America, A Nation In Crisis

Last Trumpet  October, 2020

"Why art thou cast down, O my soul? and why art thou disquieted within me? hope thou in God: for I shall yet praise him, who is the health of my countenance, and my God."

Psalm 42:11

"Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort; Who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God."

II Corinthians 1:3-4

As the clock struck midnight on January 1, 2020, revelry and mirth were seen and heard all around the world. A new year is often said to be a fresh start brimming with hope and new possibilities. Adding further to the excitement is the fact that this year is the beginning of an entire new decade, which only amplified the anticipation of good things to come. However, few could have predicted the distressing events in store for the world in 2020. Did all of these things just happen to happen, or is there an unseen force at play working to weaken and transform the United States? Even as the new year began, the Democratic Party had already set in motion an attempt to impeach American President Donald Trump. Democrats pursued these efforts despite knowing that their gambit would likely fail since the Republicans controlled the Senate and were unlikely to evict their party's leader from his residence at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C. While politicians busied themselves with partisan projects and the President was distracted and obsessed with crafting his defense, a new virus was spreading in China, seemingly under the radar of almost everyone.

The New York Times published its very first article about the disease, now known as COVID-19, on January 6, 2020, less than one week into the new year. It hardly seemed a reason for concern at the time with the article informing its readers that "59 people in the central city of Wuhan have been sickened by a pneumonia-like illness." (1) By January 21, 2020, the first confirmed case of COVID-19 in the United States was reported by government officials in the state of Washington. (2) The rest, as they say, is history, and these circumstances feel as if they took place years ago.

We now come to the tenth month of 2020. The months since the pandemic began have brought lockdowns, restrictions, and regulations. The world has dramatically changed so much that it is now unusual to see a bare face in public as most folks are compelled to wear face coverings. People are constantly reminded to observe social distancing and stay six feet apart from other people who do not live in the same household. Businesses have failed. Restaurants have closed, and many of them will never reopen. In fact, the business rating and review website known as Yelp reported in September 2020 that 163,735 businesses that they list have now closed, with an astonishing 97,966 of these closures being permanent. (3)

Many American people are suffering right now. A report dated September 9, 2020, indicates that more than half of all households in four of the United States' largest cities - New York City, New York; Los Angeles, California; Chicago, Illinois; and Houston, Texas - have struggled financially during the coronavirus pandemic. (4) Further complicating matters, numerous states are set to end moratoriums on utility shutoffs, meaning that millions of Americans could soon be without power, water, and sewer service. "Every utility in the country is facing the same situation. It's rather unprecedented. We have to balance the needs of customers with what makes the most sense to keep the lights on," said Chris Eck, a spokesman for the energy provider known as FirstEnergy. (5) Another report from September 2020 claims that one-tenth of American households have struggled to put food on the table in recent months. (6) Furthermore, a study by Pew Research found that 52 percent of young adults aged 18-29 are presently living with their parents. This is the largest share of this demographic to do so since the time of the Great Depression. (7) "Essentially we saw about a little over 3 million more people moving home… with their parents or grandparents, from a year ago. That's up about 9 percent," informed Cheryl Young, a senior economist at the real estate database company known as Zillow. (8)

To help struggling Americans, Congress passed the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act in March 2020. The mammoth bill, which was quickly signed by President Trump, allowed for the disbursement of 2.2. trillion dollars, and amongst other features, provided most tax-paying Americans with a check for 1,200 dollars. (9) Since that time, there has been ongoing talk of passing more stimulus, and many Americans could certainly use some financial help, but it has not materialized. While Democrats and Republicans claim they cannot agree on the finer points of a new stimulus package, part of the reason for the reticence, at least for some lawmakers, might be the fact that the American national debt has exploded to absolutely historic levels. As of this writing, the national debt now exceeds 26.7 trillion dollars. (10) Clearly, the accrual of debt has taken on great speed in recent decades. The national debt first hit one trillion dollars in October 1981. By 2017, just three years ago, the debt topped 20 trillion for the first time. (11)

Even as the American government continues to pile on trillions of dollars worth of debt, the Congressional Budget Office has sounded the alarm in a recent report stating, "The fiscal path over the coming decades is unsustainable." (12) This is a serious warning, and unless significant policy changes are implemented, the United States could face a financial disaster in the not-to-distant future. In fact, it is predicted that four important government trust funds, including two Social Security funds, Medicare's hospital insurance fund, and the Highway Trust Fund, could be completely exhausted by the year 2031. (13) In other words, the government might be unable to make social security payments in a little over a decade.

If the economic system in the United States collapses, I strongly suspect it will be replaced with a new cashless monetary system. This country, and, indeed, many other countries around the world, have been trending towards a cashless society for quite some time. This trend has only accelerated amid the global pandemic. According to an article published by Fortune Magazine in August 2020, 54 percent of Americans surveyed are afraid to touch cash because of coronavirus, while 60 percent said they plan to use cashless payments on a permanent basis going forward. (14) All of the issues at hand are greatly weakening the United States. Is it a coincidence that all of this happening just ten years before the United Nations wants to establish its one world government?

Based on news headlines, it seems unlikely that life will get easier any time soon. Experts are predicting that COVID-19 is about to surge even more in the United States as we enter autumn and approach the winter. John Hopkins University claims that the virus is rapidly spreading in twenty-four states at this present time, and the University of Washington projects that the United States could suffer three thousand deaths per day by late December. (15) These developments are very troubling. Yet, projections regarding coronavirus have been wrong before, sometimes drastically so, and they certainly could be wrong again. Scientists are fallible men and women; only God knows what the future holds. Thankfully, God saw all of the events of this modern age long before they happened, and He saw our struggles, too. The Scriptures assure us that even in times of trouble and tribulation, God is able to comfort His people. II Corinthians 1:3-4 declares, "Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort; Who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God." In like manner, Jesus promised in John 14:18, "I will not leave you comfortless: I will come to you." As always, I urge every reader of this newsletter to put your faith, trust, and hope in God.

01. Last Trumpet Newsletter, April 2020, By Samuel David Meyer, http://lasttrumpetnewsletter.org.
02. Ibid.
03. CNBC, September 16, 2020, By Anjali Sundaram, http://cnbc.com.
04. The Week, September 9, 2020, By Tim O'Donnell, http://theweek.com.
05. The Wall Street Journal, September 26, 2020, By Kris Maher, http://wsj.com.
06. The Week, September 2, 2020, By Kathryn Krawczyk, http://theweek.com.
07. CNN, September 4, 2020, By Catherine E. Shoichet, http://cnn.com.
08. Ibid.
09. Wikipedia, CARES Act, http://wikipedia.org.
10. CNBC, September 21, 2020, By Lindsey Jacobson, http://cnbc.com.
11. Politico, October 22, 2017, By Andrew Glass, http://politico.com.
12. The Washington Times, September 21, 2020, By Stephen Dinan, http://washingtontimes.com.
13. Ibid.
14. Fortune Magazine, August 11, 2020, By Jeff John Roberts, http://fortune.com.
15. UPI, September 27, 2020, By Daniel Uria, http://upi.com.

So your church is closed, now what do you do?

NTEB March 30, 2020

As a society, Americans in 2020 are largely a pampered lot of people, me included. True, we have our share of the poor, but not poor like what you see in Indonesia, or Afghanistan and Africa where they lick dirt to find the nutrients. In America there is abundance, and we are not used to living any other way. We have churches in nearly every town, and a lot of time there are massive million dollar megachurches. What do you see when you go inside? A lot of people “going to church” but it’s really become more of a social club where people meet to gossip, hook up, socialize and drink coffee. They roll their eyes if the preacher goes longer than usual, lukewarm as the day is long. Maybe God is doing you a favor by allowing your church to be shut down, maybe God is trying to wake you up.

I think we’ve forgotten that born again Christians are the Church, it was never about the building. There were no church buildings in the First Century AD, where did they meet? They met at people’s homes, in small groups, and they made the word of God of primary importance. Many of them suffered persecution by Rome for doing so, and were put to death. It cost them something to meet to worship the Lord like that, and it caused them to walk very closely with Him.

Now we get to see who the Christians are.

Could we quarantine the constitution?

RT  22 Mar, 2020

 Do we really think “it can’t happen here” in America? Could we quarantine the constitution? Are we doing it already?

Panics from pandemics unleash unchecked governmental power. The very premise of popular films like V for Vendetta reveal this: a group uses a virus to seize power and create a totalitarian society. Anyone could witness this from far-off lands, watching the news about China locking people up in their own homes and then removing them screaming from those homes whenever the state wanted. World War I and the Great Depression birthed virulent forms of governments with leaders like Hitler, Mao, Mussolini and Stalin.

Governments across America already used the pandemic, and the media-stoked panic around the pandemic particularly, to limit, restrict or remove First Amendment freedoms of speech and free association, with officials complaining about the potential restraints the freedom of religion imposed upon them. Others denied or declared the right to deny Second Amendment rights of gun purchase for personal safety (at a time governments are issuing no-arrest and no-detention orders for a wide range of crimes in their community while publicly freeing inmates from jails and prisons). They want to coordinate with tech companies to surveil and spy on your everyday movements and activities, in violation of the Fourth Amendment and potentially waive, unilaterally, your medical right to privacy in multiple contexts. Stay-at-home orders deprive you of your profession, occupation, business and property, without any due process of law at all beyond an executive fiat in violation of the Fifth Amendment right to due process. Governments request the authority to involuntarily imprison any American on mere fear of infection without any probable cause of crime or clear and present danger of harm by that person’s volitional conduct, deny access to personal counsel in an unsupervised, un-surveilled manner in violation of the Sixth Amendment, and act as judge, jury and executioner in violation of the Seventh Amendment right to a trial by jury, as jury trials themselves get suspended around the country in the nation’s quieted courts and fear-muted public.

The real pandemic threat is here. It’s the panic that will quarantine our Constitution.

Nearly 102 Million Americans Do Not Have A Job Right Now

TECB  April 25, 2019

Wouldn’t it be horrible if the number of Americans without a job was higher today than it was during the Great Recession of 2008 and 2009?  Well, that is actually true.  As you will see below, nearly 102 million Americans do not have a job right now, and at no point during the last recession did that number ever surpass the 100 million mark.  Of course the U.S. population has grown a bit over the last decade, but as you will see below, the percentage of the population that is engaged in the labor force is only slightly above the depressingly low levels from the last recession.  Sadly, the truth is that the rosy employment statistics that you are getting from the mainstream media are manufactured using smoke and mirrors, and by the time you are done reading this article you will understand what is really going on.

Before we dig into the long-term trends, let’s talk about what we just learned.

According to CNBC, initial claims for unemployment benefits just rose by the most that we have seen in 19 months…

Initial claims for state unemployment benefits jumped 37,000 to a seasonally adjusted 230,000 for the week ended April 20, the Labor Department said on Thursday. The increase was the largest since early September 2017.

And considering all of the other troubling economic signs that we have been witnessing lately, this makes perfect sense.

In addition, we need to remember that over the last decade lawmakers across the country have made it more difficult to apply for unemployment benefits and have reduced the amount of time that unemployed workers can receive them.  In reality, the unemployment situation in this nation is far worse than the mainstream media is telling us.

When a working age American does not have a job, the federal number crunchers put them into one of two different categories.  Either they are categorized as “unemployed” or they are categorized as “not in the labor force”.

But you have to add both of those categories together to get the total number of Americans that are not working.

More than half a million Americans will sleep on the streets of our cities tonight

TECB  April 28, 2019
The elite are very “tolerant” of the homeless until they start showing up in their own neighborhoods.  Even though the mainstream media keeps telling us that the U.S. economy is “booming”, the number of Americans living on the streets continues to grow very rapidly, and this is particularly true in our major west coast cities.  More than half a million Americans will sleep on the streets of our cities tonight, and they need help, care and shelter.  Sadly, as economic conditions deteriorate that number is likely to double or even triple.  Of course many among the elite are all in favor of doing something for the homeless, as long as they don’t have to be anywhere around them.

For example, let’s talk about what is going on in Los Angeles.  No city on the west coast has a bigger problem with homelessness than L.A. does, and many in the homeless population enjoy camping out on the beautiful beaches in the L.A. area at night.

But of course many of the elite that paid millions of dollars for beachfront property are not too thrilled about this.  Sex Pistols frontman Johnny Rotten was a key symbol of anti-establishment rebellion in the 1970s, but now he is freaking out because homeless people are making life very difficult for him and his wife in Venice Beach, and what he recently told Newsweek’s Paula Froelich is making headlines all over the nation…

Americans are consuming more news than ever

Miami Herald   April 03, 2018

Americans are consuming more news than ever — and it’s driving us further and further apart.

That’s according to a new paper from Neil Johnson, a physicist who now runs the University of Miami’s Complexity interdisciplinary group, which is examining collective behavior in a number of fields.

Johnson and his team have found that when it comes to digesting news of any kind, Americans now exist in a state of pure polarization: the size of the extremes of the left and right are now so large that they outnumber those in the middle ground.

As a physicist, Johnson is used to seeing populations sorting into bell curves — think of heights and weights, he says. So one might expect that people would naturally sort into this normal distribution when it comes to ideology.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/business/article207841309.html#storylink=cpy

Drug Companies Sell Us Remedies for Problems Caused by Their Own Products

Alternet  January 30, 2018

Like most folks, you dutifully rub shampoo into your hair daily or a few times each week. After it strips out your hair’s natural moisture and liveliness, you apply a conditioner to get that moisture and liveliness back.

Much about modern life seems to follow this general pattern.

Mounting evidence suggests multinational companies negligently sell products to the public that are leading drivers of public health issues, while at the same time another division presents the “remedy” for that same harm. A panacea for their own poison, as it were. In this way, they profit twice: once when they supply the cause of our ailments, and again when we come to them for the cure.

It is clear that all is not well in Big Pharma these days. Americans have yet to coalesce around a plan to impose transparency and integrity on health care and pharmaceutical companies. Meanwhile, mounting evidence suggests the industry persists in the peddling hundreds of products each year with dubious claims and even more dubious real-world effects — all while maintaining stupefyingly high profit margins.

Sick and Getting Sicker

The real topics today are corporate consolidation and corruption. There may be no better example of this problem than Johnson & Johnson, a corporation made up of more than 250 subsidiaries. You may recall that the pharma giant’s talc-based baby powder is now inextricably linked to incidences of ovarian cancer. Websites that concern themselves with preventing this type of cancer specifically recommend omitting talcum powders from your daily constitutionals.

Fortunately for Johnson & Johnson’s bottom line, at least one company from its panoply of subsidiaries — Janssen Pharmaceuticals — charitably offers chemotherapy drugs for ovarian cancer patients for a mere $2,758 per dose. You can recognize it by the marketing-friendly name “Doxil.”

NFL Hysteria a Reminder of How the Elite Have Controlled Men for Thousands of Years

September 25, 2017 by Isaac Davis

“So long as they (the Proles) continued to work and breed, their other activities were without importance… Films, football, beer and above all, gambling filled up the horizon of their minds. To keep them in control was not difficult.” ~ George Orwell, 1984

Few things in American culture exemplify the fractured status of the collective psyche quite like the popularity of the National Football League (NFL). The NFL has become a de facto symbol of American freedom, while in reality it performs the function of the Roman circus, keeping the distracted from the extortion and crimes of state.

The NFL is sponsored by major corporations and by the U.S. Armed Forces. The games played in multi-billion dollar subsidized stadiums have become patriotically charged events, where spectators conflate fighting for freedom with watching games for entertainment. Men are told to pick a team and go to war for that team. Fans of different teams are mortal enemies. Military planes conduct fly-bys overhead, and participants are apparently expected to stand for the national anthem.

The euphoria of football has political value. The sport is an important program of deflection and subjugation of the natural male will to protect community and to fight against foe if necessary. This natural drive is captured and projected onto the tightly controlled images of the league, its teams, and its players. Games are presented as life and death struggles, while real-life issues are downplayed in favor of this never-ending drama.

Author William Cooper talked about the importance of football and other major league sports in a society where men must be pacified in order for the government to continually abuse the populace. Cooper’s perspective is that such enormous investment in the sport as a national pastime serves to distract the people from important social issues, deflecting blame away from the oligarchy for it’s contributions in destroying real freedom. When men’s passions are levied on sport, they pay little attention to the workings of the state, and have no gumption to resist creeping tyranny.

“What does the emperor do when the people have become restive, and when the people are asking questions, or when the people don’t like the policies of the emperor? He sends them to the circus. He creates a circus. He builds a giant coliseum and he begins to throw the Christians to the lions, and he has great chariot races, and football games, and basketball games. All to keep the idiots preoccupied with things that don’t mean anything in the scheme of the entire world. So that they don’t have the time to learn what the truth is, so that they don’t ever get smart enough to learn how they’re being manipulated. So that they don’t ever question the emperor.” ~William Cooper

“When a hundred and fifty of the most powerful men and women in the world can meet in secret… to plot the fate of billions, and nobody even cares about it, but six football players go to lunch together, and it’s in the headlines across the country, you have a reflection of the society in which that exists. And it is a sick, sick society that is doomed to self-destruction.” ~William Cooper

And now, as ‘take a knee‘ protests have swept the nation, the NFL’s image has just been shattered in a catch-22 of brainwashing and cognitive dissonance. What originally started as a statement against the very real and destructive issue of police brutality has become a hysteria-fueled social movement and front page news. People are destroying thousands of dollars worth of team branded merchandise to demonstrate that complaints against the state will not be tolerated.

Now, the president has even chimed in, adding fuel to the fire and doubling down on the notion that the National Football League is first and foremost a patriotic organization. In this country, and in this sport, the government is not to be criticized. Not for brutalizing the citizenry with out of control police, or anything else.

Final Thoughts

In a society as rigidly controlled by a monolithic, top-down, know-it-all organization like the state, the archetypal energy of the male is manageable only by suppressing man’s natural drive to protect his community. This is how the elite have controlled men since the days of the Roman Empire.

When President Eisenhower left office, he warned us that the U.S. was changing under the pressures of a new world, and that a military industrial complex had emerged which would pose a sincere menace to a free society. Fast forward almost 60 years and his words are quite prescient.

“Now this conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence—economic, political, even spiritual—is felt in every city, every Statehouse, every office of the Federal government.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.” ~Dwight D. Eisenhower         Walking Times

Columbus, the Indians, and Human Progress excerpted from a People's History of the United States

By Howard Zinn

Arawak men and women, naked, tawny, and full of wonder, emerged from their villages onto the island's beaches and swam out to get a closer look at the strange big boat. When Columbus and his sailors came ashore, carrying swords, speaking oddly, the Arawaks ran to greet them, brought them food, water, gifts. He later wrote of this in his log:

"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."

These Arawaks of the Bahama Islands were much like Indians on the mainland, who were remarkable (European observers were to say again and again) for their hospitality, their belief in sharing. These traits did not stand out in the Europe of the Renaissance, dominated as it was by the religion of popes, the government of kings, the frenzy for money that marked Western civilization and its first messenger to the Americas, Christopher Columbus.

Columbus wrote:

"As soon as I arrived in the Indies, on the first Island which I found, I took some of the natives by force in order that they might learn and might give me information of whatever there is in these parts."

The information that Columbus wanted most was: Where is the gold?

****

The Indians, Columbus reported, "are so naive and so free with their possessions that no one who has not witnessed them would believe it. When you ask for something they have, they never say no. To the contrary, they offer to share with anyone...." He concluded his report by asking for a little help from their Majesties, and in return he would bring them from his next voyage "as much gold as they need . . . and as many slaves as they ask." He was full of religious talk: "Thus the eternal God, our Lord, gives victory to those who follow His way over apparent impossibilities."

Because of Columbus's exaggerated report and promises, his second expedition was given seventeen ships and more than twelve hundred men. The aim was clear: slaves and gold. They went from island to island in the Caribbean, taking Indians as captives. But as word spread of the Europeans' intent they found more and more empty villages. On Haiti, they found that the sailors left behind at Fort Navidad had been killed in a battle with the Indians, after they had roamed the island in gangs looking for gold, taking women and children as slaves for sex and labor.

Now, from his base on Haiti, Columbus sent expedition after expedition into the interior. They found no gold fields, but had to fill up the ships returning to Spain with some kind of dividend. In the year 1495, they went on a great slave raid, rounded up fifteen hundred Arawak men, women, and children, put them in pens guarded by Spaniards and dogs, then picked the five hundred best specimens to load onto ships. Of those five hundred, two hundred died en route. The rest arrived alive in Spain and were put up for sale by the archdeacon of the town, who reported that, although the slaves were "naked as the day they were born," they showed "no more embarrassment than animals." Columbus later wrote: "Let us in the name of the Holy Trinity go on sending all the slaves that can be sold."

But too many of the slaves died in captivity. And so Columbus, desperate to pay back dividends to those who had invested, had to make good his promise to fill the ships with gold. In the province of Cicao on Haiti, where he and his men imagined huge gold fields to exist, they ordered all persons fourteen years or older to collect a certain quantity of gold every three months. When they brought it, they were given copper tokens to hang around their necks. Indians found without a copper token had their hands cut off and bled to death.

The Indians had been given an impossible task. The only gold around was bits of dust garnered from the streams. So they fled, were hunted down with dogs, and were killed.

Trying to put together an army of resistance, the Arawaks faced Spaniards who had armor, muskets, swords, horses. When the Spaniards took prisoners they hanged them or burned them to death. Among the Arawaks, mass suicides began, with cassava poison. Infants were killed to save them from the Spaniards. In two years, through murder, mutilation, or suicide, half of the 250,000 Indians on Haiti were dead.

When it became clear that there was no gold left, the Indians were taken as slave labor on huge estates, known later as encomiendas. They were worked at a ferocious pace, and died by the thousands. By the year 1515, there were perhaps fifty thousand Indians left. By 1550, there were five hundred. A report of the year 1650 shows none of the original Arawaks or their descendants left on the island.

The chief source-and, on many matters the only source-of in formation about what happened on the islands after Columbus came is Bartolome de las Casas, who, as a young priest, participated in the conquest of Cuba. For a time he owned a plantation on which Indian slaves worked, but he gave that up and became a vehement critic of Spanish cruelty.

*****

In Book Two of his History of the Indies, Las Casas (who at first urged replacing Indians by black slaves, thinking they were stronger and would survive, but later relented when he saw the effects on blacks) tells about the treatment of the Indians by the Spaniards. It is a unique account and deserves to be quoted at length:

"Endless testimonies . . . prove the mild and pacific temperament of the natives.... But our work was to exasperate, ravage, kill, mangle and destroy; small wonder, then, if they tried to kill one of us now and then.... The admiral, it is true, was blind as those who came after him, and he was so anxious to please the King that he committed irreparable crimes against the Indians..."

Las Casas tells how the Spaniards "grew more conceited every day" and after a while refused to walk any distance. They "rode the backs of Indians if they were in a hurry" or were carried on hammocks by Indians running in relays. "In this case they also had Indians carry large leaves to shade them from the sun and others to fan them with goose wings."

Total control led to total cruelty. 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."

The Indians' attempts to defend themselves failed. And when they ran off into the hills they were found and killed. So, Las Casas reports. "they suffered and died in the mines and other labors in desperate silence, knowing not a soul in the world to whom they could tun for help." He describes their work in the mines:

"... mountains are stripped from top to bottom and bottom to top a thousand times; they dig, split rocks, move stones, and carry dirt on their backs to wash it in the rivers, while those who wash gold stay in the water all the time with their backs bent so constantly it breaks them; and when water invades the mines, the most arduous task of all is to dry the mines by scooping up pansful of water and throwing it up outside....

After each six or eight months' work in the mines, which was the time required of each crew to dig enough gold for melting, up to a third of the men died. While the men were sent many miles away to the mines, the wives remained to work the soil, forced into the excruciating job of digging and making thousands of hills for cassava plants.

Thus husbands and wives were together only once every eight or ten months and when they met they were so exhausted and depressed on both sides . . . they ceased to procreate. As for the newly born, they died early because their mothers, overworked and famished, had no milk to nurse them, and for this reason, while I was in Cuba, 7000 children died in three months. Some mothers even drowned their babies from sheer desperation.... In this way, husbands died in the mines, wives died at work, and children died from lack of milk . . . and in a short time this land which was so great, so powerful and fertile ... was depopulated.... My eyes have seen these acts so foreign to human nature, and now I tremble as I write...."

When he arrived on Hispaniola in 1508, Las Casas says, "there were 60,000 people living on this island, including the Indians; so that from 1494 to 1508, over three million people had perished from war, slavery, and the mines. Who in future generations will believe this? I myself writing it as a knowledgeable eyewitness can hardly believe it...."

Thus began the history, five hundred years ago, of the European invasion of the Indian settlements in the Americas. That beginning, when you read Las Casas-even if his figures are exaggerations (were there 3 million Indians to begin with, as he says, or less than a million, as some historians have calculated, or 8 million as others now believe?) is conquest, slavery, death. When we read the history books given to children in the United States, it all starts with heroic adventure-there is no bloodshed-and Columbus Day is a celebration.

*****

The treatment of heroes (Columbus) and their victims (the Arawaks) the quiet acceptance of conquest and murder in the name of progress-is only one aspect of a certain approach to history, in which the past is told from the point of view of governments, conquerors, diplomats, leaders. It is as if they, like Columbus, deserve universal acceptance, as if they-the Founding Fathers, Jackson, Lincoln, Wilson, Roosevelt, Kennedy, the leading members of Congress, the famous Justices of the Supreme Court-represent the nation as a whole. The pretense is that there really is such a thing as "the United States," subject to occasional conflicts and quarrels, but fundamentally a community of people with common interests. It is as if there really is a "national interest" represented in the Constitution, in territorial expansion, in the laws passed by Congress, the decisions of the courts, the development of capitalism, the culture of education and the mass media.

"History is the memory of states," wrote Henry Kissinger in his first book, A World Restored, in which he proceeded to tell the history of nineteenth-century Europe from the viewpoint of the leaders of Austria and England, ignoring the millions who suffered from those states men's policies. From his standpoint, the "peace" that Europe had before the French Revolution was "restored" by the diplomacy of a few national leaders.

But for factory workers in England, farmers in France, colored people in Asia and Africa, women and children everywhere except in the upper classes, it was a world of conquest, violence, hunger, exploitation-a world not restored but disintegrated.

*****

When the Pilgrims came to New England they too were coming not to vacant land but to territory inhabited by tribes of Indians. The governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, John Winthrop, created the excuse to take Indian land by declaring the area legally a "vacuum." The Indians, he said, had not "subdued" the land, and therefore had only a "natural" right to it, but not a "civil right." A "natural right" did not have legal standing.

The Puritans also appealed to the Bible, Psalms 2:8: "Ask of me, and I shall give thee, the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession." And to justify their use of force to take the land, they cited Romans 13:2: "Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation."

*****

The Indian population of 10 million that lived north of Mexico when Columbus came would ultimately be reduced to less than a million. Huge numbers of Indians would die from diseases introduced by the whites. A Dutch traveler in New Netherland wrote in 1656 that "the Indians . . . affirm, that before the arrival of the Christians, and before the smallpox broke out amongst them, they were ten times as numerous as they now are, and that their population had been melted down by this disease, whereof nine-tenths of them have died." When the English first settled Martha's Vineyard in 1642, the Wampanoags there numbered perhaps three thousand. There were no wars on that island, but by 1764, only 313 Indians were left there. Similarly, Block Island Indians numbered perhaps 1,200 to 1,500 in 1662, and by 1774 were reduced to fifty-one.

Behind the English invasion of North America, behind their massacre of Indians, their deception, their brutality, was that special powerful drive born in civilizations based on private property. It was a morally ambiguous drive; the need for space, for land, was a real human need. But in conditions of scarcity, in a barbarous epoch of history ruled by competition, this human need was transformed into the murder of whole peoples.                  Third World Traveler

G.O.P. Unveils Immigration Plan: “We Must Make America Somewhere No One Wants to Live”

Credit Photograph by Alex Wong/Getty

November 19, 2014  By Andy Borowitz

WASHINGTON (The Borowitz Report)—Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell unveiled his party’s long-awaited plan on immigration on Wednesday, telling reporters, “We must make America somewhere no one wants to live.”

Appearing with House Speaker John Boehner, McConnell said that, in contrast to President Obama’s “Band-Aid fixes,” the Republican plan would address “the root cause of immigration, which is that the United States is, for the most part, habitable.”

“For years, immigrants have looked to America as a place where their standard of living was bound to improve,” McConnell said. “We’re going to change that.”

Boehner said that the Republicans’ plan would reduce or eliminate “immigration magnets,” such as the social safety net, public education, clean air, and drinkable water.

The Speaker added that the plan would also include the repeal of Obamacare, calling healthcare “catnip for immigrants.”

Attempting, perhaps, to tamp down excitement about the plan, McConnell warned that turning America into a dystopian hellhole that repels immigrants “won’t happen overnight.”

“Our crumbling infrastructure and soaring gun violence are a good start, but much work still needs to be done,” he said. “When Americans start leaving the country, we’ll know that we’re on the right track.”

In closing, the two congressional leaders expressed pride in the immigration plan, noting that Republicans had been working to make it possible for the past thirty years.

The New Yorker