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There is no excuse for ignorance!

by Theo van Rossum

Of course we can always be ignorant about something and the title isn't meant to be as harsh as it may sound. I'm just referring to an overall and general ignorance that isn't necessary or even acceptable, not about de-tails, as there always be something for us to learn about of course. In this modern day of internet being available to most of us, there is in fact no excuse to be ignorant about information that is available to us.

Back in medieval Europe people really didn't know what happened in the world and most of the world hadnīt even been discovered yet. But even about what happened in their own country they were mostly in the dark. It wasn't called the Dark Ages for nothing, you know. There were no newspapers and even if there had been newspapers they'd been useless as no one could read or write except for the monks who wrote books by hand in Latin, a secret language to the populace. Even kings were often illiterate. Just now and then a town crier, sometimes on horseback would come into a town to tell everyone the latest news after saying "Hear ye! Hear ye! Hear ye!" and everybody listened. Now of course all this news was quite scarse and coming from just one source so therefore not always all that reliable. But today we have the internet and we can choose. We can even consult various different sources if we want to. The only thing that can now be in the way of discovery is when we don't WANT to know. Since there is internet we no longer need to get brainwashed by the national news and the news stations that have more money than others being backed by the rich or even subsidised by governments.

So for all you people who still believe that sports mascots "honour" Indians, that Indians pay no taxes or get everything for free, that they are all getting loaded by their moneymaking casino's and more of this stubborn stereotypical nonsense I would stongly recommed to you this website called Blue Corn Comics. It is not a news site with the latest but it is however very educational and a very good start for anyone trying to genuinely understand Indian issues.

In some of my converstations with Americans I was sometimes told "What do you know about it? You live in Europe? I see Indians every day 'cause I'm buying petrol from them." This man I "met" on a Wikipedia discussion page and he lives in New Mexico. Like many, he claimed that reservations are "sovereign nations" and even called them "untouchable". But if they are so

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