Categories
Opinion Point of View Politics

When Do We Get Outraged?

The New York Times has reported that there were many more “ghettos, slave labor sites, concentration camps and killing factories that the Nazis set up throughout Europe” then originally documented.

After reading the article, I suspect the German citizens were aware of these ghettos and camps as they were everywhere.  We are outraged at this cruelty and rightfully so.  The occupants were not only Jews but included Poles, Russians, homosexuals, the mentally impaired, the elderly, the sick and political enemies.  Millions of people were killed by the Nazis.

The United States government is also guilty of genocide.

Two studies have been conducted that attempt to number the natives killed by the United States. The first of these was sponsored by the United States government, and while official does not stand up to scrutiny and is therefore discounted (generally); this estimate shows between 1 million to 4 million killed. The second study was not sponsored by the US Government but was done from independent researchers. This study estimated populations and population reductions using later census data. Two figures are given, both low and high, at: between 10 million and 114 million Indians as a direct result of US actions. Please note that Nazi Holocaust estimates are between 6 and 11 million; thereby making the Nazi Holocaust the 2nd largest mass murder of a class of people in history.
REF:
American Holocaust: D. Stannard (Oxford Press, 1992) – “over 100 million killed” “[Christopher] Columbus personally murdered half a million Natives”
God, Greed and Genocide: The Holocaust Through the Centuries: Grenke (New Academia Publishing 2006)
Holocaust: Critical Concepts in Historical Studies: Cesarani, (Routledge 2004)

H/T to WikiAnswers.

In 1840, the Indian Removal Act made it illegal for Native Americans to live in Georgia.  This act wasn’t repealed until March 1980.  Beginning in the 1830’s, the Leni Lenape were removed from the areas surrounding the Hudson River and Delaware River and sent to Oklahoma.  The Native American children were sent to the ‘Indian School’ in Carlyle, PA.

More information about the removal of Native Americans can be found here.

Today, Native Americans live in extreme poverty on reservations that are on land that no one else wants.  After breaking treaty upon treaty, our government corralled the first people onto wastelands.

Why aren’t we angry about the US government’s genocide?  Where’s the outrage?  The Nazi holocaust stirs up anger as do the current drone strikes happening in other countries.  Do we only get offended by deaths that occur in other countries?  When it happens on our soil, do we just turn our heads aside and ignore it?

The US is host to the ‘Holocaust Museum’.  When will we build the Native American genocide museum?

Categories
Native Americans News Politics

Genocide

This is about the genocide that occurred right in this nation.  The United States has never atoned for these acts of cruelty.  Before we massacred the indigenous people of this continent, we killed the buffalo and other animals which were their main source for food.  We put their children in “re-education camps” known as “Indian Schools” and we sent what remained of these native people to “interment camps” which are referred to as “reservations”.  This was all part of the “final solution”.

December 29, 2009 is the 119th anniversary of the Battle of Wounded Knee.

Part 1

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkJaYe1T8l8)

Part 2

(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tL7lBxPPKg)

Oh, how we lied to these people and we continue to lie.  When will we make amends for the American Holocaust?

Categories
Politics

Space Invaders

Or should I say, “space thieves”.  That exactly what Israel has been doing since 1967, invading and stealing land from the Palestinians and Syrians.  Israeli settlers just keep taking more and more and more land away from the native inhabitants and we let it happen.  As a matter of fact, we turn a blind eye to the atrocities committed by Israel against the Palestinians.  This is the middle east version of the holocaust with Israel taking on the role of Hitler and the Palestinians taking on the role of the European Jews.

Barack Obama needs to make a clear statement on day 1 that this land grab and conflict can no longer continue with the support of the United States because it is against our own best interests.

From The Nation (This article originally appeared on Uri Avnery’s website.):

The following humble suggestions are based on my seventy years of experience as an underground fighter, special forces soldier in the 1948 war, editor-in-chief of a newsmagazine, member of the Knesset and founding member of a peace movement:

1. As far as Israeli-Arab peace is concerned, you should act from Day One.

2. Israeli elections are due to take place in February 2009. You can have an indirect but important and constructive impact on the outcome, by announcing your unequivocal determination to achieve Israeli-Palestinian, Israeli-Syrian and Israeli-all-Arab peace in 2009.

3. Unfortunately, all your predecessors since 1967 have played a double game. While paying lip service to peace, and sometimes going through the motions of making some effort for peace, they have in practice supported our governments in moving in the very opposite direction. In particular, they have given tacit approval to the building and enlargement of Israeli settlements in the occupied Palestinian and Syrian territories, each of which is a land mine on the road to peace.

4. All the settlements are illegal in international law. The distinction sometimes made between “illegal” outposts and the other settlements is a propaganda ploy designed to obscure this simple truth.

5. All the settlements since 1967 have been built with the express purpose of making a Palestinian state–and hence peace–impossible, by cutting the territory of the prospective State of Palestine into ribbons. Practically all our government departments and the army have openly or secretly helped to build, consolidate and enlarge the settlements–as confirmed by the 2005 report prepared for the government by lawyer Talia Sasson.

6. By now, the number of settlers in the West Bank has reached some 250,000 (apart from the 200,000 settlers in the Greater Jerusalem area, whose status is somewhat different). They are politically isolated, and sometimes detested by the majority of the Israel public, but enjoy significant support in the army and government ministries.

7. No Israeli government would dare to confront the concentrated political and material might of the settlers. Such a confrontation would need very strong leadership and the unstinting support of the President of the United States to have any chance of success.

8. Lacking these, all “peace negotiations” are a sham. The Israeli government and its US backers have done everything possible to prevent the negotiations with both the Palestinians and the Syrians from reaching any conclusion, for fear of provoking a confrontation with the settlers and their supporters. The present “Annapolis” negotiations are as hollow as all the preceding ones, each side keeping up the pretense for its own political interests.

9. The Clinton administration, and even more so the Bush administration, allowed the Israeli government to keep up this pretense. It is therefore imperative to prevent members of these administrations from diverting your Middle Eastern policy into the old channels.

10. It is important for you to make a complete new start, and to state this publicly. Discredited ideas and failed initiatives–such as the Bush “vision,” the Road Map, Annapolis and the like–should be thrown into the junkyard of history.

11. To make a new start, the aim of American policy should be stated clearly and succinctly. This should be: to achieve a peace based on the two-state solution within a defined time span (say, by the end of 2009).

12. It should be pointed out that this aim is based on a reassessment of the American national interest, in order to extract the poison from American-Arab and American-Muslim relations, strengthen peace-oriented regimes, defeat Al Qaeda-type terrorism, end the Iraq and Afghanistan wars and achieve a viable accommodation with Iran.

13. The terms of Israeli-Palestinian peace are clear. They have been crystallized in thousands of hours of negotiations, conferences, meetings and conversations. They are:

Read the following bullets points at The Nation:

Further comment:

What the Israelis have done to the Palestinians is not unlike what the US has done to the Native Americans.  They moved into a territory, used terrorist techniques to kick out the native populations and then seized territory from the native populations.

The Israelis out arm and out power the Palestinians.  It’s like the guns and cannons vs the bows, arrows and spears.   This conflict needs to stop.