Rum, trinkets & a grave

"Throwing large amounts of money into Palestinian reconstruction while reinforcing a political context that only perpetuates Israel's regular destruction of Palestinian institutions is wasteful folly at best, and complicity in criminality at worst."

"In 1544, in De orbis terrae concordia, Concerning the Harmony of the Earth, (Guillaume) Postel advocated a universalist world religion. The thesis of the book was that all Jews, Muslims and heathens could be converted to the Christian religion once all of the religions of the world were shown to have common foundations and that Christianity best represented these foundations. He believed these foundations to be the love of God, the praising of God, the love of Mankind, and the helping of Mankind."

"...Guillaume Postel attempted an objective portrayal of Islam in his République des Turcs, first published at Poitiers in 1560. Postel tried to show that Protestants, Jews, and Moslems held many beliefs in common, for which (among other reasons) he earned the almost universal reprobation of his contemporaries."

"The only real connoisseur of the customs of the Muslims , and the first true protagonist of the study of Arabic and other oriental languages was Guillaume Postel, professor of Greek, Hebrew, and Arabic in the Collège de France, established in the early decades of the sixteenth century. Postel travelled in Muslim countries several times, and had a first-hand knowledge of people's way of life there. He insisted on the necessity to reach out to the sources of the Islamic doctrine and Muslim worldview, in order to obtain authentic and objective knowledge about them — hence the need to start with philological and linguistic studies. Like Nicholas of Cusa, Postel also believed that Islam contains many elements of the Christian doctrine, and he praised the Muslims' charity towards the poor and their non-discrimination among those who received the alms."

"No tribe has the right to sell, even to each other, much less to strangers.... Sell a country! Why not sell the air, the great sea, as well as the earth? Didn't the Great Spirit make them all for the use of his children?

The way, the only way to stop this evil is for the red man to unite in claiming a common and equal right in the land, as it was first, and should be now, for it was never divided."

We gave them forest-clad mountains and valleys full of game, and in return what did they give our warriors and our women? Rum, trinkets, and a grave."
-Chief Tecumseh, 1768 – 1813