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| Oldest person turns 115 (amazing example of inserted bias by Al Reuters) |
| 2005-06-30 |
| Al Reuters sneaks it everywhere: AMSTERDAM (Reuters) - A Dutch woman who swears by a daily helping of herring for a healthy life celebrated her 115th birthday on Wednesday as the oldest living person on record. Hendrikje van Andel-Schipper, a former needlework teacher, was born in 1890, the year Sioux Indians were massacred by the U.S. military at the Battle of Wounded Knee. EFL, usual old person marks milestone story. Right at the top, this is certainly relevant to an old lady in the Netherlands. In that selfsame year of 1890, Dutch colonialists held the teeming millions of the East Indies, now Indonesia, in a virtual state of slavery. Dutch settlers in South Africa, the Afrikaners or Boers, still had literal slaves at that time. Elsewhere in Africa, in what is now Sudan, Islamic fanatics who had seized the country in 1885 were still in control. Their slaving expeditions ranged as far south as present day Rwanda and westward to the Niger, spreading famine, genocide, rape, and (of course) Islamic influence. This was the heyday of European colonialism and it is likely that there were dozens of massacres worse than Wounded Knee during that year, as well as the systematic degradation of hundreds of millions, but Al-Reuters would not find those useful since the perpetrators were not Americans. FYIThe founder of Reuters, Baron Paul J. von Reuter, was born in Germany in 1816, the same year that mixed race Métis people defeated the colonialist Hudson's Bay Company at the Battle of Seven Oaks in Canada. Reuters was founded as a financial service in Germany in 1851, the same year Victor Hugo first used the term "United States of Europe" during a speech to the French National Assembly. It was also the year that the Library of Congress burned down in Washington DC. (Coincidence? You decide.) Reuters news service was founded in London (site of many sadistic executions and much torture at the infamous Tower of London) in 1858. This was the year in which British colonial forces finished the suppression of the Indian Mutiny, during which many captured mutineers were reportedly blown from the mouths of cannon, among inumerable other atrocities. Baron von Reuter himself died in 1899, the year in which Al Capone was born. Source (other than wikipedia) my trusty and un-PC 1964 edition of the World Book Encyclopedia. |
| Posted by:Atomic Conspiracy |
| #5 They didn't do her any favors with that mugshot either. This one is more appropriate: http://content.answers.com/main/content/wp/en/b/b0/Hendrikje_van_Andel-Schipper_at_113.jpg |
| Posted by: Tom 2005-06-30 20:18 |
| #4 I'm sure we did some other bad stuff in 1890. Somebody Google history of Utah and see what we did vis-a-vis the Mormons that year. I fault Reuters cutbacks in editorial and research staffs for the oversight. Maybe horong Ward Churchill as a fact-checker would improve the quality of their "news." It makes you wonder whether she will die in a bizarre tomohawk mishap as a final stroke of cosmic justice. |
| Posted by: Super Hose 2005-06-30 19:57 |
| #3 Sic 'em AC. |
| Posted by: Shipman 2005-06-30 19:25 |
| #2 Many thanks, SPOD. Btw, this belongs on page 3. I keep forgetting. Categorization is morally equivalent to racism, genocide, and forced delousing of hippies. I want my money back! |
| Posted by: Atomic Conspiracy 2005-06-30 18:59 |
| #1 LOL AC, you out did them. |
| Posted by: Sock Puppet 0’ Doom 2005-06-30 18:56 |