Happy Columbus Day

AK Press

It seems there are still some people out there who celebrate Columbus Day. If you happen to know any of them, please share this description from Bartolome de las Casas of the sort of civilized and heroic behavior Columbus brought to the "new" world:

"And the Christians, with their horses and swords and pikes began to carry out massacres and strange cruelties against them. They attacked the towns and spared neither the children nor the aged nor pregnant women nor women in childbed, not only stabbing them and dismembering them but cutting them to pieces as if dealing with sheep in the slaughter house. They laid bets as to who, with one stroke of the sword, could split a man in two or could cut off his head or spill out his entrails with a single stroke of the pike. They took infants from their mothers' breasts, snatching them by the legs and pitching them headfirst against the crags or snatched them by the arms and threw them into the rivers, roaring with laughter and saying as the babies fell into the water, 'Boil there, you offspring of the devil!' Other infants they put to the sword along with their mothers and anyone else who happened to be nearby. They made some low wide gallows on which the hanged victim's feet almost touched the ground, stringing up their victims in lots of thirteen, in memory of Our Redeemer and His twelve Apostles, then set burning wood at their feet and thus burned them alive. To others they attached straw or wrapped their whole bodies in straw and set them afire. With still others, all those they wanted to capture alive, they cut off their hands and hung them round the victim's neck, saying, "Go now, carry the message," meaning, Take the news to the Indians who have fled to the mountains. They usually dealt with the chieftains and nobles in the following way: they made a grid of rods which they placed on forked sticks, then lashed the victims to the grid and lighted a smoldering fire underneath, so that little by little, as those captives screamed in despair and torment, their souls would leave them...."

One chart, all the religions

Fascinating stuff (click on picture to enlarge):

The history of all religions explained in one fascinating graphic

Makes you feel special, doesn't it?

Christopher Hitchens quotable

“To terrify children with the image of hell, to consider women an inferior creation—is that good for the world?” - Christopher Hitchens, writer, author

revelations VII

I could never understand why so many of you think I want to punish you.


                                   --God

revelations VI

It really is love beyond your comprehension, people.  That "peace that surpasses all understanding" thing?  That's just part of it.  Deal. 


                                              --God

revelations V

I don't belong to a religion.


And while we're at it, that's a double-entendre.


Think about it.


               --God

revelations IV

Live, laugh, love and stop messing up that planet you're on.  What is so difficult about this, people?

                                                                     --God

revelations III

Stop making up goofy rules about me.


                            --God

revelations (with a little "r")

I am not a book, people.


               --God

Lovin ' those crazy Catholics, this Christmas Eve

This is extremely rare.

I just got a Christmas gift from the Pope and Vatican.

Actually, it's more of a holiday gift, since I don't celebrate the religious side of Christmas but, you get the idea.

It was in my newspaper this morning.

As if to further prove Catholicism's, the Pope's and the Vatican's absurd irrelevance, it was annonunced recently--and, again, in my paper this morning--that the Pope has "forgiven" Galileo for announcing that--shock of shocks--the earth goes 'round the sun and is not the center of the universe.

Thanks, Pope.

Now that I think of that one, it makes me think that someone should announce to the Pope and Vatican that they aren't the center of the universe any longer either.

Far from it, thank, uh, whomever or whatever.

As if that's not bad enough, come May next year, "several Vatican officials will participate in an international conference to re-examine the Galileo affair..."

This must be their way of doing more of that stuff they call "Penance" cuz, you know, they have guilt down pretty pat.

Let's keep in mind, too, folks, that this was part of that fun Catholic faith's many "Incquisitions" and Galileo was sentenced to "house arrest" for the rest of his life.

Hey, at least they didn't boil him in oil or crucify him, as they did so many millions of other "disbelievers".

The other announcement I got was less of a gift, for sure, but certainly proves further the ridiculousness of the Catholic Church and that same Pope and Vatican.

It seems the Pope declared that gays, of all groups, are a bigger threat to mankind than global warming.

I wish someone were making this stuff up.

It's that just wildly, obscenely ridiculous?

Hurricanes? Drought? Starvation? Disease caused by weather conditions? etc., etc.

They're all nothing compared to the idea of two women or two men loving one another.

Holy cow.

Somebody needs to propose selling the Vatican and all those Catholic jewels and artifacts, so we can feed, clothe and heal the poor.

God knows it would go a lot farther towards being helpful to makind than that collection of knuckleheads in that tiny country.