Pilgrims of 1620. It was about racism, deceit, slaughter and imperialism. King Philip was the Anglicized name of the Wampanoag chief, Metacomet.

One may think that Eulogy on King Philip is merely an historical account of the white man’s imperialism, but it is far more. Apes’ address in Boston was delivered in 1836 and he told of events that occurred from 1620 to 1676. But, his words are uncannily precise in describing the world today. One can change the dates and places and see an accurate view of today’s imperialistic aspirations of the U.S.

For years prior to the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, President Saddam Hussein warned the Arab world of U.S. intentions to colonize the area. In addition, he told his countrypeople the deprivations they would experience, including the shaming of them and their culture. Shortly before the beginning of King Philip’s War, Chief Metacomet gave an inspirational and realistic speech to his people that mirrored the proclamations Saddam made about the future of Iraq after a U.S. invasion. In the speech, Metacomet stated:

Brothers, these people from the unknown world will cut down our groves, spoil our hunting and planting grounds, and drive us and our children from the graves of our fathers, and our council fires, and enslave our women and children.

Millions of Iraqis have been forced from their homes. Much of Iraqi farmland was plundered and destroyed by U.S. military operations. And, today Iraqi farmers can not use their own seeds to plant crops. The U.S. administration took a page out of antiquity and applied the same tactics that Metacomet described 328 years prior.

This is the fourth of five parts of "Eulogy on King Philip." Metacomet and his Wampanoag tribe declared full-out war on the European intruders. In this section we see where the Natives dominated the early battles, not losing one.

...This is the fifth of five parts of "Eulogy on King Philip". For more than a year, the Wampanoag won battle-after-battle against the pilgrims. But, disease and lack of food helped destroy what the pilgrims couldn’t: the Wampanoag tribe. Even in this, the methods used were almost identical to those employed by the U.S. today in showing victory. Metacomet’s wife and son were captured and sold into slavery. Once the U.S. occupied Iraq, Saddam Hussein’s wife and daughters quickly left the country before they were captured. Today, they live in exile and are on Interpol’s list of wanted terrorists.. http://www.uruknet.de/?p=48801

SAME SHIT, DIFFERENT CENTURIES (Part One)
http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m48218

SAME SHIT DIFFERENT CENTURIES (Part Two):
http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m48359

SAME SHIT DIFFERENT CENTURIES (Part Three):
http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m48542

SAME SHIT DIFFERENT CENTURIES (Part Four):
http://www.uruknet.info/?p=m48664

1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus.
By Charles C. Mann.
(Knopf, $30.) This sweeping portrait of pre-Columbian civilization argues
that it was far more populous and sophisticated than previously thought.

The Origin of Thanksgiving
In mid-winter 1620 the English ship Mayflower landed on the North American
coast (at Plymouth Rock) delivering 102 Puritan exiles. The original Native
people ("Indians") of this stretch of shoreline had already been killed off
in great numbers. In 1614 a British expedition had landed there. When they
left they took 24 Indians as slaves and left smallpox, syphilis and
gonorrhea behind. That plague swept the so called "tribes of New England",
destroyed some villages totally.

The Puritans landed and built their colony called "the Plymouth Plantation"
near the desired ruins of the Indian village of Pawtuxet. They ate from
abandoned cornfields grown wild. Historical accounts tell us that only one
Pawtuxet named Squanto had survived. He had spent the last years as a slave
to the English and Spanish in Europe. The Pilgrim crop failed miserably, but
the agricultural expertise of Squanto produced 20 acres of corn, without
which the Pilgrims would have surely perished.

Squanto spoke the colonists' language and taught them how to plant corn and
how to catch fish. Squanto also helped the colonists negotiate a peace
treaty with the nearby Wampanoag tribe, led by the chief Massasoit. These
were very lucky breaks for the colonists. Thanks to the good will of the
Wampanoag, the Puritans not only survived their first year but had an
alliance with the Wampanoags that would give them almost two decades of
peace.

In celebration of their good fortune, the colony's governor, William
Bradford, declared a three-day feast after the first harvest of 1621. It
later became known as "Thanksgiving", but the Pilgrims never called it that.
The "Indians" who attended were not even invited. The pilgrims only invited
Chief Massasoit and it was Massasoit who then invited ninety or more of his
"Indian" brothers and sisters to the affair to the chagrin of the indignant
Europeans. No turkey, cranberry sauce or pumpkin pie was served, no prayers
were offered and the "Indians" were not
invited back for any other such meals. The Pilgrims did however consume a
good deal of brew on that day. In fact, each Pilgrim drank at least a half
gallon of ale a day which they preferred even to water.

The peace that produced the Thanksgiving Feast of 1621 meant that the
Puritans would have fifteen years to established a firm foothold on the
coast. Until 1629 there were no more than 300 Puritans in New England,
scattered in small and isolated settlements. But their survival inspired a
wave of Puritan invasion that soon established growing Massachusetts towns
north of Plymouth; Boston and Salem. For ten years, boat loads of new
settlers came.

As the Europeans' numbers increased, they proved not nearly as generous as
the Wampanoags. On arrival, the Puritans discussed "who legally owns all
this land? "Massachusetts Governor Wintrop declared the "Indians" had not
"subdued" the land, and therefore all uncultivated lands should, according
to English Common Law, be considered "public domain." This meant they
belonged to the king. In short, colonists decided they did not need to
consult the "Indians". When they seized the new lands, they only had to
consult the representative of the crown (meaning the local governor). The
Puritans embraced a line from Psalms 2:8, "Ask of me, and I shall give thee,
the heather for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of he earth for
thy possession."

Contrary to popular mythology the Pilgrims were no friends to the local
Indigenous People ("Indians"). A company of Pilgrims led by Miles Standish
actively sought the head of a local chief. Standish eventually got his
bloody prize. He beheaded an Indian brave named Wituwamat and brought the
head to Plymouth where it was displayed on a wooden spike for many years.

In about 1636, a force of colonists trapped some seven hundred Pequot
Indians near the mouth of the Mystic River. English Captain John Mason
attacked the Indian camp with "fire, sword, blunderbuss, and tomahawk." Only
a handful escaped and few prisoners were taken.

"To see them frying in the fire, and the streams of their blood quenching
the same, and the stench was horrible, but the victory seemed a sweet
sacrifice to the great delight of the Pilgrims, and they gave praise thereof
to God."

The Puritan fathers believed they were the Chosen People of an Infinite God
and that this justified anything they did. They were Calvinists who believed
that the vast majority of humanity was predestined to damnation.

During this period a day of thanksgiving was also proclaimed in the churches
of Manhattan. The European colonists declared thanksgiving days to celebrate
mass murder more often than they did for reverence, harvest or friendship.

In 1641 the Dutch governor Kieft of Manhattan offered the first "scalp
bounty". His government paid money for the scalp of each "Indian" brought to
him. A couple of years later, Kieft ordered the massacre of the Wappingers,
a "friendly tribe". Eighty were killed and their severed heads were kicked
like soccer balls down the streets of Manhattan. One captive was castrated,
skinned alive and forced at points to eat his own flesh while the Dutch
governor watched and laughed. Then Kieft hired the notorious Underhill who
had commanded in the Pequot War to carry out a similar massacre near
Stamford, Connecticut. The village was set on fire, and 500 "Indian"
residents were put to the sword.

In their victory, the settlers launched an all out genocide plot against the
remaining Native people. The Massachusetts government, following what
appeared to be the order of the day, offered twenty shillings bounty for
every "Indian" scalp, and forty shillings for every prisoner who could be
sold into slavery. Soldiers were allowed to enslave and rape any "Indian"
woman or enslave any "Indian" child under 14 they could kidnap. The "Praying
Indians" who had converted to Christianity and fought on the side of the
European troops were accused of shooting into the treetops during battles
with "hostiles." They were enslaved or killed. Other "peaceful Indians" of
Dartmouth and Dover were invited to negotiate or seek refuge at trading
posts and were sold onto slave ships. Colonial law further gave permission
to "kill savages ("Indians") on sight at will."

Any goodwill that may have existed was certainly now gone and by 1675
Massachusetts and the surrounding colonies were in a full scale war with the
great chief of the Wampanoags, Metacomet. Renamed "King Phillip" by the
White man, Metacomet watched the steady erosion of the lifestyles and
culture of his people as European laws and values engulfed them. The
syphilis, gonorrhea, smallpox and all types of "white man" diseases took
their toll. Forced ultimately into humiliating submission by the power of a
distant king, Metacomet struck out with raids on several isolated frontier
towns. The expedient use of the so-called "Praying Indians" (natives
converted to their version of Christianity), ultimately defeated the great
"Indian" nation, just half a century after the arrival of the European.

When Captain Benjamin Church tracked down and assassinated Metacomet, his
body was quartered and parts were "left for the wolves." The great "Indian"
chief's hands were cut off and sent to Boston and his head went to Plymouth
where it was set upon a poke on Thanksgiving Day, 1767. Metacomet's
nine-year-old son was destined for execution, the Puritan reasoning being
that the offspring of the "Devil" must pay for the sins of their father. He
was instead shipped to the Caribbean to serve his life in slavery.

In the midst of the Holocaust/Genocide of the Red Man and woman, Governor
Dudley declared in 1704 a "General Thanksgiving" not to celebrate the
brotherhood of man, but for: [God's] infinite Goodness to extend His
Favors... In defeating and disappointing.... the expeditions of the Enemy
[Indians] against us, And the good Success given us against them, by
delivering so many of them into our hands...

Thanksgiving Prayer

Thanks for the wild turkey and
the passenger pigeons, destined
to be shat out through wholesome
American guts.
Thanks for a continent to despoil
and poison.

Thanks for Indians to provide a
modicum of challenge and
danger.
Thanks for vast herds of bison to
kill and skin leaving the
carcasses to rot.

Thanks for bounties on wolves
and coyotes.
Thanks for the American dream,
To vulgarize and to falsify until
the bare lies shine through.
Thanks for the KKK.
For nigger-killin' lawmen,
feelin' their notches.
For decent church-goin' women,
with their mean, pinched, bitter,
evil faces.
Thanks for "Kill a Queer for
Christ" stickers.
Thanks for laboratory AIDS.
Thanks for Prohibition and the
war against drugs.
Thanks for a country where
nobody's allowed to mind the
own business.
Thanks for a nation of finks.
Yes, thanks for all the
memories-- all right let's see
your arms!
You always were a headache and
you always were a bore.
Thanks for the last and greatest
betrayal of the last and greatest
of human dreams.
William S. Burroughs
November 28 1986

THE ORIGINAL THANKSGIVING PROCLAMATION
06/20/167
www.informationclearinghouse.info/article5302.htm

"The Holy God having by a long and Continual Series of his Afflictive
dispensations in and by the present Warr with the Heathen Natives of this
land, written and brought to pass bitter things against his own Covenant
people in this wilderness, yet so that we evidently discern that in the
midst of his judgements he hath remembered mercy, having remembered his
Footstool in the day of his sore displeasure against us for our sins, with
many singular Intimations of his Fatherly Compassion, and regard; reserving
many of our Towns from Desolation Threatened, and attempted by the Enemy,
and giving us especially of late with many of our Confederates many signal
Advantages against them, without such Disadvantage to ourselves as formerly
we have been sensible of, if it be the Lord's mercy that we are not
consumed, It certainly bespeaks our positive Thankfulness, when our Enemies
are in any measure disappointed or destroyed; and fearing the Lord should
take notice under so many Intimations of his returning mercy, we should be
found an Insensible people, as not standing before Him with Thanksgiving, as
well as lading him with our Complaints in the time of pressing Afflictions: 

The Council has thought meet to appoint and set apart the 29th day of this
instant June, as a day of Solemn Thanksgiving and praise to God for such his
Goodness and Favour, many Particulars of which mercy might be Instanced,
but we doubt not those who are sensible of God's Afflictions, have been as
diligent to espy him returning to us; and that the Lord may behold us as a
People offering Praise and thereby glorifying Him; the Council doth commend
it to the Respective Ministers, Elders and people of this Jurisdiction;
Solemnly and seriously to keep the same Beseeching that being perswaded by
the mercies of God we may all, even this whole people offer up our bodies
and soulds as a living and acceptable Service unto God by Jesus Christ." 

The End of American Thanksgivings Will Be a Cause for Universal Rejoicing
http://www.blackcommentator.com/66/66_cover_thanksgiving.html

The Mayflower's cultural heirs are programmed to find glory in
their own depravity and savagery in their helpless victims.

Nobody but Americans celebrates Thanksgiving. It is reserved by history
and the intent of “the founders” as the supremely white American holiday,
the most ghoulish event on the national calendar. No Halloween of the
imagination can rival the exterminationist reality that was the genesis,
and remains the legacy, of the American Thanksgiving. It is the most
loathsome, humanity-insulting day of the year – a pure glorification of
racist barbarity.

We at are thankful that the day grows nearer when the almost four
centuries-old abomination will be deprived of its reason for being: white
supremacy. Then we may all eat and drink in peace and gratitude for the
blessings of humanity’s deliverance from the rule of evil men.

Thanksgiving is much more than a lie – if it were that simple, an
historical correction of the record of events in 1600s Massachusetts would
suffice to purge the “flaw” in the national mythology. But Thanksgiving is
not just a twisted fable, and the mythology it nurtures is itself
inherently evil. The real-life events – subsequently revised – were
perfectly understood at the time as the first, definitive triumphs of the
genocidal European project in New England. The near-erasure of Native
Americans in Massachusetts and, soon thereafter, from most of the remainder
of the northern English colonial seaboard was the true mission of the
Pilgrim enterprise – Act One of the American Dream. African Slavery
commenced contemporaneously – an overlapping and ultimately inseparable Act
Two.

The last Act in the American drama must be the “root and branch”
eradication of all vestiges of Act One and Two – America’s seminal crimes
and formative projects. Thanksgiving as presently celebrated – that is, as
a national political event – is an affront to civilization.

Celebrating the unspeakable

White America embraced Thanksgiving because a majority of that population
glories in the fruits, if not the unpleasant details, of genocide and
slavery and feels, on the whole, good about their heritage: a cornucopia
of privilege and national power. Children are taught to identify with the
good fortune of the Pilgrims. It does not much matter that the Native
American and African holocausts that flowed from the feast at Plymouth are
hidden from the children’s version of the story – kids learn soon enough
that Indians were made scarce and Africans became enslaved. But they will
also never forget the core message of the holiday: that the Pilgrims were
good people, who could not have purposely set such evil in motion. Just as
the first Thanksgivings marked the consolidation of the English toehold in
what became the United States, the core ideological content of the holiday
serves to validate all that has since occurred on these shores – a national
consecration of the unspeakable, a balm and benediction for the victors, a
blessing of the fruits of murder and kidnapping, and an implicit obligation
to continue the seamless historical project in the present day.

The Thanksgiving story is an absolution of the Pilgrims, whose brutal quest
for absolute power in the New World is made to seem both religiously
motivated and eminently human. Most importantly, the Pilgrims are depicted
as victims – of harsh weather and their own naïve yet wholesome visions of
a new beginning. In light of this carefully nurtured fable, whatever
happened to the Indians, from Plymouth to California and beyond, in the
aftermath of the 1621 dinner must be considered a mistake, the result of
misunderstandings – at worst, a series of lamentable tragedies. The story
provides the essential first frame of the American saga. It is unalloyed
racist propaganda, a tale that endures because it served the purposes of a
succession of the Pilgrims’ political heirs, in much the same way that
Nazi-enhanced mythology of a glorious Aryan/German past advanced another
murderous, expansionist mission.

Thanksgiving is quite dangerous – as were the Pilgrims.

Rejoicing in a cemetery

The English settlers, their ostensibly religious venture backed by a
trading company, were glad to discover that they had landed in a virtual
cemetery in 1620. Corn still sprouted in the abandoned fields of the
Wampanoags, but only a remnant of the local population remained around the
fabled Rock. In a letter to England, Massachusetts Bay colony founder John
Winthrop wrote, "But for the natives in these parts, God hath so pursued
them, as for 300 miles space the greatest part of them are swept away by
smallpox which still continues among them. So as God hath thereby cleared
our title to this place, those who remain in these parts, being in all not
50, have put themselves under our protection."

Ever diligent to claim their own advantages as God’s will, the Pilgrims
thanked their deity for having “pursued” the Indians to mass death.
However, it was not divine intervention that wiped out most of the natives
around the village of Patuxet but, most likely, smallpox-embedded blankets
planted during an English visit or slave raid. Six years before the Pilgrim
landing, a ship sailed into Patuxet’s harbor, captained by none other than
the famous seaman and mercenary soldier John Smith, former leader of the
first successful English colony in the New World, at Jamestown, Virginia.
Epidemic and slavery followed in his wake, as Debra Glidden described in
IMDiversity.com:

In 1614 the Plymouth Company of England, a joint stock company, hired
Captain John Smith to explore land in its behalf. Along what is now the
coast of Massachusetts in the territory of the Wampanoag, Smith visited the
town of Patuxet according to "The Colonial Horizon," a 1969 book edited by
William Goetzinan. Smith renamed the town Plymouth in honor of his
employers, but the Wampanoag who inhabited the town continued to call it
Patuxet.

The following year Captain Hunt, an English slave trader, arrived at
Patuxet. It was common practice for explorers to capture Indians, take
them to Europe and sell them into slavery for 220 shillings apiece. That
practice was described in a 1622 account of happenings entitled "A
Declaration of the State of the Colony and Affairs in Virginia," written by
Edward Waterhouse. True to the explorer tradition, Hunt kidnapped a number
of Wampanoags to sell into slavery.

Another common practice among European explorers was to give "smallpox
blankets" to the Indians. Since smallpox was unknown on this continent
prior to the arrival of the Europeans, Native Americans did not have any
natural immunity to the disease so smallpox would effectively wipe out
entire villages with very little effort required by the Europeans. William
Fenton describes how Europeans decimated Native American villages in his
1957 work "American Indian and White relations to 1830." From 1615 to 1619
smallpox ran rampant among the Wampanoags and their neighbors to the north.
The Wampanoag lost 70 percent of their population to the epidemic and the
Massachusetts lost 90 percent.

Most of the Wampanoag had died from the smallpox epidemic so when the
Pilgrims arrived they found well-cleared fields which they claimed for
their own. A Puritan colonist, quoted by Harvard University's Perry Miller,
praised the plague that had wiped out the Indians for it was "the wonderful
preparation of the Lord Jesus Christ, by his providence for his people's
abode in the Western world."
Historians have since speculated endlessly on why the woods in the region
resembled a park to the disembarking Pilgrims in 1620. The reason should
have been obvious: hundreds, if not thousands, of people had lived there
just five years before.

In less than three generations the settlers would turn all of New England
into a charnel house for Native Americans, and fire the economic engines
of slavery throughout English-speaking America. Plymouth Rock is the place
where the nightmare truly began.

The uninvited?

It is not at all clear what happened at the first – and only – 
“integrated” Thanksgiving feast. Only two written accounts of the three-day
event exist, and one of them, by Governor William Bradford, was written 20
years after the fact. Was Chief Massasoit invited to bring 90 Indians with
him to dine with 52 colonists, most of them women and children? This seems
unlikely. A good harvest had provided the settlers with plenty of food,
according to their accounts, so the whites didn’t really need the
Wampanoag’s offering of five deer. What we do know is that there had been
lots of tension between the two groups that fall.  John Two-Hawks, who runs
the Native Circle web site, gives a sketch of the facts:
“Thanksgiving' did not begin as a great loving relationship between the
pilgrims and the Wampanoag, Pequot and Narragansett people.  In fact, in
October of 1621 when the pilgrim survivors of their first winter in Turtle
Island sat down to share the first unofficial 'Thanksgiving' meal, the
Indians who were there were not even invited!  There was no turkey, squash,
cranberry sauce or pumpkin pie.  A few days before this alleged feast took
place, a company of 'pilgrims' led by Miles Standish actively sought the
head of a local Indian chief, and an 11 foot high wall was erected around
the entire Plymouth settlement for the very purpose of keeping Indians
out!”

It is much more likely that Chief Massasoit either crashed the party, or
brought enough men to ensure that he was not kidnapped or harmed by the
Pilgrims. Dr. Tingba Apidta, in his “Black Folks’ Guide to Understanding
Thanksgiving,” surmises that the settlers “brandished their weaponry” early
and got drunk soon thereafter. He notes that “each Pilgrim drank at least
a half gallon of beer a day, which they preferred even to water. This daily
inebriation led their governor, William Bradford, to comment on his
people's ‘notorious sin,’ which included their ‘drunkenness and
uncleanliness’ and rampant ‘sodomy.’”

Soon after the feast the brutish Miles Standish “got his bloody prize,” Dr.
Apidta writes:
“He went to the Indians, pretended to be a trader, then beheaded an
Indian man named Wituwamat. He brought the head to Plymouth, where it was
displayed on a wooden spike for many years, according to Gary B. Nash, ‘as
a symbol of white power.’ Standish had the Indian man's young brother
hanged from the rafters for good measure. From that time on, the whites were
known to the Indians of Massachusetts by the name ‘Wotowquenange,’ which
in their tongue meant cutthroats and stabbers.”

What is certain is that the first feast was not called a “Thanksgiving” at
the time; no further integrated dining occasions were scheduled; and the
first, official all-Pilgrim “Thanksgiving” had to wait until 1637, when the
whites of New England celebrated the massacre of the Wampanoag’s southern
neighbors, the Pequots.

The real Thanksgiving Day Massacre

The Pequots today own the Foxwood Casino and Hotel, in Ledyard,
Connecticut, with gross gaming revenues of over $9 billion in 2000. This is
truly a (very belated) miracle, since the real first Pilgrim Thanksgiving
was intended as the Pequot’s epitaph. Sixteen years after the problematical
Plymouth feast, the English tried mightily to erase the Pequots from the
face of the Earth, and thanked God for the blessing.

Having subdued, intimidated or made mercenaries of most of the tribes of
Massachusetts, the English turned their growing force southward, toward the
rich Connecticut valley, the Pequot’s sphere of influence. At the point
where the Mystic River meets the sea, the combined force of English and
allied Indians bypassed the Pequot fort to attack and set ablaze a town
full of women, children and old people.

William Bradford, the former Governor of Plymouth and one of the
chroniclers of the 1621 feast, was also on hand for the great massacre of
1637:
"Those that escaped the fire were slain with the sword; some hewed to
pieces, others run through with their rapiers, so that they were quickly
dispatched and very few escaped. It was conceived they thus destroyed about
400 at this time. It was a fearful sight to see them thus frying in the
fire...horrible was the stink and scent thereof, but the victory seemed a
sweet sacrifice, and they gave the prayers thereof to God, who had wrought
so wonderfully for them, thus to enclose their enemies in their hands, and
give them so speedy a victory over so proud and insulting an enemy."

The rest of the white folks thought so, too. “This day forth shall be a day
of celebration and thanksgiving for subduing the Pequots," read Governor
John Winthrop’s proclamation. The authentic Thanksgiving Day was born.

Most historians believe about 700 Pequots were slaughtered at Mystic. Many
prisoners were executed, and surviving women and children sold into slavery
in the West Indies. Pequot prisoners that escaped execution were parceled
out to Indian tribes allied with the English. The Pequot were thought to
have been extinguished as a people. According to IndyMedia, “The Pequot
tribe numbered 8,000 when the Pilgrims arrived, but disease had brought
their numbers down to 1,500 by 1637. The Pequot ‘War’ killed all but a
handful of remaining members of the tribe.”

But there were still too many Indians around to suit the whites of New
England, who bided their time while their own numbers increased to
critical, murderous mass.

Guest’s head on a pole

By the 1670s the colonists, with 8,000 men under arms, felt strong enough
to demand that the Pilgrims’ former dinner guests the Wampanoags disarm and
submit to the authority of the Crown. After a series of settler provocations
in 1675, the Wampanoag struck back, under the leadership of Chief Metacomet,
son of Massasoit, called King Philip by the English. Metacomet/Philip,
whose wife and son were captured and sold into West Indian slavery, wiped
out 13 settlements and killed 600 adult white men before the tide of battle
turned. A 1996 issue of the Revolutionary Worker provides an excellent
narrative.

In their victory, the settlers launched an all-out genocide against the
remaining Native people. The Massachusetts government offered 20 shillings
bounty for every Indian scalp, and 40 shillings for every prisoner who
could be sold into slavery. Soldiers were allowed to enslave any Indian
woman or child under 14 they could capture. The "Praying Indians" who had
converted to Christianity and fought on the side of the European troops
were accused of shooting into the treetops during battles with "hostiles."
They were enslaved or killed. Other "peaceful" Indians of Dartmouth and
Dover were invited to negotiate or seek refuge at trading posts – and were
sold onto slave ships.

It is not known how many Indians were sold into slavery, but in this
campaign, 500 enslaved Indians were shipped from Plymouth alone. Of the
12,000 Indians in the surrounding tribes, probably about half died from
battle, massacre and starvation.

After King Philip's War, there were almost no Indians left free in the
northern British colonies. A colonist wrote from Manhattan's New York
colony: "There is now but few Indians upon the island and those few no ways
hurtful. It is to be admired how strangely they have decreased by the hand
of God, since the English first settled in these parts." In Massachusetts,
the colonists declared a "day of public thanksgiving" in 1676, saying,
"there now scarce remains a name or family of them [the Indians] but are
either slain, captivated or fled."
Fifty-five years after the original Thanksgiving Day, the Puritans had
destroyed the generous Wampanoag and all other neighboring tribes. The
Wampanoag chief King Philip was beheaded. His head was stuck on a pole in
Plymouth, where the skull still hung on display 24 years later.

This is not thought to be a fit Thanksgiving tale for the children of
today, but it’s the real story, well-known to the settler children of New
England at the time – the white kids who saw the Wampanoag head on the pole
year after year and knew for certain that God loved them best of all, and
that every atrocity they might ever commit against a heathen, non-white was
blessed.

There’s a good term for the process thus set in motion: nation-building.

Roots of the slave trade

The British North American colonists’ practice of enslaving Indians for
labor or direct sale to the West Indies preceded the appearance of the
first chained Africans at the dock in Jamestown, Virginia, in 1619. The
Jamestown colonists’ human transaction with the Dutch vessel was an
unscheduled occurrence. However, once the African slave trade became
commercially established, the fates of Indians and Africans in the colonies
became inextricably entwined. New England, born of up-close-and-personal,
burn-them-in-the-fires-of-hell genocide, led the political and commercial
development of the English colonies. The region also led the nascent
nation’s descent into a slavery-based society and economy.

Ironically, an apologist for Virginian slavery made one of the best,
early cases for the indictment of New England as the engine of the American
slave trade. Unreconstructed secessionist Lewis Dabney’s 1867 book “A
Defense of Virginia” traced the slave trade’s origins all the way back to
Plymouth Rock:

The planting of the commercial States of North America began with the
colony of Puritan Independents at Plymouth, in 1620, which was subsequently
enlarged into the State of Massachusetts. The other trading colonies, Rhode
Island and Connecticut, as well as New Hampshire (which never had an
extensive shipping interest), were offshoots of Massachusetts. They partook
of the same characteristics and pursuits; and hence, the example of the
parent colony is taken here as a fair representation of them.

The first ship from America, which embarked in the African slave trade,
was the Desire, Captain Pierce, of Salem; and this was among the first
vessels ever built in the colony. The promptitude with which the "Puritan
Fathers" embarked in this business may be comprehended, when it is stated
that the Desire sailed upon her voyage in June, 1637. [Note: the year they
massacred the Pequots.] The first feeble and dubious foothold was gained by
the white man at Plymouth less than seventeen years before; and as is well
known, many years were expended by the struggle of the handful of settlers
for existence. So that it may be correctly said, that the commerce of New
England was born of the slave trade; as its subsequent prosperity was
largely founded upon it. The Desire, proceeding to the Bahamas, with a
cargo of "dry fish and strong liquors, the only commodities for those
parts," obtained the negroes from two British men-of-war, which had
captured them from a Spanish slaver.
Thus, the trade of which the good ship Desire, of Salem, was the
harbinger, grew into grand proportions; and for nearly two centuries poured
a flood of wealth into New England, as well as no inconsiderable number of
slaves. Meanwhile, the other maritime colonies of Rhode Island and
Providence Plantations, and Connecticut, followed the example of their
elder sister emulously; and their commercial history is but a repetition of
that of Massachusetts. The towns of Providence, Newport, and New Haven
became famous slave trading ports. The magnificent harbor of the second,
especially, was the favorite starting-place of the slave ships; and its
commerce rivaled, or even exceeded, that of the present commercial
metropolis, New York. All the four original States, of course, became
slaveholding.

The Revolution that exploded in 1770s New England was undertaken by men
thoroughly imbued with the worldview of the Indian-killer and slave-holder.
How could they not be? The “country” they claimed as their own was fathered
by genocide and mothered by slavery – its true distinction among the
commercial nations of the world. And these men were not ashamed, but proud,
with vast ambition to spread their exceptional characteristics West and
South and wherever their so-far successful project in nation-building might
take them – and by the same bloody, savage methods that had served them so
well in the past.

At the moment of deepest national crisis following the battle of Gettysburg
in 1863, President Abraham Lincoln invoked the national fable that is far
more central to the white American personality than Lincoln’s battlefield
“Address.” Lincoln seized upon the 1621 feast as the historic
“Thanksgiving” – bypassing the official and authentic 1637 precedent – and
assigned the dateless, murky event the fourth Thursday in November.

Lincoln surveyed a broken nation, and attempted nation-rebuilding, based
on the purest white myth. The same year that he issued the Emancipation
Proclamation, he renewed the national commitment to a white manifest
destiny that began at Plymouth Rock. Lincoln sought to rekindle a shared
national mission that former Confederates and Unionists and white
immigrants from Europe could collectively embrace. It was and remains a
barbaric and racist national unifier, by definition. Only the most
fantastic lies can sanitize the history of the Plymouth Colony of
Massachusetts.

”Like a rock”

The Thanksgiving holiday fable is at once a window on the way that many,
if not most, white Americans view the world and their place in it, and a
pollutant that leaches barbarism into the modern era. The fable attempts to
glorify the indefensible, to enshrine an era and mission that represent the
nation’s lowest moral denominators. Thanksgiving as framed in the mythology
is, consequently, a drag on that which is potentially civilizing in the
national character, a crippling, atavistic deformity. Defenders of the
holiday will claim that the politically-corrected children’s version
promotes brotherhood, but that is an impossibility – a bald excuse to
prolong the worship of colonial “forefathers” and to erase the crimes they
committed. Those bastards burned the Pequot women and children, and ushered
in the multinational business of slavery. These are facts. The myth is an
insidious diversion – and worse.

Humanity cannot tolerate a 21st Century superpower, much of whose
population perceives the world through the eyes of 17th Century land and
flesh bandits. Yet that is the trick that fate has played on the globe. We
described the roots of the planetary dilemma in our March 13 commentary,
“Racism & War, Perfect Together.”

The English arrived with criminal intent - and brought wives and children
to form new societies predicated on successful plunder. To justify the
murderous enterprise, Indians who had initially cooperated with the
squatters were transmogrified into "savages" deserving displacement and
death. The relentlessly refreshed lie of Indian savagery became a truth in
the minds of white Americans, a fact to be acted upon by every succeeding
generation of whites. The settlers became a singular people confronting the
great "frontier" - a euphemism for centuries of genocidal campaigns against
a darker, "savage" people marked for extinction.
The necessity of genocide was the operative, working assumption of the
expanding American nation. "Manifest Destiny" was born at Plymouth Rock and
Jamestown, later to fall (to paraphrase Malcolm) like a rock on Mexico, the
Philippines, Haiti, Nicaragua, etc. Little children were taught that the
American project was inherently good, Godly, and that those who got in the
way were "evil-doers" or just plain subhuman, to be gloriously eliminated.
The lie is central to white American identity, embraced by waves of
European settlers who never saw a red person.

Only a century ago, American soldiers caused the deaths of possibly a
million Filipinos whom they had been sent to “liberate” from Spanish rule.
They didn’t even know who they were killing, and so rationalized their
behavior by substituting the usual American victims. Colonel Funston, of
the Twentieth Kansas Volunteers, explained what got him motivated in the
Philippines:
"Our fighting blood was up and we all wanted to kill 'niggers.' This
shooting human beings is a 'hot game,' and beats rabbit hunting all to
pieces." Another wrote that "the boys go for the enemy as if they were
chasing jack-rabbits .... I, for one, hope that Uncle Sam will apply the
chastening rod, good, hard, and plenty, and lay it on until they come into
the reservation and promise to be good 'Injuns.'"

Last week in northern Iraq another American colonel, Joe Anderson of the
101st Airborne (Assault) Division, revealed that he is incapable of
perceiving Arabs as human beings. Colonel Anderson, who doubles as a
commander and host of a radio call-in program and a TV show designed to
win the hearts and minds of the people of Mosul, had learned that someone
was out to assassinate him. In the wild mood swing common to racists,
Anderson decided that Iraqis are all alike – and of a different breed. He
said as much to the Los Angeles Times.
"They don't understand being nice," said Anderson, who helps oversee the
military zone that includes Mosul and environs. He doesn't hide his
irritation after months dedicated to restoring the city: "We spent so long
here working with kid gloves, but the average Iraqi guy will tell you, 'The
only thing people respect here is violence…. They only understand being
shot at, being killed. That's the culture.' … Nice guys do finish last
here."

Col. Anderson personifies the unfitness of Americans to play a major role
in the world, much less rule it. "We poured a lot of our heart and soul
into trying to help the people,” he bitched, as if Americans were God’s
gift to the planet. "But it can be frustrating when you hear stupid people
still saying, 'You're occupiers. You want our oil. You're turning our
country over to Israel.'” He cannot fathom that other people – non-whites
–  aspire to run their own affairs, and will kill and die to achieve that
basic right.

What does this have to do with the Mayflower? Everything. Although
possibly against their wishes, the Pilgrims hosted the Wampanoag for three
no doubt anxious days. The same men killed and enslaved Wampanoags
immediately before and after the feast. They, their newly arrived English
comrades and their children roasted hundreds of neighboring Indians alive
just 16 years later, and two generations afterwards cleared nearly the
whole of New England of its indigenous “savages,” while enthusiastically
enriching themselves through the invention of transoceanic, sophisticated
means of enslaving millions. The Mayflower’s cultural heirs are programmed
to find glory in their own depravity and savagery in their most helpless
victims, who can only redeem themselves by accepting the inherent goodness
of white Americans.

Thanksgiving encourages these cognitive cripples in their madness, just as
it is designed to do.

Things are looking up

We began this essay by saying that “the day grows nearer when the almost
four centuries-old abomination [Thanksgiving] will be deprived of its
reason for being: white supremacy.” We firmly believe this. The wired
world works against the Bush men’s insane leap to global hegemony, while
creating the material basis for (dare we say the words) brother- and
sisterhood among humankind. It becomes clear that the fruits of millennia
of human genius cannot be captured and packaged for the enrichment of a few
for much longer – and certainly not by a cabal that cannot see beyond the
bubble of its own, warped history. The dim outlines of a new and more
democratic world order can be seen in the often tentative, but sometimes
dramatic actions of movements and nations determined to construct a fairer
way to live. As the world witnesses the brutality, stupidity and sheer
incompetence of the Pirates currently at the helm of the United States, the
urgency of a common, alternative human project becomes apparent to all. The
“end of history” that the Bush men triumphantly announce is really the end
of them, through a process they have accelerated with every deranged action
and delusional strategy they have undertaken since 2001.

They are like men in quicksand. White racism as a global scourge will sink
with them, and eventually whither to a mere prejudice rather than a
world-threatening menace.

We at are thankful to be alive in the knowledge that a new world is just
over the horizon, close enough to sense, even if we never see it.

We are optimistic about our struggle in the United States – if not, we
would never encourage anybody to fight for anything....

=====

THE TRAIL OF TEARS CONTINUES FOR BLACK INDIANS
Shaeed Shabazz
http://www.blackcommentator.com/66/66_reprint_indians.html

At least 18% of the Indians who survived the Trail of Tears were Black.

ENID, Oklahoma – "History speaks of the ‘Trail of Tears’ in the past
tense, and perhaps for the Indian nations it is, but for Black Indians 173
years later, we find ourselves still traveling this journey," Eleanor
"Gypsy" Wyatt, chairman of the Freedman Descendents of the Five Civilized
Tribes told those gathered at the first annual Enid, Oklahoma, Black
Indian pow wow.

She was speaking of the forced march at gunpoint that thousands of Native
Americans endured in the 1930s after the United States government decided
that they wanted the Indian lands east of the Mississippi.

Ms. Wyatt said her ancestors marched on the trail, and like many Black
families, part of their history has been lost. "Though my complexion is of
a dark hue, my African brothers don’t claim me for my hair is too straight
or wavy, my nose is not broad, my lips are not full. My Choctaw and
Chickasaw brothers won’t claim me, although my features are much like their
own. I am a reminder of the inhumane treatment against a people," she said.

In 1829, settlers found gold on the Cherokee lands in northeastern
Georgia, and they wanted government officials to remove the Indians off
their land. In 1830, Congress passed the Indian Removal Act, which was
signed into law by President Andrew Jackson. The act argued that, "no
state could achieve proper culture, civilization, and progress, as long as
Indians remained within its boundaries." The bill called for the removal of
all Indians in the southeastern United States to the territory west of the
Mississippi River. In 1838, the first groups started out on their
1,000-mile trek, which became known as the Trail of Tears because of the
horrors faced, such as disease, lack of food, water and bad weather.

Indian nations such as the Cherokee, Choctaw, Creek, Kickapoo, Seminole,
Wyandotte, Lenapi, Chickasaw and Mohawk had their lands taken away because
settlers and corporations wanted more land, according to historians.

The Cherokee arrived on March 24, 1839 in their new land called the
Indian Territory, now Oklahoma, a word that means "red people."

Today, organizations, such as the Black Indians United Legal Defense and
Education Fund and the Freedman Descendants of the Five Civilized Tribes,
argue that the history of Black Indians has been left out deliberately by
government agencies such as the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA).

"Our current struggles arise from what seems to be a concerted effort by
the highest levels of U.S. government agencies responsible for the
fiduciary and trustee duties to deny Black Indians their rights under the
Treaty of 1866, giving slaves held by the five tribes equal rights, as full
members of the tribes.

"I charge the BIA with ethnic cleansing, racial discrimination, ethnically
exclusionary procedural systems and breach of contractual obligations,"
said Angela Molette, Freedmen's Descendants spokesperson. She said the
main purpose of the First Annual Black Indian Pow Wow in Enid was to call
"members" of the five tribes back home so that they may re-claim the
heritage that was lost due to the forced exile. Historians have estimated
that at least 18 percent of the Indians that survived the Trail of Tears
were Black.

Robert Finley, 62, told The Final Call that he moved back to Enid from
California to claim his lost heritage. He said his father, Robert Finley,
Sr., would sit around the house on the weekends and hold conversations with
his uncles in Choctaw. "I would ask them what language they were speaking,
and they would tell me that I would pick it up as I got older, but that
never happened," Mr. Finley said. He said that his generation was not
encouraged to seek information about their Indian heritage. He said the
elders felt it was difficult enough being Black, and adding the Indian to
it would make life unbearable.

Pearl Mitchell, 86, is the matriarch in Enid’s Black Indian enclave. "We
never knew much about our Indian heritage," she said, admitting that she
learned more about her true heritage at the pow wow than she had over the
years. "It is good that the young want to know about their Indian
ancestors," Ms. Mitchell added.

James Hakeem Sweeney, his sister Nzingha Beverly Sweeney and Charline
Habiba Tramel traveled from Buffalo, New York, to attend the pow wow.
"There is a part of my history here that I need to know," Mr. Sweeney
said. He said his grandparents came from Oklahoma. Nzingha Sweeney said that
she always felt that her grandparents, aunts and uncles were keeping
secrets about their Indian heritage. "I remember looking at my grandfather
with those cheekbones and high nose, and I would say there is more to where
we come from," Ms. Sweeney shared.

"I have been to other pow wows because I am always searching for my Indian
history. I have grandchildren and I want them to know where they come
from, so they will know where they are going," Ms. Tramel said.

(If you are interested in gaining knowledge of genealogy techniques and
family contacts, you may contact Angela Molette at the Southern Heights
Heritage Center and Museum, 616 Leona Mitchell Boulevard, Enid, Oklahoma
73701, or call (580) 237-6989.)

Giving Thanks In The Land Of Denial
by Mickey Z
November 28, 2002
http://www.zmag.org/content/Miscellaneous/z_givingthanks.cfm

"Thanks for the wild turkey and the passenger pigeons, destined to be shit out through wholesomeAmerican guts."From "A Thanksgiving Prayer"William S. Burroughs, 1988

-----------When New York Times columnist William Safire informs us that
Saddam Hussein is "gaining the power to threaten our cities with
annihilation,"and President-Select Bush calls the Iraqi leader" a man who
loves to link up with al-Qaeda," they are remaining faithful to America's
long tradition of subterfuge and pretext.

Even the name "America" can trace its roots to deceit.

-----------"Thanks for a continent to despoil and poison. Thanks for Indians
to provide a modicum of challenge and danger."-Burroughs-----------

Amerigo Vespucci (1451-1512) was a Florentine merchant-adventurer. His
self-generated claims as an explorer and as the first white man to reach the
mainland of America in June 1497 have long been in dispute due to the
geographically unfeasible distances and positions quoted in his letters.
While it is widely accepted he made atleast two voyages to the Americas, he
was not the leader of any expedition and was not the first European of his
era to set foot on the mainland.

America: named after a self-hyping fraud? It's just too perfect.

-----------"Thanks for vast herds of bison to kill and skin,leaving the
carcasses to rot. Thanks for bounties on wolves and
coyotes."-Burroughs-----------

Like the Bush and Safire fabrications above, we've heard lots of fables to
justify war: the sinking of the Maine and the Lusitania, the expected
surprise of Pearl Harbor, invisible torpedoes in the Tonkin Gulf, and Iraqi
soldiers ripping babies from Kuwaiti incubators. In response to these and
other yarns, the Department of War becomes the Department of Defense,
missiles become peacekeepers, and "Apache" helicopters are unselfconsciously
sent to quell ethnic cleansing.Incendiary bombs fall over Dresden and
Tokyo,atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, depleted uranium over Iraq
and Yugoslavia (and Vieques),daisy cutters over Afghanistan, and the people
of Vietnam are introduced to the smell of napalm in the morning.

Meanwhile, Kissinger wins a Nobel Peace Prize.

-----------"Thanks for the KKK; for nigger-killin' lawmen,feelin' their
notches; for decent church-goin'women, with their mean, pinched, bitter,
evil faces."-Burroughs-----------

An internal document, written in 1948 by George Kennan, head of the State
Department planning staff in the early post-war period, explained America's
global strategy: "We have about 50% ofthe world's wealth, but only 6.3% of
its population...In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy
and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of
relationships, which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity
without positive detriment to our national security. To do so, we will have
to dispense with all sentimentality and daydreaming; and our attention will
have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives. We
need not deceive ourselves that we can afford today the luxury of altruism
and world-benefaction...We should cease to talk about vague and-for the Far
East-unreal objectives as human rights, the raising of living standards, and
democratization. The day is not far off when we are going to have to deal in
straight power concepts. The less we are then hampered by idealistic
slogans, the better."

-----------"Thanks for 'Kill a Queer for Christ' stickers.Thanks for
Prohibition and the war against drugs."-Burroughs-----------

Founding Father, John Jay-signer of the Declaration of Independence,
America's first Supreme Court Chief Justice, and namesake of a college of
criminology located on the island of Manhattan-once declared his belief that
America should be governed by "the people who own it."

One might imagine if Mr. Jay were alive today,he'd be quite pleased with the
way things turned out.

-----------"Thanks for a country where nobody's allowed to mind the own
business. Thanks for a nation of finks."-Burroughs-----------

Thanksgiving 2002: some 380 years in the making.

The first Thanksgiving probably didn't take place on the fourth Thursday in
November and maybe not in November at all. It was not an annual Pilgrim
event and not necessarily tied to the fall (in1623, it may have taken place
in July). Even calling it the "first" is a lie. Eastern Indians had observed
harvest celebrations for centuries.

-----------"Thanks for the American dream: to vulgarize and to falsify until
the bare lies shine through."-Burroughs-----------

The Pilgrims did not wear buckles on their shoes, hats, or clothing, and
probably didn't eat turkey. As for the legend that they found a large stone
at Plymouth Rock and carved in the date 1620, there is no mention of it in
any historical account. Also unmentioned is an epidemic (most likely
Smallpox introduced by European visitors) that dwarfed the Black Plague in
scope. From 1616-1619, between 90 percent and 96 percent of the inhabitants
of southern New England were wiped out.

The land subsequently "found" by the Pilgrims was empty for a good reason.

President Abraham Lincoln declared Thanksgiving a national holiday in 1863.
By 1939, in a move designed to stimulate a Christmas shopping "season," FDR
set the fourth Thursday in November as the official date.

How many shopping days do we really have left?

On National Commemorations in the Age of Empire: Multicultural Columbus
Scott Richard Lyons A Leech Lake Ojibwe, teaches at Syracuse University
http://www.counterpunch.org/lyons10192005.html
... many folks seemed pleasantly surprised this year when a pretty young lady of
Vietnamese descent, Myphuong Phan, was crowned Miss Columbus Day. According
to the Syracuse Post-Standard, the committee who selected Phan for the
honors did so because "Columbus discovered America for everyone."

Christopher Columbus: he's not just for Italians anymore! Many Americans,
conservatives and liberals alike, would doubtless applaud this
multicultural take on the controversial explorer; and some might even
conclude that our colorfully adorned Miss Columbus Day brought an additional
meaning to the day's festivities, namely another welcomed step away from
that grisly legacy of ambivalence known as the Vietnam War. Surely, if
Columbus discovered America for Miss Phan as much as anyone else, there's a
bit less incentive to worry about old unpleasantries like napalm or My Lai.

people who inhabited invaded lands was considered a moot point by
outsiders who presumed to know best and acted accordingly. In such cases,
you can be sure that the deaths of natives will always far exceed those of
the invaders, and native life will inevitably be made more difficult in the
aftermath.

To wit, the American phase (1965-73) of the Second Indochina War (1960-75)
killed some 1,700,000 natives, as well as 58,000 U.S. military personnel.
Bathed in the blood of imperialism, the entire war destroyed 3,500,000
lives. So far the Iraq War has killed between 26,000 and 30,000 civilian
Iraqis, according to the conservative estimates of Iraq Body Count,
although the British medical journal The Lancet reported a year ago that
the war had already caused a possible 100,000 "excess deaths." Such numbers
are getting worse; Robert Fisk recently reported that 1,100 Iraqi civilians
died in Baghdad alone last July. The US military death toll is rapidly
approaching 2,000, of which a full quarter has been reservists, and that
latter statistic is multiplying: in August and September of this year, a
full 56% of the US military dead have been reservists.

As for the death toll legacy of our old friend Columbus, for years
demographers have argued over how to estimate the pre-Columbian Native
population and its subsequent reduction, with informed guesses ranging
anywhere from 8 to 100 million Indians killed as a result of Columbus's
"discovery." Personally, I've always been partial to geographer William
Denevan's reasonable 1976 "consensus count" of 54,000,000 dead Indians, but
that's probably because I'm a moderate. Whether attributed to unlivable
conditions of life caused by colonialism, or to outright genocidal military
campaigns, the fact is these obscene numbers would not exist were it not
for the man Americans celebrate each October. Nor would our more current
and depressing array of statistics that consistently rank today's Indians at
the very bottom of every single social indicator of well being, from
health, to education, to crime, economy, and more.

So I suppose I'm not feeling uplifted by Syracuse's multicultural take on
Columbus, no matter how much I support efforts by the Vietnamese-American
community to become more accepted in their new country (and I do appreciate
that impulse). To me, this joint celebration of old Chris on the one hand,
and today's fascination with "diversity" on the other, is neither more nor
less than a symptom of the cultural logic of Empire: namely, the New World
Order's desire to have everyone wear their ethnic costumes to global
capitalism's grand ball.