Did you ever notice how most major USA holidays celebrate genocides and holocausts?  Today is Memorial Day in the USA celebrating the deaths of all the men that were drafted into or bought the military industrial complex’s war propaganda. The United States has sent troops abroad or militarily struck other countries’ territory at least 216 times since independence from Britain . Since 1945 the United States has intervened in more than 20 countries throughout the world. Since World War II, the United States actually dropped bombs on 23 countries. These include: China 1945-46, Korea 1950-53, China 1950-53, Guatemala 1954,Indonesia 1958, Cuba 1959-60, Guatemala 1960, Congo1964, Peru 1965, Laos 1964-73, Vietnam 1961-73,Cambodia 1969-70, Guatemala 1967-69, Grenada 1983,Lebanon 1984, Libya 1986, El Salvador 1980s, Nicaragua1980s, Panama 1989, Iraq 1991-1999, Sudan 1998,Afghanistan 1998, and Yugoslavia 1999. Post World War II, the United States has also assisted in over 20 different coups throughout the world, and the CIA was responsible for half a dozen assassinations of political heads of state.

The first official Thanksgiving Day celebrated the massacre of native American men, women and children during one of their religious ceremonies.

“Gathered in this place of meeting, they were attacked by mercenaries and English and Dutch. The Indians were ordered from the building and as they came forth were shot down, The rest were burned alive in the building—–The very next day the governor declared a Thanksgiving Day…..For the next 100 years, every Thanksgiving Day ordained by a Governor was in honor of the bloody victory, thanking God that the battle had been won.” (Professor Newell)

Then there is Columbus Day. He was a terrorist according to today’s definition. Las Casas, a priest traveling with Columbus tells how the Spaniards in the Caribbean “grew more conceited every day” … They “rode the backs of Indians if they were in a hurry” or were carried on hammocks by Indians running in relays. “In this case they also had Indians carry large leaves to shade them from the sun and others to fan them with goose wings.” Total control led to total cruelty. The Spaniards “thought nothing of knifing Indians by tens and twenties and of cutting slices off them to test the sharpness of their blades.” Las Casas tells how “two of these so-called Christians met two Indian boys one day, each carrying a parrot; they took the parrots and for fun beheaded the boys.” (Howard Zinn, Peoples History of the USA )

There is the Fourth of July. Those revolutionaries would be tortured at Guantanamo or water-boarded in a CIA prison in Poland or Romania today. The American revolutionaries of the 1700’s sponsored a new nation with a constitution built on “Indian removal” and genocide of an estimated 11 million natives and slavery of Africans. The figures from the 18th Century Slave Trade show approximately 5,000,000 people transported and 8,100,000 people died.

My personal favorite holiday is Labor Day. Here are some highlights from Illinois , my state of residence demonstrating how much the USA government values its laborers:

14 July 1877

A general strike halted the movement of U.S. railroads. In the following days, strike riots spread across the United States . The next week, federal troops were called out to force an end to the nationwide strike. At the ” Battle of the Viaduct” in Chicago , federal troops (recently returned from an Indian massacre) killed 30 workers and wounded over 100.

Haymarket on 11 November 1887, four anarchists were executed. All of the executed advocated armed struggle and violence as revolutionary methods, but their prosecutors found no evidence that any had actually thrown the Haymarket bomb. They died for their words, not their deeds. A quarter of a million people lined Chicago ‘s street during Parson’s funeral procession to express their outrage at this gross mis-carriage of justice.

5 July 1893

During a strike against the Pullman Palace Car Company, which had drastically reduced wages, the 1892 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago ‘s Jackson Park was set ablaze, and seven buildings were reduced to ashes. The mobs raged on, burning and looting railroad cars and fighting police in the streets, until 10 July, when 14,000 federal and state troops finally succeeded in putting down the strike.

3 February 1930

“Chicagorillas” — labor racketeers — shot and killed contractor William Healy, with whom the Chicago Marble Setters Union had been having difficulties.

30 May 1937

Police killed 10 and wounded 30 during the “Memorial Day Massacre” at the Republic Steel plant in Chicago.

For over five hundred years whether it’s Europeans calling themselves Catholics or Puritans; Europeans calling themselves Zionists; or the democratic crusaders of the USA it’s never a good thing for indigenous populations to have invaders “settle” on the stolen land to which they say they have a divine right. . The Puritans embraced a line from Psalms 2:8, “Ask of me, and I shall give thee, the heather for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession.” Their mantra of “God told me it’s mine” means the shit is hitting the fan for the people of the land.

In June 1637 John Underhill slaughtered a Pequot village in a similar manner to that described above.

The Pequot had a festival to welcome in the new harvest. At that point, the pilgrims came over and ambushed and slaughtered them. The next day the pilgrims went to church and gave thanks to God for the food and success. That’s how Thanksgiving started. Sundust Teocuauhtli Martinez

The descendents of these Europeans have a similar scam going in Syria, Libya,  Iraq , Palestine , Afghanistan , Somalia , and coming soon to a war near you in Syria , Iran and the Sudan . The war hawks are down right rabid when it comes to taking over the Middle East . They also have their sites on Africa and then their plan is to go back to South America to finish the regime changed begun on that “other” September 11, in 1973 when the USA held their CIA sponsored coup against Allende in Chile. The coup in Chile is exactly what President Nixon wanted, he is quoted as saying,

It’s that son of a bitch Allende. We’re going to smash him.”

This latest terror wars scam mirrors the game run by popes and kings of the past. Papal bulls declaring all heathen lands to belong to the Catholics and royal decrees advocating the slaughter and enslavement of natives are today called executive orders and international resolutions. As soon as Bush declared “mission accomplished” in Iraq there was an executive order to “claim” the oil. As for the Zionists, their god tells them that they get to have Gaza, Jerusalem, South Lebanon, and it does not matter if it violates any man made law because their god trumps man made laws and their holocaust gets better film distribution.

The hate campaigns of past and present are slick and the propaganda program in the military and the media are one and the same: Hate the native, kill the native, and steal the land. The government media wing employs henchmen, like Edward Bernays of the past and torture loving lawyer Alan Dershowitz who manufactures the hate campaigns of today. They engineer pseudo academic programs and obsessive propaganda films intended to scare white Americans who will in turn support nuking commies or Muslims or both to kingdom come. Today’s propaganda of Trotskyites turned neo-conservatives are as factual as the Thanksgiving and Columbus myths.

President Obama says he’s all about change. Guess what story he’ll be telling today to the people of the world that the US government calls Memorial Day? I bet it won’t be the story about the massacre of Iraqi’s, Afghani’s Libyans, Pakistani’s or Syrians.   It will be the continuing saga of giving thanks for government holocausts while bailing out bankers and making the military industrial complex rich for the new world order.

June Terpstra, Ph.D., activist educator and author who is on the faculty at NEIU Justice Studies, Columbia College Chicago Humanities, ED of Liberation Education Action Research Network, and VP of Alternative Education Research Institute, a prisoner re-entry research and education program.