Autumn in the US is oddly bookmarked by the two holidays that celebrate the origins of European settler colonialism in the Americas: Columbus’ landfall on October 10, and that mythological encounter of multicultural good will, the first successful harvest of the Plymouth Colony on the fourth Thursday in November.
The average natural born citizen in any country is continuously indoctrinated into the national culture starting about the time they begin understanding the meaning of words. There’s one country in particular where reality is staring the public in the face, but the truth has been grossly distorted for decades by government, and mass media, bias and propaganda.
It is a sometimes overly rich recipe, starched with violence and populism, but Latin American politics is something to behold. In the Americas, experiments have been run and tried with brutal consequences. Revolutions and counter-revolutions have been plotted and enacted. The good have tended to be a short time in office, while the coup d’état has had something of a long history.
Joseph Conrad is responsible for some of the best writing on imperialism’s darker side in the English language. The jungles of Marlowe and Kurtz in his classic novel Heart of Darkness remain some of literature’s ugliest manifestations of European hubris and white racism ever written. Conrad’s characters are so well contrived they have become metaphors for the imperial economic and cultural system of domination that is championed by its kings and rulers as much as it is maligned by its victims and those opposed to its machinations.
A while back, I saw an addition to a roadside sign that stated “Welcome to GREATER VICTORIA.” Appended underneath was another sign which read “LOCATED ON COAST SALISH TERRITORY.” The upper sign makes a colonialist statement. The lower sign signifies that the territory belongs to the Coast Salish, that include Xwsepsum, T’Sou-ke, Songhees, Pauquachin, Tseycum, Tsawout, Tsartlip, Scia’new, T’souke and Malahat, to which one Nuu-chah-Nulth First Nation, the Pacheedaht, could also be added.
This week a look into Israel’s racism, riots in Paris in solidarity with Gaza, resistance to oil and gas infrastructure in Turtle Island, including actions in Utah, Vermont, Washington, 6 Nations and Unist’ot’en, the defense of Pizzeria Anarchia in Austria, PETA’s latest asshole move, new music by Rob Hustle, and an interview with Doug Gilbert on his book the I saw fire.
The Zionist Project is to eradicate all Palestinians who make claim to a home in Palestine. The Zionist Project is exactly what Israel has been doing since its artificial creation.
The Zionist Project is planned incremental dispossession and an on-going attempted genocide, and this has been repeatedly and explicitly expressed by its architects and executioners. The Zionist Project as attempted genocide is also expressly cheered-on by many Israeli citizens and by members of the Zionist diaspora of all religions.
Tom Swanky, author of The Great Darkening: The True Story of Canada’s “War” of Extermination on the Pacific plus The Tsilhqot’in and other First Nations Resistance1 has written a new short book — A Missing Genocide and the Demonization of its Heroes – that
Recently, the US House of Representatives voiced unanimous support for the Israeli onslaught on the people of Gaza. Many opponents of Israel’s continued occupation and oppression of the Palestinians pointed, like they always do, to the disproportionate influence the so-called Israeli Lobby has in Congress. While this is an established and verifiable fact, I would argue that the Lobby is just a manifestation of a less obvious but essential reason for the never-ending support Israel receives from Washington and its apologists in the US media.
