28 December 2017

~ Some Things To Do. | A Vague But Specific List Of 50(-Ish) Activities To Do. ~

#1: read.

#2: write.

#3: watch a tv show / movie.

#4: go for a walk.

#5: play sudoku.

#6: play some video games / mobile games.

#7: crochet/knitting/macramé/etc.

#8: make figures with perler beads.
#9: exercise.

#10: gardening.

#11: practice ballet.

#12: practice K-pop dance choreos.

#13: chew some gum/bubblegum.

#14: drink some (healthy) soda.

#15: apply a face mask.

#16: research herbalism / natural remedies.

#17: cook some food. (I seriously read this as "Choke some food" a
little bit of a while ago from where I wrote it down in my notebook.)

#18: bake some food. (And I seriously just wrote this as "Bake some good". Ugh.)

#19: video production / content creation.

#20:  photography.

#21: voice acting.

#22: play an instrument / instruments.

#23: arts & crafts.

#24: dance.

#25: do a detox/cleanse.

#26: meditate.

#27: list-making.

#28: blogging.

#29: listen to some music.

#30: brush/comb your hair. (Gahhhhh, auto-correct changed "Comb" to "Combat". Hahahahaha.)

#31: skincare.

#32: apply some lip balm.

#33: colour some pictures.

#34: read the Scriptures.

#35: research about Greek mythology.

#36: singing.

#37: play with a pet / pets. (WILD ANIMALS THAT BITE
YOU WHEN YOU PET THEM DON'T COUNT!!!)

#38: make a floral bouquet.

#39: self-massage / acupressure.

#40: do some stretches / calisthenics.

#41: scrapbooking / collaging.

#42: parkour.

#43: laser tag.

#44: LARPing and/or cosplaying.

#45: hiking.

#46: build up a tolerance to doing certain forms of cardio (besides biking / swimming), like jogging / running / sprinting. (you might not like it, and / or it might be a complicated thing for you, but even starting out with five minutes of doing some low-intensity jogging daily can be a starting point.)

#47: cold shower therapy (cst). (can start out with five to ten minutes
of cold shower therapy daily for one week to one month.)

#48: ad libs.

#49: acting (stage / film).

#50: practice gratitude.

05 November 2017

To Love, To Lose, And To Reunite (Until We Meet Again).

Work Text:

Haides: "Listen to me carefully, Dearest One. You have brought all of your sunlight and all of your springtime with you down into my Underworld, and, when you leave, when you return to the Overworld, that will all be taken back with you - away from me - once again. It pains me to have you away from me for so long. I am completely and devotedly in love with you. Oh, Persephonê."

Persephonê: "Oh, Haides. I am completely and devotedly in love with you, too. Let us [continue to] hold our love for each other in our hearts always, so that we will never feel much too alone ever again. My sunlight and my springtime shall not necessarily leave you when I am required to return to the surface. Let them rest in your heart and in your mind, my Darling."

01 November 2017

The Mad Killing Poem.

The Summary:

A poem in the point of view of the Joker (Jack Napier / Nolanverse / Jerome Valeska ... whatever).

"Mad Love" & "The Killing Joke" & Poetry = "The Mad Killing Poem".

The Notes:

I'm not necessarily trying to endorse crime and / or illegal activity by the way of this poem (not that it necessarily talks about that kind of stuff in a super blatant sense ... maybe more like "kind of implied"). This poem is based on fictional characters from a fictional world.

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

The Work['s] Text:

"Oh, Pudding Pie.
Why does she cry?
Doesn't she know?
That it was only a joke?

My silly little girl,
her mind is off on some whirl.

I'm the crazy one?
I'm the psycho?
Say that you're mine.
Oh, how delightful.

'Off with their heads'.
Soon we'll *all* be dead.

Put on your mask,
put on your cowl.
I'll take the Bat,
you'll take the Owl.

It's not for the money,
it's for our legacy.

Let's paint our lips
with almost every shade of red.
Let's not forget
about all of the enchanting things that we've said.

Sometimes when we're sane,
we still try to pray.
But the prayers of the insane
might sometimes be more desperate, anyway(s).

Terrible chaos
against those that deserved it.
Now I briefly wonder:
'Was it all truly worth it?'

'Maybe',
but my mind is drawn back to another plot.
We're already locked up,
but we just can't seem to stop.

Some kind of a soliloquy?
We'll do, or we'll rot.
A few words for our memory:
'Ha. Ha. Ha.'"

The Notes:

"Let's paint our lips with almost every shade of red" could even be a little bit ambiguous. Hmmm. What are they painting their lips red with? Blood? Lipstick? Hehehe. Again, this is not necessarily an endorsement of any kind(s) of evilness!

22 October 2017

Amor Fati / αγαπούν Τύχη / Love of Fate.

Persephone (to Hades): "I know that you really do truly love me.
And I understand your reasoning for why you made the decisions that you made for us to be together.
Even if you had asked to court me, to marry me ... even if you had tried to do so ... I do not know for sure if I would have been able to accept your proposal to me. Even if we had gotten to know each other more first, even if we had fallen in love with each other first, and even if I had wanted to accept your proposal to me, surely, my Mother would have most likely been against it. She would have most likely even have gone as far as to forbid it ... to keep us apart.
She surely would have tried to influence me against it ... against you. Even now, she doesn't want for us to be together. Even now, she doesn't want for me to live in the Underworld with you. So why would she have given her consent to us then?
Of course, I was afraid of being here at first. I was afraid, and I've spent so much time with my Mother and not so much time around very many men, so it was so different. And the Underworld is so different, although it might not be as bad as some people might think that it would be. I was afraid and conflicted and sheltered ... even if I did still know about your reasoning then. Even if you did keep on telling it to me.
My Mother was such a big part of my life, and she influenced such a big part of my life. She tried to shelter me for so long ... to keep me mainly close to her ... to warn me against the things that she didn't want for me. My Mother claimed my own status of maidenhood for me. I was to be an eternally maiden Spring goddess. She had her own plans for my own life. This wouldn't have been a part of her plans for me, so, no, I do not think that she would have given in otherwise.
If you had simply asked, other than for Zeus's blessing, you would have surely had to face rejection in one way or another. So, yes, I understand it.
And I don't think that that burden of rejection would have been something that you would have wanted to bear. Not when you loved me so much. Not when you were so lonely for so long.
You were desperate, Hades.
Most people wouldn't willingly choose to spend very much time here ... sadly, even your own family ... our own family.
Even if others might consider your decisions to be extreme. Even if they don't understand, you must know that I do understand.
If you had not brought me here, had not married me and made me your Queen, had not given me the pomegranate to eat, then we might not have been together like this. We might have been kept apart from each other.
And I'm so glad that you did, Hades.
I'm so glad that you did make those decisions.
The Fates have willed it to be.
You have shown me so much love and so much care and so much kindness. I know that you are fair and just and good ... no matter what some other people might think that they know about you.
I have felt pain over the things that I have had. You have felt pain over the things that you have not had.
You've been alone in the Underworld for so long, Hades.
Can you really be damned for wanting love? Can you really be damned for your loneliness?
What other choices did you have?
You wanted to love and to be loved.
And I do.
I love you, Hades.
I love you so much.
I know that I really do truly love you."

16 October 2017

The Early Native Americans And The Early European Settlers.

I believe that there are good people and bad people in every group of people. And it's sad to look back on our American history and to see a lot of discord between different groups of people that might have both blamed and / or that might have hated each other.

The early Native Americans and the early European Settlers were comprised of many different groups of people, of course. Ones that warred amongst their own peoples, no less. Not all of the tribes of Native Americans got along with each other, and not all of the European settlers got along with each other, either.

In the new world, the British, the French, and the European settlers all fought against each other at one time or at another time. The Native American Indians (they were called "Indians" because of the fact that some of the early "discoverers" had mistakenly thought that they had travelled to the east [although ... a certain post online claims that that is wrong since India apparently went by a different name at the time]) even had wars that went on between the differing tribes, such as: the Mohicans versus the Huron, the Iroquois versus the Algonquins, et cetera.

The Native Americans and the Europeans had cultural differences, different morals, different values, et cetera. They believed in different things about land and religion (or, rather, faith).

The Native Americans considered themselves to be "caretakers" of the land, whereas the Europeans felt that owning their own properties was very important.

"And to anyone with a drop of Irish blood in them, why, the land that they live on is like their Mother. It's the only thing that lasts, that worth working for, for fighting for." - Mr. Gerald O'Hara ("Gone With The Wind" [1940]).

It's not that either side didn't try to make peace with each other, because a lot of them did try to do so. But not everyone would honour the peace-making at the time.

There's nothing really wrong with wanting to try to live in a different place, as long as we can all just try to show common courtesy to our fellow living beings. That doesn't necessarily mean that we all have to agree on all subjects ever.

The British seem to have painted an optimistic picture for the European travellers of how they would be able to get along with the indigenous people of the new world that would welcome them and that there could be peace between them, but the Spanish seem to have painted a pessimistic picture for them of how the natives were blood-thirsty and flesh-eating.



Some people on both sides seemed to mistrust each other, and - for others - greed, pride, and / or a sense of supremacy seemed to overtake them. But it would not be fair to say that everyone on both sides hated each other.


There were sweeping generalizations aimed at both sides.



The Native Americans were seen as so-called "savages" that lived in "primitive ways" and that could be "brutal" at times.



The European settlers were seen as "greedy", "liars", "thieves", "tricksters", and "disloyal".


It's sad that that was the way many different people of such different - but beautiful - cultures had to end up feeling about each other.

Warring with each other. Killing each other. Many lives were lost; men, women, and children.

One would attack another, provoking another attack back. So many lives were lost because of the misunderstandings and because of the vengeful hearts of so many people.

The Spaniards took the Native Americans as slaves for many years, and the Mexican Government paid for people to kill and to scalp Native Americans since they were afraid of not being able to protect their own people from "Indian attacks".



"The Scalp Industry":
"Although the origins of the practice of scalping may be lost in the nebulous hinterlands of the past, the industry of scalp hunting has a specific and documented history. Although some of the particulars may be shrouded in rumors, the scalp bounty laws instituted a peculiar economic venture between the Mexican government and, primarily, American citizens. Between 1835 and the 1880s, the Mexican authorities paid private armies to hunt Native Americans, paying per kill and using scalps as receipts. The practice began when the Mexican government could no longer provide adequate protection to its citizens from the marauding Apaches and Comanches. The natives rode down from the U.S. killing peons, kidnapping women, and stealing livestock and then would escape back over the border. Because the Mexican military was unable to effectively ward off the threat over such a large expanse and because the Mexican farmers either could not afford or were forbidden to possess arms, the government had to look to alternative methods of suppressing native violence." - Http://XRoads.Virginia.edu/~hyper/hns/scalpin/oldfolks.html.
~
~
~
TL;DR: The Mexican government paid people to kill and to scalp Native Americans, because they felt like they couldn't adequately protect their own citizens from some "Indian attacks". Although ... who is to say that some innocent individuals didn't get caught up in it and didn't lose their lives and their scalps?! Objectively, that was a part of history that many different people participated in (regardless of their race / regardless of their country), but one might wonder about the innocent people that might have been dragged into it.



When the Europeans came to America, they encountered the disease Syphilis, and the indigenous people encountered diseases like smallpox.

Of course, not all of the Europeans travelled to the new world simply to escape British tyranny, but there were also matters of mercantilism and militarism.

The British leaders (?) in America at the time tried to make treaties with the Native Americans, but the treaties were not always honoured, which led to more problems. 

Eventually, the Native Americans were pushed off of the land that was supposed to be their own (remember those treaties? Agreements were made that basically meant that certain areas would belong to the European settlers and that certain areas would belong to the Native Americans) ... even though, at first, it was supposed to seem like "negotiations" to exchange lands.




"The Indian Removal Act was signed by President Andrew Jackson on May 28,1830. The law authorized the president to negotiate with southern Indian tribes for their removal to federal territory west of the Mississippi River in exchange for their lands." - Wikipedia.



Approximately 40,000 Cherokees died on what is called the "Trail of Tears".


"The first meetings between settlers and Native Americans would follow the same course in almost every European settlement along the East Coast. The two groups would meet as friends. They would begin by trading for food and other goods.


In time, however, something would happen to cause a crisis. Perhaps a settler would demand that an Indian stay off the settler's land. Perhaps someone was killed. Fear would replace friendship.

One side or the other would react to what they believed was an attack. A good example of this was the conflict known as King Philip's War.

Metacom, also known as Metacomet, was a leader of the Wampanoag tribe. He was the son of Chief Massasoit. Without the help of Massasoit and his tribe, the first European settlers in the northernmost colonies might not have survived their first winter. The Wampanoag Indians provided them with food. They taught the settlers how to plant corn and other crops. The two groups were very friendly for several years. Massasoit and his court attended the first harvest feast, which became known as Thanksgiving.

As the years passed, however, fear and mistrust replaced friendliness. Metacom 's brother died of a European disease. Metacom, who was known to the English as King Philip, blamed the colonists. He also saw how the increasing numbers of settlers were changing the land. He believed they were destroying it.


One small crisis after another finally led to the killing of a Christian Indian who lived with the settlers. The settlers retaliated by killing three Indians. King Phillip’s War quickly followed. It began in sixteen seventy-five and continued for almost two years. Men, women and children on both sides were killed. Historians say as many as three thousand Native Americans died in the violence. More than six hundred settlers are believed to have been killed." - "American History: A New World Clash of Cultures" by Steve Ember.




Jens Böttiger, I have a degree in history

Original Question: I mean , Europeans could have asked for land through mutual understanding and cooperation, explaining why they fled from their countries. Both the groups could have taken time to learn about each other's culture and could have helped to educate/support each other, couldn't they?

They actually did. All the time.

Your concept of the situation is completely wrong.

There is no “both groups”. There was no European group, and there was no Native American group. That’s how you think about it today, because they do a piss-poor job of teaching history.

There were dozens of independent colonies and separate European governments fighting or negotiating with hundreds of native nations. They had nothing to do with each other. AT ALL. They fought and murdered each other all the time. They were all in competition.

Those colonies and those native nations fought among themselves more than anyone else. They would often make treaties or alliances with the colonists or the natives to help them with their own rivalries.

European immigration along with European food production and medicine allowed Europeans to out-breed native populations at an insane rate, which quickly made them obscenely dominant on the continent, at which point the newly minted US government mostly lost interest in cooperating with them, and simply ignored their own treaties and obligations, and just took control.

They then crushed native cultures, not by war or direct violence, so much as state organized ethnic cleansing through child abduction and brain washing.

Worst of all, it is still going on in some US states TODAY: Native Foster Care: Lost Children, Shattered Families


No, definitely not.

I will talk about a subject that no other answers have focused on: Native Americans (including North+South America) were easily just as violent as Europeans were. Tribes fought each other- a lot.

One culture I remember explicitly from school are the Aztecs. I remember them because of their gruesome, vile, and I will argue barbaric ways of treating tribes that did not pay tribute to them. The Aztecs were extremely big on human sacrifice. Like- really big. At their peak, estimates put them at 100,000–200,000human sacrifices a year! Holy cow! Furthermore, these were not “humane” executions as executions are today. Here is an excerpt from http://Mexicolore.com :

“THE AZTECS AND THEIR NEIGHBOURING TRIBES PERFORMED MANY TYPES OF SACRIFICE. CAPTIVES MIGHT HAVE THEIR HEARTS RIPPED FROM THEIR BODIES, BE BURNT ALIVE, FLAYED, OR CUT INTO PIECES. AZTEC CITIZIENS AND PRIESTS OFTEN PERFORMED ACTS OF SELF-SACRIFICE WHEREBY THEY PERFORATED THEIR TONGUES, EARLOBES, LEGS AND ARMS WITH CACTUS THORNS. AN ESPECIALLY PAINFUL EXAMPLE OF SELF-SACRIFICE INVOLVED PIERCING THE TONGUE AND PASSING LONG PIECES OF STRAW THROUGH THE WOUND.”

Sorry for the all caps, I got the information directly from http://www.mexicolore.co.uk/azte... (I fear posting images for they will be too graphic for Quora)
An interesting fact that resonated with me is that the torches in the religious temples were lit by burning the hearts they ripped out of the victims. (No wonder they needed so many sacrifices; I'm no expert, but I don't think human hearts burn for that long)
While the North American tribes were not as keen on human sacrifice as the Aztecs, warfare was not at all uncommon. The names of the tribes that we use today (Apache, Iroquois, etc.) are actually the names that enemy tribes would give their opposition. They mean “enemy”, “not us”, and other words along those lines.
Another fact I found interesting was that Europeans actually killed less Natives than Natives did each other. (Excluding disease), Europeans account for a minute number of warefare fatalities of Native Americans.
So no, it was not at all a Utopia in Native America.

The World's Dark Histories. | Different People Had Different Problems.

How much longer will some people blame the world's problems on one race and / or on a select few races? Basically all of us have our differences in some way or in another way. Different values, different morals, different beliefs. A lot of the world's dark past occurred over misunderstandings and / or over cultural differences. (Yes, even things like racism and / or like prejudice can stem from those kinds of things.)





We live in a world where, yes, we are equal, but we are not always all treated equally by everyone. Some people want to believe in equality whilst treating each other unequally. They want to focus on their own problems whilst claiming that nobody else has their own problems and whilst believing that everyone else has more "privileges" than they have "privileges". Basically almost everyone has their own issues and their own advantages. This isn't a monopoly that one race or another race holds over everyone else. 




It's not "a privilege". It's the racist actions of prejudiced people. How is that even a privilege? That's just something that happens ... and that doesn't mean that it's right. Some people just so happen to be racist. (And, obviously, that's not something that is collectively condoned. The majority of people are against racism.) Why is that the fault of one whole race? That's called "generalizing". A single group of people doesn't have a monopoly on prejudice and / or on racism. We do not really have a choice in how we are born and / or a choice in a some of the demographics that we might belong to.




"rac·ism
ˈrāˌsizəm/
noun
  1. prejudice, discrimination, or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one's own race is superior."




Eric Altschuler Debunks "White Privilege":




"“White” privilege means that your race is represented and spoken for across all spectrums of media, such as books, movies, television shows, etc. That is, providing that you feel attachment to the so-called “white” race, which in my experience most light-skinned people do not. Here in New York there are very few people who identify as “white,” or exhibit any sort of “white” pride. There are, however, plenty of Italians, Irish, Albanians, Jews, Greeks, Poles and Russians, none of whom seem to be overrepresented or spoken for by any media." - "18 Things People Don’t Seem To Get About White People (Because, Racism)" by Eric Altschuler.




How is a person with a similar skin tone to another person supposed to perfectly represent them just because of that little detail? That doesn't necessarily mean that they perfectly agree with each other.



"You did not choose how you were born." - Catalina Ferrara, on the subject of how Drew Hawk is / was a so-called "half-breed" [he is / was half Native American and half white] ("Native Hawk" [the third book out of the California Legends trilogy] by Glynnis Campbell).




Some of the World's Dark Histories:





Some of the Spaniards took some of the Native American Indians as slaves.


"The Spanish were almost totally dependent on Indian labor in most of their colonies, and even where unfree labor did not predominate, as in the New England colonies, colonial production was geared toward supporting the slave plantation complex of the West Indies." - 



The Mexican government used to pay people to scalp Native American Indians. The payment amount depended on whether the scalp was from a man, from a woman, or from a child.


"Although the origins of the practice of scalping may be lost in the nebulous hinterlands of the past, the industry of scalp hunting has a specific and documented history. Although some of the particulars may be shrouded in rumors, the scalp bounty laws instituted a peculiar economic venture between the Mexican government and, primarily, American citizens. Between 1835 and the 1880s, the Mexican authorities paid private armies to hunt Native Americans, paying per kill and using scalps as receipts. The practice began when the Mexican government could no longer provide adequate protection to its citizens from the marauding Apaches and Comanches. The natives rode down from the U.S. killing peons, kidnapping women, and stealing livestock and then would escape back over the border. Because the Mexican military was unable to effectively ward off the threat over such a large expanse and because the Mexican farmers either could not afford or were forbidden to possess arms, the government had to look to alternative methods of suppressing native violence." - Http://XRoads.Virginia.edu/~hyper/hns/scalpin/oldfolks.html.



The English persecuted the Irish for about 800 years.

"Anti-Irish sentiment (or Hibernophobia) may refer to or include racism, oppression, bigotry, persecution, discrimination, hatred or fear of Irish people as an ethnic group or nation, whether directed against Ireland in general or against Irish emigrants and their descendants in the Irish diaspora.
It is traditionally rooted in the medieval period, and is also evidenced in Irish immigration to North America, South America, Australia, New Zealand and Great Britain. Anti-Irish sentiment can include both social and cultural discrimination in Ireland itself, such as sectarianism or cultural religious political conflicts in the Troubles of Northern Ireland.
Discrimination towards Irish Travellers, an Irish minority group, is evident in both the Republic of Ireland[1] and the United Kingdom.[2]" - Https://En.Wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Irish_sentiment.




Yes, there were Irish slaves ... not just Irish indentured servants.

Calling the enslavement of the Irish "a myth" and / or "a meme" is like invalidating what a large group of people went through. Doing the same thing to non-European races would most likely cause a huge ordeal. It's hypocritical to demand so-called "acknowledgement(s)" for only a select few people's problems whilst ignoring other people's problems. Shouldn't the serious problems of basically everyone be considered as "valid"? Because then that would be true equality.



"In 1629 a large group of Irish men and women were sent to Guiana, and by 1632, Irish were the main slaves sold to Antigua and Montserrat in the West Indies. By 1637 a census showed that 69% of the total population of Montserrat were Irish slaves, which records show was a cause of concern to the English planters. But there were not enough political prisoners to supply the demand, so every petty infraction carried a sentence of transporting, and slaver gangs combed the country sides to kidnap enough people to fill out their quotas. [. . .] 



The slavers were so full of zest that they sometimes grabbed non-Irishmen. On March 25, 1659, a petition was received in London claiming that 72 Englishmen were wrongly sold as slaves in Barbados, along with 200 Frenchmen and 7-8,000 Scots. [. . .] So many Irish slaves were sent to Barbados, between 12,000 and 60,000, that the term “barbadosed” began to be used. By the 1630’s, Ireland was the primary source of the English slave trade.   And then disaster struck." - "The Irish Slave Trade - The Slaves That Time Forgot" by Christian Winthrop.
"The Irish slave trade began when 30,000 Irish prisoners were sold as slaves to the New World. The King James I Proclamation of 1625 required Irish political prisoners be sent overseas and sold to English settlers in the West Indies. By the mid 1600s, the Irish were the main slaves sold to Antigua and Montserrat. At that time, 70% of the total population of Montserrat were Irish slaves.
Ireland quickly became the biggest source of human livestock for English merchants. The majority of the early slaves to the New World were actually white.
From 1641 to 1652, over 500,000 Irish were killed by the English and another 300,000 were sold as slaves. Ireland’s population fell from about 1,500,000 to 600,000 in one single decade. Families were ripped apart as the British did not allow Irish dads to take their wives and children with them across the Atlantic. This led to a helpless population of homeless women and children. Britain’s solution was to auction them off as well.
During the 1650s, over 100,000 Irish children between the ages of 10 and 14 were taken from their parents and sold as slaves in the West Indies, Virginia and New England. In this decade, 52,000 Irish (mostly women and children) were sold to Barbados and Virginia. Another 30,000 Irish men and women were also transported and sold to the highest bidder. In 1656, Cromwell ordered that 2000 Irish children be taken to Jamaica and sold as slaves to English settlers.
Many people today will avoid calling the Irish slaves what they truly were: Slaves. They’ll come up with terms like “Indentured Servants” to describe what occurred to the Irish. However, in most cases from the 17th and 18th centuries, Irish slaves were nothing more than human cattle. [. . .] The English masters quickly began breeding the Irish women for both their own personal pleasure and for greater profit. Children of slaves were themselves slaves, which increased the size of the master’s free workforce. Even if an Irish woman somehow obtained her freedom, her kids would remain slaves of her master. Thus, Irish moms, even with this new found emancipation, would seldom abandon their kids and would remain in servitude." - "The Irish Slave Trade – The Forgotten “White” Slaves" by John Martin.

The English government variously referred to Irish to be transported as rogues, vagabonds, rebels, neutrals, felons, military prisoners, teachers, priests, maidens etc. All historians call them servants, bondsman, indentured servants, slaves, etc., and agree that they were all political victims. The plain facts are that most were treated as slaves. After their land was confiscated by England, which drove them from their ancestral homes to forage for roots like animals, they were kidnapped, rounded up and driven like cattle to waiting ships and transported to English colonies in America, never to see their country again. They were the victims of what many called the immense “Irish Slave Trade.”
All writers on the 17th century American colonies are in agreement that the treatment of white servants or white slaves in English colonies was cruel to the extreme, worse than that of black slaves; that inhuman treatment was the norm, that torture (and branding FT, fugitive traitor, on the forehead) was the punishment for attempted escape. (*A Note: The idea that one form of slavery is / was worse than another might be kind of questionable and / or might be kind of subjective ... depending on the situation[s] ... so I'm not necessarily endorsing that part.*) Dunn stated:
“Servants were punished by whipping, strung up by the hands and matches lighted between their fingers, beaten over the head until blood ran,” –all this on the slightest provocation.(30) Ligon, an eyewitness in Barbados from 1647-1650 said, “Truly, I have seen cruelty there done to servants as I did not think one Christian could have done to another.”(31)" - "England’s Irish Slaves" by Robert E. West.



Some of the Africans sold some of their own people into slavery.

That obviously doesn't mean that two wrongs make a right. (In other words: That obviously doesn't mean that it was "a-okay" for people of other races to buy African slaves. Slavery is just wrong in general.)



Some of the first slaves in America were Jewish people that were brought here by Polish people.




The Egyptians enslaved the Israelites.




Did the Europeans really "steal" the land of the Native American Indians?


Now ... about the idea that the Europeans "stole" the land of the Native American Indians. First of all, the Native American Indians didn't believe that the land could be owned anyone, so it wasn't really "stealing" for the Europeans to decide to live in the world (and they were trying to escape the persecution of a certain controlling king [King James] ... remember?). Second of all, the Europeans and the Native American Indians had cultural differences. They had different values and different morals. A lot of people by that time had the same value of people having their own properties. And to say that the Europeans shouldn't have tried to live in the new world is kind of a hypocritical belief (unless you somehow believe that everyone should just stay in their own countries for some reason), because many different people have travelled to many different countries to live in over the course of the world's history. If the world is not ours to own, then it is not ours to say that certain people cannot live in certain places. Both the Native American Indians and the Europeans had rights to freely live where they chose. You cannot blame the whole of either groups of people for the warring that some of their peoples did.




"Since we are dealing with a conflict between two nations or races, the white race and the Indian race, we need to turn to the Law of Nations or International Law for the solution. The following are some basic maxims of the International Law:

FIRST: That every nation possesses an exclusive sovereignty and jurisdiction in its own territory.

SECOND: That no state or nation can by its law directly affect or bind property that lies outside of its own territory, or persons not resident therein.

THIRD: That whatever force the laws of one country have in another depends solely on the municipal laws of the latter.

[. . .]

It must also be addressed as to whether the white man encroached upon and took possession of lands that were legally claimed by the Indian. The third maxim of International Law says we have to look at the Indian's law, and that whatever measures or acts the white man took in regards to Indian land must be pursuant to Indian law. The following are some of the laws that were generally held by the Indians:

1. It was a law common among Indians that the stronger of two tribes or people (nations) has the right to conquer and subdue the weaker.

2. Under Indian common law it was understood that land claims existed by inhabiting the land and by any use of the land.

3. When any land was unoccupied or not used for one year, the land was free for anyone to claim and settle." - "Did the White Man Steal North America From the Indians?" by Charles Weisman.

(A NOTE: I DON'T NECESSARILY AGREE WITH AND / OR ENDORSE EVERYTHING THAT THE PREVIOUSLY LINKED-TO ARTICLE STATES. SOME OF IT MIGHT BE KIND OF SUBJECTIVE. I GUESS THAT I THINK THAT MOST PEOPLE SHOULD GENERALLY HAVE THE RIGHT TO FREELY LIVE WHEREVER THEY CHOOSE AS LONG AS IT IS WITHIN REASON / PERMISSIBLE / BENEFICIAL [OBVIOUSLY, CRIMINALS SHOULD JUST BE SENT TO JAIL / TO PRISON / TO ASYLUMS ... HENCE THE WHOLE "MOST PEOPLE" THING.)