Tuesday Tunes

In 1609 a bunch of settlers were given land taken from the natives. The settlers were of a different culture and more importantly of different religious backgrounds. While both the natives and the settlers claimed to worship the same God they had a different “chain of command” to get to God.

This lead to conflicts.

The conflicts continued at a sort of low level until 1798 when the natives rose up in rebellion. The settlers called on the home state for help and the home state sent the military to put down the up rising. The military of the settlers as reinforced by the home state squashed the insurrection but did nothing to stop the on going conflicts.

The natives continued to agitate to remove the settlers with violence erupting with regularity.

In 1912 the natives had made significant headway back in the home state and it was looking as if they might regain control of their own lands. In response the settlers formed paramilitary groups to fight against the natives taking control. They were prepared to do battle over their holdings, some of which went back 300 years to that 1609 date.

WWI interrupted the situation but after the war the country split, the northern part going to the settlers and the southern part to the natives. This created even more conflict.

There was another uprising and the native survivors of that uprising fumed over their loss with growing resentment.

In the meantime Communism was making its way as if a disease throughout the world. The losing natives, in their resentment, adopted a Socialist viewpoint.

Tensions continued to mount breaking out in the late 1960s to open gorilla warfare. Assisted by Muammar Gaddafi and other nasty groups they received arms and explosives.

For over 30 years this war went on. At the end of the war the natives disarmed turning in the following:

• 1,000 rifles
• 2 tons of Semtex plastic explosive
• 20-30 heavy machine guns
• 7 surface-to-air missiles
• 7 flamethrowers
• 1,200 detonators
• 11 rocket-propelled grenade launchers
• 90 handguns
• 100+ hand grenades

Wikipedia

During this war the natives had somewhere between 8,000 and 10,000 people actively involved. The settlers estimated that at the start of war the natives had around 500 full time volunteers with natives claiming around 1,200.

At the end of the conflict the were around 600-700 active members of the native fighting group.

Support of the native terrorists was high through out the world. Many felt a cultural connection back to their native land and sympathy for the natives as the home state of the settlers wasn’t known for being all that benign.

For us an important piece of information is just how small the active resistance force was and how weekly armed they were. When some politician claims that they could stomp out gun ownership they need only look at these number to realize how wrong they would be. It is estimated that around 40% of the population of that northern state were directly or indirectly adversely affected by the conflict

Of course there were songs created: