Sometimes history is cruel.

[truepenny]

Of our two major-party candidates for President of the United States in the year 2000, one is sharing a Nobel Peace Prize with the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

Don't mind me, I'll be over here choking on my own bitter laughter.

Oh, yes, and happy Columbus Day, too. Celebrating 515 years of rape, murder, theft, oppression, and genocide.

Comments

[fidelioscabinet.livejournal.com]

Cartoon (http://blogs.chron.com/nickanderson/archives/2007/10/post_48.html) from the Houton paper, thanks to a commenter at Making Light.

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

Ow.

(Oh and thank you for the photographic evidence of The Mirador in the wild.)

[fidelioscabinet.livejournal.com]

Hey, I had the camera in my purse and there it was!

[liminalia.livejournal.com]

But hey, at least the Nobel winner was the guy who won the presidential vote!

Oh, wait.

[tx-cronopio.livejournal.com]

I'm hard core liberal, but WTF?
Celebrating 515 years of rape, murder, theft, oppression, and genocide.


May we assume that you are 100% Native American?

[libskrat]

Why would she have to be in order to comment on the history involved?

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

No, you may not. And I don't know why you think you should.

[tx-cronopio.livejournal.com]

Sorry to have been offensive, but that's such a 1974 thing to say. I think there are more important battles to fight, and a woman as intelligent as you knows that.

[deepad]

Wow. You just managed to be offensive on an even more obnoxious level with that clarification.

(Feel free to delete this, Truepenny, if you'd rather.)

[hermetic.livejournal.com]

Wow. You removed the foot in your mouth to insert an entire leg.

The recognition of the fact of the genocide of the Americas is not a trivial thing, and pointing it out on the anniversary of its beginning is entirely appropriate.

While I, as a mestizo, would likely not exist if the conquest had not happened, I still recognize and mourn the loss of hundreds of peoples, cultures, languages and particular ways of being human the were obliterated through disease, active persecution and willing murder. A full one-fifth of the human race died as a consequence of the 'discovery' of the Americas. Remembering that is little enough to do, and it is incumbent upon anyone who is not ignorant of the history to do so--not just those who suffered most.

[michaeldthomas.livejournal.com]

Well said.

Let’s not forget that while Congress messes around with resolutions about the genocide of Armenians in Turkey, we as a nation are guilty of much greater crimes against Native Americans and Africans. It happened. You don’t need to be a Native American or African American to say this. In fact, one of the reasons why so many social injustices continue to this day is the refusal of many the descendants of the European immigrants to acknowledge what was done to create this wonderful “land of the free.”

Some people need research the current living conditions on many Reservations. Things have not greatly improved since 1974.

It’s a great day to be an American. :)

[liminalia.livejournal.com]

Yeah, because the oppression of Native Americans is totally over nowadays. Just ask Leonard Peltier. Oh, wait, I forgot, he's still in prison for a murder he didn't commit.

Hullo, white privilege. How's it goin'?

[leahbobet.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure how "sorry to be offensive, but here's some more offense" works. Could that be explained to me?

[ronin-kakuhito.livejournal.com]

It is disheartening how many people I've had to explain what the global warming work has to do with peace.

WTF?

[boji.livejournal.com]

You mean people don't get that mass migration and an decrease in food resources (not to mention oil, if Peak oil is true and natural gas and so on and so forth) are situations that will lead to violence and or violent situations?

Re: WTF?

[ronin-kakuhito.livejournal.com]

Oil they understand. We've been fighting over oil for years. But the results of Global Climate Change? That is a whole step or two longer. And all of the current examples are happening to brown people somewhere else.

[wldhrsjen3.livejournal.com]

I'm laughing with you, and trying not to beat myself over the head with my own frying pan in frustration.

And the genocide...glad you mentioned it. Why was it so critical that Congress pass a resolution decrying the genocide of Armenians when we have barely confronted the genocide lurking in our own history?

As far as global warming... It still amazes me that people are so willing to stuff their heads in the sand and ignore scientific evidence by blathering political platitudes. The effects are obvious and pervasive. The global climate is an integrated phenomenon: when one factor changes - say, average oceanic temperature - it has worldwide consequences. And climate change has far-reaching impact on resources, land, health, and cultures. I am thrilled that peace is being recognized as vitally connected to global welfare.

[primroseburrows.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes, and happy Columbus Day, too. Celebrating 515 years of rape, murder, theft, oppression, and genocide.

I decided that Columbus Day was the Monday holiday and recognized it as Canadian Thanksgiving. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thanksgiving_(Canada)) Not that Martin Frobisher (http://www.civilization.ca/hist/frobisher/frint01e.html) didn't have his own issues with the Inuit, but I see Thanksgiving (Canada's and the US version both) as a harvest festival and harvest festivals are good things.

[heresluck]

A bunch of students organized Indigenous Day on campus today; it was a nice bit of counter-hegemony.