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Another Self-defense Postcard

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Posted by Mike Pearson on March 1, 2002 23:53:29 UTC

Yanniru wrote:"I'm afraid it is true. Starting with Columbus, the Europeans killed millions of natives. For references and a disturbing discussion of the subject please read the book by Cabot-Zinn..."

Response: 1) the post in question also claims
U.S. killed millions of Mexicans ALSO. Are you
saying this is true?
2) Make a claim, order the other person to read a book to support your claim. Or, you could prove YOU read the book and quote from it.
I am not excusing any crimes. Also, notice that in the same breath, we never admit "natives" were also capable of doing wrong occasionally. Do you think it is literacy that causes evil?
Did you know that "natives" had turf wars on the Great Plains? The accounts of one such battle in Northern Colorado ( before the coming of the Europeans) recounts a giant toll of 600 dead...a giant number for that time! In 1803, Lewis and Clark travelled a stretch of the Upper Missouri without seeing any "natives" for three weeks in the warm season.
In Custer's last battle, the whole central interior of the continent's "native" population
mustered a giant village of at most 20,000.

Cortez and about 100 men hacked their way through the strongest empire in Central America.
What's with these numbers you quote
-- Europeans killed millions? Where did they even find them? I am not excusing crimes, just
doubting numbers. It has become politically strange to insist on information we don't really know, then form personal policy based on it.
Did "native" hunter-gatherer societies live in big cities? Where were they?
Explain from your book, please.
Estimates that seem most reliable to me indicate
that perhaps as many as one million
"natives" inhabited the entire continent when
Europeans arrived, and a big proportion of those
were in Central America.

Yanniru wrote:

"Regarding my political persuasion. I have been a life long democrat and never a communist."

My response: first time you've said that here, as far as I know. I think you were playing with our minds, because you made several argumentive points in favor of communism and kept branding me an extreme anti-communist. If the archive doesn't show it, that will be a good way to convince me to quit the forum.


Richard wrote"
Regarding my Patriotism, I can point to several pieces of evidence showing that I have more patriotism than the average US citizen.

I respond: I've known socialists who were good Americans though I didn't think their economic system would work. I don't think I questioned your patriotism. And I remember Bob Hanssen was not a communist, just a turncoat.

Yanniru wrote:
. The result is that Greg Canavan from Los Alamos invented the system called Brilliant Pebbles, which the one now being proposed for deployment. Brilliant Pebbles is not vulnerable. Greg acknowledges that my work was instrumental in his invention.

I respond: very impressive.

Yanniru wrote:

In addition for all my adult life and as a teenager I have participated in american revolutionary martial music,

I respond: G. Gordon Liddy loves it too.
And he broke into the Democratic National Headquarters...hardly a democratic thing to do.

Yanniru wrote:
So my patriotism is without blemish.

I wrote:
Actually, that's not proven, though I'm not
questioning it. In fact, you haven't defined
"unblemished patriotism." Who can argue?
Talk show hosts on the radio regularly call
Presidents and Senators the worst names, certainly implying lack of patriotism.


Yannriu wrote:
Can you say the same. I think not.

I respond:

I'll let that pass a careless comment.
As a joke, I refer you to the previous paragraph, and say, "speaking of radio talk show hosts...here's one now!"


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