A correspondent wrote to me saying that "The history taught at schools is designed to dumb US down is a ridiculous statement."
So here's a few salient exposes of the lies and misdirections of School History Texts......
EG: History in School tell us that the 1766 US Rebellion against the British - The American Revolution - was driven by "No taxation without representation" when in FACT it was driven by the desire of the powerful commercial groups in the America's to negate the 1763 Treaty signed by George III, King of England, as a Royal Proclamation, that recognised Aboriginal Title to Land in the America's as Valid, and regarded the Aboriginal Peoples and a Sovereign Polity, who could have equal standing as an Internationally Recognised Nation State amongst the Nation States at that time and sign Treaties that had full legal standing in International Law.
So here's a few salient exposes of the lies and misdirections of School History Texts......
EG: History in School tell us that the 1766 US Rebellion against the British - The American Revolution - was driven by "No taxation without representation" when in FACT it was driven by the desire of the powerful commercial groups in the America's to negate the 1763 Treaty signed by George III, King of England, as a Royal Proclamation, that recognised Aboriginal Title to Land in the America's as Valid, and regarded the Aboriginal Peoples and a Sovereign Polity, who could have equal standing as an Internationally Recognised Nation State amongst the Nation States at that time and sign Treaties that had full legal standing in International Law.
The European Powers had already by this time accorded such status to China and India, and other States. France had also accorded International Nation State Status to Aboriginal Polities in Canada, and elsewhere, recognising Land Title of those who lived on lands prior to invasion and colonisation. That all these Powers later reneged on these recognitions is also true. Just as the USA reneged on it's many, many Treaties with Aboriginal Peoples within the US Conquest.
Why this 1763 Treaty is important, from the Historical perspective, is that this set an international legal precedent, which would have applied to all America, of recognising Aboriginal Culture as a distinct polity and that their Land Title , in the manner they were accustomed to hold land title, which was collectively, as Valid. To the powerful commercial interests in what was to become the USA, this meant that they would be unable to take the lands from the many 'Indian' tribes that populated America.
They based their 'claim' on the policy of 'terra nullis' which emanated from the Roman Catholic Emperors, who issued Papal Bulls declaring lands inhabited by non-Christians to be places where no-one lived, as non-Christians were in their eyes merely savages, non-people.
These Papal Bulls formed the legal basis for much of European conquest and colonisation. They were issued to Secular Powers to legalise their invasions and conquests as an aspect of the Christian Missionary project to Christianise the entire Earth, and granted the land to the invaders, and the souls of the savages to the Vatican, who decreed that if the 'savages' refused Christianity they could be slaughtered as they were not people, but animals.
This was underpinned with the concept that whilst Christianising 'savages' would liberate them from their 'savage' state, gaining them access to Heaven,if they refused, they were already condemned to Hell by their non-Christian status and could easily be slaughtered without Sin on the part of those conducting the slaughter.
They based their 'claim' on the policy of 'terra nullis' which emanated from the Roman Catholic Emperors, who issued Papal Bulls declaring lands inhabited by non-Christians to be places where no-one lived, as non-Christians were in their eyes merely savages, non-people.
These Papal Bulls formed the legal basis for much of European conquest and colonisation. They were issued to Secular Powers to legalise their invasions and conquests as an aspect of the Christian Missionary project to Christianise the entire Earth, and granted the land to the invaders, and the souls of the savages to the Vatican, who decreed that if the 'savages' refused Christianity they could be slaughtered as they were not people, but animals.
This was underpinned with the concept that whilst Christianising 'savages' would liberate them from their 'savage' state, gaining them access to Heaven,if they refused, they were already condemned to Hell by their non-Christian status and could easily be slaughtered without Sin on the part of those conducting the slaughter.
The Power Elites in America, in conducting the propaganda war to gain support for a split from Britain, used 'taxation without representation' as one of a series of cover stories to convince the white lower class people of the USA to enlist to fight a war with Britain, so that they could ignore the validity of that 1776 Treaty (validated by the British Parliament) and therefore treat the Aboriginal Land Title as a 'domestic matter' subject to internal Laws, rather than dealing with the Aboriginal Peoples as Internationally recognised Polities.
The fact of the matter was that the vast majority of people within the US Polity after the Declaration of Independence were taxed without representation, as the vote excluded, women, labourers, blacks and native peoples. It applied only to land owners.
The fact of the matter was that the vast majority of people within the US Polity after the Declaration of Independence were taxed without representation, as the vote excluded, women, labourers, blacks and native peoples. It applied only to land owners.
They wanted the land that was occupied by the American Aboriginals because if thay had the right to grant land title, they could make a huge profit by selling that land, the best of which they kept for themselves as vast estates, the rest was to be given to white settlers who would become the new market for the products of the emerging factory system.
In the process they carried out more than 200 years of genocide, which continues to this day, to appropriate the lands of the people who had been living there for well over 30,000 years.
This is well documented, in both private and public archives of those involved…. and it the mass trauma inflicted upon countless millions of Aboriginal lives, families, communities over 5 centuries...
For a fuller account of this, I suggest readers get a copy of "Earth into Property" by Anthony James Hall.
For a fuller account of this, I suggest readers get a copy of "Earth into Property" by Anthony James Hall.
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Reflecting on your school history, ask yourself these questions....
Reflecting on your school history, ask yourself these questions....
Do you know who John Lilbourne was, and what he wrote about during the the English Civil Wars of the 1600s?
What did they teach you about that in school?
What did they teach you about that in school?
Do you know WHY the Enclosure Acts coincided with the emergence of the Factory system in England?
What did they teach you about that in school?
What did they teach you about that in school?
Do you know the purpose and inspiration for the Sunday School System that emerged within the factory system in the 1730s-50s? And how Methodism, which was until then a fringe sect of puritan Christianity, was introduced into the Factory system and WHY this was engineered by the Factory owners?
What did they teach you about that in school?
What did they teach you about that in school?
So you know full story of the origins of Compulsory State Schooling? How the powerful coal barons of North America, Britain, France and Germany spent huge fortunes lobbying for such a system worldwide and why they did this?
What did they teach you about that in school?
Questioning what we are taught is essential to anyone who wishes to understand the world Polity we live in and why it is the way it is, violent, destructive, angry rather than nurturant, creative, loving.
Furthermore the constant conditioning of schooling trains one to read and take in without subjecting the material to a critical analysis, or to a reflecting based on what one FEELS about what one is reading?
What kind of person has the child become when they can read of wars, of torture, of mass laughter and glorify it as 'part of our great history', and exciting tale.....?
And what kind of adult will that child become, and what will his or her role in the community be determined by, what outcomes for future generations will ensue?
What did they teach you about that in school?
Questioning what we are taught is essential to anyone who wishes to understand the world Polity we live in and why it is the way it is, violent, destructive, angry rather than nurturant, creative, loving.
Furthermore the constant conditioning of schooling trains one to read and take in without subjecting the material to a critical analysis, or to a reflecting based on what one FEELS about what one is reading?
What kind of person has the child become when they can read of wars, of torture, of mass laughter and glorify it as 'part of our great history', and exciting tale.....?
And what kind of adult will that child become, and what will his or her role in the community be determined by, what outcomes for future generations will ensue?
Kindest regards
Corneilius
Do what you love, it's Your Gift to Universe
Who benefits if we demonise the 'racists' whilst power tramples over EVERYONE?
Diane Abbot, and the Editors of The Guardiuan and other Newspapers, (and their readerships) would do well to read Paolo Friere's "Pedagogy of the Oppressed' and actually take some of it in. Though they'd very quickly find themselves unemployed if they did so and acted on what Friere wrote, which is truth and beauty, REAL power.... the power to become fully human.
I am appalled at the craven nature of this discourse.