Compare and contrast....

[InkAddict]

I was reading, of all things, Tobacco by Iain Gately, published 2001, and found these paragraphs:

"The Spaniards returned to the Caribbean islands with the intentionof taking absolute possion of them. Their claims to the American continent were settled by Pope Alexander VI, coincidentally a Spaniard, who divided ownership of the globe between the Spanish and Portuguese in 1494. The Spaniards had also evolved a legal justification for their policy of enslaving or exterminating any humans they might come across in the New World. This was enshrined in a document named the
"requeriemento, which pretended to derive authority from the Bible's Book of Joshua and which was to be read aloud to natives before an attack might be made on them. The "requeriemento" commenced with a brief history of the world since its creation, proceeded to the establishment of the Holy Roman Catholic Church, provided the geneology of Spain's monarchs, and concluded with a demand that the listeners renounce, if different, their faith, culture and freedom, or: 'We will do all the harm and damage that we can...and we protest that the deaths and losses which shall accrue from this are your fault.'

"The Spanish conquistadores were rigourous in their observation of the "requerimiento", ensuring lawyers were present to note its proclamation everywhere they went, though it was often read in Spanish "to the trees." In adition to this legal weapon, they had the advantages of surprise, infection and technology. The Spaniards found their conquest of the Caribbean islands a remarkably easy task, so easy that within twenty years of Columbus's first landfall they were lamenting an unforeseen consequence of the original inhabitants' extermination, "a shortage of labor."......

Contrast w/
An al-Qaeda-linked extremist group warned Pope Benedict XVI on Monday that he and the West were "doomed," as protesters returned to the streets across the Muslim world to demand more of an apology from the pontiff for his remarks about Islam and violence.

The Mujahedeen Shura Council, an umbrella organization of Sunni Arab extremist groups that includes al-Qaeda in Iraq, issued a statement on a Web forum vowing to continue its holy war against the West. The authenticity of the statement could not be independently verified.

The group said Muslims would be victorious and addressed the pope as "the worshipper of the cross" saying "you and the West are doomed as you can see from the defeat in Iraq, Afghanistan, Chechnya and elsewhere. ... We will break up the cross, spill the liquor and impose head tax, then the only thing acceptable is a conversion (to Islam) or (killed by) the sword."

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=102&topic_id=2516672&mesg_id=2517066


Jihad? Hmmm....the more things change, the more they stay the same - different war/different players/same tactics - will history repeat?