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Vittorio Miri's avatar

With your works, both from a legal and judicial perspective as well as a philosophical and thought perspective, you have opened up a world to me that I had not known before and made me reconsider the existence of modern states and how they are abusive and oppressive. The situation of the American Indians is, to this day, nothing short of scandalous and intolerable, which demonstrates that the USA has never been a civil democracy but just a fiction, a murderous scam. I am fighting for similar issues in Italy to bring liberation and rights to my People, namely that land today called Southern Italy (former Kingdom of the Two Sicilies), like the Native Americans, we were attacked in 1860 without a declaration of war and occupied and annexed to what we now call the Republic of Italy, from which we want to free ourselves. From the aggression of 1860 to today, we have suffered over a million deads and only plunder and bleak, cynical violence, and we are considered an internal colony and children of a lesser god.

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April Mondragon's avatar

Thank you so much Peter for unveiling this for us.

Indeed the doctrine of discovery "ownership" is about land theft and so much more. The Carl Schmitt, 1950 quote is visceral for me because the thinking is also applied in many ways in the structural system of domination.

The “land” is not limited to whatever continent this thinking arrived on. It includes earth, water, air, trees, minerals, animals, children, human beings, women’s wombs, language, cultural life ways that they can only see through the lens of “religion”, etc. The "land" includes all life. Mother Earth herself.

For example: Quanah Parker’s negotiations with US govt for the protection of the Sacred Sites and Life Ways of Peyote meant the usurpation by the christian theological worldview imposed criteria of agreement to call it a “religion” and he would create a “church” and incorporate bible words. Another note - one time I was invited to a Sun Dance that they said the 12 arbor poles represented the 12 apostles.

The rest of the quote as are the mental gymnastics of case law - is the usurpation through claim of "primary source" to replace natural lore and original existence with man made-up "right" to dominate and own original existence and the justification of this man made-up "right" is maintained through "legalized" acts of warfare, conquest, treaties, municipalities, policing, etc etc etc and mostly because people believe this stuff, all dressed up with words like "freedom".

There is nothing in this kind of thinking that makes good relations with Earth, all life and one another. It is the language of warfare.

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