COLUMBUS DAY
October 11th America will celebrate Columbus Day.
It was A.D. 1492.
In Italy artists of great value are working on the masterpieces that centuries later will be known as Renaissance. Banks and the first big capitalistic companies are starting their journey too. The New Era begins!
Same year, same story. Just seen from another angle. The civilized white man arrives to the "new" (sic!) world and immediately starts his best business. Columbus was greatly impressed by the beauty of the people and their hospitality. "(They) are so naïve and so free with their possessions that no one who has not witnessed them would believe it. When you ask for something they have, they never say no. To the contrary, they offer to share with anyone...". The great hero continues: "They would make fine servants... With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want".
District of Columbia. Columbia University. Columbus Circle. Columbus Day... Bloodshed. Deceit. Genocide. This is what we celebrate today.
Howard Zinn writes in "A People's History of the United States": "The treatment of heroes and their victims - the quiet acceptance of conquest and murder in the name of progress - is only one aspect of a certain approach to history, in which the past is told from the point of view of governments, conquerors, diplomats, leaders."
Columbus is still with us. Years after years. Generation after generation. Genocide after genocide.
"I do not admit... that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America, or the black people of Australia... by the fact that a stronger race, a higher grade race... has come in and taken its place." Churchill to Palestine Royal Commission, 1937
Lesley Stahl on U.S. sanctions against Iraq: "We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it? "
US Ambassador at the United Nations (soon to become Secretary of State) Madeleine Albright: "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price - we think the price is worth it." CBS - "60 Minutes", May 12, 1996
“We come to Iraq with respect for its citizens, for their great civilization and for the religious faiths they practice. We have no ambition in Iraq, except to remove a threat and restore control of that country to its own people.” - US President George Bush, March 19, 2003
Again in "A People's History...", Howard Zinn writes: "Columbus and his successors were not coming into an empty wilderness, but into a world which in some places was as densely populated as Europe itself, where the culture was complex, where human relations were more egalitarian than in Europe, and where the relations among men, women, children, and the nature were more beautifully worked out than perhaps any place in the world."
Let's remember this. Not for the past. But for the present. And our future.
It was A.D. 1492.
In Italy artists of great value are working on the masterpieces that centuries later will be known as Renaissance. Banks and the first big capitalistic companies are starting their journey too. The New Era begins!
Same year, same story. Just seen from another angle. The civilized white man arrives to the "new" (sic!) world and immediately starts his best business. Columbus was greatly impressed by the beauty of the people and their hospitality. "(They) are so naïve and so free with their possessions that no one who has not witnessed them would believe it. When you ask for something they have, they never say no. To the contrary, they offer to share with anyone...". The great hero continues: "They would make fine servants... With fifty men we could subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want".
District of Columbia. Columbia University. Columbus Circle. Columbus Day... Bloodshed. Deceit. Genocide. This is what we celebrate today.
Howard Zinn writes in "A People's History of the United States": "The treatment of heroes and their victims - the quiet acceptance of conquest and murder in the name of progress - is only one aspect of a certain approach to history, in which the past is told from the point of view of governments, conquerors, diplomats, leaders."
Columbus is still with us. Years after years. Generation after generation. Genocide after genocide.
"I do not admit... that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America, or the black people of Australia... by the fact that a stronger race, a higher grade race... has come in and taken its place." Churchill to Palestine Royal Commission, 1937
Lesley Stahl on U.S. sanctions against Iraq: "We have heard that a half million children have died. I mean, that's more children than died in Hiroshima. And, you know, is the price worth it? "
US Ambassador at the United Nations (soon to become Secretary of State) Madeleine Albright: "I think this is a very hard choice, but the price - we think the price is worth it." CBS - "60 Minutes", May 12, 1996
“We come to Iraq with respect for its citizens, for their great civilization and for the religious faiths they practice. We have no ambition in Iraq, except to remove a threat and restore control of that country to its own people.” - US President George Bush, March 19, 2003
Again in "A People's History...", Howard Zinn writes: "Columbus and his successors were not coming into an empty wilderness, but into a world which in some places was as densely populated as Europe itself, where the culture was complex, where human relations were more egalitarian than in Europe, and where the relations among men, women, children, and the nature were more beautifully worked out than perhaps any place in the world."
Let's remember this. Not for the past. But for the present. And our future.
posted by The Cat's Dream at 10:57 PM
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