Happy Bin Laden day....

[Fez Hammersticks]

[video=youtube;2wm0EvTk8o4]

Or rather, Columbus day!

Same realm...

 

[santeesioux]

Fuck that guy!

 

[Ed O]

If it wasn't Columbus, it would have been another European trader/explorer. I think that the European discovery, colonization and ultimate domination of the western hemisphere is something to be celebrated, even if Columbus as an individual left a lot to be desired.

Ed O.

 

[Fez Hammersticks]

If it wasn't Columbus, it would have been another European trader/explorer. I think that the European discovery, colonization and ultimate domination of the western hemisphere is something to be celebrated, even if Columbus as an individual left a lot to be desired.

Ed O.

Who would have exterminated the Indigenous population in the name of Jesus Christ. The genocide continued well after Columbus, too.

 

[ABM]

I'm now convinced. Christopher Columbus was part of a cult.

 

[Ed O]

Who would have exterminated the Indigenous population in the name of Jesus Christ. The genocide continued well after Columbus, too.

Name me a part of human history that didn't include winners and losers and I will be quite surprised.

Most indigenous people were "exterminated" because they had lived in an isolated fashion from communicable diseases. The black death killed about half of Europe's population in the 1300's and reduced global population overall... and was just one of a number of plagues that struck.

I am sorry that so many millions of indigenous people died in the Americas, but no more sorry than I am that the black death was so terrible a few hundreds of years earlier. The reality is that we are here, now, and I believe that my life (and the lives of everyone I know) is better because of European conquest of the New World and I'm happy it happened.

Ed O.

 

[Fez Hammersticks]

Name me a part of human history that didn't include winners and losers and I will be quite surprised.

Most indigenous people were "exterminated" because they had lived in an isolated fashion from communicable diseases. The black death killed about half of Europe's population in the 1300's and reduced global population overall... and was just one of a number of plagues that struck.

I am sorry that so many millions of indigenous people died in the Americas, but no more sorry than I am that the black death was so terrible a few hundreds of years earlier. The reality is that we are here, now, and I believe that my life (and the lives of everyone I know) is better because of European conquest of the New World and I'm happy it happened.

Ed O.

Rationalizing a genocide with a pandemic is asinine. One was intentional, the other wasn't (unless you want to blame god); The European population was reduced 30-60% from this outbreak; 98% of the Indigenous population in North and South America was exterminated.

We'll just have to agree to disagree.

 

[Ed O]

Rationalizing a genocide with a pandemic is asinine.

*yawn*

Applying 20th century norms to things that happened centuries earlier is worthless most of the time, IMO.

Ed O.

 

[3RA1N1AC]

*sleep talking*

plagues kill people, so its ok to wipe a race of people off the face of the earth, duh

and im happy they did

 

[ABM]

*sleep talking*

plagues kill people, so its ok to wipe a race of people off the face of the earth, duh

and im happy we now have casinos!

FIFY.

 

[3RA1N1AC]

those damn redskins are all rich now anyways! :MARIS61:

 

[3RA1N1AC]

now, it could be said that we shouldnt waste time lamenting on past indiscretions and instead stop genocide happening TODAY...

but i guess those who do not learn from the past are destined to repeat it

and thank god they do!

 

[Ed O]

now, it could be said that we shouldnt waste time lamenting on past indiscretions and instead stop genocide happening TODAY...

Next time we discover new continents full of people with little or no immunity to diseases that killed vast quantities of our population previously, we will know to wear rubber suits.

Would that be better?

Ed O.

 

[ABM]

Next time we discover new continents full of people with little or no immunity to diseases that killed vast quantities of our population previously, we will know to wear rubber suits.

Would that be better?

Ed O.

I'm pretty certain I saw that Star Trek episode.

 

[3RA1N1AC]

hmmm, they would have probably needed immunity to murder too, which is tougher to acquire

 

[TradeNurkicNow]

Next time we discover new continents full of people with little or no immunity to diseases that killed vast quantities of our population previously, we will know to wear rubber suits.

Would that be better?

How about we don't go over to the new continent with the intent of looting its resources and exterminating, subjugating and enslaving its people? But if we did, you know, that's cool too.

 

[santeesioux]

http://www.buzzfeed.com/donnad/ways-to-accurately-celebrate-columbus-day

 

[MARIS61]

Indians enslaved Indians and attempted to wipe out other tribes hundreds of years before Europeans arrived. With the gamut of taxpayer-funded handouts and social services currently needed to prop up their lackadaisical society, it is doubtful they would be in much better shape than they are now had Europeans never arrived. I expect they would be extinct by now.

 

[santeesioux]

Indians enslaved Indians and attempted to wipe out other tribes hundreds of years before Europeans arrived. With the gamut of taxpayer-funded handouts and social services currently needed to prop up their lackadaisical society, it is doubtful they would be in much better shape than they are now had we never arrived. I expect they would be extinct by now.

 

[Ed O]

How about we don't go over to the new continent with the intent of looting its resources and exterminating, subjugating and enslaving its people? But if we did, you know, that's cool too.

We sought to "exterminate" its people? That's ridiculous. And how does one exterminate and enslave people at the same time?

Slavery and murder--on a micro and macro level--were commonplace throughout history. Acting like we cannot celebrate the good that came from history just because there is bad intermingled strikes me as a bad way to look at the world.

Ed O.

 

[ABM]

Somehow, it's an injustice that Columbus Day, for the most part, is only a federal and bank employees holiday.

 

[3RA1N1AC]

sorry i missed the rest of the convo, i was down in brazil, finding lost tribes of the amazon, and shooting them in the face

its cool though, i gave the few survivors a cell phone, so they are better off

 

[TradeNurkicNow]

We sought to "exterminate" its people? That's ridiculous. And how does one exterminate and enslave people at the same time?

We did give them blankets filled with smallpox. Or is that an urban legend?

And yeah, we enslaved some, killed others, assimilated more and relocated the ones that were left to the shittiest parts of the country we could find.

Slavery and murder--on a micro and macro level--were commonplace throughout history. Acting like we cannot celebrate the good that came from history just because there is bad intermingled strikes me as a bad way to look at the world.

Sure we can celebrate ourselves-- we certainly didn't do any of these things personally. But why celebrate the people who did do those things, all for the sake of hoarding treasure, just because it happened to lead to our country being founded?

 

[Ed O]

We did give them blankets filled with smallpox. Or is that an urban legend?

Who is "them"? Weren't there hundreds of tribes throughout the Americas? I don't think that some cases of handing out infected blankets indicate an intentional destruction of two continents' worth of people.

And yeah, we enslaved some, killed others, assimilated more and relocated the ones that were left to the shittiest parts of the country we could find.

Name a part of the world where that hasn't happened. There are winners and losers throughout history.

Sure we can celebrate ourselves-- we certainly didn't do any of these things personally. But why celebrate the people who did do those things, all for the sake of hoarding treasure, just because it happened to lead to our country being founded?

Because it lead to our country being founded, and to lives around the world being enriched by the good that our country (and, indeed, the countries of the Americas more generally) has done.

Ed O.

 

[MARIS61]

Modern day PC apologism aside, the point of celebrating Columbus is to celebrate the adventurous spirit of explorers, without whom none of us would have ever been born.

Indians "discovered" America thousands of years before Columbus did, and likely wiped out the Polynesian race that "discovered" America before they did.

Man has always killed man, usually out of greed, often out of fear or ignorance, occasionally in self defense. No race is any better than any other in that regard.

 

[jlprk]

I'm tired of all the liberal softies trying to make--
burning 13 Indians at a time at the stake to celebrate Jesus and the 12 Apostles
--look bad.

Think of all the good that came from torture. Without torture, we'd still be back in Europe, acting like liberal softies. Indians would be here, acting like liberal softies. We all owe a debt of gratitude to torture.

 

[TradeNurkicNow]

All's well that ends well. Good to know.

 

[Fez Hammersticks]

Columbus and his men also used the Taino as sex slaves: it was a common reward for Columbus' men for him to present them with local women to rape. As he began exporting Taino as slaves to other parts of the world, the sex-slave trade became an important part of the business, as Columbus wrote to a friend in 1500: "A hundred castellanoes (a Spanish coin) are as easily obtained for a woman as for a farm, and it is very general and there are plenty of dealers who go about looking for girls; those from nine to ten (years old) are now in demand."

Hispaniola: they resented their lands and children being taken, and attempted to fight back against the invaders. Since the Taino where obviously standing in the way of Spain's progress, Columbus sought to impose discipline on them. For even a minor offense, an Indian's nose or ear was cut off, se he could go back to his village to impress the people with the brutality the Spanish were capable of. Columbus attacked them with dogs, skewered them with pikes, and shot them.

Eventually, life for the Taino became so unbearable that, as Pedro de Cordoba wrote to King Ferdinand in a 1517 letter, "As a result of the sufferings and hard labor they endured, the Indians choose and have chosen suicide. Occasionally a hundred have committed mass suicide. The women, exhausted by labor, have shunned conception and childbirth . . . Many, when pregnant, have taken something to abort and have aborted. Others after delivery have killed their children with their own hands, so as not to leave them in such oppressive slavery."

Eventually, Columbus and later his brother Bartholomew Columbus who he left in charge of the island, simply resorted to wiping out the Taino altogether. Prior to Columbus' arrival, some scholars place the population of Haiti/Hispaniola (now at 16 million) at around 1.5 to 3 million people. By 1496, it was down to 1.1 million, according to a census done by Bartholomew Columbus. By 1516, the indigenous population was 12,000, and according to Las Casas (who were there) by 1542 fewer than 200 natives were alive. By 1555, every single one was dead.

-Thom Hartmann

 

[3RA1N1AC]

and good for us, they deserved it

obviously they werent born lucky enough

and they are better off now that they are wiped off the face of the earth, because we have motorized back scratchers and oscillating dildos for their ghosts to look at

 

[TradeNurkicNow]

and good for us, they deserved it

obviously they werent born lucky enough

and they are better off now that they are wiped off the face of the earth, because we have motorized back scratchers and oscillating dildos for their ghosts to look at

this. the internet at its finest