Religions > Atheism > Article: Christian Discovery to Manifest Destiny: A Brief History of United States Violence
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Religions > Atheism |
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"Michael Gray" |
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26 Apr 2006 08:26:34 PM |
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Article: Christian Discovery to Manifest Destiny: A Brief History of United States Violence |
"Christian Discovery to Manifest Destiny: A Brief History of United
States Violence.
By Jim Cornehls
(Copyright, 2006)
<excerpt>
Faced with increasingly violent times and sectarian conflicts many
Americans react in horror to recent beheadings in the Middle East and
condemn the use of mass violence as a means of affecting political
outcomes. They attribute these actions to religious fanaticism,
especially militant Islam, or to savagery or barbarism. These same
Americans see themselves as peaceful and tolerant, both individually
and as a nation, not prone to violence unless provoked. In so doing
they fail to understand or acknowledge their own history of mass
violence and barbarism, including the genocide inflicted on the
original Native Americans; and the murder, extreme violence against,
and dehumanization of African Americans. While violence cannot be
condoned for any reason, an examination of the United States’ own
history and its contemporary actions may help place many Americans’
current bewilderment about violence directed against them in
perspective.
:
"
Read it all at:
http://www3.uta.edu/faculty/cornehls/pages/Brief%20History%20of%20U.S.%20Violence.htm
or
http://tinyurl.com/fw2cl
--
Michael Gray.
Founding Member and Doorman,
Earthquack's 666 Club.
EAC Trainee Inquisitor.
Pluritalis non est ponenda sine necessitate
.
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| User: "stoney" |
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| Title: Re: Article: Christian Discovery to Manifest Destiny: A Brief History of United States Violence |
30 Apr 2006 04:02:48 PM |
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On Thu, 27 Apr 2006 10:56:34 +0930, Michael Gray
<fleetg@newsguy.spam.com> wrote in alt.atheism
"Christian Discovery to Manifest Destiny: A Brief History of United
States Violence.
By Jim Cornehls
(Copyright, 2006)
<excerpt>
Faced with increasingly violent times and sectarian conflicts many
Americans react in horror to recent beheadings in the Middle East and
condemn the use of mass violence as a means of affecting political
outcomes. They attribute these actions to religious fanaticism,
especially militant Islam, or to savagery or barbarism. These same
Americans see themselves as peaceful and tolerant, both individually
and as a nation, not prone to violence unless provoked. In so doing
they fail to understand or acknowledge their own history of mass
violence and barbarism, including the genocide inflicted on the
original Native Americans; and the murder, extreme violence against,
and dehumanization of African Americans. While violence cannot be
condoned for any reason, an examination of the United States’ own
history and its contemporary actions may help place many Americans’
current bewilderment about violence directed against them in
perspective.
Colonial Violence
The American Indian was the first to experience the violence of the
newest Americans, the European settlers. The Native Americans numbered
anywhere from an estimated two to five million in the area now known as
the United States at the time of Columbus’ arrival. They were widely
dispersed across the continent with the main concentrations on the east
and west coasts. The Indians originally welcomed the new arrivals from
Europe. They provided them assistance, to prevent their starvation
during their first harsh winters in the new world. They taught the
colonists how to grow Native American varieties of plants. They offered
to share their ancestral lands with the newcomers.
Conflicts soon arose, however, as the colonists pressed further into
Indian Territory. The Indians saw their traditional lands being overrun
by the white settlers and their food stores stolen or seized by the
colonists. The expansionist, land-grabbing actions of the settlers
alarmed the Indians as the whites attacked and killed entire villages
and pushed further and further inland. This seizure of Indian lands was
predicated on a doctrine called “Christian discovery.” Simply stated,
the doctrine held that any land that had not previously been claimed by
Christians was there for the taking, by force if necessary. Christian
conquerors laid legal claim to the American Indian lands because the
Indians did not believe in the God of the Bible and in Jesus as the
Messiah, even though they never had heard of this white god and could
not read the Bible.
Native Americans were unfamiliar with the European concept of private
property. They thought of themselves as temporary stewards of the land
during their lives, not as absolute owners. Most Indian lands were held
communally. The Indians, in turn, were judged by European (Christian)
law as incapable of legal ownership and could only remain on the land as
wards of its new Christian owners. This doctrine ultimately was
enshrined in United States law by the Supreme Court in Johnson v.
McIntosh 21 U. S 543 (1823) which established “Christian discovery” as
the legal foundation for the assertion of United States sovereignty over
indigenous lands.[2]
By 1860, only an estimated 400,000-500,000 Indians remained in the
United States and its territories. Our ancestors, who by then numbered
almost 30 million, had either slaughtered or indirectly caused the
deaths of an estimated two-thirds to three-fourths of the Indian
population, by armed conflict or by the transmission of European
diseases, such as smallpox and chickenpox, to a people with no
immunities. There is at least one documented instance in which smallpox
contaminated blankets were knowingly given to Indians, to facilitate
their deaths from disease. The deliberate and planned murder of Indians
continued, during the Plains Indian Wars of 1860-1890. The Indian
population eventually reached an estimated low of 300,000 by 1900.[3]
The history of the United States is indelibly scarred by the wanton
murder and pillage of indigenous peoples who failed to become
Christianized and accept Christian domination of their world. They were
declared uncivilized “savages” and either exterminated or forcefully
placed on caretaker reservations, where they were treated as children,
to be administered to by the “Great White Father” in Washington, through
a cadre of Indian agents. They were no longer permitted by their
conquerors to move freely about in a land that had once been exclusively
theirs.
This domination and control of the Indians was no different than if the
United States were invaded and conquered by foreign adventurers, who
informed the residents in a language they could not understand that they
all must become Bozoists (the invaders’ religion) or be incarcerated or
killed. Further, they were informed that their claims to live on the
lands where they had lived for centuries were invalid, so they must go
to live in special camps set up for them by their conquerors, or face
death.
In addition to land theft and this particularly violent kind of
Christian proselytizing, the
economic exploitation of the indigenous inhabitants of America began
with the fur trade. Spurred by European trappers, who were slaughtering
beavers and other animals for fur pelts to be sold in Europe, the
Indians themselves joined in the destruction of the resource that for
centuries had provided them their own clothing, and pelts to trade with
other tribes. The Indians were lured into this self-destructive trade
by alcohol and greed. Some of them became more rapacious than their
teachers. But they became entrapped in a system of economic exchange
with which they had no experience and for which they were ill prepared.
Thorstein Veblen, one of America’s leading intellectuals, commented in
the early 1900’s that the fur trade was “an unwritten chapter on the
debauchery and manslaughter entailed upon the Indian population of the
country." The sheer nastiness of this rotten business was such that it
produced, according to Veblen, “the sclerosis of the American soul."
Contrary to many popular American histories, the majority of Indian
tribes were generally peaceful. Over a period of many centuries they
had adapted to living off the land and had developed a rich culture that
was reverential of the land and nature. They had complex systems of
social and political relations based on kinship, reciprocity and
consensus. In this way conflict was minimized. When armed conflict did
occur, it was more about pride and was usually brief and without
widespread killing and bloodshed. The all-out, death-to-the - last man,
woman and child style of conflict of the European settlers was unknown
to the Indians, who were shocked and confused by such behavior.
Some of the tribes did skirmish with other tribes, usually over a
territorial dispute or the theft of their property, especially horses in
the West, but they were not the vicious savages portrayed by the
European settlers. In fact, there is some evidence that the practice of
scalping, considered so savage a custom of the Indians, was introduced
to the new world by Europeans. Similarly, the Spaniards taught the
Southern Plains Apaches to skewer their adversaries with lances.
Nonetheless, like any people, the Indians fought to defend their own
homeland and their way of life against the encroachment of foreign
adventurers, adventurers with no less a goal than to steal an entire
continent.
The pattern of expansion and conquest became familiar. White settlers
advanced westward, illegally encroaching on lands previously reserved to
the Indians by the United States government, either by treaty or other
written agreement. The U.S. Army was supposedly responsible for
evicting the invading settlers from Indian lands. Yet, when the white
settlers encroached and the Indians attempted to defend their territory,
the settlers could count on the Army to take up arms against the
Indians. Treaty after treaty and agreement after agreement between the
Indians and the United States government were abrogated by the United
States in favor of white settlers. This resulted in frequent bloody
massacres of the Indians by U.S. troops and so-called Indian fighters,
the latter with the tacit concurrence of the government.
While there were countless lesser known atrocities in this systematic
effort to exterminate the Native American people, four incidents stand
out for their ferocity and cruelty, and provide a glimpse into the
American soul: the Great Cherokee Children Massacre at Ywahoo Falls
(1810), the Bear River Massacre in northern Utah (1862), the Sand Creek
Massacre in southeastern Colorado (1863), and the massacre at Wounded
Knee in South Dakota (1890). Wounded Knee marked the end of Indian
armed resistance to the takeover of their nation by the Europeans.
Cherokee Children Massacre
Because of the age and innocence of the victims the Great Cherokee
Children Massacre is the most contemptible of all. As the Cherokee
prepared to defend themselves from the growing threat of United States
sanctioned Indian fighters on the Cumberland Plateau, in Kentucky and
Tennessee, they made plans to send their children to a safe place. They
began gathering the children at a sacred site at Ywahoo Falls. Once
assembled, they were to be sent to a Presbyterian Indian School just
outside Chattanooga.
Before the children and their caretakers could depart for sanctuary they
were brutally attacked and murdered by a contingent of Indian fighters
under the leadership of Hiram “Big Tooth” Gregory. Gregory’s operations
were approved by the United States Government, the War Department and
the Governor of the Territory, as part of the U.S. Indian removal
policy. The removal policy was designed to open up the Cumberland
plateau and the South generally to white settlers.
Big Tooth and his men began by firing down on the children from a bluff
above the site where the children, women and a few old men were waiting
to be taken to the Presbyterian school. After descending and
dispatching the few female warriors defending the children, Big Tooth
and his men proceeded to rape all the women and the younger females, to
cut open the bellies of all pregnant females to destroy the fetuses, and
to scalp and kill all the children. More than 100 women and children
were cruely slaughtered.
Big Tooth’s battle cry was the infamous “nits make lice” slogan that
became the Indian fighters’ and the U.S. Army’s banner. It was
contended that by killing all Cherokee children, there would be no new
Cherokee adults to oppose the American expansionist program. It was
without question a policy of genocide, either expressly supported by or
tacitly approved by the U.S. Government.
Bear River Massacre
The massacre that occurred at the Bear River in Northern Utah was a
massacre of immense ferocity and ruthless killing. The extraordinary
cruelty displayed by the U.S. militia almost defies belief. The
Shoshone Indians, not an especially aggressive tribe, were camped at
their winter site near the Bear River, where they grazed their cattle.
The Shoshone grazing lands were coveted by Mormon ranchers. Under the
pretext of defending against Indian abuses, they called on the U.S.
militia at Salt Lake City to assist them. Accounts of what happened
next vary in the details but are in agreement as to the basic facts.
The Indians were brutally massacred by an undisciplined group of
California Volunteer Militia, under the command of Colonel Patrick
Conner, an acknowledged Indian-hater.
One account describes the events of that day in graphic detail. It
recounts how the vicious, blood thirsty, Christian militia at Bear River
first “broke the arms and legs of the women so they couldn't fight back
while they were raped.”
Bayonets cut open the wombs of pregnant women and pulled out the
fetuses. Some of the militia wrapped the fetuses around their hats as
war trophies. After the women were raped the soldiers split their skulls
open with hatchets. Babies and toddlers were grabbed and their heads
bashed against trees. Chief Bear Hunter was stripped, beaten, kicked,
and whipped bloody. When he refused to cry out in pain or anguish to his
tormenters, a soldier heated his bayonet in a camp fire to a glowing red
hot, and ran it through Bear Hunter's ears. Colonel O'Connor then
allowed his men to pillage anything that was left. Whatever the militia
could not steal or plunder was put to the torch, including the last of
food staples for any survivors. The intent was to exterminate the
entire tribe.
Sand Creek Massacre
The origins of the Sand Creek Massacre, near current day Pueblo,
Colorado, were different, but the results for the Cheyenne tribe and a
small band of Arapahoe camped nearby were no less devastating. The
attack on the Indians was designed to remove them from land awarded them
by treaty, combined with a strong element of revenge. It was
pre-meditated and the Indians were falsely lulled into a sense of
security.
Gold had been discovered in Colorado and thousands of prospectors and
their suppliers were streaming into the territory. The Governor of the
Territory, John Evans, wanted the Cheyenne removed from the territory in
order to open it to exploitation by the incoming settlers and
prospectors. Evans also advocated the killing of Indians. He was
supported in this by Colonel John Chivington, another rabid
Indian-hater, who made speeches in Denver calling for the extermination
of the Indians. Under the pretext of punishing the Indians for alleged
attacks on several white families, Chivington prepared his men for a
forced overnight march and a surprise, early dawn attack on the Cheyenne
encampment.
Before the march some of Chivington’s subordinates attempted to dissuade
him because his predecessors had given the Cheyenne a pledge of safety
if they would remain in their encampment near the Sand Creek.
Chivington replied: “Damn any man who sympathizes with Indians. I have
come to kill Indians and believe it is right and honorable to use any
means under God’s heaven to kill Indians.” Chivington talked of
“collecting scalps” and “wading in gore.” He repeated Big Tooth’s
slogan, “nits make lice,” and advocated the killing and scalping of
Indian children.
The Indians, who were in compliance with the U.S. Army’s orders to
remain in their encampment, were caught completely off guard by
Chivington’s attack. They were sitting targets for the white militia,
which, egged on by Chivington, was in an ugly mood. The Indians and
several half-breed traders raised white flags while the Cheyenne chief,
Black Kettle, frantically waved a United States flag he had received
when he had traveled to Washington, to indicate the Indians were
friendly and wished to surrender. But Colonel Chivington had given the
order not to take any prisoners. The carriers of the white flags of
truce were fired on and the massacre began.
Many of the Cheyenne braves were away hunting buffalo, with the
permission of the government agent assigned to the reservation. As a
result, two thirds of those present in the encampment were women,
children and old men. The militia began firing into the village and
bombarding it with grape shot, indiscriminately killing men, women and
children, then looting, and pursuing small bands of Indians who
attempted to flee. By three o’clock that afternoon the massacre was
over and Colonel Chivington proudly reported that about half the Indians
had been killed, including several elderly chiefs.
Sand Creek, more than any other massacre of Indians, was to became the
rallying cry for all the Plains Indians in their final, desperate
efforts to hold off the invading hordes of white settlers and preserve
their nomadic way of life based on the buffalo. Sand Creek symbolized
the white man’s treachery and unwillingness to abide by the many
treaties and agreements reached with the Indians. Gold had been
discovered in Colorado and with the ensuing influx of white men and
women, the United States’ goal was to exterminate or drive all the
Indians out, to allow for the development of the Colorado Territory by
whites.
Wounded Knee Massacre
The culminating event in this inglorious chapter of American history
took place twenty seven years later, at Wounded Knee, South Dakota. The
Lakota Sioux had carried on a protracted, running fight with the U.S.
Army in an effort to keep their cherished Powder River and Black Hills
territory, which had been declared forever theirs in yet another treaty
with the United States. Then, gold was discovered in the Black Hills
and with the discovery came hordes of white prospectors.
The Lakota, in concert with many other plains tribes, had routed the
infamous Seventh Cavalry at the Little Big Horn and killed the arrogant
and impetuous George Custer and all the soldiers under his command.
Though the battle was initiated by Custer, against the advice of his
second in command, the Americans immediately labeled the battle a
massacre and called for swift punishment of the Indians. After the
fighting at Little Big Horn, the various tribes involved dispersed. But
the Sioux, especially, were pursued relentlessly by the Army because
three of their chiefs, Red Cloud, Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull were
considered the instigators of the insurrection and the strongest and
most dangerous leaders of the Plains Indians. One by one they were
subdued. Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull both were murdered while in
United States custody and Red Cloud ultimately accepted the way of the
white men and agreed to live quietly on the Pine Ridge Reservation, in
present day South Dakota.
After Sitting Bull’s murder many of the Lakota fled, some seeking refuge
with a tribe led by a chief named Big Foot. But Big Foot himself was
ordered arrested. When Big Foot learned of Sitting Bull’s death he
began to move his small band to Pine Ridge, to comply with the U.S.
order to go to the reservation there. Enroute, they encountered members
of the Seventh Cavalry, under the command of Major Samuel Whitside. The
soldiers took Big Foot and his tribe to a cavalry camp near Wounded Knee
Creek. where they were to be disarmed. During the night, the remainder
of the Seventh Cavalry moved in and Colonel James Forsyth, who had
replaced Custer as its regimental commander, took charge of the
operation.
As the Indians were being disarmed the following morning, a
misunderstanding with a deaf brave occurred and a shot rang out. Within
seconds the soldiers opened fire on the unarmed men, women and children.
Many of the Indians, unable to defend themselves, attempted to flee or
take cover. Instead they were cut down by withering crossfire from four
powerful Hotchkiss guns, previously mounted during the night so as to
surround the Indian encampment. It was a virtual planned slaughter.
Forsyth was investigated by the Army for his role in the killing of
innocents but was absolved of any responsibility
“Only the worst crimes of the Indian, and his own best deeds, does the
white man tell.”
[Chief Yellow Wolf, whose Nez Perce tribe was driven relentlessly
across nearly 1,000 miles of Pacific Northwest wilderness in 1877
by the U.S. Army.]
The systematic and calculated extermination of Native Americans by the
U.S. government and by sanctioned private Indian fighters ranks as one
of the great historical crimes against humanity. Promises to the
Indians were routinely broken; treaties were habitually violated,
ignored or unilaterally changed by the United States Congress. Those
Indians who were not killed were isolated on reservations, reduced to
almost complete dependence on a government that virtually imprisoned
them in conditions of poverty and near starvation. The stoicism,
persistence and survival of the Indians in the face of these calamitous
conditions are a testimonial to their strength of character and
unyielding dignity. The whites characterized their behavior as
indolence.
The mistreatment and degradation of Native Americans by the U. S.
government and the white population has persisted to the present. There
still is widespread discrimination against Indians. Indian culture is
trivialized by the use of Indian names for sports franchises and school
athletic teams. The Atlanta Braves major league baseball team with its
“tomahawk chop” is the most flagrant example, but there are 1,000s of
others. Indian people are still thought of by many Americans as the
recent descendants of savages and of a primitive culture.
That the Indians were not enslaved and forced to work for their
conquerors, as occurred in Meso-America, seems to have been for two
reasons. One was the insistence by the British crown that one of the
principal goals of colonization was to bring Christianity to the
Indians. Enslaving them was inconsistent with this goal. The other and
perhaps most important reason was that the North American Indians were
independent, possessed a strong cultural identity of their own and were
self-sufficient, having survived for centuries. Because of this they
were labeled lazy (too independent) and too difficult to manage by the
colonists.
The ultimate insults to Indian cultural identity were the Dawes Act
(1887) and the Curtis Act (1898). The former created the allotment
system, designed to break up the communally held Indian lands and give
each Indian a personal allotment of land. The second, sponsored by then
congressman Charles Curtis, himself of Indian American ancestry,
expanded the powers of the federal government over Indian affairs and
effectively ended tribal governance and control of Indian lands.
Many American Indians still live on reservations today, in conditions of
poverty. The paternalistic reservation system was designed to rob the
Indians of their self-respect and to force them into the mold of white
Americans. It succeeded in certain negative respects but failed in its
efforts to erase Indian culture. The continued poverty of most Indians
is made all the more shocking because of the disappearance of $50
billion of Indian Trust Fund moneys held in individual accounts by the
U.S. Department of the Interior and the Bureau of Indian Affairs, for
the benefit of Indians.
The General Accounting Office, the Justice Department, the FBI and other
law enforcement agencies have shown little interest in the disappearance
of these funds. Only through the determined efforts of one Native
American woman, Nancy Cobbell, who sued the Department of the Interior
for an accounting, and a tenacious federal judge in Washington, D.C.,
has the legal action been kept alive for more than 10 years. During
this time the Secretary of the Interior, Gale Norton, was cited for
contempt on three separate occasions for failure to provide an open
accounting and records of Indian Trust Fund moneys under her control.[4]
Black Slavery
The history of U.S. violence is further evidenced in the wholesale
enslavement, murder, torture, and subjugation of African Americans, the
institutional vestiges of which persist today. To feed the southern
plantation economy’s voracious appetite for cheap labor black African
slaves were brought involuntarily to the U.S. by slave traders, who
literally tore entire families and villages from their ancestral homes
in Africa. Forty to fifty percent of the slaves perished enroute, from
malnutrition, disease and abuse.
Upon arrival in America those who survived were placed on display at
auction, to be examined, pinched, prodded and bid for like cattle.
Families were torn asunder and sold separately to the highest white
bidder. The economy of the South was built and maintained on the
lash-scarred backs of unwilling slaves. They were viciously whipped for
the slightest infraction, but not excessively because they were property
and represented an investment. Also treated as another piece of
property, slave women frequently were raped by their white owners,
sometimes as their husbands watched, helplessly. It was a social system
built on the total humiliation of one group of people by another, the
dehumanization of other human beings.
Some of America’s most revered leaders and founders, George Washington,
James Madison and Thomas Jefferson were themselves slave owners.
Jefferson inherited some 250 slaves from his father and father-in-law.
Despite his professed objection to slavery in principle, he kept slaves
until his death. George Washington was the owner of more than 100 black
slaves. Washington’s family numbered several black members and
descendants. Martha Washington’s half sister, Anne Dandridge and her
brother in law, “Black Jack” Custis were of mixed race. Washington’s
stepson, Jacky Custis and his brother, John Washington were proven
rapists of black slave women. Typically these unflattering accounts of
racial and economic subjugation of African Americans by our white
forefathers are ignored in the history taught to American students, even
at the university level.[5]
But these are our ancestors. This is our American heritage. This is
the culture of which present-day white Americans are products.
Manifest Destiny and the Seizure of Mexican Territory
America’s thirst for land and conquest and its belief in its own
“manifest destiny” led to the violent invasion of Mexico and to the
United States Mexican War of 1846-48. Texas already had been stolen
from Mexico by the Texicans, who established their own Republic in 1836,
before being annexed by the United States, in 1845.
During the Texas war for independence thousands of Mexican soldiers lost
their lives at the Alamo defending their sovereign claim to Texas (also
forcefully taken by Spaniards from the native inhabitants). But Santa
Anna’s army, victorious over a sparsely defended Alamo, subsequently was
routed at San Jacinto, by the army of General Sam Houston, where
thousands more Mexican soldiers were killed.
But that was in 1836 and these struggles were but a prelude to the
atrocities committed by the U. S. Army during its invasion of Mexico in
1846-47.
James Polk, the recently elected President, was an expansionist who
sought to acquire California for the United States. Unfortunately for
Mexico; Arizona, New Mexico and other parts of Mexico’s territory lay
between Texas and California. Polk ordered General Zachary Taylor to
move U.S. soldiers into Mexican territory, to provoke an incident that
would justify a declaration of war against Mexico. Taylor succeeded.
Mexico, still debilitated from its long struggle for independence from
Spain, internal strife, and its fight to keep Texas, was quickly overrun
by United States troops and forced to cede the entire American southwest
to the United States, including Nevada, Utah, California, and parts of
Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico and Wyoming. Tens of thousands of Mexican
soldiers and civilians were killed by the invading American forces.
Villages were pillaged and women raped by the American soldiers. It was
the largest single land grab in U.S. history.
American Export of Violence
The U.S. became embroiled in the Spanish-American War at the close of
the 19th century. American business interests had acquired extensive
tracts of land in Cuba for sugar plantations. A guerilla insurgency was
fighting for Cuba’s independence from Spain while Spain attempted to
re-assert its control over Cuba. U.S. commercial interests began to
push for war, allegedly to liberate Cuba. After the U.S. battleship,
Maine, hit a mine in Havana harbor, and sank, the pressure for war with
Spain intensified. War against Spain was declared by President
McKinley, in 1898. The U.S. also immediately took steps to invade the
Spanish colonial possession in the Pacific, the Philippines, where other
guerilla insurgents were fighting for independence from Spain.
Reprising the pattern employed against the American Indians, some of
these same U. S. Indian fighters and soldiers who had fought Kiowas,
Cheyenne, Apaches, Sioux and other Indian tribes, including some who
were at Wounded Knee, were members of U. S. forces during the invasion
of the Philippines in the early 1900’s. The United States was engaged
in the so-called “pacification” of the Filipino people at the time,
which meant the annexation and occupation of the Philippines as an
American protectorate. It has been estimated that more than half a
million Filipinos were slaughtered by United States troops.
In one of the worst examples, a small garrison of about 100 U. S.
soldiers was established in the small town of Balangiga, on the
Philippine island of Samur. The inhabitants of the town and the
surrounding area attacked and killed 48 of the soldiers and wounded 22
more. The soldiers killed an estimated 250 of their attackers. General
Jake “Roaring Hell” Smith, himself a Wounded Knee veteran, ordered a
massive retaliation against every Filipino on the island over the age of
10 years. His orders to his subordinate, Major Littleton Waller, were
to “take no prisoners” and convert the island into a “howling
wilderness.” His orders were carried out and tens of thousands of
civilian residents were slaughtered. Subsequently, the General was
known as Jake “Howling” Smith.
There have been countless covert and military forays into Latin America
by the United States, to topple an unfriendly dictator here, to install
a friendly one there, and to help corrupt governments crush popular
democratic rebellions, by supplying arms and troops to defend these
corrupt regimes, because they were “friends” of the United States.
“Between 1898 and 1934, the United States Marines invaded Cuba
4 times, Nicaragua 5 times, Honduras 7 times, the Dominican
Republic 4 times, Haiti twice, Guatemala once, Panama twice,
Mexico 3 times and Colombia 4 times. Washington has intervened
militarily in foreign countries more than 200 times.”[6]
Some foreign countries were invaded by the United States multiple times.
But since there are currently only 193 nations in the world, on average,
the United States could have invaded every country on the planet 1.04
times!
America was secure in its belief in its God-given right to rule other
people and to expropriate the lands of others, as an incident of its
self proclaimed “manifest destiny.” Many of America’s political and
military leaders claimed to believe that the United States occupied a
special place in the firmament and was destined to lead the world out of
un-Christian darkness and backwardness.
“I firmly believe that when any territory outside the
present
territorial limits of the United States becomes necessary
for
our defense or essential for our commercial development,
we ought to lose no time in acquiring it.”
U.S Senator Orville Platt of Connecticut, 1894
“We are the ruling race of the world…We will not renounce
our part in the mission of our race, trustee, under God, of
the
civilization of the world…He has marked us as his chosen
people…He has made us adept in government that we may
administer government among savage and senile peoples.”
U.S. Senator Alfred Beveridge, ca, 1900
As America embarked on the twentieth century, it might have been claimed
that these regrettable excesses of violence occurred in a distant past,
and that the United States since had become a more civilized and
inclusive nation. Blacks were no longer physically enslaved and Indians
were no longer massacred. The United States had become a more pacific,
tolerant nation and no longer invaded other nations for territorial
expansion. Or so the story goes.
America Again Goes to War
In 1918 and again in the 1940s, America became a crucial participant in
the world’s two greatest conflagrations to date, World Wars I and II.
In terms of the justness of the cause these probably are the two most
morally defensible wars in which the United States has engaged. The
United States was helping to defend first, against the dynastic
ambitions of the Kaiser in Western Europe. President Woodrow Wilson
characterized the United States’ entry into World War I as pursuing the
spread of democracy In World War II, America was helping halt the
spread of fascism in Europe and the rise of Adolph Hitler’s Nazi
Germany.
There is evidence that President Franklin Roosevelt, faced with a
neutrality-minded Congress and having promised the American people that
the United States would not voluntarily enter the European conflict,
sought to provoke either Germany or Japan to commit an aggressive act
against the United States that would justify declarations of war against
the Axis Powers, who had a collective defense agreement. The Japanese
government obliged by attacking the U.S. Naval installation at Pearl
Harbor, on December 7, 1941. The following day, the United States
declared war on both Japan and Germany.
A measure of U.S. violence during World War II can be gauged by the
horrific fire bombing of Dresden, Germany that completely destroyed 85%
of the city. The U.S. Air Force and the British Royal Air Force
obliterated 15 square miles of the center city over a concentrated three
day bombing raid. Occurring very near the end of the war, in 1945,
there was no military justification for the bombing as Dresden had no
military importance. It was a beautiful old world city of some 600,000
inhabitants, known for its architecture and cultural values. At the
time tens of thousands of war refugees, fleeing the advancing Soviet
Army, were passing through the city. An estimated 35,000 to 135,000
people were killed in this assault. Horrible as it was, it soon was to
pale in comparison to United States actions in the Pacific.
America’s excessive use of violence also can be measured by its
imprisonment of some 120,000 Japanese-Americans during World War II.
There was no evidence that any of these Americans were disloyal or
represented a threat to our domestic security, yet they were forced from
their homes and interned without cause. They suffered loss of
employment, loss of property, loss of assets and most importantly loss
of pride and dignity. Many of the young Japanese-American men had
joined the army and fought for the United States. Despite this display
of patriotism their relatives and friends were imprisoned in shoddy
prison camps, solely because they were of Japanese ancestry! The U.S.
Supreme Court judged that their ancestry alone was sufficient cause to
imprison them, their relatives and their friends.[7]
The war in the European theatre already had ended. There were reported
overtures from the Japanese, via the Russian government, that Japan was
seeking terms for surrender. Peace seemed imminent, without significant
further loss of life. Instead, perhaps because of pent-up anger at the
Japanese over the mistreatment of American prisoners of war, perhaps out
of a simple desire for revenge, perhaps out of a desire to control the
Pacific, the United States decided to make an example of Japan,
demonstrating a capacity for violence that the world never before had
experienced.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki
As a consequence, the most devastating act defining the use of violence
by Americans was the unleashing of the ultimate weapon of mass
destruction in world history to that time, the atomic bomb. Atomic
bombs were dropped on the civilian populations of Hiroshima and
Nagasaki. When the Enola Gay dropped “Little Boy,” as the first atomic
bomb was “affectionately” known, on Hiroshima, a city of 310,000, there
were an estimated 150,000 to 200,000 civilians killed, at least half the
population. In subsequent years, there were more than 5,000 additional
deaths from cancer caused by radiation exposure.
Only three days later, on August 9, 1945, “Fat Boy” was detonated over
Nagasaki, with a resulting acute death toll of an estimated 100,000 to
150,000 civilians, mainly women, children and old men. The subsequent
deaths attributable to the effects of radiation were comparable to those
of Hiroshima.
President Franklin Roosevelt died on April 12, 1945. Harry S. Truman,
who succeeded him as President, was persuaded to allow the use of the
atomic bomb. However, Truman’s order that it be used only on military
targets, and not on civilians, was ignored by the Army, which picked two
Japanese cities, Hiroshima and Nagasaki as the targets. The Army was to
explain subsequently that Hiroshima was a military target because there
was a military base there and munitions plants. The case for Nagasaki
was even less compelling.
Many consider the United States use of the atomic bomb (its first
“weapon of mass destruction”) against the civilian populations of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki as a defining moment in our history of violence
against other nations and peoples.
One of the great ironies of both World Wars was that black men, while
still being denied the full rights and freedoms of American citizens,
were eligible to be drafted to defend the nation, but still were
required to serve in segregated units, both at home and on the field of
battle. There would be no mixing of White and Black blood, even in war
and unto death.
Another great irony was that American Indians volunteered by the
thousands to join the army and risk their lives in defense of a
government responsible for their systematic exploitation and
mistreatment. Many were not U.S. citizens, a right not granted to all
Indians until 1924.
Meanwhile: Back Home
In the United States, until half-way through the 20th century, slaves
freed by the Civil War and their descendants continued to be subjected
to the most brutal forms of violence, including lynchings, beatings,
tarring and feathering and being burned alive.
This treatment frequently was condoned by white Christian church leaders
who piously intoned about the inherent superiority of the white race and
the “natural” subservience of blacks. They helped assure the faithful
that it was all part of God’s greater plan.
During this period the Ku Klux Klan emerged as an organized effort to
intimidate, demean, brutalize and lynch African Americans, all designed
to “keep the black man in his place.” Garbed in their ghoulish white
hoods and sheets and burning crosses to signify their evil intent, they
made a mockery of being a freed slave. Because of the Klan the lives of
African Americans frequently were more endangered than when they were
slaves. Though slavery was primarily practiced in the South, the Klan
spread nationwide. Its activities, though ostensibly no longer
including murder and physical harm continue up to the present. Recent
reports indicate a revival of the Klan in parts of the United States.
The extreme violence against both African Americans and their white
supporters during the civil rights movement and southern freedom rides
of the 1960s is legendary. Vicious dogs and powerful fire hoses were
used to attack and suppress protesters. Peaceful marchers were trampled
deliberately by law officers on horseback, and hundreds were beaten,
tortured, shot and buried. Others were burned alive in their places of
worship. And the lynchings continued. This was America, two-thirds of
the way through the 20th century.
Violence Against Workers
The targets of violence in the United States were not limited to racial
or ethnic minorities. The American union movement, representing the
organization of white American workers to achieve more equitable
bargaining power with their employers, was greeted with violence from
both the government and the employers. The police helped keep the
striking workers subdued while their employers hired thugs to beat-up,
intimidate and frequently murder striking workers and their union
leaders.
The infamous Pinkerton agency, a private police force that hired thugs,
was hired by employers to brutally assault American workers, while
official law enforcement cooperatively looked the other way. The
bloodshed, almost solely that of American working men and women was both
voluminous and gratuitous.
Assasination of Political Leaders
American political leaders also were the targets of violence. Four U.S.
Presidents were assassinated during their terms of office: Abraham
Lincoln in 1865; James Garfield in 1881; William McKinley in 1901; and
John F. Kennedy in 1963.
On the day preceding President Kennedy’s official open car parade
through downtown Dallas, a complete layout of the parade route and
estimated times of arrival at various intermediate points was published
in the Dallas Morning News. The Morning News also published an
incendiary, full-page advertisement, paid for by an ultra conservative
group, that was highly critical of Kennedy’s policies, an astonishingly
poor exercise of editorial judgment during a presidential visit.
The official blame for Kennedy’s assassination was ultimately placed on
Lee Harvey Oswald, an itinerant social agitator. Ever since, conspiracy
theories have flourished, in an effort to show that Oswald did not and
could not have acted alone in such an enterprise. That Oswald had
contacts with anti-Castro groups in New Orleans who also hated the
President is unquestioned. But no clear and convincing evidence has
ever surfaced that would prove the assassination represented the work of
more than one person. In a subsequent act of violence, Jack Ruby, a
shady local character with ties to the Dallas police, made certain
Oswald would never live to tell his version of events.
The Kennedy assassination ushered in a wave of violent acts against
American political and social leaders.
1) Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated on April 4, 1968, while
standing on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel, in Memphis, Tennessee.
Again, an alleged lone gunman, James Earl Ray, was arrested and
convicted. Ray originally confessed but later recanted his confession
and hinted at the involvement of others. He died in prison in 1998.
2) Robert Kennedy, brother of John, was assassinated only a few weeks
later, on June 5, 1968, in Los Angeles, by Sirhan Sirhan, while on his
way to a press conference after winning the Democratic Primary in
California. Within a span of slightly over five years three of
America’s most prominent leaders had been cut down by assassins’ bullets
in the prime of their lives.
3) On September 5, 1975, Lynette “Squeaky” Fromme, a member of the
Charles Manson cult, attempted the assassination of then President
Gerald Ford.
4) On March 30, 1981, John Hinckley attempted to assassinate President
Ronald Reagan, but only succeeded in wounding him.
Violence Against Women
Although not an act of physical violence, women in the United States
were systematically discriminated against and treated as the chattels of
men. Like Native Americans and Blacks, they were denied the right to
vote. It was not until 1920 that women achieved the right to vote fully
in all elections, by the Nineteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
The Equal Rights Amendment, first proposed to Congress in 1923, still
has not been ratified.
The “inferior” status accorded women fostered violence against women.
For more than a century U. S. courts have looked the other way as men
(many of them husbands) physically abused women. Women appeared in
court with their faces bruised, battered, red and swollen, with black
eyes and bearing the scars of recent assaults. But the courts seldom
locked up their abusers, gave them any more than a perfunctory warning,
or issued a restraining order that the (male) police frequently ignored
when violated. For most of U.S. history it has been open season on
women. Discrimination and violence against women continues today. Each
year American women are stalked or abused by an intimate partner 5.3
million times. Five hundred and fifty five thousand women annually
suffer serious injuries caused by domestic abuse. One hundred and forty
five thousand of these women are hospitalized for these injuries.[8]
Violence against women in the United States is so widespread that recent
studies reveal 12% of college women have reported being sexually
assaulted on campus by another student or students. According to
national statistics, on average, 683,000 women report being sexually
assaulted every year. Since only six out of ten cases are reported the
actual number is easily a million rapes per year.
Violence Against Lesbians, Gays, Bisexuals and Transgendered
One form of violence in the U.S. that currently is on the rise is that
directed at individuals and groups because of their sexual orientation.
A recent report by the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs
found that violence against gays increased by 30 percent during the two
year period 2003-2004.[9] According to the authors of the Coalition
study, the rapid increase was attributed to the strong conservative and
religious right movements of the past few years. Public debate over
proposed constitutional amendments to bar same sex marriage have
encouraged militant anti-gay groups and individuals to act out their
opposition to gays, lesbians, bi-sexuals and transgendered with assaults
on such persons.
Since the birth of the nation there have been laws criminalizing non
heterosexual acts. These were the so-called sodomy statutes. At one
time every U.S. state had such a law. Gays also were officially banned
from serving in the armed forces. Making homosexual acts illegal
fostered a climate that countenanced violence against gays. Criminal
acts against gays, such as assault and battery, were seldom enforced.
Gays were afraid to press charges because of the fear they would be
“outed,” with the personal repercussions that might entail. Law
enforcement tended to look the other way because of the anti-gay
attitudes of many police officers and local public officials.
The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionally of Georgia’s sodomy
law, in 1968. It was not until 2003, in Lawrence v. Texas, that the
Supreme Court struck down the Texas sodomy law and with it effectively
outlawed the sodomy laws of the remaining states that still had such
laws.
Violent Suppression of War Protesters
During the 1960s, the use of official police violence against Americans,
to quell peaceful anti-Vietnam war demonstrators and draft resisters,
was commonplace. An anti-war demonstration that began peacefully on the
campus of Kent State University ended in the shooting deaths of four
students and the wounding of nine others by national guardsmen ordered
to the campus by the Ohio Governor, James Rhodes. National guardsmen
were shooting their fellow citizens for demonstrating against an
unpopular war. When not shooting fellow Americans, police wielded clubs
and used tear gas to attack anti-war demonstrators in New York,
Washington, Chicago and San Francisco, to name only a few locations.
Anti-war demonstrators gathered in Chicago in 1968, for the Democratic
National Convention. They camped out in a downtown park but began to be
harassed and arrested by the Chicago police, for failure to obtain a
necessary permit. They were offered alternate places to camp, but these
were located far from the Amphitheater where the Convention was being
held. Compliance would have rendered the protest a meaningless camping
trip.
When an after-dark curfew was imposed, the protesters refused to honor
it. There ensued a clash with the Chicago police, who retaliated with
tear gas and batons against the protestors. It was vividly captured on
television for the world to see. In the aftermath, eight protestors
were arrested and charged with conspiracy to incite a riot and with
inciting a riot. Eight police officers also were charged with minor
infractions.
The eight protesters went to trial in 1969. What subsequently followed
was one of the most bizarre trials in U.S. history. Julius Hoffman, the
74 year-old trial judge, was a virulent conservative. He made no effort
to conceal his disgust for the defendants, in the presence of the jury.
He jailed their lawyers for contempt, disallowed the testimony of many
defense witnesses and consistently ruled in favor of the prosecution.
The trial became a public embarrassment.
All the defendants were outspoken and constantly drew attention to the
unfairness of the trial and Judge Hoffman’s rulings. They were intent
to show that the trial was a mockery designed to silence political
protest. One of the defendants, Bobby Seale, was so abrasive in his
verbal exchanges with Judge Hoffman that the judge first ordered him
bound and gagged and then severed his case from that of the other seven
defendants and sentenced him immediately to 4 years in prison, for
contempt of court. That’s why the trial came to be known as the Trial
of the Chicago Seven.
Following a trial of five months, two of the seven defendants were
acquitted. The other five were found not guilty of conspiracy, but were
found guilty of inciting a riot. Judge Hoffman sentenced each of them
to five years in prison and assessed each a fine of $5,000.
Subsequently, the Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit ruled that
the trial was so unfair and riddled with prosecutorial and judicial
misconduct that it reversed all the convictions and publicly rebuked
Judge Hoffman.
Also arising out of the sixties and the general wave of protest against
the Vietnam War, discrimination and other forms of social injustice,
were several radical political groups. One of the most visible was the
Black Panther Party for Defense (of Black Americans.) In a series of
violent shoot-outs between police and the Black Panthers, most of the
Panther leaders were systematically killed or imprisoned, with long
sentences.
Another was the radical underground group known as the Weathermen. The
Weathermen, the most violent and dangerous of the two groups, was
principally comprised of young, white middle class men and women, whose
goal was the overthrow of the U.S. government. They became well-known
for staging jail breaks, riots and bombings. Though it is widely
thought that 9/11 represented the first attack on the Capitol and the
Pentagon, the Weathermen accomplished this feat in the early 1970s.
There were clashes with the police but nothing comparable to the
magnitude of the police action against the Black Panthers.
Vietnam
The Vietnam War officially lasted 13 years but the United States was
involved in Vietnam for nearly two decades. The armed conflict claimed
the lives of an estimated 2.5 million people, the vast majority of whom
were Vietnamese civilians. Fifty five thousand United States soldiers
also lost their lives. During the War, American war atrocities reached
new levels of calculated barbarism. Villages were torched with napalm,
producing the horrible, heart-wrenching photos of innocent Vietnamese
children, running screaming through the streets with their burned flesh
dropping off their bodies. It also produced the infamous line in the
movie Apocalypse Now, when a U.S. military officer proclaimed, “I just
love the smell of napalm in the morning,” and the real life American
army officer who solemnly declared, “We had to destroy the village in
order to save it. The U.S. forces degradingly referred to the
Vietnamese people as “gooks.”
Agent Orange, a deadly chemical defoliant, with extremely long lasting
effects, (since banned) was sprayed indiscriminately over wide areas of
Vietnamese jungle, to destroy enemy cover. Between 1961 and 1971, the
United States Army spread more than 100,000 tons of toxic chemical
products over a quarter of the total surface area of Vietnam, making it
the biggest “chemical war” the world has ever experienced. Thirty-five
years later, ailments attributable to these poisons are still being
experienced by the Vietnamese people and American veterans of the war.
Despite U.S. expressions of outrage over the use of chemicals by Saddam
Hussein and others, chemical warfare is no stranger to the United
States.
Vietnam also produced the infamous My Lai Massacre. Hundreds of
innocent Vietnamese, mainly women and children, were herded into a
ditch. As they stood there, helplessly looking at their tormentors,
they were shot at close range by American soldiers until not a single
one of them remained alive. While the soldiers’ leader, Lt. William
Calley, was prosecuted and convicted for murder, despite significant
popular protest, My Lai was but one instance among hundreds, perhaps
thousands that went unnoticed and unpunished. And most importantly, the
conviction did nothing to help the victims of the massacre. It only
served to expiate American guilt over the incident.
Guns, Violence, Murder and Incarceration
The United States is a nation consumed with violence. Unlike most other
advanced nations, the United States still permits individuals to carry
concealed handguns. The United States also continues to permit the sale
of automatic assault weapons to individuals, many of whom have criminal
records. Many of the famous British Bobbies still only carry
nightsticks. Only recently have some British police officers begun to
carry guns.
The United States has one of the highest murder rates in the world.
Outside a theater of war, the best place to go to be murdered is the
United States. The number of violent crimes per capita in the United
States is among the highest in the world and this can be directly linked
to the ownership of guns. Deaths from assault were anywhere from three
to five times higher in the United States than in 17 other western
capitalist nations during the period 1960-2002.
The level of violence in the United States is reflected in the number of
persons incarcerated in U.S. jails and prisons. The United States
currently has the largest documented prison population in the world,
both in absolute numbers and in proportion to the population. Inmates
in maximum security prisons are routinely beaten, sexually abused and
subjected to humiliating and painful body cavity searches by prisons
guards. A 1966 study revealed that 42% of prisoners in maximum security
prisons were beaten at least once monthly and there is little reason to
believe those numbers have changed. In 1999 a federal judge concluded
that Texas prisons were pervaded by “a culture of sadistic and malicious
violence.”
Despite alleged reforms, Human Rights Watch recently documented 100’s of
examples of continued physical abuse of prisoners by their U.S. guards.
U.S. prison inmates were beaten with batons, stomped, kicked, shot,
stunned with electric stun guns, doused with chemical sprays, choked,
and slammed face down onto concrete floors. Inmates sustained broken
jaws, smashed ribs, perforated eardrums, missing teeth, and burn scars,
in addition to the psychological scars and emotional pain they will
carry with them for life.[10] The prisoners themselves, coming from a
civilian life where fear and violence are routine, are often their own
worst enemies, sodomizing, abusing and murdering fellow inmates, often
with the tacit approval of prison officials.
The United States ranks 4th in the world in the number of people
executed annually. While most democratic nations have abolished the
death penalty, including Canada and most of Western Europe, the United
States executes more people than Saudi Arabia or Pakistan.
The United States has its own homegrown varieties of modern terrorists:
the Unabomber, the Christian abortion clinic bombers and murderers; the
Murrah Federal building bombers in Oklahoma City, the Ruby Ridge
separatists, the Republic of Texas separatists and the Washington
Beltway terrorists. The nation is filled with organizations advocating
violence in pursuit of their political or religious ends.
Violence perpetrated by and against American teenagers has grown rapidly
in the last several years. Young men on messianic missions of their own
devising are waging war on their classmates, teachers and school
administrators. Because it is so easy in the United States for even
teenagers to obtain firearms, they come to school armed to the teeth in
places such as Columbine High School in Colorado and, most recently on
the Red Lake Indian Reservation in Minnesota. They leave as their
legacy a trail of violence and death.
Contemporary Suppression of Political Dissent
Over the past several years official police violence once again returned
to the domestic scene in the United States. As more and more Americans
took to the streets to protest the war in Iraq and the Bush
administration’s international policies, the President and top cabinet
officials began to retreat into a cocoon of secrecy, insisting that
protesters be forcibly kept out of sight by herding them into so-called
“free speech zones” where they are surrounded by chain link fences, far
removed from the Presidential view. Only those favorably disposed
towards the administration are permitted to demonstrate their support as
the President passes. These practices are reminiscent of Third World
dictators who insulate themselves from dissent by denying its existence.
Protesters against Mr. Bush’s policies once again are facing mass
arrests and round-ups of political activists, police brutality, abusive
conditions of detention, denial of permits to peacefully assemble,
political, racial and religious profiling and disinformation campaigns
waged against them by the administration and its supporters. During the
Republican National Convention in New York, in August, 2004, the police
indiscriminately arrested protesters and jailed them. The New York
Times accused the city of engaging in preventive detention. Eventually
a local judge ordered mass releases of arrested protesters, but only
after they had been prevented from exercising their constitutional right
to assemble and protest.
A recent example of domestic police violence took place on April 18,
2005, in Santa Cruz, California. A group of more than 200 students
erected a large tent on the campus of the University of California at
Santa Cruz, and were protesting recent tuition increases and demanding
higher pay for university service workers. They held workshops on
everything from the environment, to non-violent activism, to yoga.
University officials attempted to disrupt the peaceful protest by
invoking a university regulation that prohibits camping on the
university grounds. To enforce their ruling, university officials
called in the riot police from Berkeley, who arrived in force and full
battle gear, with helmets, Plexiglas face shields, police batons at the
ready. After forming a perimeter of officers, facing outwards towards
the crowd, another group of riot police entered the tent, to force the
protesters to disperse. The following account of one student inside the
tent was widely publicized.
“And 3-4 police with thick gloves on. They would come in, everyone would
be shrinking. And the police with the gloves on would come in and start
applying pressure at people's throats and pressure points around their
jaw and started trying to pull people upward. So they would do that to
get you out of the circle," Harless said.
“So they would do that and another would try to break the clasping of
your hands. All this, the pain treatment, in an effort to break you from
the circle."
“Students had numerous bruises and contusions. And figures I heard were
20 arrested and 80 wounded. My girlfriend caught a baton to the chest,
unprovoked. And numerous people witnessed a cop go into a frenzy and
basically dive forward into the crowd with a baton and that's how my
girlfriend caught a baton," Indigo Moonstar, 23, a recent graduate of
UCSC, said. Moonstar is not his real name, but is the name he gave to
the Associated Press.
Yet another peaceful demonstration, to protest certain university
policies and working conditions of the custodial staff, was turned into
a scene of police violence and brutality.
Other Examples of Official Violence
It was only a dozen years ago that the FBI and the Federal Bureau of
Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, joined forces just outside Waco, Texas
and annihilated at least 80 members of the Branch Davidians, an obscure
religious sect, including 23 children under the age of 17. The Branch
was headed by a charismatic leader, David Koresh. The negotiators
refused to wait things out; they decided to exercise their muscle and
tried to storm the compound, in a show of unnecessary and unsuccessful
force. The incident inspired at least one of the Oklahoma City bombers,
Timothy McVeigh, to retaliate against the federal government by bombing
the federal building in Oklahoma City.
Bringing America up to state-of-the art the United States now engages in
precision bombing of the kind that is capable of decapitating 30 to 50
individuals at once instead of the slow, plodding Muslim barbarians’
one-at-a-time approach, considered so outrageous by Americans. In one
such recent incident caught on tape over Fallujah, Iraq, an American
aircraft, on spotting an unidentified group of about 30-35 persons
walking down a Fallujah street, requested radio instructions and was
instantly told to “take them out.” On viewing his own direct hit on the
group with an air-to-surface missile the U. S. pilot was recorded
gloating, “Aw, dude.”
Perhaps the most recent up-to-date examples of American violence are
revealed in its actions against detainees at the Abu Ghraib prison in
Baghdad, and at facilities in Afghanistan and Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. A
gruesome example was manifested in the torture of an Afghan detainee,
only recently revealed by the Army. The prisoner’s legs were so
severely and repeatedly beaten, while suspended by his wrists, that he
is permanently crippled and psychologically devastated.
The responsible military interrogator, identified only as Captain Woods,
was subsequently transferred to Abu Ghraib Prison in Iraq to help train
interrogators there in the use of her interrogation techniques.
Americans were asked to believe that the brutality subsequently
documented at Abu Ghraib and other U.S. detention facilities was the
work of a handful of rogue soldiers, acting independently and outside
the scope of their orders. Such deceptive explanations are unconvincing
when it is revealed that the new Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales,
outlined his own, imaginative interpretation of the Geneva Convention
which concluded that under modern conditions of counter-terrorist
warfare, torture is acceptable.
In yet another modern display of America’s propensity for violence, it
recently was revealed that the United States government routinely
engages in a practice known as “extraordinary rendition.” To circumvent
United States laws that forbid the use of torture, the United States
secretly delivers suspected terrorists into the custody of foreign
nations known for their use of the most extreme forms of torture. The
United States has begun to outsource its violence.
Amnesty International recently identified what it describes as a virtual
archipelago of quasi-secret United States prisons maintained throughout
the world, far from the prying eyes of United States courts, where the
only justice is that of the jailers. Amnesty also reports that
prisoners being held in these installations have been tortured and
killed.
Many Americans still believe in the honesty and virtuousness of their
government and applaud when their posturing leader prances around the
deck of an aircraft carrier, in full flight gear but safe from any
possible harm, to declare, “Mission Accomplished” in Iraq, when the
“mission” had only just begun. Mr. Bush’s own Secretary of Defense
estimated that the “mission” could take as long as 12 years.
Ample self-praise was bestowed on the President by himself, for
America’s assault on the Iraqi nation. Yet, he failed to acknowledge
that it was America that originally helped install Saddam Hussein in
power and armed him, to protect American interests in the Middle East.
The United States supplied Hussein with the chemical weapons (WMDs) used
to murder Iranian and Kurdish people.
Americans declare themselves the outraged victims of the horrible crime
orchestrated by Osama bin Laden, a man once employed and armed by the
United States to fight against Soviet forces in Northern Afghanistan.
They are enraged when this same mercenary they hired to kill Soviet
soldiers and civilians subsequently turns his wrath on Americans, too.
Curiously, the vaunted military forces and intelligence agencies of the
United States and its cooperating allies have been unable to find or
subdue bin Laden for three and one-half years, despite virtually
obliterating the tiny, impoverished nation of Afghanistan and scorching
large parts of Iraq. As the all-to-clever U.S. President tautologically
explains, “We can’t find him because he’s hiding from us.”
The United States continues to apply its "democratic discovery" doctrine
abroad because President Bush, like the Spanish king who originated the
concept, decided it is the best thing for them. They can either accept
it, and be subjected to the "yoke" of American domination and control,
or, they can suffer the consequences. But there is no intention that
theirs’ ever will be a true democracy, only an American protectorate,
thinly hidden beneath the veil of a false democracy. The new rulers of
Iraq, and its vast reserves of oil, are the hand-picked servants of the
United States.
With that in mind, Republican leaders in the United States should make
available to every citizen a copy of “The New American Century,” a
blueprint for world domination by Christian democracy. This
Neo-Conservative Manifesto offers a road map for the proposed domination
of the world by the United States in the 21st Century. Neoconservative
goals are laid out clearly. Let no nation ever again attain military
parity with the United States. Those nations that defy the American
rule will be crushed and subdued, the “evil empires” of Iran, Syrian and
North Korea, for starters.
A so-called Pax Americana, based on the self-professed goodness and
moral superiority of the American people and their government, will
insure world order. Every government in the world is to be modeled on
American “democracy” but not of the kind outlined in government
textbooks, nor found in the real world, and certainly no longer found in
the United States.
To achieve and maintain this new Pax Americana, the current American
leadership has clearly stated that a new doctrine of pre-emptive war
will be employed. The United States will no longer wait for
provocation. It will designate rogue governments and political leaders
throughout the world presumed to represent a threat to United States
interests, and unilaterally “take them out” before any harm can come to
Americans or America’s interests. Their leaders will be neutralized by
the capture of individuals believed to have useful information and their
delivery to countries known for their use of the most extreme forms of
torture, “extraordinary rendition.” Beyond that, America will shape the
nations of the world, to prevent rogue governments from ever coming into
existence.
It would be laughable, if it were not so tragic, that the formulators of
these policies appear completely oblivious to the fact that China and
India are rapidly becoming world powers, and soon may dwarf the United
States, perhaps during the next twenty to thirty years. Already China,
which holds huge amounts of U.S. debt, is proposing to acquire major
U.S. corporations. America, according to the moronic architects of
these policies, is expected to control 2.2 billion Chinese and Indians
for the next century with a mere 297 million Americans. America is not
even able to prevent North Korea, a country with only 23 million
citizens and a land area smaller than the state of Mississippi, from
developing nuclear weapons and long range missiles armed with nuclear
warheads.
Many Americans consider themselves civilized and morally superior,
perhaps innocent by proxy, for the killing of what now is an estimated
100,000 innocent Iraqi civilians, 35 times the number who died in the
World Trade Center. These innocents have died in a war that is now
known to have been planned during the early months of the Bush
administration, decided on by President Bush and Prime Minister Blair,
as early as April, 2002, and justified by “fixing” the intelligence to
support the policy. Americans may believe that the torture and murder
of hundreds more at the Abu Ghraib prison and other locations is a
necessary incident of the war and convinced that Americans remain
morally superior when compared to the uncivilized, religious bigots and
barbarians, who cut off the heads of a dozen people who most likely
would not have been there but for the unlawful United States invasion of
Iraq.
America’s own current military misadventure in Iraq is heavily
reinforced by a strong element of Christian fanaticism, similar in tone
to its own “Christian discovery” of the early nineteenth century and its
“manifest destiny” of the late 1800’s and early twentieth century.
The United States’ misanthropic leader has stated that God directed him
to invade and conquer Afghanistan and Iraq. Lt. General William G.
Boykin, one of the administration’s top military officials, entrusted
with finding bin Laden and with Gitmo-izing the Abu Ghraib prison,
declared his certainty of American victory in Iraq because “my God is
bigger than their God.” He also proclaimed that President Bush was not
elected by American voters but “appointed by God.” America is involved
in a Holy War.
The United States has become the most efficient killing machine in
recorded history. That is what the Pentagon and the news media gushed
about when they referred to the bombing of Iraq as “shock and awe?” It
is what the President bragged about when he declared, “Mission
Accomplished.”
The United States need not nor should it measure its own barbarism or
justice by comparison with other cultures. It need only measure its
actions against America’s own laws and values. It should refrain from
any actions that conflict with the letter or spirit of these laws and
the original promise of the nation. The Christian conservative
propaganda that aggravates and calcifies the United States’
international aggression, institutional discrimination,
double-standards, murder, exploitation, racism, torture, and sexism is
not the American promise. Our violent history is the by product of a
messianic conviction exploited by an elite ruling class that America is
destined to rule the world.
The United States is a nation heavily steeped in a history of violence,
steeped in contempt for other cultures and for those who do not agree
with its rulers or who challenge their authority and moral superiority.
It is not surprising that many people throughout the world think of the
United States as a virtual synonym for violence.
"I knew that I could never again raise my voice against the violence
of the oppressed in the ghettos without having first spoken clearly to
the
greatest purveyor of violence in the world today -- my own government."
Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr.
Speech calling for an end to the Vietnam War April 4, 1967
[1] With the collaboration of Kelly Simons
[2] For the details of this invasion by hostile Christians see P.
d’Errico and D. Shultz, eds. 1998, “A Brief History of the Context of
U.S. ‘Indian Law’,” The Encyclopedia of Minorities in American Politics:
American Political Landscape Series. AZ. Oryx Press.
[3] As a result of the reduction in the mortality rate, the Indian
population has made a steady recovery. Currently, the U.S. Census
Bureau estimates there are 2.8 million Native Americans, Eskimos and
Aleuts living in the United States and territories.
[4] The court transcripts may be examined at www.indiantrust.com
[5] An exception is Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United
States.
[6] Andreas, Joel, Addicted to War, AK Press, Oakland, CA, 2004.
[7] Korematsu v. United States, 323 U.S. 375 (1944)
[8]Gonnerman, Jennifer and Sara Catania, “No Safe Haven,” Mother Jones,
July-August, 2005,
[9]http://www.ncavp.org/media/MediaReleaseDetail.aspx?p=1420&d=1492
[10] Human Rights Watch, http://hrw.org, May 14, 2004
[i][i] I also with to express my gratitude to Sara Hudson, Charles
Sackrey and Kent Hurst for reading the manuscript at various stages and
making invaluable substantive and editorial suggestions. They are not
responsible for any errors or omissions that remain.
Read it all at:
http://www3.uta.edu/faculty/cornehls/pages/Brief%20History%20of%20U.S.%20Violence.htm
or
http://tinyurl.com/fw2cl
--
Fundies and trolls are cordially invited to
shove a wooden cross up their arses and rotate
at a high rate of speed. I trust you'll
be 'blessed' with a plethora of splinters.
.
|
|
|
| User: "Michael Gray" |
|
| Title: Re: Article: Christian Discovery to Manifest Destiny: A Brief History of United States Violence |
02 May 2006 01:07:34 AM |
|
|
On Sun, 30 Apr 2006 14:02:48 -0700, stoney <stoney@the.net> wrote:
- Refer: <rd9a529pnkppla14bmb36fsfh21h7m8067@4ax.com>
On Thu, 27 Apr 2006 10:56:34 +0930, Michael Gray
<fleetg@newsguy.spam.com> wrote in alt.atheism
"Christian Discovery to Manifest Destiny: A Brief History of United
States Violence.
By Jim Cornehls
(Copyright, 2006)
<excerpt>
Faced with increasingly violent times and sectarian conflicts many
Americans react in horror to recent beheadings in the Middle East and
condemn the use of mass violence as a means of affecting political
outcomes. They attribute these actions to religious fanaticism,
especially militant Islam, or to savagery or barbarism. These same
Americans see themselves as peaceful and tolerant, both individually
and as a nation, not prone to violence unless provoked. In so doing
they fail to understand or acknowledge their own history of mass
violence and barbarism, including the genocide inflicted on the
original Native Americans; and the murder, extreme violence against,
and dehumanization of African Americans. While violence cannot be
condoned for any reason, an examination of the United States’ own
history and its contemporary actions may help place many Americans’
current bewilderment about violence directed against them in
perspective.
Colonial Violence
:
Took me until now to read that lot!
(Thanks)
A lot of the earlier colonisation crimes are uncannily like the early
history of Australian colonialism.
Only for African slaves we substituted maily British Criminals.
And our colonists managed to exterminate the original inhabitants much
more efficiently.
--
Michael Gray.
Founding Member and Doorman,
Earthquack's 666 Club.
EAC Trainee Inquisitor.
Pluritalis non est ponenda sine necessitate
.
|
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| User: "stoney" |
|
| Title: Re: Article: Christian Discovery to Manifest Destiny: A Brief History of United States Violence |
02 May 2006 05:32:15 PM |
|
|
On Tue, 02 May 2006 15:37:34 +0930, Michael Gray
<fleetg@newsguy.spam.com> wrote in alt.atheism
On Sun, 30 Apr 2006 14:02:48 -0700, stoney <stoney@the.net> wrote:
- Refer: <rd9a529pnkppla14bmb36fsfh21h7m8067@4ax.com>
On Thu, 27 Apr 2006 10:56:34 +0930, Michael Gray
<fleetg@newsguy.spam.com> wrote in alt.atheism
"Christian Discovery to Manifest Destiny: A Brief History of United
States Violence.
By Jim Cornehls
(Copyright, 2006)
<excerpt>
Faced with increasingly violent times and sectarian conflicts many
Americans react in horror to recent beheadings in the Middle East and
condemn the use of mass violence as a means of affecting political
outcomes. They attribute these actions to religious fanaticism,
especially militant Islam, or to savagery or barbarism. These same
Americans see themselves as peaceful and tolerant, both individually
and as a nation, not prone to violence unless provoked. In so doing
they fail to understand or acknowledge their own history of mass
violence and barbarism, including the genocide inflicted on the
original Native Americans; and the murder, extreme violence against,
and dehumanization of African Americans. While violence cannot be
condoned for any reason, an examination of the United States’ own
history and its contemporary actions may help place many Americans’
current bewilderment about violence directed against them in
perspective.
Colonial Violence
:
Took me until now to read that lot!
(Thanks)
Welcome.
A lot of the earlier colonisation crimes are uncannily like the early
history of Australian colonialism.
Only for African slaves we substituted maily British Criminals.
And our colonists managed to exterminate the original inhabitants much
more efficiently.
Sporting event.
--
Fundies and trolls are cordially invited to
shove a wooden cross up their arses and rotate
at a high rate of speed. I trust you'll
be 'blessed' with a plethora of splinters.
.
|
|
|
| User: "Michael Gray" |
|
| Title: Re: Article: Christian Discovery to Manifest Destiny: A Brief History of United States Violence |
02 May 2006 11:33:50 PM |
|
|
On Tue, 02 May 2006 15:32:15 -0700, stoney <stoney@the.net> wrote:
- Refer: <nenf52pd88i5h7e4itcn2p6d45bpndcng9@4ax.com>
On Tue, 02 May 2006 15:37:34 +0930, Michael Gray
<fleetg@newsguy.spam.com> wrote in alt.atheism
On Sun, 30 Apr 2006 14:02:48 -0700, stoney <stoney@the.net> wrote:
- Refer: <rd9a529pnkppla14bmb36fsfh21h7m8067@4ax.com>
On Thu, 27 Apr 2006 10:56:34 +0930, Michael Gray
<fleetg@newsguy.spam.com> wrote in alt.atheism
"Christian Discovery to Manifest Destiny: A Brief History of United
States Violence.
By Jim Cornehls
(Copyright, 2006)
<excerpt>
Faced with increasingly violent times and sectarian conflicts many
Americans react in horror to recent beheadings in the Middle East and
condemn the use of mass violence as a means of affecting political
outcomes. They attribute these actions to religious fanaticism,
especially militant Islam, or to savagery or barbarism. These same
Americans see themselves as peaceful and tolerant, both individually
and as a nation, not prone to violence unless provoked. In so doing
they fail to understand or acknowledge their own history of mass
violence and barbarism, including the genocide inflicted on the
original Native Americans; and the murder, extreme violence against,
and dehumanization of African Americans. While violence cannot be
condoned for any reason, an examination of the United States’ own
history and its contemporary actions may help place many Americans’
current bewilderment about violence directed against them in
perspective.
Colonial Violence
:
Took me until now to read that lot!
(Thanks)
Welcome.
A lot of the earlier colonisation crimes are uncannily like the early
history of Australian colonialism.
Only for African slaves we substituted maily British Criminals.
And our colonists managed to exterminate the original inhabitants much
more efficiently.
Sporting event.
Better firearms and poisons, I expect.
We had 200 years to develop them for more murderous power, don't
forget.
--
Michael Gray.
Founding Member and Doorman,
Earthquack's 666 Club.
EAC Trainee Inquisitor of the month (runner up: March)
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
.
|
|
|
| User: "Emmanual Kann" |
|
| Title: Re: Article: Christian Discovery to Manifest Destiny: A Brief History of United States Violence |
03 May 2006 11:06:10 AM |
|
|
An Wed, 03 May 2006 14:03:50 +0930, Michael Gray hat geschreibt:
And our colonists [Australian] managed to exterminate the original
inhabitants much more efficiently [than Americans].
From what I've read, aboriginal population pre-British was anywhere from
300,000 to 1,000,000. Today's aboriginal population is projected to reach
650,000 in 2006.
Contrast that with the statistics for North America.
The Native-American population in United States in 2000 population was
2,068,883. A conservative estimate of the population of the territory now
called the United States is 12 million. I think the numbers indicate that
my ancestors were better at genocide than yours. We had 12 times as many
to start with and we now have only three times as many. I'd say we were
four times better at genocide than you.
.
|
|
|
| User: "Michael Gray" |
|
| Title: Re: Article: Christian Discovery to Manifest Destiny: A Brief History of United States Violence |
03 May 2006 09:03:02 PM |
|
|
On Wed, 03 May 2006 16:06:10 GMT, Emmanual Kann <kann@keinspam.de>
wrote:
- Refer: <pan.2006.05.03.16.06.04.682301@keinspam.de>
An Wed, 03 May 2006 14:03:50 +0930, Michael Gray hat geschreibt:
And our colonists [Australian] managed to exterminate the original
inhabitants much more efficiently [than Americans].
From what I've read, aboriginal population pre-British was anywhere from
300,000 to 1,000,000. Today's aboriginal population is projected to reach
650,000 in 2006.
Contrast that with the statistics for North America.
The Native-American population in United States in 2000 population was
2,068,883. A conservative estimate of the population of the territory now
called the United States is 12 million. I think the numbers indicate that
my ancestors were better at genocide than yours. We had 12 times as many
to start with and we now have only three times as many. I'd say we were
four times better at genocide than you.
Yes, you are correct; you win.
I'm sorry if I somehow implied that the Pommy exterminators were
somehow better than the Yankee ones! ;)
Look at Bush and Blair's comparative records...
--
Michael Gray.
Founding Member and Doorman,
Earthquack's 666 Club.
EAC Trainee Inquisitor of the month (runner up: March)
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
.
|
|
|
| User: "stoney" |
|
| Title: Re: Article: Christian Discovery to Manifest Destiny: A Brief History of United States Violence |
04 May 2006 12:47:12 PM |
|
|
On Thu, 04 May 2006 11:33:02 +0930, Michael Gray
<fleetg@newsguy.spam.com> wrote in alt.atheism
On Wed, 03 May 2006 16:06:10 GMT, Emmanual Kann <kann@keinspam.de>
wrote:
- Refer: <pan.2006.05.03.16.06.04.682301@keinspam.de>
An Wed, 03 May 2006 14:03:50 +0930, Michael Gray hat geschreibt:
And our colonists [Australian] managed to exterminate the original
inhabitants much more efficiently [than Americans].
From what I've read, aboriginal population pre-British was anywhere from
300,000 to 1,000,000. Today's aboriginal population is projected to reach
650,000 in 2006.
Contrast that with the statistics for North America.
The Native-American population in United States in 2000 population was
2,068,883. A conservative estimate of the population of the territory now
called the United States is 12 million. I think the numbers indicate that
my ancestors were better at genocide than yours. We had 12 times as many
to start with and we now have only three times as many. I'd say we were
four times better at genocide than you.
Yes, you are correct; you win.
I'm sorry if I somehow implied that the Pommy exterminators were
somehow better than the Yankee ones! ;)
Look at Bush and Blair's comparative records...
Either way highlights Christian Love.
--
Fundies and trolls are cordially invited to
shove a wooden cross up their arses and rotate
at a high rate of speed. I trust you'll
be 'blessed' with a plethora of splinters.
.
|
|
|
| User: "Michael Gray" |
|
| Title: Re: Article: Christian Discovery to Manifest Destiny: A Brief History of United States Violence |
04 May 2006 06:46:42 PM |
|
|
On Thu, 04 May 2006 10:47:12 -0700, stoney <stoney@the.net> wrote:
- Refer: <hgfk529c7ge3mblu8lt0nst63otl8jquv3@4ax.com>
On Thu, 04 May 2006 11:33:02 +0930, Michael Gray
<fleetg@newsguy.spam.com> wrote in alt.atheism
On Wed, 03 May 2006 16:06:10 GMT, Emmanual Kann <kann@keinspam.de>
wrote:
- Refer: <pan.2006.05.03.16.06.04.682301@keinspam.de>
An Wed, 03 May 2006 14:03:50 +0930, Michael Gray hat geschreibt:
And our colonists [Australian] managed to exterminate the original
inhabitants much more efficiently [than Americans].
From what I've read, aboriginal population pre-British was anywhere from
300,000 to 1,000,000. Today's aboriginal population is projected to reach
650,000 in 2006.
Contrast that with the statistics for North America.
The Native-American population in United States in 2000 population was
2,068,883. A conservative estimate of the population of the territory now
called the United States is 12 million. I think the numbers indicate that
my ancestors were better at genocide than yours. We had 12 times as many
to start with and we now have only three times as many. I'd say we were
four times better at genocide than you.
Yes, you are correct; you win.
I'm sorry if I somehow implied that the Pommy exterminators were
somehow better than the Yankee ones! ;)
Look at Bush and Blair's comparative records...
Either way highlights Christian Love.
That's more accurate than you may think.
Their Christian Love for Power of a selected Elite.
Spot on.
--
.
|
|
|
| User: "stoney" |
|
| Title: Re: Article: Christian Discovery to Manifest Destiny: A Brief History of United States Violence |
05 May 2006 10:22:07 AM |
|
|
On Fri, 05 May 2006 09:16:42 +0930, Michael Gray
<fleetg@newsguy.spam.com> wrote in alt.atheism
On Thu, 04 May 2006 10:47:12 -0700, stoney <stoney@the.net> wrote:
- Refer: <hgfk529c7ge3mblu8lt0nst63otl8jquv3@4ax.com>
On Thu, 04 May 2006 11:33:02 +0930, Michael Gray
<fleetg@newsguy.spam.com> wrote in alt.atheism
On Wed, 03 May 2006 16:06:10 GMT, Emmanual Kann <kann@keinspam.de>
wrote:
- Refer: <pan.2006.05.03.16.06.04.682301@keinspam.de>
An Wed, 03 May 2006 14:03:50 +0930, Michael Gray hat geschreibt:
And our colonists [Australian] managed to exterminate the original
inhabitants much more efficiently [than Americans].
From what I've read, aboriginal population pre-British was anywhere from
300,000 to 1,000,000. Today's aboriginal population is projected to reach
650,000 in 2006.
Contrast that with the statistics for North America.
The Native-American population in United States in 2000 population was
2,068,883. A conservative estimate of the population of the territory now
called the United States is 12 million. I think the numbers indicate that
my ancestors were better at genocide than yours. We had 12 times as many
to start with and we now have only three times as many. I'd say we were
four times better at genocide than you.
Yes, you are correct; you win.
I'm sorry if I somehow implied that the Pommy exterminators were
somehow better than the Yankee ones! ;)
Look at Bush and Blair's comparative records...
Either way highlights Christian Love.
That's more accurate than you may think.
Their Christian Love for Power of a selected Elite.
Spot on.
It was a deliberate bulls-eye attempt. I thought it went on the proper
trajectory, thank you for the confirmation.
--
Fundies and trolls are cordially invited to
shove a wooden cross up their arses and rotate
at a high rate of speed. I trust you'll
be 'blessed' with a plethora of splinters.
.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
| User: "stoney" |
|
| Title: Re: Article: Christian Discovery to Manifest Destiny: A Brief History of United States Violence |
03 May 2006 10:59:43 AM |
|
|
On Wed, 03 May 2006 14:03:50 +0930, Michael Gray
<fleetg@newsguy.spam.com> wrote in alt.atheism
On Tue, 02 May 2006 15:32:15 -0700, stoney <stoney@the.net> wrote:
- Refer: <nenf52pd88i5h7e4itcn2p6d45bpndcng9@4ax.com>
On Tue, 02 May 2006 15:37:34 +0930, Michael Gray
<fleetg@newsguy.spam.com> wrote in alt.atheism
On Sun, 30 Apr 2006 14:02:48 -0700, stoney <stoney@the.net> wrote:
- Refer: <rd9a529pnkppla14bmb36fsfh21h7m8067@4ax.com>
On Thu, 27 Apr 2006 10:56:34 +0930, Michael Gray
<fleetg@newsguy.spam.com> wrote in alt.atheism
"Christian Discovery to Manifest Destiny: A Brief History of United
States Violence.
By Jim Cornehls
(Copyright, 2006)
<excerpt>
Faced with increasingly violent times and sectarian conflicts many
Americans react in horror to recent beheadings in the Middle East and
condemn the use of mass violence as a means of affecting political
outcomes. They attribute these actions to religious fanaticism,
especially militant Islam, or to savagery or barbarism. These same
Americans see themselves as peaceful and tolerant, both individually
and as a nation, not prone to violence unless provoked. In so doing
they fail to understand or acknowledge their own history of mass
violence and barbarism, including the genocide inflicted on the
original Native Americans; and the murder, extreme violence against,
and dehumanization of African Americans. While violence cannot be
condoned for any reason, an examination of the United States’ own
history and its contemporary actions may help place many Americans’
current bewilderment about violence directed against them in
perspective.
Colonial Violence
:
Took me until now to read that lot!
(Thanks)
Welcome.
A lot of the earlier colonisation crimes are uncannily like the early
history of Australian colonialism.
Only for African slaves we substituted maily British Criminals.
And our colonists managed to exterminate the original inhabitants much
more efficiently.
Sporting event.
Better firearms and poisons, I expect.
We had 200 years to develop them for more murderous power, don't
forget.
As I understand it hunting the original inhabitants was considered
sport.
--
Fundies and trolls are cordially invited to
shove a wooden cross up their arses and rotate
at a high rate of speed. I trust you'll
be 'blessed' with a plethora of splinters.
.
|
|
|
| User: "Michael Gray" |
|
| Title: Re: Article: Christian Discovery to Manifest Destiny: A Brief History of United States Violence |
03 May 2006 09:06:59 PM |
|
|
On Wed, 03 May 2006 08:59:43 -0700, stoney <stoney@the.net> wrote:
- Refer: <aqkh525sul67lvei0v08bjgfoa457gbj56@4ax.com>
On Wed, 03 May 2006 14:03:50 +0930, Michael Gray
<fleetg@newsguy.spam.com> wrote in alt.atheism
On Tue, 02 May 2006 15:32:15 -0700, stoney <stoney@the.net> wrote:
- Refer: <nenf52pd88i5h7e4itcn2p6d45bpndcng9@4ax.com>
On Tue, 02 May 2006 15:37:34 +0930, Michael Gray
<fleetg@newsguy.spam.com> wrote in alt.atheism
On Sun, 30 Apr 2006 14:02:48 -0700, stoney <stoney@the.net> wrote:
- Refer: <rd9a529pnkppla14bmb36fsfh21h7m8067@4ax.com>
On Thu, 27 Apr 2006 10:56:34 +0930, Michael Gray
<fleetg@newsguy.spam.com> wrote in alt.atheism
"Christian Discovery to Manifest Destiny: A Brief History of United
States Violence.
By Jim Cornehls
(Copyright, 2006)
<excerpt>
Faced with increasingly violent times and sectarian conflicts many
Americans react in horror to recent beheadings in the Middle East and
condemn the use of mass violence as a means of affecting political
outcomes. They attribute these actions to religious fanaticism,
especially militant Islam, or to savagery or barbarism. These same
Americans see themselves as peaceful and tolerant, both individually
and as a nation, not prone to violence unless provoked. In so doing
they fail to understand or acknowledge their own history of mass
violence and barbarism, including the genocide inflicted on the
original Native Americans; and the murder, extreme violence against,
and dehumanization of African Americans. While violence cannot be
condoned for any reason, an examination of the United States’ own
history and its contemporary actions may help place many Americans’
current bewilderment about violence directed against them in
perspective.
Colonial Violence
:
Took me until now to read that lot!
(Thanks)
Welcome.
A lot of the earlier colonisation crimes are uncannily like the early
history of Australian colonialism.
Only for African slaves we substituted maily British Criminals.
And our colonists managed to exterminate the original inhabitants much
more efficiently.
Sporting event.
Better firearms and poisons, I expect.
We had 200 years to develop them for more murderous power, don't
forget.
As I understand it hunting the original inhabitants was considered
sport.
Sometime, literally, but more often than not in the same manner that
you might find exterminating vermin as "sport".
In 200 years time, enlightened folks will look back at this century in
the same manner.
In fact, they are doing so RIGHT NOW!
Put 'em all in a stadium and let 'em fight it out amongst themselves.
Osama can have the trident and net, and Rumsfeld can have a piece of
the True Cross.
--
Michael Gray.
Founding Member and Doorman,
Earthquack's 666 Club.
EAC Trainee Inquisitor of the month (runner up: March)
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
.
|
|
|
| User: "stoney" |
|
| Title: Re: Article: Christian Discovery to Manifest Destiny: A Brief History of United States Violence |
04 May 2006 12:43:49 PM |
|
|
On Thu, 04 May 2006 11:36:59 +0930, Michael Gray
<fleetg@newsguy.spam.com> wrote in alt.atheism
On Wed, 03 May 2006 08:59:43 -0700, stoney <stoney@the.net> wrote:
- | | | | | | | |
