You OK your civil liberties to be violated for security. Now they invade your mind..Good Luck sheep...Merry on down to the slaughter....

Truth!

Airport-security plan calls for 500 body scanners in '11

Body scanners that look under airline passengers' clothing for hidden weapons could be in nearly half the nation's airport checkpoints by late 2011, according to an Obama administration plan announced Monday.

The $215 million proposal to acquire 500 scanners next year, combined with the 450 to be bought this year, marks the largest addition of airport-security equipment since immediately after the 9/11 attacks. There are only 40 body scanners in a total of 19 airports now.

"It's a move in the right direction," aviation-security consultant Douglas Laird said. "We need to scan all passengers."

The push for more scanners accelerated after the failed Christmas Day attempt to bomb an airliner near Detroit. Suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab boarded Flight 253 in Amsterdam after walking through a metal detector with powder explosives hidden in his underwear, authorities say. Police allege he tried to trigger an explosion by igniting the powder, which caught fire but did not cause any serious damage before Abdulmutallab was subdued by the crew and passengers.

Privacy advocate Marc Rotenberg called the scanners "a deeply invasive intrusion" that would inconvenience millions of innocent travelers with screening that takes longer than metal detectors. "We'll have another Homeland Security Department program for the war on terror used almost exclusively on Americans," said Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center.

Laird said the administration should emphasize installing body scanners in major European airports "because that's where the threats come out of." European countries such as the United Kingdom and the Netherlands are adding the scanners. Countries such as Germany and Italy are considering the technology, which creates black-and-white images of passengers under their clothing.

Senior House Appropriations Committee member Rep. Nita Lowey, D-N.Y., welcomes the plan for 500 new scanners. "The American people understand that this threat is real, and if we can provide equipment that will make their flights safer and prevent another attack, they will be supportive," Lowey said.

Among the other aviation-security upgrades the administration proposed in its 2011 budget:

• Increasing the number of airport officers who patrol terminals looking for suspicious passengers to 3,350 from 3,000.

• Increasing the number of bomb-sniffing dogs used at airports to 1,080 from 805.

• Adding an unspecified number of air marshals to international flights.

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Most OK with TSA full-body scanners

Air travelers strongly approve of the government's use of body scanners at the nation's airports even if the machines compromise privacy, a USA TODAY/Gallup poll finds.

Poll respondents appeared to endorse a Transportation Security Administration plan to install 300 scanners at the nation's largest airports this year to replace metal detectors. The machines, used in 19 airports, create vivid images of travelers under their clothes to reveal plastics and powders to screeners observing monitors in a closed room.

"It would seem much more thorough than the process that we're doing now," poll respondent Joel Skousen, 38, of Willcox, Ariz., said. "It would put me more at ease getting on a plane."

In the poll, 78% of respondents said they approved of using the scanners, and 67% said they are comfortable being examined by one. Eighty-four percent said the machines would help stop terrorists from carrying explosives onto airplanes. The survey was taken Jan. 5-6 of 542 adults who have flown at least twice in the past year.

Only 29% of respondents say they are more concerned about air safety since the alleged Dec. 25 attempt by a Nigerian passenger to blow up a Northwest Airlines flight. Bombing suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab got through an airport metal detector in Amsterdam with powder explosives in his underwear.

"Nothing happened," said Lynne Webster, 33, of Albion, Neb. "Security will only get better because of a scare."

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said Thursday that the TSA "should accelerate" the scanners' installation and may buy more than the 300 machines it owns.

Privacy advocates, such as the American Civil Liberties Union have denounced the scanners as an invasion of privacy.

"To use these scanners, I would feel rather violated," said poll respondent Malena Jackson, 35, of Denver. She worries that the images would be saved, even though the TSA says they are deleted immediately. "Just hearing that doesn't really make me comfortable," Jackson said.

Passengers can opt to be patted down by a screener instead of going through a scanner. Only 22% of poll respondents said they prefer a pat-down to a scan. "In a pat-down, I do feel like you're invading my physical space," said Dennis Skiles, 62, of Livonia, Mich.

TSA acting Administrator Gale Rossides said the poll results "demonstrate public understanding" of the need to use the scanners.

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FBI uses facial-recognition technology on DMV photos

In its search for fugitives, the FBI has begun using facial-recognition technology on millions of motorists, comparing driver's license photos with pictures of convicts in a high-tech analysis of chin widths and nose sizes.

The project in North Carolina has already helped nab at least one suspect. Agents are eager to look for more criminals and possibly to expand the effort nationwide. But privacy advocates worry that the method allows authorities to track people who have done nothing wrong.

"Everybody's participating, essentially, in a virtual lineup by getting a driver's license," said Christopher Calabrese, an attorney who focuses on privacy issues at the American Civil Liberties Union.

Earlier this year, investigators learned that a double-homicide suspect named Rodolfo Corrales had moved to North Carolina. The FBI took a 1991 booking photo from California and compared it with 30 million photos stored by the motor vehicle agency in Raleigh.

In seconds, the search returned dozens of drivers who resembled Corrales, and an FBI analyst reviewed a gallery of images before zeroing in on a man who called himself Jose Solis.

A week later, after corroborating Corrales' identity, agents arrested him in High Point, southwest of Greensboro, where they believe he had built a new life under the assumed name. Corrales is scheduled for a preliminary hearing in Los Angeles later this month.

"Running facial recognition is not very labor-intensive at all," analyst Michael Garcia said. "If I can probe a hundred fugitives and get one or two, that's a home run."

Facial-recognition software is not entirely new, but the North Carolina project is the first major step for the FBI as it considers expanding use of the technology to find fugitives nationwide.

So-called biometric information that is unique to each person also includes fingerprints and DNA. More distant possibilities include iris patterns in the eye, voices, scent and even a person's gait.

FBI officials have organized a panel of authorities to study how best to increase use of the software. It will take at least a year to establish standards for license photos, and there's no timetable to roll out the program nationally.

Calabrese said Americans should be concerned about how their driver's licenses are being used.

Licenses "started as a permission to drive," he said. "Now you need them to open a bank account. You need them to be identified everywhere. And suddenly they're becoming the de facto law enforcement database."

State and federal laws allow driver's license agencies to release records for law enforcement, and local agencies have access to North Carolina's database, too. But the FBI is not authorized to collect and store the photos. That means the facial-recognition analysis must be done at the North Carolina Division of Motor Vehicles.

"Unless the person's a criminal, we would not have a need to have that information in the system," said Kim Del Greco, who oversees the FBI's biometrics division. "I think that would be a privacy concern. We're staying away from that."

Dan Roberts, assistant director of the FBI's Criminal Justice Information Services Division, added: "We're not interested in housing a bunch of photos of people who have done absolutely nothing wrong."

Gone are the days when states made drivers' licenses by snapping Polaroid photos and laminating them onto cards without recording copies.

Now states have quality photo machines and rules that prohibit drivers from smiling during the snapshot to improve the accuracy of computer comparisons.

North Carolina's lab scans an image and, within 10 seconds, compares the likeness with other photos based on an algorithm of factors such as the width of a chin or the structure of cheekbones. The search returns several hundred photos ranked by the similarities.

"We'll get some close hits, and we'll get some hits that are right on," said Stephen Lamm, who oversees the DMV lab.

The technology allowed the DMV to quickly highlight 28 different photos of one man who was apparently using many identities. It also identified one person who, as part of a sex change, came in with plucked eyebrows, long flowing hair and a new name — but the same radiant smile.

The system is not always right. Investigators used one DMV photo of an Associated Press reporter to search for a second DMV photo, but the system first returned dozens of other people, including a North Carolina terrorism suspect who had some similar facial features.

The images from the reporter and terror suspect scored a likeness of 72%, below the mid-80s that officials consider a solid hit.

Facial-recognition experts believe the technology has improved drastically since 2002, when extremely high failure rates led authorities to scrap a program planned for the entrances to the Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City.

Lamm said investigators reviewing the galleries can almost always find the right photo, using a combination of the computer and the naked eye.

Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center, questioned whether the facial-recognition systems that were pushed after the Sept. 11 attacks are accurate or even worthwhile.

"We don't have good photos of terrorists," Rotenberg said. "Most of the facial-recognition systems today are built on state DMV records because that's where the good photos are. It's not where the terrorists are."

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THE SPANISH INFLUENZA EPIDEMIC OF 1918 WAS CAUSED BY VACCINATIONS

As has been stated before, all medical and non-medical authorities on vaccination agree that vaccines are designed to cause a mild case of the diseases they are supposed to prevent. But they also know and admit that there is no way whatsoever to predict whether the case will be mild or severe - even deadly. With this much uncertainty in dealing with the very lives of people, it is very unscientific and extremely dangerous to use such a questionable procedure as vaccination.

Many vaccines also cause other diseases besides the one for which they are given. For instance, smallpox vaccine often causes syphilis, paralysis, leprosy, and cancer. (See the chapters on smallpox and plagues.) Polio shots, diphtheria toxin-antitoxin, typhoid vaccine, as well as measles, tetanus and all other shots often cause various other stages of disease such as post-vaccinal encephalitis (inflammation of the brain,) paralysis, spinal meningitis, blindness, cancer (sometimes within two years,) tuberculosis, (two to twenty years after the shot,) arthritis, kidney disease, heart disease (heart failure sometimes within minutes after the shot and sometimes several hours later.) Nerve damage and many other serious conditions also follow the injections.

When several shots are given (different vaccines) within a few days or a few weeks apart, they often trigger intensified cases of all the diseases at once, because the body cannot handle such a large amount of deadly poison being injected directly into the bloodstream. The doctors call it a new disease and proceed to suppress the symptoms.

When poison is taken by the mouth, the internal defense system has a chance to quickly eject some of it by vomiting, but when the poisons are shot directly into the body, bypassing all the natural safeguards, these dangerous poisons circulate immediately throughout the entire body in a matter of seconds and keep on circulating until all the cells are poisoned.

I heard that seven men dropped dead in a doctor’s office after being vaccinated. This was in an army camp, so I wrote to the Government for verification. They sent me the report of U.S. Secretary of War, Henry L. Stimson. The report not only verified the report of the seven who dropped dead from the vaccines, but it stated that there had been 63 deaths and 28,585 cases of hepatitis as a direct result of the yellow fever vaccine during only 6 months of the war. That was only one of the 14 to 25 shots given the soldiers. We can imagine the damage that all these shots did to the men. (See the chapter on What Vaccinations Did to Our Soldiers.)

The first World War was of a short duration, so the vaccine makers were unable to use up all their vaccines. As they were (and still are) in business for profit, they decided to sell it to the rest of the population. So they drummed up the largest vaccination campaign in U.S. history. There were no epidemics to justify it so they used other tricks. Their propaganda claimed the soldiers were coming home from foreign countries with all kinds of diseases and that everyone must have all the shots on the market.

The people believed them because, first of all, they wanted to believe their doctors, and second, the returning soldiers certainly had been sick. They didn’t know it was from doctor-made vaccine diseases, as the army doctors don’t tell them things like that. Many of the returned soldiers were disabled for life by these drug-induced diseases. Many were insane from postvaccinal encephalitis, but the doctors called it shell shock, even though many had never left American soil.

The conglomerate disease brought on by the many poison vaccines baffled the doctors, as they never had a vaccination spree before which used so many different vaccines. The new disease they had created had symptoms of all the diseases they had injected into the man. There was the high fever, extreme weakness, abdominal rash and intestinal disturbance characteristic of typhoid. The diphtheria vaccine caused lung congestion, chills and fever, swollen, sore throat clogged with the false membrane, and the choking suffocation because of difficulty in breathing followed by gasping and death, after which the body turned black from stagnant blood that had been deprived of oxygen in the suffocation stages. In early days they called it Black Death. The other vaccines cause their own reactions — paralysis, brain damage, lockjaw, etc.

When doctors had tried to suppress the symptoms of the typhoid with a stronger vaccine, it caused a worse form of typhoid which they named paratyphoid. But when they concocted a stronger and more dangerous vaccine to suppress that one, they created an even worse disease which they didn’t have a name for. What should they call it? They didn’t want to tell the people what it really was — their own Frankenstein monster which they had created with their vaccines and suppressive medicines. They wanted to direct the blame away from themselves, so they called it Spanish Influenza. It was certainly not of Spanish origin, and the Spanish people resented the implication that the world-wide scourge of that day should be blamed on them. But the name stuck and American medical doctors and vaccine makers were not suspected of the crime of this widespread devastation — the 1918 Flu Epidemic. It is only in recent years that researchers have been digging up the facts and laying the blame where it belongs.

Some of the soldiers may have been in Spain before coming home, but their diseases originated in their own home-based U.S. Army Camps. Our medical men still use that same dodge. When their own vaccines (required for travel) cause vaccine diseases abroad they use this as grounds for a scare campaign to stampede people into the vaccination centers. Do you remember the Hong Kong Flu and the Asian Flu and the London Flu scares? These were all medically-made epidemics mixed with the usual common colds which people have every year.

Now (1976) we are being worked on again by the vaccine -epidemic makers in their effort to force another multi million dollar vaccine sale caper. Their con men have already talked President Ford into handing over $135 million dollars to start their vaccine racket. Even the insurance companies refused to become involved with such an obviously dangerous and crooked scheme. So, again the medical and drug con men induced the appropriate government officials to guarantee insurance against the, possible billions of dollars in law suits which could be brought against the vaccine promoters if the vaccine campaign is carried out as planned. It’s a good thing Ford was voted out of office. It’s too bad he wasn’t "dumped" before he paid the poison squad the MONEY’ to poison the whole population. However, we don’t yet know if President Carter will be any better. Will he be held in the grip of the medical and drug dictatorship? Or will he investigate — learn the truth — reverse the decisions and make the vaccine makers return the money taken from the taxpayers under false pretenses?

The statement of the swine flu vaccine promoters to the effect that the vaccine is harmless, is false, and the statement that it will protect against flu is false. Fifty-six people died after the shots, some within 48 hours. There is confusion and disagreement among the doctors about all aspects of the vaccine, from the safety and effectiveness to the necessity for it, who should have it and who should be warned against it.

Their scare-head campaign cry is that the swine flu is like the 1918 flu which killed 20,000,000 people. They don’t have any usable and provable blood samples from the 1918 flu epidemic to prove it. That was 58 years ago, and the doctors were just as confused and inefficient then as now. However, one thing is certain — the 1918 Spanish Influenza was a vaccine-induced disease caused by extreme body poisoning from the conglomeration of many different vaccines. The soldiers at Fort Dix who were said to have had Swine Flu had been injected with a large variety of vaccines like the vaccines which caused the 1918 flu epidemic. The flu epidemic at Fort Dix was in no way related to swine. There were no swine at camp (unless we want to sarcastically call the vaccine promoters who caused the diseases -"swine.")

To add to the confusion, the doctors tell the people that there are a lot of various kinds of flu; the one which the soldiers at Fort Dix had was AVictoria flu, there are other strains of flu virus, and also, that the swine flu vaccine which so many people have taken already will not protect them against the many other types of flu. This will be used as an "out" in case of law suits later on when more casualties begin to show up. The doctors will say that the vaccine failed because it was the wrong kind of flu for the vaccine. Of course, no one can prove it one way or the other because viruses are illusive, invisible organisms which are unstable and unpredictable. One dictionary definition of virus is "a morbid poison." The vaccines injected into the body are poison and cause the typical poison reactions. Virus (poison) does not fly around and attack people.

Therefore, there will be no swine flu epidemic unless the vaccine promoters make one like they did in the 1918 flu epidemic. It will not kill 20,000,000 people unless the people submit to the disease-producing shots. There are also, other causes of disease besides vaccines, such as bad food, which has been devitalized and contaminated with poison preservatives and artificial drug concoctions. There are many more causes of disease but no diseases are contagious(See the chapter on the germ theory).

Vaccine drives come and go as often as the vaccine promoters can cook up the slightest pretense of a reason.n Back in1957 they were trying to stir up a vaccination campaign for what they decided to call Asiatic flu. An editorial in the Herald and Express for August 29, 1957 was captioned, "Fear of Flu Propaganda." Part of the piece is as follows:

"What a tempest in a teapot has been blown up over the probability that this country will experience an epidemic of the Asiatic flu in the fall and winter months ahead.

"Even the United States Department of Health is stooge for the panic — and has issued statements which are frightening the public, rather than reassuring them by pointing out that this epidemic, while widespread, gives no indication of being any more dangerous than our usual flood of influenza-like colds when winter comes on.

"Those who read between the lines even wonder whether the whole thing might not be a bit of super salesmanship on the part of those who are making and selling the vaccines which are being prepared.. . ."

 I WAS AN ON-THE-SPOT OBSERVER OF THE 1918 INFLUENZA EPIDEMIC

All the doctors and people who were living at the time of the 1918 Spanish Influenza epidemic say it was the most terrible disease the world has ever had. Strong men, hale and hearty, one day would be dead the next. The disease had the characteristics of the black death added to typhoid, diphtheria, pneumonia, smallpox, paralysis and all the diseases the people had been vaccinated with immediately following World War 1. Practically the entire population had been injected "seeded" with a dozen or more diseases — or toxic serums. When all those doctor-made diseases started breaking out all at once it was tragic.

That pandemic dragged on for two years, kept alive with the addition of more poison drugs administered by the doctors who tried to suppress the symptoms. As far as I could find out, the flu hit only the vaccinated. Those who had refused the shots escaped the flu. My family had refused all the vaccinations so we remained well all the time. We knew from the health teachings of Graham, Trail, Tilden and others, that people cannot contaminate the body with poisons without causing disease.

When the flu was at its peak, all the stores were closed as well as the schools, businesses — even the hospital, as the doctors and nurses had been vaccinated too and were down with the flu. No one was on the streets. It was like a ghost town. We seemed to be the only family which didn’t get the flu; so my parents went from house to house doing what they could to look after the sick, as it was impossible to get a doctor then. If it were possible for germs, bacteria, virus, or bacilli to cause disease, they had plenty of opportunity to attack my parents when they were spending many hours a day in the sick rooms. But they didn’t get the flu and they didn’t bring any germs home to attack us children and cause anything. None of our family had the flu — not even a sniffle— and it was in the winter with deep snow on the ground.

When I see people cringe when someone near them sneezes or coughs, I wonder how long it will take them to find out that they can’t catch it — whatever it is. The only way they can get a disease is to develop it themselves by wrong eating, drinking, smoking or doing some other things which cause internal poisoning and lowered vitality. All diseases are preventable and most of them are cureable with the right methods, not known to medical doctors, and not all drugless doctors know them either.

It has been said that the 1918 flu epidemic killed 20,000,000 people throughout the world. But, actually, the doctors killed them with their crude and deadly treatments and drugs. This is a harsh accusation but it is nevertheless true, judging by the success of the drugless doctors in comparison with that of the medical doctors.

While the medical men and medical hospitals were losing 33% of their flu cases, the non-medical hospitals such as BATTLE CREEK, KELLOGG and MACFADDEN’S HEALTH-RESTORIUM were getting almost 100% healings with their water cure, baths, enemas, etc., fasting and certain other simple healing methods, followed by carefully worked out diets of natural foods. One health doctor didn’t lose a patient in eight years. The very successful health treatment of one of those drugless doctors who didn’t lose any patients will be given in the other part of this book, titled VACCINATION CONDEMNED, to be published a little later.

If the medical doctors had been as advanced as the drugless doctors, there would not have been those 20 million deaths from the medical flu treatment.

There was seven times more disease among the vaccinated soldiers than among the unvaccinated civilians, and the diseases were those they had been vaccinated against. One soldier who had returned from overseas in 1912 told me that the army hospitals were filled with cases of infantile paralysis and he wondered why grown men should have an infant disease. Now, we know that paralysis is a common after-effect of vaccine poisoning. Those at home didn’t get the paralysis until after the world-wide vaccination campaign in 1918.

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Native Blood: The Myth of Thanksgiving

Every schoolchild in the U.S. has been taught that the Pilgrims of the Plymouth Colony invited the local Indians to a major harvest feast after surviving their first bitter year in New England. But the real history of Thanksgiving is a story of the murder of indigenous people and the theft of their land by European colonialists--and of the ruthless ways of capitalism.

* * * * *

In mid-winter 1620 the English ship Mayflower landed on the North American coast, delivering 102 Puritan exiles. The original Native people of this stretch of shoreline had already been killed off. In 1614 a British expedition had landed there. When they left they took 24 Indians as slaves and left smallpox behind. Three years of plague wiped out between 90 and 96 percent of the inhabitants of the coast, destroying most villages completely.

The Puritans landed and built their colony called "the Plymouth Plantation" near the deserted ruins of the Indian village of Pawtuxet. They ate from abandoned cornfields grown wild. Only one Pawtuxet named Squanto had survived--he had spent the last years as a slave to the English and Spanish in Europe. Squanto spoke the colonists' language and taught them how to plant corn and how to catch fish until the first harvest. Squanto also helped the colonists negotiate a peace treaty with the nearby Wampanoag tribe, led by the chief Massasoit.

These were very lucky breaks for the colonists. The first Virginia settlement had been wiped out before they could establish themselves. Thanks to the good will of the Wampanoag, the Puritans not only survived their first year but had an alliance with the Wampanoags that would give them almost two decades of peace.

John Winthrop, a founder of the Massahusetts Bay colony considered this wave of illness and death to be a divine miracle. He wrote to a friend in England, "But for the natives in these parts, God hath so pursued them, as for 300 miles space the greatest part of them are swept away by smallpox which still continues among them. So as God hath thereby cleared our title to this place, those who remain in these parts, being in all not 50, have put themselves under our protection."

The deadly impact of European diseases and the good will of the Wampanoag allowed the Puritans to survive their first year.

In celebration of their good fortune, the colony's governor, William Bradford, declared a three-day feast of thanksgiving after that first harvest of 1621.

How the Puritans Stole the Land

But the peace that produced the Thanksgiving Feast of 1621 meant that the Puritans would have 15 years to establish a firm foothold on the coast. Until 1629 there were no more than 300 Puritans in New England, scattered in small and isolated settlements. But their survival inspired a wave of Puritan invasion that soon established growing Massachusetts towns north of Plymouth: Boston and Salem. For 10 years, boatloads of new settlers came.

And as the number of Europeans increased, they proved not nearly so generous as the Wampanoags.

On arrival, the Puritans discussed "who legally owns all this land." They had to decide this, not just because of Anglo-Saxon traditions, but because their particular way of farming was based on individual--not communal or tribal--ownership. This debate over land ownership reveals that bourgeois "rule of law" does not mean "protect the rights of the masses of people."

Some Puritans argued that the land belonged to the Indians. These forces were excommunicated and expelled. Massachusetts Governor Winthrop declared the Indians had not "subdued" the land, and therefore all uncultivated lands should, according to English Common Law, be considered "public domain." This meant they belonged to the king. In short, the colonists decided they did not need to consult the Indians when they seized new lands, they only had to consult the representative of the crown (meaning the local governor).

The Puritans embraced a line from 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." Since then, European settler states have similarly declared god their real estate agent: from the Boers seizing South Africa to the Zionists seizing Palestine.

The European immigrants took land and enslaved Indians to help them farm it. By 1637 there were about 2,000 British settlers. They pushed out from the coast and decided to remove the inhabitants.

The Birth of
"The American Way of War"

In the Connecticut Valley, the powerful Pequot tribe had not entered an alliance with the British (as had the Narragansett, the Wampanoag, and the Massachusetts peoples). At first they were far from the centers of colonization. Then, in 1633, the British stole the land where the city of Hartford now sits--land which the Pequot had recently conquered from another tribe. That same year two British slave raiders were killed. The colonists demanded that the Indians who killed the slavers be turned over. The Pequot refused.

The Puritan preachers said, from Romans 13:2, "Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation." The colonial governments gathered an armed force of 240 under the command of John Mason. They were joined by a thousand Narragansett warriors. The historian Francis Jennings writes: "Mason proposed to avoid attacking Pequot warriors which would have overtaxed his unseasoned, unreliable troops. Battle, as such, was not his purpose. Battle is only one of the ways to destroy an enemy's will to fight. Massacre can accomplish the same end with less risk, and Mason had determined that massacre would be his objective."

The colonist army surrounded a fortified Pequot village on the Mystic River. At sunrise, as the inhabitants slept, the Puritan soldiers set the village on fire.

William Bradford, Governor of Plymouth, wrote: "Those that escaped the fire were slain with the sword; some hewed to pieces, others run through with their rapiers, so that they were quickly dispatched and very few escaped. It was conceived they thus destroyed about 400 at this time. It was a fearful sight to see them thus frying in the fire...horrible was the stink and scent thereof, but the victory seemed a sweet sacrifice, and they gave the prayers thereof to God, who had wrought so wonderfully for them."

Mason himself wrote: "It may be demanded...Should not Christians have more mercy and compassion? But...sometimes the Scripture declareth women and children must perish with their parents.... We had sufficient light from the word of God for our proceedings."

Three hundred and fifty years later the Puritan phrase "a shining city on the hill" became a favorite quote of Ronald Reagan's speechwriters.

Discovering the
Profits of Slavery

This so-called "Pequot war" was a one-sided murder and slaving expedition. Over 180 captives were taken. After consulting the bible again, in Leviticus 24:44, the colonial authorities found justification to kill most of the Pequot men and enslave the captured women and their children. Only 500 Pequot remained alive and free. In 1975 the official number of Pequot living in Connecticut was 21.

Some of the war captives were given to the Narragansett and Massachusetts allies of the British. Even before the arrival of Europeans, Native peoples of North America had widely practiced taking war captives from other tribes as hostages and slaves.

The remaining captives were sold to British plantation colonies in the West Indies to be worked to death in a new form of slavery that served the emerging capitalist world market. And with that, the merchants of Boston made a historic discovery: the profits they made from the sale of human beings virtually paid for the cost of seizing them.

One account says that enslaving Indians quickly became a "mania with speculators." These early merchant capitalists of Massachusetts started to make genocide pay for itself. The slave trade, first in captured Indians and soon in kidnapped Africans, quickly became a backbone of New England merchant capitalism.

Thanksgiving in the
Manhattan Colony

In 1641 the Dutch governor Kieft of Manhattan offered the first "scalp bounty"--his government paid money for the scalp of each Indian brought to them. A couple years later, Kieft ordered the massacre of the Wappingers, a friendly tribe. Eighty were killed and their severed heads were kicked like soccer balls down the streets of Manhattan. One captive was castrated, skinned alive and forced to eat his own flesh while the Dutch governor watched and laughed. Then Kieft hired the notorious Underhill who had commanded in the Pequot war to carry out a similar massacre near Stamford, Connecticut. The village was set fire, and 500 Indian residents were put to the sword.

A day of thanksgiving was proclaimed in the churches of Manhattan. As we will see, the European colonists declared Thanksgiving Days to celebrate mass murder more often than they did for harvest and friendship.

The Conquest of New England

By the 1670s there were about 30,000 to 40,000 white inhabitants in the United New England Colonies--6,000 to 8,000 able to bear arms. With the Pequot destroyed, the Massachusetts and Plymouth colonists turned on the Wampanoag, the tribe that had saved them in 1620 and probably joined them for the original Thanksgiving Day.

In 1675 a Christian Wampanoag was killed while spying for the Puritans. The Plymouth authorities arrested and executed three Wampanoag without consulting the tribal chief, King Philip.

As Mao Tsetung says: "Where there is oppression there is resistance." The Wampanoag went to war.

The Indians applied some military lessons they had learned: they waged a guerrilla war which overran isolated European settlements and were often able to inflict casualties on the Puritan soldiers. The colonists again attacked and massacred the main Indian populations.

When this war ended, 600 European men, one-eleventh of the adult men of the New England Colonies, had been killed in battle. Hundreds of homes and 13 settlements had been wiped out. But the colonists won.

In their victory, the settlers launched an all-out genocide against the remaining Native people. The Massachusetts government offered 20 shillings bounty for every Indian scalp, and 40 shillings for every prisoner who could be sold into slavery. Soldiers were allowed to enslave any Indian woman or child under 14 they could capture. The "Praying Indians" who had converted to Christianity and fought on the side of the European troops were accused of shooting into the treetops during battles with "hostiles." They were enslaved or killed. Other "peaceful" Indians of Dartmouth and Dover were invited to negotiate or seek refuge at trading posts--and were sold onto slave ships.

It is not known how many Indians were sold into slavery, but in this campaign, 500 enslaved Indians were shipped from Plymouth alone. Of the 12,000 Indians in the surrounding tribes, probably about half died from battle, massacre and starvation.

After King Philip's War, there were almost no Indians left free in the northern British colonies. A colonist wrote from Manhattan's New York colony: "There is now but few Indians upon the island and those few no ways hurtful. It is to be admired how strangely they have decreased by the hand of God, since the English first settled in these parts."

In Massachusetts, the colonists declared a "day of public thanksgiving" in 1676, saying, "there now scarce remains a name or family of them [the Indians] but are either slain, captivated or fled."

Fifty-five years after the original Thanksgiving Day, the Puritans had destroyed the generous Wampanoag and all other neighboring tribes. The Wampanoag chief King Philip was beheaded. His head was stuck on a pole in Plymouth, where the skull still hung on display 24 years later.

The descendants of these Native peoples are found wherever the Puritan merchant capitalists found markets for slaves: the West Indies, the Azures, Algiers, Spain and England. The grandson of Massasoit, the Pilgrim's original protector, was sold into slavery in Bermuda.

Runaways and Rebels

But even the destruction of Indian tribal life and the enslavement of survivors brought no peace. Indians continued to resist in every available way. Their oppressors lived in terror of a revolt. And they searched for ways to end the resistance. The historian MacLeod writes: "The first `reservations' were designed for the `wild' Irish of Ulster in 1609. And the first Indian reservation agent in America, Gookin of Massachusetts, like many other American immigrants had seen service in Ireland under Cromwell."

The enslaved Indians refused to work and ran away. The Massachusetts government tried to control runaways by marking enslaved Indians: brands were burnt into their skin, and symbols were tattooed into their foreheads and cheeks.

A Massachusetts law of 1695 gave colonists permission to kill Indians at will, declaring it was "lawful for any person, whether English or Indian, that shall find any Indians traveling or skulking in any of the towns or roads (within specified limits), to command them under their guard and examination, or to kill them as they may or can."

The northern colonists enacted more and more laws for controlling the people. A law in Albany forbade any African or Indian slave from driving a cart within the city. Curfews were set up; Africans and Indians were forbidden to have evening get-togethers. On Block Island, Indians were given 10 lashes for being out after nine o'clock. In 1692 Massachusetts made it a serious crime for any white person to marry an African, an Indian or a mulatto. In 1706 they tried to stop the importation of Indian slaves from other colonies, fearing a slave revolt.

Celebrate?

Looking at this history raises a question: Why should anyone celebrate the survival of the earliest Puritans with a Thanksgiving Day? Certainly the Native peoples of those times had no reason to celebrate.

A little known fact: Squanto, the so-called "hero" of the original Thanksgiving Day, was executed by the Indians for his treacheries.

But the ruling powers of the United States organized people to celebrate Thanksgiving Day because it is in their interest. That's why they created it. The first national celebration of Thanksgiving was called for by George Washington. And the celebration was made a regular legal holiday later by Abraham Lincoln during the civil war (right as he sent troops to suppress the Sioux of Minnesota).

Washington and Lincoln were two presidents deeply involved in trying to forge a unified bourgeois nation-state out of the European settlers in the United States. And the Thanksgiving story was a useful myth in their efforts at U.S. nation-building. It celebrates the "bounty of the American way of life," while covering up the brutal nature of this society.

Posted via email from Refuse 2 Be Programmed