The Orangemen in Northern Ireland marched in parades last 12th of July to mark the 326th anniversary of King William III’s victory at the Battle of the Boyne in 1690. Fortunately the troubles these “walks” cause have been limited as of late. They have produced many problems in the past being seen by the Irish Catholics as celebrating their defeat and particularly insulting and triumphalist when they march through Catholic areas.
For some 326 years is hardly an old memory. The Serbians still talk about the battle back over 600 years ago in 1389 at Kosovo Polje or Field of Blackbirds where they lost land to the Turks; the Jews talk about a battle going back to 70 AD at the rock fortress of Masada after having ignored it for 1800 years.
Old wounds are hard to forget and easily revived for present day purposes in order to stoke up the home folk. Machiavelli told us a man will more easily forget the death of his father than the loss of his land. The Jews would eventually remember their homeland and recover it; the Serbs continually lament their loss of land to Kosovo; and the Orangemen find their celebration of their triumph over the Catholics is having a bitter taste as they face the consequences of leaving the European Union.
What then about us Americans. We have not been around that long to grieve about lost lands. Our history goes back less than 250 years. What land we took from others is not under threat because of our strength. Our Indians, or if you prefer Native Americans, are well subdued and forced under our tutelage to ensure they remained docile. We gave them some land, not any of the good land we took from them, and let them build casinos or sell tax-free cigarettes or trinkets along the highways of Arizona.
Are there other things to concern us? Unfortunately, yes. At the start of the 20th Century we decided to spread the word of the Gospel to the unfortunates throughout the globe. Having won an easy victory over Spain’s fleet and soldiers we were rewarded ourselves with Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines among other places.
We let the Cubans keep their country but we decided to take the Philippines as one of our possessions. To do that we had to conquer the Filipino forces who initially asked for our help in fighting the Spanish which we gave but then decided to become their bosses ourselves. We ended up fighting and beating those who asked for our help.
Unfortunately to subdue the Filipinos we, following the British example in the Boer war, set up concentration camps and committed mass executions of people, sort of like the Germans did in WWII or perhaps, horrible to say, like some of the things ISIS does today.
We were not nice. If you doubt that recall the order by General Jacob A. Smith who told his troops: “I want no prisoners. I wish you to kill and burn; the more you kill and burn the more you will please me.” It was American policy in certain areas to kill any male over ten years of age capable of carrying arms.
We occupied the Philippines from 1898 to 1946. The slaughter took place less than 120 years ago; as noted above that is like yesterday for some. The Filipinos are now remembering and looking for a little payback.
Yes, then there is Mexico. A mere 170 years ago we invaded that country. The Marines stormed the castle of Chapultepec as a prelude to our seizing its capital. At the castle was a military corps of cadets between age 13 and 19 and their commanders. They fought back bravely but eventually all but 6 cadets retreated.
The six are remembered today in Mexico as Los Ninos Heroes with a large monument. (picture above) They refused to surrender and fought and were killed. One supposedly threw himself from the walls of the fort with the Mexican flag wrapped around him so that the Americans could not capture it. For some strange reason the Marines remember this battle where they beat the cadets in the Marines Hymn calling it the Halls of Montezuma.
The Mexicans also remember their humiliating defeat by the superior American forces and their forcible surrender of almost half their land to the Americans that now make up all or part of ten states. Will they too seek payback someday?
sorry wrong link
http://www.thesullenbell.com/tag/digital-communications/
Seth Material and Jane Roberts
Phychic Politics – Codicils
Codicils
(Alternate hypotheses as a base for private and public experience.)
1.All of creation is sacred and alive, each part connected to each other part, and each communicating in a creative cooperative commerce in which the smallest and the largest and equally involved.
2.The physical senses present one unique version of reality, in which being is perceived in a particular dimensionalized sequence, built up through neurological patterning, and is the result of one kind of neurological focus. There are alternate neurological routes, biologically acceptable, and other sequences so far not chosen.
3.Our individual self-government and our political organizations are by-products of sequential perception, and our exterior methods of communication set up patterns that correlate with, and duplicate, our synaptic behavior. We lock ourselves into certain structures of reality in this way.
4.Our sequential prejudiced perception is inherently far more flexible than we recognize, however. There are half steps—other unperceived impulses—that leap the nerve ends, too fast and too slow for our usual focus. Recognition of these can be learned and encouraged, bringing in perceptive data that will trigger changes in usual sense response, filling out potential sense spectra with which we are normally not familiar.
5.This greater possible sense spectrum includes increased perception of inner bodily reality in terms of cellular identity and behavior; automatic conscious control of bodily processes; and increased perception of exterior conditions as the usual senses become more vigorous. (Our sight, for example, is not nearly as efficient as it could be. Nuances of color, texture, and depth could be expanded and our entire visual area attain a brilliance presently considered exceptional or supernormal.)
Comments on Codicils
Acceptance of these first codicils would expand practical knowledge of the self.; break down barriers that are the results of our prejudiced perception, and restructure personal, social, and political life.
Concepts of the self and practical experience of the self must be broadened if the species is to develop its true potentials. Only an evolution of consciousness can alter the world view that appears to our official line of consciousness.
Comments on Codicil 2
This next step is as important as the birth of Christianity was in the history of mankind. It will present a new structure for civilization to follow. Christianity represented the human psyche at a certain point, forming first inner patterns for development that then became exteriorized as myth, drama, and history, with the Jewish culture of the Talmud presenting the psyche’s direction. The differences between Jewish and Christian tradition represented allied but different probabilities, one splitting off from the others, but united by common roots and actualized in the world to varying degrees.
The traditional personified god concept represented the mass psyche’s one-ego development; the ego ruling the self as God ruled man; man dominant over the planet and other species, as God was dominant over man—as opposed to the idea of many gods or the growth of a more multifocused self with greater nature identification.
Neurological patterning of the kind we know began with the early old-Testament Jews (known, then, as God’s people), looking forward through time to a completely one-ego focused self: Before, neurological functioning was not as set; and in our world today some minority peoples and tribes still hold to those alternate neurological pulses. These will not appear to our measuring devices because we are literally blind to them.
The Jewish prophets, however, utilized these alternate focuses of perception themselves, and were relatively unprejudiced neurologically. They were therefore able to perceive alternate visions of reality. Yet their great work, while focusing the energy of an entire religion, and leading to Christianity, also resulted in limiting man’s potential perceptive area in important ways.
The prophets were able to sense the potentials of the mass psyche, and their prophecies charted courses in time, projecting the Jewish religion into the future. The prophecies gave the people great strength precisely because they gave their religion a future in time, providing a thread of continuity and a certain immortality in earthly terms.
The prophecies were psychic molds to be filled out in flesh. Some were fulfilled and some were not, but the unfulfilled ones were forgotten and served their purpose by providing alternate selections and directions. The Prophecies ahead of time charted out a people’s probable course, foreseeing the triumphs and disasters inherent in such an adventure through time.
They provided psychic webworks, blueprints, and dramas, with living people stepping into the roles already outlined, but also improvising as they went along. These roles were valid, however, chosen in response to an inner reality that foresaw the shape that the living psyche of the people would take in time.
But as a snake throws off old skin, the psyche throws off old patterns that have become rigid, and we need a new set of psychic blueprints to further extend the species into the future, replete with great deeds, heroes, and challenges; a new creative drama projected from the psyche into the three-dimensional arena. For now we no longer view reality through original eyes, but through structures of beliefs that we have outgrown. These structures are simply meant to frame and organize experience, but we mistake the picture for the reality that it represents. We’ve become neurologically frozen in that respect, forced to recognize the one sequential pattern of sense perceptions, so that we think that the one we’ve chosen is the only one possible.
Comments on Codicil 3
Thus far we’ve projected the unrecognized portions of our greater selfhood outward into God, religion, government, and exteriorized concepts. In this existence, selfhood is dependent upon sense perceptions, so that our neurological prejudice and rigid focus have limited our concepts of identity. When we do become aware of unofficial information, coming through other than recognized channels then it seems to come from “notself,” or outside.
A great deal of energy has been used to repress levels of selfhood and to project these into religious and nationalistic heroes and cultural organizations. Government and religion try to preserve the status quo, to preserve their own existences, not for political or religious reasons, but to preserve the official picture of the self around which they are formed.
But the structured reality in which that kind of a self can exist is breaking down. The official picture no longer fits or explains private experience which is growing out of it. There is a momentary rift between the inner psyche and its creations.
Besides this, the experienced self is not the same through the ages. The experienced self is a psychic creation, responsive to exterior conditions which it creates as the psyche dives into the waters of experienced earthly selfhood. Only a portion of the potential self is experienced, but different portions as intents and purposes change. It is possible, though, to actualize more of our potential.
also see narconews dot com
Ed: Thank you very much for those great citations.
Yes, diseases destroyed native populations and decimated early settlers, too. And yes the history of interactions between Indians and settlers was marked both by warfare and prolonged periods of peace as your citations demonstrated.
I requote this important paragraph: “There is no question that Europeans and Indians massacred one another from time to time, but the Mayflower Pilgrims were never involved in a massacre. Research shows that throughout the entire contact period (1600-1850) Indians carried out approximately 500 massacres against Europeans, and Europeans committed about 450 massacres against Indians. A total of approximately 9,000 settlers were massacred by Indians, compared with roughly 7,000 Indians massacred by Europeans.”
Read a great book by Hampton Sides, “Blood & Thunder”, about Custer, the Apaches, relations with Mexico and settling the West. Cultures collide, conflicts ensue, peace prevails. History’s complexities.
Thank you for these Fascinating citations clarifying the complex interrelationships with Settlers and Native Americans.
It turns out there were conflicts but also harmonious relationships with some tribes, there were also decades of peace and cooperation:
“ In the summer of 1621 the colony invited a second Indian, a Pokanoket named Hobbamock, to live among them, and he stayed for several years serving as a guide and ambassador. In fact, Hobbamock helped the Plymouth Colonists to set up fur trading posts at the mouth of the Penobscot and Kennebec rivers in Maine, along the Aptucxet River in Massachusetts, and along the Windsor River in Connecticut.”
And, indeed, there was Thanksgiving: “The Pilgrims did not introduce the Fall Harvest Thanksgiving Ceremony. Northeastern tribes had observed autumnal harvest celebrations for centuries. However, in the fall of 1621, the governor of the Plymouth Colony, William Bradford, decided to have a harvest Thanksgiving celebration of his own and invited Massasoit, the Grand Sachem of the Wampanoag Federation to come as a guest. Massasoit arrived on the appointed day with ninety warriors, and gifts of more food, including apple cider, deer, lobster, clams, oysters, smoked eel, corn, squash, wild rice, smoked cod fish, and popped corn with maple syrup. The Wampanoags remained at Plymouth for three days and the celebration continued for several more days after they left.”
From other sites:
2. Continuously occupied settlements in present day continental United States:
1635 Saint Augustine, Florida – Spanish
1607 Santa Fe New, Mexico – Spanish (oldest state capital) (the Palace of the Governors is the oldest continually occupied structure in the U.S., since 1610)
1607 Jamestown, VA – English
1610 Hampton, VA – English
1614 Albany, NY – English
1620 Plymouth, MA – English (then until 1633 a dozen others along the Eastern seaboard mostly English, some Dutch)
1634 Green Bay, WI – French
How many have to die to qualify as a massacre? The dictionary defines a massacre as an indiscriminate and brutal slaughter of a large number of people or animals. The FBI defines a mass murder as four or more people deliberately killed.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wessagusset_Colony
“In the Wessagusset massacre Standish personally killed a Native leader, stabbing him in the heart after inviting him to dinner, and carrying his head back to Plymouth. Native villagers on Cape Cod were so fearful of the white warrior, that they were afraid to plant crops and died of starvation.”
http://www.seacoastnh.com/History/History-Matters/myles-standish-speak-out-on-nhs-first-settler/?start=1
An archeological viewpoint:
http://www.plymoutharch.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/50300822-An-Investigation-into-Weston-s-Colony-at-Wessagussett-Weymouth-Massachusetts.pdf
The creole government in Mexico City had no more right to the areas ceded to the United States than did the government in Washington. The claim was rooted in Madrid’s claim. Neither of the claims prior to 1848 were much exercised in those areas. Power abhors a vacuum. America settled and dominated the land. That robust claim justifies itself.
Yes, folks remember historical wounds. Some beat war drums. Others want to move beyond the past into a brighter future. Know the past, but don’t dwell there!
– – Native Americans and settlers fought viciously at times for centuries before the U.S. was formed (1789)and afterwards during its first 100 years. There were atrocities on all sides: Indians against Whites, Indians against Spanish, Indians against Mexicans, Indians against Indians, and vice-versa. They also lived peaceably, worked together, came to accommodations. Remember Thanksgiving, Sacagawea and the Native-Americans who served in all of America’s wars and conflicts. The more advanced culture with better technology, better weapons and more numbers eventually subdued the less advanced. That’s been the history of clashing cultures for millennia.
– – Filipinos rebelled against Spain, then after the Treaty of Paris which ended the Spanish-American War and gave ownership to the U.S., they rebelled against the U.S., but by the 1930s the U.S. had agreed to Filipino Independence (effective 1944) then the U.S. army expelled the Japanese invaders. Filipinos remember the American liberators, too. Filipinos also remember that the U.S. brought medicine, education, technology, business, a better standard of living to the Philippines, So, the history is complex. .
The Spanish-American War (American imperialism) was triggered by Hearst News over the bogus “Remember the Maine” incident like the bogus “Gulf of Tonkin” and “WMD”. Cuba was grateful to be free. The U.S. gained Guam and Puerto Rico as possessions, territories. Perhaps, they too will seek independence, like the Philippines, or statehood.
– – The Mexican-American War is complex; Mexico invited Americans to settle in the Texas area to thwart Indian attacks; then the Alamo; than then Texans defeated Santa Ana; then Texas Independence (The Republic of Texas); then Texas annexation by the U.S., then a dispute over territory between the Rio Grande and Nueces River led to some shooting. Some say Mexico started the shooting War. Most understand President Polk, avaricious of western expansion via acquisition of Mexican territory, was looking for any pretext.
What do we learn from the U.S. excesses? The dangers of imperialism and militarism!
Man’s inhumanity to man. Countries make mistakes. Know the past, but don’t repeat it.
2. Reconquista? California secession? I doubt it! But Rome fell; the British Empire?
As Thanksgiving Day approaches, I recommend that readers research the 1605-1617 Tarratine (Tarrateen) War, where Canadian Maritime Mi’kmaq, who had acquired seagoing technology, firearms and infectious diseases from interaction with Vikings, Basque fishermen and French fur traders, raided Indian settlements in New England south to Cape Cod. It is unclear whether high mortality diseases such as typhus and influenza spread north to south or south to north, but it is very clear that they spread with disastrous consequences for all participants.
“Thanksgiving: Fact or Fiction?”
http://www.powwows.com/2011/11/08/thanksgiving-fact-or-fiction/
“PILGRIMS AND INDIANS – Ten Common Misbeliefs”
http://hosted.verticalresponse.com/224864/2fbaa3ee84/TEST/TEST/
Good post. I will look that up.
Disease crosses the oceans both ways. Columbus brought syphilis home to Spain and before long it was all over Europe and Asia. Other viral diseases spread both ways too.
The Columbian Exchange introduced the horse to North America, and spread potatoes, sweet potatoes, corn, and cassava, tomatoes, chili peppers, cacao, peanuts, pineapples, chili peppers, tobacco, sugar, coffee to the world.
Read about Squanto:
Tisquantum (November 15, 1585 – November 30, 1622), also known as Squanto, was a Patuxet man who assisted the Pilgrims after their first winter in what is now Massachusetts. He was integral to their very survival. He was a member of the Patuxet tribe, a tributary of the Wampanoag Confederacy. He crossed the Atlantic Ocean six times, traveling with colonists to London and back
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squanto
Good summary.
* Bill C. …Again a nice summation of these events.
* There is much historical suffering that was visited * by one group upon another ,and then another ( US ) visited the same upon that group. Call it equal opportunity Manifest Destiny if that helps.
If Queen Lili’uokalani were here, she would wholeheartedly agree, John.
Rather :
Yes, The Gal from Punchbowl Crater was intrigued against by American interests and the Marines enforced those interests .
What a lovely Island you have here .
ALOHA 🙂
“Hmmm….this looks like a good spot for a military base……and don’t worry, Mr. Dole, they won’t be too much trouble, and we get free labor to keep those pineapples moving.”
Immigration without assimilation is invasion.
Consider what is required to become a citizen of Mexico:
“The Nationality Law establishes also that a foreigner that wishes to naturalize must do the following:
1. present the application to the Secretariat of Foreign Affairs;
2. formulate the renunciation of the persons country of origin, and take the oath of sole nationality to Mexico. Once this has been given;
3. prove knowledge of Spanish and Mexican history integration to the national culture; and
4. prove residence in Mexico for five years immediately prior to the submission of the application, or two years of residency if a direct descendant of a Mexican by birth; or is the mother or father of a Mexican by birth; or is a national of a Latin American or Iberian country; or to the judgment of the Secretariat, she or he has performed or created outstanding works in a cultural, social, scientific, technical, artistic, sports or business area that benefit the nation, in which case, the foreigner is not required to have resided in the country for the number of years prescribed in the law.
“Mexican law also distinguishes between naturalized citizens and natural-born citizens in many ways. Under the Mexican constitution, naturalized citizens are prohibited from serving in a wide array of positions, mostly governmental. Naturalized Mexicans cannot occupy any of following posts:
The Mexican military during peacetime
Policeman
Captain, pilot, or crew member on any Mexican-flagged vessel or aircraft
President of Mexico
Member of the Congress of Mexico
Member of the Supreme Court of Mexico
Governor of a Mexican state
Mayor or member of the legislature of Mexico City”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mexican_nationality_law
Perhaps the US might adopt Mexico’s Citizenship rules?
Sure as shootin’ ….. It is called by Mexican Nationalists like writer Jose Luis Borges the … RECONQUISTA . La Rasa is all about reparations for blood and treasure they lost in that war. The Southwestern US Chicano population was radicalized decade by decade by raw deals like OPERATION WETBACK. There is no question that California had a ruling class deposed along with their extensive lands and haciendas by WASPS largely as a result of that conflict. And yet … That ruling class was Spanish largely in composition ; racially pure and the historic conquerors of the indigenous peoples of Mexico. They understood one thinks … in their imperial natures … that history is indeed written by the winners and poetry by the losers.
Unless the analysis is a thoughtful one regarding this complex … situation … we simply get regurgitated history easily tailored according to the writer’s bias on the subject. And the result is political propaganda for justifying really heinous criminality on the part of what we shall call the … insurgent offended members …of that … historically subjugated population. There is a sense of cultural entitlement : ” Listen gringo … take Black Jack Pershing and stick him where the Moon don’t shine on the Rio Grande. ” So to speak.
Their is much genuine suffering that was visited upon one group upon another and then another ( US) upon that group. But Reality and History are not so easily distilled into … WORDS. Nothing is simple. We can find a way to pull together. We cannot capture lightning or history in a bottle or a ” Dialectic. ” Viva Chavez! Viva La Revolutione! and May God Bless The United States Of America. These Spirits of Ages Past, and now Omnipresent need not mutually exclude. We can find Common Ground. The Mexicans and their issue are long since married to Americans and their issue. It would be an unbelievable synergy if we could get on the same page. Call it The Art Of The Deal . 🙂