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reetings from Australia.
Welcome to this Red-Letter Day. Below you will find today's global celebrations, birthdays and events.
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The people of this island and of all the other islands
which I have found and seen, or have not seen, all go naked, men and
women, as their mothers bore them, except that some women cover one
place only with the leaf of a plant or with a net of cotton which
they make for that purpose. They have no iron or steel or weapons,
nor are they capable of using them, although they are well-built
people of handsome stature, because they are wondrous timid....
[T]hey are so artless and free with all they possess, that no one
would believe it without having seen it. Of anything they have, if
you ask them for it, they never say no; rather they invite the
person to share it, and show as much love as if they were giving
their hearts; and whether the thing be of value or of small price,
at once they are content with whatever little thing of whatever kind
may be given to them.
They ... brought us parrots and balls of
cotton and spears and many other things, which they exchanged for
the glass beads and hawks' bells. They willingly traded everything
they owned ... They were well-built, with good bodies and handsome
features ... They do not bear arms, and do not know them, for I
showed them a sword, they took it by the edge and cut themselves out
of ignorance. They have no iron. Their spears are made of cane....
They would make fine servants ... With fifty men we could subjugate
them all and make them do whatever we want.
The Spaniards 'thought nothing of knifing
Indians by tens and twenties and of cutting slices off them to test
the sharpness of their blades.' Las Casas tells how 'two of these
so-called Christians met two Indian boys one day, each carrying a
parrot; they took the parrots and for fun beheaded the boys'. |
Bali tragedy, 2002 |
One day, in front of Las Casas, the Spanish
dismembered, beheaded, or raped 3000 people. 'Such inhumanities and
barbarisms were committed in my sight,' he says, 'as no age can
parallel. ...' The Spanish cut off the legs of children who ran from
them. They poured people full of boiling soap. They made bets as to who,
with one sweep of his sword, could cut a person in half. They loosed
dogs that 'devoured an Indian like a hog, at first sight, in less than a
moment.' They used nursing infants for dog food.
Source
... to emphasize the heroism of Columbus and
his successors as navigators and discoverers, and to de-emphasize their
genocide, is not a technical necessity, but an ideological choice. It serves -
unwittingly - to justify what was done.
Howard Zinn,
American historian
We place no reliance
On virgin or pigeon;
Our Method is Science,
Our Aim is Religion.
Aleister Crowley, British occultist born on October 12, 1875; from the journal
Equinox
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law.
Aleister Crowley
Magick is the science and art of causing change to occur in conformity with will.
Aleister Crowley; Magick
Destiny is an absolutely definite and inexorable ruler. Physical ability and moral determination count for nothing. It is impossible to perform the simplest act when the gods say "no." I have no idea how they bring pressure to bear on such occasions; I only know that it is irresistible.
Aleister Crowley; attributed
Falsehood is invariably the child of fear in one form or another.
Aleister Crowley; attributed
I have never grown out of the infantile belief that the universe was made for me to suck.
Aleister Crowley; attributed
I slept with faith and found a corpse in my arms on awakening; I drank and danced all night with doubt and found her a virgin in the morning.
Aleister Crowley; attributed
Love is the law, Love under will.
Aleister Crowley; attributed
Intolerance is evidence of impotence.
Aleister Crowley; attributed
The people who have really made history are the martyrs.
Aleister Crowley; attributed
The supreme satisfaction is to be able to despise one's neighbour and this fact goes far to account for religious intolerance. It is evidently consoling to reflect that the people next door are headed for hell.
Aleister Crowley; attributed
To read a newspaper is to refrain from reading something worthwhile. The first discipline of education must therefore be to refuse resolutely to feed the mind with canned chatter.
Aleister Crowley; attributed
The conscience of the world is so guilty that it always assumes that people who investigate heresies must be heretics; just as if a doctor who studies leprosy must be a leper. Indeed, it is only recently that science has been allowed to study anything without reproach.
Aleister Crowley; attributed
The pious pretence that evil does not exist only makes it vague, enormous and menacing.
Aleister Crowley; attributed
Patriotism is not enough. I must have no hatred or bitterness towards anyone.
Last words of Nurse Edith
Cavell, executed on October 12, 1915
Here we're talking about plastic knives and using an American Airlines flight
filled with our citizens, and
the missile to damage this building and similar (inaudible) that damaged the World Trade Center.
US Secretary of Defense Donald
Rumsfeld speaking of the September
11 attacks; interview with Lyric Wallwork Winik, Parade Magazine, October 12, 2001 [emphasis mine]
October 12
is
the 285th
day of the year in the Gregorian
Calendar (286th in leap years), with 80
days remaining.
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Columbus Day (traditionally), USA
The first recorded celebration of Columbus Day in the USA was held by the Tammany Society, also known as the the Colombian Order, in New York on October 12th 1792, marking the 300th anniversary of Christopher Columbus's landing in the Bahamas.
Columbus Day was first celebrated by Italians in San Francisco in 1869, following on the heels of 1866 Italian celebrations in New York City. The first state celebration was in Colorado in 1905, and in 1937, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt set aside Columbus Day as holiday in the United States. Since 1971, the holiday has been commemorated in the USA on the second Monday in October, the same day as Thanksgiving in neighbouring Canada.
The date of Columbus's arrival in the Americas is celebrated in Mexico (and in some Latino communities in the USA as the Dia de la Raza ("day of the race"), commemorating the first encounters of Europe and the Americas which would produce the new Mestizo race. Columbus day also falls near Spain's national holiday, October 12.
Some activists within the United States, particularly Native Americans, find the holiday offensive because they object to honouring a person who they see as opening the door to European colonization, the exploitation of native peoples and the slave trade. This has caused a persistent controversy between Native Americans and Italian-Americans. In response to this controversy, some communities, such as Berkeley, California have renamed the holiday to 'Indigenous Peoples Day', celebrated also in Canada (see also International Day of the World's Indigenous People, August 9 in the Book of Days).
Some have argued that the responsibility of contemporary governments and their citizens for allegedly ongoing acts of genocide against Native Americans are masked by positive Columbus myths and celebrations. These critics argue that a particular understanding of the legacy of Columbus has been used to legitimize their actions, and it is this misuse of history that must be exposed. The claim made here is that certain myths about Columbus and celebrations of Columbus make it easier for people today to avoid taking responsibility for their own actions or the actions of their governments. In Columbus's time, eight million Arawaks – virtually the entire native population of Hispaniola – were exterminated by torture, murder, forced labor, starvation and disease (David E Stannard, American Holocaust; Columbus And The Conquest Of The New World, Oxford University Press, New York, 1992 Source).
Based on the article at Wikipedia Population history of American indigenous peoples
Transform Columbus Day Alliance Past genocides committed against Native Americans
Indigenous People's Opposition to Columbus Day Celebration Bartolomé de las Casas, who wrote on Columbus's depradations
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