As many people in America are celebrating the so-called thanksgiving holiday- with the good intentions of family reunion and thanking God- a review of parts of the Leader of the Revolution's speech on May 15, 2007 can help shed light on the history of European colonizers.

The colonization of peoples was done in the name of progress. This has been a source of disgrace for human history in the last two centuries. From the viewpoint of colonizers, colonization stimulates innovation. The English, the Dutch, the Portuguese and the French went to different parts of Asia, Africa and Latin America to murder the natives, to occupy different countries, to steal many things and to betray many peoples. They led many nations to disaster and they did so in the name of innovation and progress.

When neocolonialism emerged, the situation was still the same. America, England and other colonizers raised the flag of innovation, progress and development in order to justify their violence, warmongering and all the coups d'état that were organized by their intelligence services. In the present time, you can see what is happening in Afghanistan and Iraq. The Americans entered Iraq to create a new world in which the people of Iraq can have freedom and democracy and in which they can make progress. But notice what is happening in Iraq in the present time. Perhaps all the pains that the people of Iraq endured during the time of all coup governments in Iraq - Saddam's government was the last coup government - was not as terrible as the suffering that they are experiencing at the hands of the Americans.

Ayatollah Khamenei's Speech at Ferdowsi University of Mashhad on May 15, 2007