I posted a tweet Friday evening that Instapundit re-tweeted to his bazillion followers and so my stream was clogged up by other re-tweets and answers and insults and other stuff. Here is what I tweeted:
Question: Can you name any country where the land wasn't at some point in history taken by one group from another group?I posted that tweet to end a conversation I was having with someone on twitter who was complaining about Americans stealing land from other people. And I also meant it in a serious manner. Can you name any country where the land wasn't at some point in history taken by one group from another group? Don't we all, complaniers and complainees, live on stolen land?
It's an interesting question because America is usually the only country that's blamed for taking land from other people (never mind that it's happening right now in Ukraine and parts of the Middle East). I can't think of a country or a people whose land wasn't taken at some point. We're all thieves on this planet.
Maybe I'm wrong, though. Can you answer the question? I'll stipulate that Antarctica doesn't count, and for those who think America stole the moon, I'd counter that the moonbats probably colonized parts of America first.
42 comments:
I believe Mark Twain said that every square inch of land in the world had been stolen a dozen times over.
We're a warrior/predator animal.
Civilization is an attempt to keep that in check.
Haz...quite true. Even the "Native Americans" were migratory, aggressive, and took the lands of others...witness the Lakota Sioux versus the Crow in Montana...Custer died in the middle of purloined Crow land and it is still an issue today among tribal folks out there.
People need to look up where Anglo and Saxon comes from. And don't get me started on the Normans!
As one British historian (or diplomat) once said: "What else is history but the erasure of borders and the disappearances of peoples?"
I posted a tweet Friday evening that Instapundit re-tweeted to his bazillion followers and so my stream was clogged up by other re-tweets and answers and insults and other stuff.
The price of fame is acclaim and blame!
Maybe Iceland.
You are right. The entire history of human kind is that we move around and take the stuff that the first people had and that they probably took from those before them.
If we don't take their stuff and kill them, we just merge together and make a new people.
Pointing out the truth really pisses some people off.
Iceland?
Let's take a look.
Celtic monks known as the Papar lived in Iceland before the Scandinavian settlers arrived, possibly members of a Hiberno-Scottish mission. Recent archaeological excavations have revealed the ruins of a cabin in Hafnir on the Reykjanes peninsula. Carbon dating indicates that it was abandoned somewhere between 770 and 880, suggesting that Iceland was populated well before 874. This archaeological find may also indicate that the monks left Iceland before the Scandinavians arrived.
The Celts got there first, apparently, and the the Norwegians took it from the Celt, with a little help from the Scots.
American guilt is a gigantic mega-corporation. Don't question it or attempt to fight it. Just pay up and whine for justice and communism. The only solution.
Michael,
You need to check the names in the Icelandic sagas. A number of those "Celts" were not monks.
The one worlders are trying to pull off the biggest trick of all, for once they've been able to wipeout all those retrograde borders and made us all one tribe, why then they'll be able to take away everyone's land in the name of, er....the common good.
Wikipedia doesn't note which tribes were preliterate.
The Normans were pretty much swallowed up by the Anglo-Saxon natives. But it took about two hundred years. What was the catalyst? Ironically it was The Hundred Years War with France. At the start of the war (circa 1350) the English king's court spoke french and an english that would be barely understandable to us; at the end (circa 1425) the language was close to modern english.
Moral: you need an enemy, to meld with your damned neighbor.
I've given thought to taking over my neighbors land to the north and south.
A man can't have too much land.
When Yankee stadium was torned down did people go in to take chunks of dirt?
I bet they did.
Haz - your question is too simple and too logical. It will make the average lib's head explode.
Btw- if you ever watched Apocylypto,at the end, the native who escaped from being sacrificed on an altar by savage Incas when an eclipse occurs, is seen looking out to sea and spying a couple Conquistador ships cruising into the harbor. He has no idea what they will bring.
So, yeah, up until the last 150 years, savagery and theft of land was the rule not the exception.
I'm part Basque. We're the remnant of the aboriginal European population, descendants of the Cro-Magnon cave artists everyone oohs and ahhs over.
First, the fucking Celts showed up. Then it was Greeks, Romans, Gypsies, various Nordic types (some by way of God-knows-where), then Arabs, and, to top it all off, after we dumped the Moors (not to mention that asshole Roland and his stupid Frenchmen), the Godforsaken Castilians showed up, trying to turn the Iberian Peninsula into one country, as if we didn't have 40,000 years of trying to get everybody to leave. But, hey, we're still in our ancestral home, complete with a terrorist organization to prove how up-to-date the Paleolithic really is.
Now, we MAY have stolen our land from the Neanderthals, but who can say? They're all dead.
Polynesia, maybe?
Even here in the Americas evidence is mounting of a pre-Clovis culture, controversially connected to Solutreans (western Europe.)
Got some shocking news over Thanksgiving dinner. We have no, zero, zilch Cherokee blood. Cousin had her DNA tested and we are dumbfounded by the results. No wonder we could never find documentation. I don't know why I'm so shocked. Over years of doing genealogy I've found lots of family history that just isn't so, even some published stuff. I suspect I'm suffering from having lost all claim to moral superiority.
There's a theory 1/3 of all American Indians are actually of Eurasian descent and that the may have come here over an ice bridge across the Atlantic (Atlantis, anyone?), so maybe it's all just a mistaken case of "Over The River And Through The Woods".
Long time ago I remember watching a show (Red Earth People or something?) that was comparing artifacts and burial habits along the American side of the north Atlantic and European side and making the argument that these represented the same population. And then they explained that the coastal living people in Europe went aaaaaalllll the way across Russia and Siberia and across the land bridge to Alaska and then aaaaalllll the way across Canada until they reached their preferred Atlantic coastal lifestyle again.
Because it would have been too hard for primitive people to cross the Atlantic.
I don't know how old I was at the time but I remember staring at the television and thinking... do you people even *listen* to yourselves?
"I suspect I'm suffering from having lost all claim to moral superiority."
Yes, well, what can you do?
:)
Get Out of Whiteness Free Card Revocation Program. Gotta have someone left to blame for Everything
Phoenicians! I forgot to blame the Phoenicians! Crooked slimeball Carthaginians. But they didn't get very far with us. I tell you, it was enough to make a person root for Scipio Africanus when the time came.
Man, I tell you: all this discussion just reinforces my thankfulness that I am black. :)
Don't let the paleness fool you: Believe it or not, I am not kidding.
Oh, and according to GEDMatch.com, I also am a match with the Clovis, MT boy's DNA. Go figure.
They tuk r jobs!
Just so amusing and snarky. And the jobs were't tuk, they were handed them by malevolent administration that cares about keeping his own base enduringly pissed off, because without perpetual real grievances their party ceases to exist.
Synova said...
Long time ago I remember watching a show (Red Earth People or something?) that was comparing artifacts and burial habits along the American side of the north Atlantic and European side and making the argument that these represented the same population. And then they explained that the coastal living people in Europe went aaaaaalllll the way across Russia and Siberia and across the land bridge to Alaska and then aaaaalllll the way across Canada until they reached their preferred Atlantic coastal lifestyle again.
There was a man named Herbert Forrest who claimed there was a sufficient ice cap over the North Atlantic for a migration to happen. He also suggested that this was the Atlantis that existed in folklore.
The Pangea adherents have also made a claim that a bridge between South america and Africa might have existed.
Interesting stuff.
Of course, the Lefties will tell you the science is settled.
TTBurnett said...
Phoenicians! I forgot to blame the Phoenicians! Crooked slimeball Carthaginians. But they didn't get very far with us. I tell you, it was enough to make a person root for Scipio Africanus when the time came.
What about the Philistines? Not only do the loathe culture, they've been nettling the Israelis since forever.
And those fuk'n Vikings. Jeeze, they took over everything by force and by trade.
Stop! I must enjoy yet another ridiculously stunning sunset.
Oh bloody wow, daddy-o. I just now realized how to draw such a sunset in Photoshop.
The sky is dark blue to light blue near the horizon.
The streaky clouds are light orange to intense orange nearer the horizon.
A reversal in intensities going on out there.
So, in two separate layers use gradient tool dark blue to light blue and in another layer clouds colored light orange to intensely orange near the horizon.
The gradient tool is behind the "fill" bucket tool that dumps color within a selected area. In tool menu you see a picture of a bucket. Click on the tiny triangular corner darkened out and it changes to gradient tool, a very useful tool that is somewhat concealed.
Click on gradient tool and nothing appears to happen. It changes "foreground & background colors" tool to be gradient colors instead. The FG/BG color tool button is two squares overlapping. The top square is foreground the behind square is background.
Click on The color tool foreground and palettes window opens. You have a choice between infinite colors or HTML colors only. One is for printing and the other for internet browser constrictions. Choose infinite.
Pick from among the dazzling array a strong blue. It closes and that would become your foreground color, but now it is the first color of your gradient. Click the behind square that would be background color but now is the second color of your gradient.
With gradient tool working, click on a spot and drag to another spot on the layer or within a selection. A gradient magically fills.
It's brilliant as can be.
I you do not like the result, say, the gradation occurs in the wrong place or at the wrong angle, then "command + z" to back out and try placing new starting and ending colors again. Keep doing that until you see what you want.
Then do the same thing in another layer with clouds.
But how do you select just the clouds on a transparent layer?
Easy. Select the whole layer, "Control -D" a dotted line frames the the whole thing. Use "move tool" push one of the clouds off its space as little as possible, even so little as one pixel. The total frame dotted line area selection suddenly shrinks to surround each separate cloud. Still with the "move" tool working, nudge one of the clouds dragging the entire cloud group back to the original position. Now each cloud is selected, each cloud has its own dotted outline.
[I do this all the time with text. When black text runs over black content then it disappears. By surrounding each letter with white, it makes the letters stand out against black. And that can be done with typed text on a transparent layer or hand-drawn letters just as with clouds. It's all good.]
The gradient will treat the set of clouds as if it were gradating the entire level. Just like the sky.
And if it doesn't, then open yet another layer and gradate the whole thing. With clouds selected and outlined in the other layer, inverse the selection to be everything BUT clouds. Switch back to the full gradient and Control-X to eliminated all gradient except clouds. Merge the two layers so now clouds are gradated.
Merge blue gradated sky level with gradated clouds layer. With clouds on top. You can switch layers around on the ladder of layers at will.
Viola!
I meant to outburst voilà!
Silhouette content.
That is the gist of it. You might want to do some refinement buffing of edges, smudging, intensifying, multiple layer build up, % of color flow and intensity, what have you.
See? Now I axe you, who is going to tell you these things?
Oh great. Chip just photoshopped a comment. Now I can't tell whether it's real. Not sure. looking for hidden scars or something.
And don't forget the most ancient Olmecs! Those southern Gulf coastal beings who left those giant, vaguely "negroid" stone carvings suggesting the eastern coast of Mexico/Yucatan was settled by Africans.who sailed across..
I thought GEDmatch dot com was a dating service for single people who struggled to graduate from high school.
chickelit: The Philistines never got anywhere near my people! They're a Semite problem.
But what do I know? I'm 1/32nd Viking and 1/32nd Mexican. I make lefse burritos.
edutcher, my complaint is that it's always got to be an ice bridge because somehow coastal dwelling people we've got scant archaeological evidence for would have found it easier to live in and migrate over a deeply glacial environment than build a boat.
What do these big-brains figure they lived next to the seas for? The view?
It's a more dressed up and respectable version of "primitive humans were so dumb that aliens must have built the pyramids and done those giant pictures in the Andes and so many millions of Polynesians have gotten blown out to sea with wives and dogs along that the number that would have reached tiny islands simply by chance is enough to maintain populations because even though they've got boats we can't allow them to have known how to go anywhere in them."
We actually stole the American Southwest and Texas from Mexico who themselves stole it from the Indians.
The British and Canadians wanted to steal Oregon and Washington from the Indians but we made them offer they couldn't refuse.
And Florida and Louisiana had already been stolen from the Indians by Spain and France, respectively, when we bought them.
And of course there are large parts of the USA that weren't really "owned" by the Indians. Almost nobody lived in the Rocky Mountains or most of the Great Plains, or even most of the Appalachians.
I'm all for giving the Indians reparations though. I'm all for giving them Berkeley, Manhattan, Washington DC, and Beverly Hills.
And Florida and Louisiana had already been stolen from the Indians by Spain and France, respectively, when we bought them.
Would we being fencing stolen goods to erect a barrier?
As near as I can tell, this whole world is full of foreigners.
Georgia is trying to steal a corner of Tennessee to get a hold of river water.
What rcocean said...those places, except maybe NYC, do need some re-settlement :-)
I did that DNA test on Ancestry.com. I thought I was mostly Irish, but apparently some of my ancestors were Anglo-Saxons who went beyond the pale, i.e. beyond the palisades of Dublin, and became Irish. Also my German great grandmother was apparently part Jewish. That's a relief. Now I don have to feel guilty about the Holocaust. The romance I'm spinning about this ancestry is that my forebears all went along to get along. Assimilation is in my genes. I was fated to be an American.
AllenS has told me about the Ancestry DNA test. I'm tempted. How is the information presented to you, in text form and graphics or what?
I might have a problem regarding my first wife if my daughter's DNA was tested as well...since her mother was a refugee in two wars and her birth records are in Hangul (written Korean) and dated some 5+ years after her birth...not until the end of WWII and re-establishment of Korean governments. There is some discrepancy built in to those records since they show an uncle as her father....her real father being killed by the Japanese and her mother sent to Okinawa as a refugee, while Nina was sent to Korea...the country of her father's origin.
I'm not sure how Ancestry would handle that...but the DNA might clarify some things.
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