Posted by farid from customer-148-233-78-77.uninet.net.mx (148.233.78.77) on Monday, June 23, 2003 at 10:58AM :
Wounded Knee
Columbus writes home home to the King and Queen of Spain after meeting the Tainos people on the island of San Salvador..."So tractable, so peaceable, are these people that I swear to your Majesties there is not in the world a better nation. They love their neighbors as themselves, and their discourse is ever sweet and gentle, and acompanied with a smile, and though it is true that they are naked, yet their manners are praiseworthy and decorous."
So, naturally they were marked for destruction. Had they been built along the lines of the Europeans, clothing and all, they would have killed and eaten any stranger landing on their shores. That's the extra, unbearable, degree of tragedy in this story...that the natives were so damn friendly and generous, without the aid of the vaunted Ten Commandments or their bloody author. By any measure of what it means to be truly civilizd, at the core and not the frilly fringes...the people the Europeans murdered and robbed, for no better reason than they let them, were the closer to it.
Throughout their clashing history the White Man was confounded by the lack the natives had for all that he considered absolutely essential. Towards the end, during the 1800's when anarchy and communism were sweeping Europe, one commissioner even refered to the native Americans as that worst of all things...natural communists. To the European mindset the natives had a "problem" in that they needed nothing the White Man held so dear. They worked only for what was essential and only for so long as it took to meet their immediate needs, no need to make millions and lock it away. How it must have puzzled the natives to see what murderous and theiving lengths the White Man went through to dig up gold from the ground, and after so much travail and hard work, bury it again, all in ONE place, back under the ground. That's why they never built a "great" civilization and never would have needed to, probably, for the land they occupied was so damn rich and spacious it constantly over-produced whatever they might need, this year, next year... and ten years later. It WAS a paradise and the people in it behaved accordingly...they saw no reason to wear clothes except as the seasons might require...a simple diet was best...and even though there was plenty of everything, they practised conservation to show their gratitude and respect for the Great Spirit who was being so thoughtful and generous towards them.
One reason the White Man may have appeared to be at war with all of nature was that he made nature into a deep and sinister mystery...something to be fought and tamed and beaten down...and look at him and her...look how contrary to any sort of a healthy nature the white man has made his own...even with the billions spent on diet and health...a People with the most expensive urine in the world isn't necessarily a wealthy, or a healthy, nation.
Columbus' reaction to the peaceful Tainos was that of a European...people who'd been venturing out to steal and kill anyone who had something they wanted and would continue to do so for centuries to come...always carrying around that handy Cross to dress their crimes in..."Columbus being a righteous European was convinced the people should be 'made to work, to sow and do all that is necessary and to ADOPT OUR WAYS'." That was one reason the Indians forced onto the reservations were not allowed to hunt for food...even though they starved because the white man was stealing their allotments provided by the government. Hunting was an entire way of life with rituals and things that kept the people united around their history. It was essential to break that tie. It wasn't about food or starving or having a generous hand-out...it was about making the Indians over in the white man's image....making them have to go out and get a job if they wanted anything. The Brits did it too in Africa. Puzzling at how to make the Kikuyus dependent on them they came up with a tax that would be levied on all natives...a tax that could ONLY be paid in British coin...no trades...no hides or ivory...the things the natives traditionally used for money. So...it was work on the coffee plantations or jail...which, ironically enough, is XACTLY what being "like" the white man means even for the white man hisself.
Columbus kidnapped ten of his kind and gentle hosts and took them back to Europe, to introduce them to the white man's ways..."one of them died soon after ariving there, but not before he was baptized a Christian. The Spaniards were so pleased that they had made it possible for the first Indian to enter heaven that they hastened to spread the good news throughout the West Indies."
What do you do with a statement like that? You can't satarize it...can't make fun of it, can't laugh at the people who believed and acted that way. All I can do is wonder at what a curse the three sisters from hell have been for the people of this planet...since the beginning. Especially when you remember that the father of all this mayhem was thrown out of BetNahrain and the god he lit on who would match his own depraved ways (I mean what do you do with a father who says god spoke to him and told him to slit his TWO sons' throats?) belonged to a tribe of obscure desert sheepshitherders...and to make this god a "Universal" one...they proceeded to shove him down the throat of everybody in the Universe...or else!
Somewhere back there...way back there...civilization on this planet peaked. All that's left to the majority of us is to lust and hunger after the wealth of others and use it to insulate us from the pernicious "nature" we've created for no one has the slightest idea how to be contented within oneself. The "game " is all wrong...doesn't matter what the rules are or how well you master it...the game's wrong.
So, what's the point...this is old news. But is it? It seems many of the tactics used against natives in the New World, Africa, Australia...wherever the white man has descended on his Cross...are fairly constant. The Iraqi people have been demonized by leaders and in the press, just as native Americans were back then to provide the justification for whatever barbarous treatment the more "civilized" Westerners would punish them with. They have been described as cruel and bloodthirsty and therefore not deserving of decent treatment. Their children have also been marked for destruction...not by being taken to "schools" but by having schools destroyed and hospitals and water treatment plants and so blighting their futures that a few generations to come will pay for it yet...and of course through death. The white man never flinched from killing "enemy" children...only now he brags about it.
This phase is over for the people of Iraq. Saddam did his work well, or was well used. It's going to happen to Africa next. It's actually been going on for some time now...I mean the AIDS epidemic and all the political and military turmoil fomented by the West...coming about as a direct result of their "policy" towards that terribly rich continent from the day they planted the first Cross. The political ground is incredibly fertile in Africa. It shouldn't take much to mount a campaign for the "liberation" of the poor benighted African people who've been obviously floundering around for decades tryng to adopt more "civilized" ways...(hell, Al Qaeda might even start "operating" from there). Why, just declare a potential world-wide health hazard...a la SARS only worse, and you have the perfect "humanitarian peg" to hang your takeover on. Anyone opposing you will be "for" a world-wide pandemic brought about through "mismanagement" and "corruption"...and our leaders "simply will not be able to tolerate" all that human suffering within Africa and the threat it poses for the rest of the people of the world..and you KNOW how much care and affection our corporate/political leaders have for the people of the world...why, look at how they treat their employees at home and you'll be "heartened". Just remember that the last people Ken Lay screwed were his closest Enron employee friends...the ones who "believed" in him enough to part with cash right at the end...when the ONLY people left to screw were his "closest friends" because they trusted their friend.
-- farid
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