[Gebari]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Nickel', 'Y')eah, Europe's come too far to come apart now. If anything, tough times are likely to tighten the bolts, but mostly because of the pressure straining them. There's little question that Europe is better off with the EU than without it; if only for eliminating the barriers to business and the expensive uncertainties that separate currencies and interest rates inject into long-term planning. Most businesses are loathe to admit government can do any good, but deep down they know they should be on their knees kissing the asses of politicians a generation ago for actually forging that advantage.

I don't doubt there will be rumblings. I wouldn't be surprised to see one country or another seriously look into jumping ship. But I'm convinced the centre will hold; in fact, if they had any guts, they'd dump all this hobbling unanimity nonsense and declare a two-speed Europe: one that would let the committed members move ahead and get on with things, and leave the reticent members behind to kick the dust and stare at their shoes until they finally work up the good sense to yell "wait up" and join in.

As for the UK, I have a feeling that if they don't come to grips with where God/Fate/geography have placed them in the world and get their noses out of the air, they're quickly going to wind up the snooty belle of the ball who's pissed off one too many suitors and finds herself going home alone in the cold. Much as they love happily "condemning" themselves to being the 51st state, they aren't. That's OUR cross to bear, and WE don't like it -- but that's the one God/Fate/geography forced on us. Britain needs to realize that, aside from some extra melt water after the last ice age, they're attached to France and Holland across a valley a few dozen miles wide, currently called the English Channel. They're in Europe. They need to get real about it, and start acting like it. Get in there and get your hands dirty and build the bloody place instead of pretending it's someone else's project and you're only interested because it's going on in the neighbourhood.

[Nickel]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Gebari', 'I') really don't think you understand things here.

[Gebari]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Nickel', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Gebari', 'I') really don't think you understand things here.

[Nickel]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Gebari', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Nickel', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Gebari', 'I') really don't think you understand things here.

[aldente]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Nickel', 'I') really don't think you understand things here.

[Ludi]

"It all began with the Europeans taking native women and children both as servants and to satisfy their own base appetites; then, not content with what the local people offered them of their own free will (and all offered as much as they could spare), they started taking for themselves the food the natives contrived to produce by the sweat of their brows, which was in all honesty little enough...the people began to realize that these men could not, in truth, be descended from heaven.

The Christians punched them, boxed their ears and flogged them in order to track down the local leaders, and the whole shameful process came to a head when one of the European commanders raped the wife of the paramount chief of the entire island.

Their (Taino) weapons, however, were flimsy and ineffective both in attack and in defense (and, indeed, war in the Americas is no more deadly than our jousting or than many European children's games) and, with their horses and swords and lances, the Spaniards easily fend them off, killing them and committing all kind of atrocities against them.

They forced their way into native settlements, slaughtering everyone they found there, including small children, old men, pregnant women, and even women who had just given birth. They hacked them to pieces, slicing open their bellies with their swords as though they were so many sheep herded into a pen. They even laid wagers on whether they could manage to slice a man in two at a stroke, or cut an individual's head from his body, or disembowel him with a single blow of their axes. They grabbed suckling infants by the feet and, ripping them from their mothers' breasts, dashed them headlong against the rocks. Others, laughing and joking all the while, threw them over their shoulders into a river, shouting: 'Wriggle, you little perisher.' They spared no one, erecting especially wide gibbets on which they could string their victims up with their feet just off the ground and then burn them alive thirteen at a time, in honor of our Savior and the twelve Apostles, or tie dry straw to their bodies and set fire to it. Some they chose to keep alive and simply cut their wrists, leaving their hands dangling, saying to them: 'Take this letter' -- meaning that their sorry condition would as a warning to those hiding in the hills. The way they normally dealt with the native leaders and nobles was to tie them to a kind of griddle consisting of sticks resting on pitchforks driven into the ground and then grill them over a slow fire, with the result that they howled in agony and despair as they died a lingering death.

It once happened that I myself witnessed their grilling of four or five local leaders in this fashion (and I believe they had set up two or three other pairs of grills alongside so that they might process other victims at the same time) when the poor creatures 'howls came between the Spanish commander and his sleep. He gave orders that the prisoners were to be throttled, but the man in charge of execution detail, who was more bloodthirsty than the average common hangman (I know his identity and even met some relatives of his in Seville), was loath to cut short his private entertainment by throttling them and so he personally went round ramming wooden buns into their mouths to stop them making such a racket and deliberately stoked the fire that they would take just as long to die as he himself chose. I saw these things for myself and many others besides."

http://www.indio.net/aymaco/slaughter.htm


'When Columbus first landed on Hispaniola in 1492, virtually the entire island was covered by lush forest. The Taino "Indians" who lived there had an apparently idyllic life prior to Columbus, from the reports left to us by literate members of Columbus's crew such as Miguel Cuneo.

When Columbus and his crew arrived on their second visit to Hispaniola, however, they took captive about two thousand local villagers who had come out to greet them. Cuneo wrote: "When our caravels… where to leave for Spain, we gathered…one thousand six hundred male and female persons of those Indians, and these we embarked in our caravels on February 17, 1495…For those who remained, we let it be known (to the Spaniards who manned the island's fort) in the vicinity that anyone who wanted to take some of them could do so, to the amount desired, which was done."

Cuneo further notes that he himself took a beautiful teenage Carib girl as his personal slave, a gift from Columbus himself, but that when he attempted to have sex with her, she "resisted with all her strength." So, in his own words, he "thrashed her mercilessly and raped her."

While Columbus once referred to the Taino Indians as cannibals, a story made up by Columbus - which is to this day still taught in some US schools - to help justify his slaughter and enslavement of these people. He wrote to the Spanish monarchs in 1493: "It is possible, with the name of the Holy Trinity, to sell all the slaves which it is possible to sell…Here there are so many of these slaves, and also brazilwood, that although they are living things they are as good as gold…"

Columbus and his men also used the Taino as sex slaves: it was a common reward for Columbus' men for him to present them with local women to rape. As he began exporting Taino as slaves to other parts of the world, the sex-slave trade became an important part of the business, as Columbus wrote to a friend in 1500: "A hundred castellanoes (a Spanish coin) are as easily obtained for a woman as for a farm, and it is very general and there are plenty of dealers who go about looking for girls; those from nine to ten (years old) are now in demand."

However, the Taino turned out not to be particularly good workers in the plantations that the Spaniards and later the French established on

Hispaniola: they resented their lands and children being taken, and attempted to fight back against the invaders. Since the Taino where obviously standing in the way of Spain's progress, Columbus sought to impose discipline on them. For even a minor offense, an Indian's nose or ear was cut off, se he could go back to his village to impress the people with the brutality the Spanish were capable of. Columbus attacked them with dogs, skewered them with pikes, and shot them.

Eventually, life for the Taino became so unbearable that, as Pedro de Cordoba wrote to King Ferdinand in a 1517 letter, "As a result of the sufferings and hard labor they endured, the Indians choose and have chosen suicide. Occasionally a hundred have committed mass suicide. The women, exhausted by labor, have shunned conception and childbirth… Many, when pregnant, have taken something to abort and have aborted. Others after delivery have killed their children with their own hands, so as not to leave them in such oppressive slavery."'

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/1011-27.htm

[PenultimateManStanding]

So sad, so depressing. I'm sure life was good for them before the Spaniards arrived. Columbus was Italian but whatever. The cruelty was done under his watch. But it was only loser scumbags that could be put to sea. The worst of humanity serving a brave visionary. How ironic.

[Tanada]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PenultimateManStanding', 'S')o sad, so depressing. I'm sure life was good for them before the Spaniards arrived. Columbus was Italian but whatever. The cruelty was done under his watch. But it was only loser scumbags that could be put to sea. The worst of humanity serving a brave visionary. How ironic.

[hope_full]

What do you think Christmas will look like this year? How will it be different from last year?

Will Main Street USA still cover their downtown streets with energy-sucking bright lights and garrish displays? Will stores stay open extra hours to accomodate the unwashed masses? Will stores hire new people for the holidays?

Years ago, after my 80-year-old Mother passed on, I cleaned out her spacious home, and hidden in the back of the closets, we found piles of Christmas presents we'd given her through the years. She'd never bothered to open and/or use most of them. But since they came from "the kids" she couldn't bear to get rid of them.

That did it for me. After that, I had no more interest in the Christmas extravaganza we were all mesmerized into bankrupting ourselves for.

This year, I'm buying the kids (all grown) some gold and silver coins and maybe a gift certificate to a bookstore and that is IT. I don't know what hubby is getting, but it'll be modest. We (like most Americans) have all that we need and MORE.

How do you think this Christmas will be different - in your locale and in your home?

HF

[WildRose]

hope_full, my guess is that the stores in my area will be after consumer bucks as usual, and I don't know if we'll see as much of a slump in sales here in Alberta as is predicted south of the border.

I agree with your perspective, though - all the people in my immediate and extended family have pretty much everything they need, except for maybe some more socks, underwear or pajamas! This year, I resolve to scale down the buying and the busy-ness of the season. I want to relax, enjoy the people I'm closest to, sing some carols and bake. And get in some toboganning.

[CarlinsDarlin]

While I have, in the past, spent way too much money on Christmas, that hasn't been the case for probably the last 8 years or so. Before I was peak oil aware, I was into voluntary simplicity.

Each year, I do spend some money on everyone, but more often than not, everyone gets at least a couple homemade gifts. It is a family tradition that in our extended family there are to be NO purchased gifts. Everything must be homemade. Among our immediate family, there are a lot of homemade gifts as well. Our boys got homemade, handpainted wood toys last year from their uncle (my brother). I also made them a bean bag toss game, and they received handmade throws for their beds from an elderly friend. They loved all the gifts.

In the past, I have made everything from quilts to paintings for family members. I always enjoy handcrafted gifts much more than store bought gifts anyway. I also re-use gift wrapping paper and gift bags. I have wrapped home made gift baskets in towels. No one seems to mind and it makes more sense to me than burning the pile of wrapping paper each year. What a collosal waste.

Even when Carlin and I do buy gifts for each other, almost always they are something we "needed" rather than "wanted." Every year I get a new pair of houseshoes Replacement clothing comes at Christmas. New shoes, and the like.

I'd be willing to bet, though, as long as the credit isn't cut off, most people will still charge up way too much on credit cards. Unfortunately, people who do things like we are, are few and far between.
Kathy

[WildRose]

I love to receive homemade gifts also. I have a friend who is very talented at making silk floral arrangements and another who is such a great seamstress. My kids have received blankets and pillows and beautiful outfits fashioned by my friend. Over the years, different friends and relatives have given us handmade Christmas tree ornaments, all unique and beautiful. I'm not very good with a sewing machine (my hubby puts me to shame!) but I would love to learn to make quilts.

I'm planning to make candies and chocolates and tuck them in with my shortbread cookies and other baked treats for gift-giving.

[mercurygirl]

I don't like to contemplate Christmas at all, much less so soon, but I appreciate ideas for cutting back (again). I made a batch of killer jam this summer and with the excess frozen fruit, may make some for gifts. It's hard because all our family lives far away. Sometimes I do the Amazon thing, that way people at least get something they want, but it all involves shipping.

I want to relearn how to knit and on that note, I have to include a link here. WTH are wrist worms and why do they cost $45? They're pretty, but is there a reason I should keep my wrists warm and at that price for like, $5 worth of yarn? I think it must be a fad.
Link

[jasonraymondson]

Bah Humbaug

[3aidlillahi]

It's going to be a pretty dreadful Christmas season this year. I think we'll see sales down double-digit percentages, even though prices will be slashed even more (wait a few weeks before the sales start to get anything). Most stores make 25% of their YEARLY profit during Christmas, if not more. When they realize that their Christmas profits are down a lot, expect a lot of layoffs come early January (more than the holiday usual). Even Wal-Mart's stock will plunge - other stocks will be shot. I'm thinking Down 8000 by Christmas and Dow 5000 by Groundhog Day.

Too bad Au and Ag aren't on sale during Christmas seasons.

[WildRose]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mercurygirl', 'W')TH are wrist worms and why do they cost $45? They're pretty, but is there a reason I should keep my wrists warm and at that price for like, $5 worth of yarn? I think it must be a fad.

[gampy]

How will Christmas look?

To me, it will probably be myself, my folks, and a big turkey. With the alcoholic uncle in the background ranting against the Jews.

Good times.

I imagine there will be some reduction in the retail sales figures. Whether it will be a big enough reduction to destroy some of these seasonal/holiday retail outfits remains to be seen.

[Pops]

...from Pops.

[wisconsin_cur]

[TheDude]

...and TheDude.

I was about to start up the exact same thread, is that spooky or what!