a day for mourning...

Click on image and text to enlarge

The above excerpts and illustration are from the book, American Holocaust, by David E. Stannard --- © 1992 by David E. Stannard/Oxford University Press

~

I share this with you in remembrance of the monstrous legacy of Christopher Columbus, and the crimes against humanity he perpetrated in the name of God & Country, and the pursuit of Gold.

America has continued to build its Empire upon the sick heritage of Columbus as evidenced by our contributions, funneled through the CIA, to the disappearances and murder of hundreds of thousands of indigenous people in Chile, Peru, Argentina, Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Panama, Venezuela, and elsewhere over the past several decades. People who resisted or disapproved of American-supported military coups and brutal dictatorships which gave control of their countries, their land, their wealth, and their resources to corporations---many of them based in the U.S.

This was the direct result of American-sponsored experiments to spread the neo-liberal (now neocon) corporatist economic theories of Milton Friedman across South America, and there is no defensible or pardonable excuse (such as fighting The Red Scare or putting and end to Creeping Socialism) for these and countless other atrocities committed, just during my lifetime, in the name of freedom and democracy.

Therefore, I, like every other human being, carry in my heart an insidious poison distilled from the suffering of the aforementioned peoples, and from the terror visited upon Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Viet Nam, Cambodia, Iraq, Afghanistan, and so many other places.

Our current human predicament, as well as our future, is surely determined by the karma of our actions, past and present, and the consequences of those actions are coming home to roost more & more, as we live each day with new revelations of unspeakable horrors, and not just terrorist attacks, but psychopathic acts of violence everywhere. Campus massacres, workplace shootings, murder, mayhem, kidnapping, rape, child-molestion, infanticide, maiming, torture, and even cannibalism, committed by ordinary people, male, female---adults and children alike--- whether black, white, brown, yellow or red, here at home, and all around the world.

Yet we continue sowing the seed of monsters even as we reap the grotesquely bitter fruit borne of selfishness and greed.

These days we do it in the name of God, Country, and the pursuit of Oil, not to mention the myriad other resources required to feed the insatiable appetites of rogue Capitalism and unbridled growth.

Atrocities and war crimes committed by the American government and its corporate leaders belong to each one of us because we allow them to happen, through either ignorance, apathy, or intimidation, and we pay for them not only with our dollars, but with the lives of our loved ones.

Many of us would deny that we play any part in this, a denial that ends rather bluntly when you trace the path of the dollars withheld from your paycheck. But we can't stop our payments for war and killing because deep-down we understand that this is not really a democracy and we're afraid of being imprisoned or impoverished like the victims of the foreign policy we pay for.

And besides, we're certainly not the only country guilty of crimes against humanity now are we?

Still, even after we nearly exterminated the people who inhabited this place when we got here, the great American experiment with democracy was seen by many as "a beacon of freedom", "a shining light of hope in the world", an alternative to the tyranny, oppression, and corruption of previous empire-builders. Not so many people believe that about America anymore though, because we've long since given our country, and its lofty ideals, over to the criminals and thieves of Corporatism.

The American experiment with democracy seems to have failed, and, once again, the emperor wears no clothes, but what could we expect?

After all, this so-called democracy was founded upon conquest, murder, theft, injustice and suffering, and all of us today shoulder a good measure of guilt in the continuing creation of a war-torn world full of fear and hatred.

We remake our beds each day, in which we must lie each night...

Will we ever learn?

Or are we simply incapable of transforming ourselves into thoughtful, conscientious, benevolent, sustainable human beings?

On this day of mourning I would humbly ask all victims of American-sponsored terrorism to try and find forgiveness in their hearts, for we are also victims. Corporatist Fascism is rapidly overtaking the world and the average person here has been duped, just like everywhere else.

in PEACE, LOVE, and HUMILITY

jim