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Friday, April 30, 2010

The Founding of Monrovia, sans flags.* But there's rum. And guns. So there's that.

American Colonization Society - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
"...Lt. Robert Stockton, who in 1821 established the site for Monrovia by "persuading" a local chief referred to as "King Peter" to sell Cape Montserado (or Mesurado) by pointing a pistol at his head...

... In a treaty of May 1825 deposited by the ACS in the U.S. Library of Congress, King Peter and other native kings agreed to sell land in return for 500 bars of tobacco, three barrels of rum, five casks of powder, five umbrellas, ten iron posts, and ten pairs of shoes, among other items."
*Flags, of course, my ever oblique reference to the genius of Eddie Izzard.*
"We stole countries with the cunning use of flags. Just sail around the world and stick a flag in. "I claim India for Britain!" They're going "You can't claim us, we live here! Five hundred million of us!" "Do you have a flag …? "What? We don't need a flag, this is our home, you bastards" "No flag, No Country, You can't have one! Those are the rules... that I just made up!...and I'm backing it up with this gun, that was lent to me from the National Rifle Association." - Izzard, Dress to Kill
And, of course, all roads and wisdom lead to Buffy the Vampire Slayer:
Spike: I just can't take all this mamby-pamby boo-hooing about the bloody Indians! You won! Alright? You came in and you killed them and you took their land. That's what conquering nations do. It's what Caesar did and he's not going around saying "I came, I conquered, I feel really bad about it." The history of the world is not people making friends - you had better weapons and you massacred them. End of story.

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