When did Americans first make profits off enemy people?

[Deja Q]

I mean, action figures of Saddam and Bush*, two enemies of the US and humankind, are sickening, but this nonsense must surely have started before?

Something tells me it started in the 1980s, but who knows?

[On the Road]

1. Well, During the Revolutionary War,

thousands of Tories fled the country and their real estate and other assets were seized. It was a huge boon to the revolutionaries. Does this count?

[LuLu550]

2. when the Dutch bought Manhatten Island

for a few beads

[Loonman]

3. Always, but mostly after the Civil War

Stole land and sold shoddy goods to the Indians for a fortune.


For an Indian to get a rifle, he had to stack beaver pelts as high as the rifle was.

The white man turned around and came up with "trade rifles", which had an extra 2 feet on the barrel, so that you had to stack pelts about 8 feet high.

[Deja Q]

4. Perhaps I'm naive or cynicl,but I hope karma retributes the white man soon

Ad when karma strikes back, I hope those white men suffer insufferably. (the rest of us should be spared; we didn't make this nightmarish shithole of a world or country, just forced to live in it.)

[Westegg]

5. My Dear Toad...

As a white man whom you want to "suffer insufferably," let me ask you a question, to which I hope to have answer before I begin suffering insufferably, if I haven't already.

Who DID make the world?

And do tell how you know the answer.

Peace,
An (already dead) white man

[Deja Q]

6. A counterquestion

Why do we not try to better the world?

Dunno who made the world. A popular myth claims God did, and God made us in His own image. (that speaks volumes about God then...) And nobody perfect would make such imperfection.

I'm a white man too. And I've disliked just about everything the wealthy white man has done. From cheating the indians to the smallpox blankets imposed on them to slavery to segregation to the waste or non-renewable resources in favor of exploring (less profitable) renewable resources to modern corporate america doing every disgusting thing imaginable, let alone the medical and legal industries... All that and more from a country whose Constitution blithers on about creating a more perfect union, by of and for the people (it doesn't specify "only people with money" it includes us all), and other nice sounding fictions that become inconvenient when personal greed interferes. We're a hypocracy. Have been, are, seems to be we will always be.

[mikehiggins]

7. It is incredible

how people bitch and moan about Native American casinos while they live on land stolen from the very same people only a couple of centuries ago.

Hey, payback is a bitch.

And, the buffet line in the Golden Room is pretty good.