{"id":100208,"date":"2017-10-16T12:01:51","date_gmt":"2017-10-16T11:01:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=100208"},"modified":"2017-10-12T14:28:59","modified_gmt":"2017-10-12T13:28:59","slug":"unmasking-columbus","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2017\/10\/unmasking-columbus\/","title":{"rendered":"Unmasking Columbus"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p><em>The path opened by Columbus to &#8220;The Americas&#8221; led to territories being conquered and claimed, stolen and shared by the Europeans.<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<div id=\"attachment_100209\" style=\"width: 610px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/Christopher-Columbus-cristovam-colombo.jpg\" ><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-100209\" class=\"size-full wp-image-100209\" src=\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/Christopher-Columbus-cristovam-colombo.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"600\" height=\"340\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/Christopher-Columbus-cristovam-colombo.jpg 600w, https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/10\/Christopher-Columbus-cristovam-colombo-300x170.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" \/><\/a><p id=\"caption-attachment-100209\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Christopher Columbus | Photo: Wikimedia Commons<\/p><\/div>\n<p><em>11 Oct 2017 &#8211; <\/em>For years, Columbus Day has\u00a0been annually observed in the USA on the second Monday of October.<\/p>\n<p>It\u2019s celebrated in honor of the 15th Century Italian navigator recorded in history as the &#8220;Discoverer of the New World,&#8221;\u00a0but who actually paved the way for the ultimate destruction of entire civilizations through centuries of colonial and imperial domination of The Americas by Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, English, French, Dutch and other European conquistadors.<\/p>\n<p>In 1492 when Christopher Columbus made his first journey seeking new worlds to conquer for the King and Queen of Spain, the Christian Crusaders were just concluding their routing of the Muslim Caliphate that had earlier dominated Europe.<\/p>\n<p>Columbus originally set out looking for India, but after losing his way mistakenly landed instead in The Bahamas on the 12th of October, 1492.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong><em>RELATED: <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.telesurtv.net\/english\/news\/Trinidad-Joins-World-Protests-Against-Columbus-Day-Statue-Defaced-20171010-0033.html\" >Trinidad Joins World Protests Against Columbus Day, Statue Defaced<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Thinking he was in Asia, he made the following\u00a0entry in his log about the native Arawak population: \u201cThey would make fine servants \u2026 With fifty men we can subjugate them all and make them do whatever we want.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The path opened by Columbus to the &#8220;The Americas&#8221;\u00a0led to territories being conquered and claimed, stolen and shared by the Europeans and left a long history of native genocide and slavery and systematic dismantling of ancient civilizations built over centuries before they arrived.<\/p>\n<p>The settlers robbed land, outlawed native religions and forcibly introduced Christianity alongside slavery, for production of cotton, sugar and other crops.<\/p>\n<p>Centuries of colonial domination followed, until the European powers were forced to cede absolute control, largely as a result of their proven inability to quell liberation wars and other forms of resistance, especially in the 18th and 19th centuries.<\/p>\n<p>httpv:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=TiKosqw0OXU<\/p>\n<p>The &#8220;New World&#8221;\u00a0came only at the cost of millions Native American and African lives, who, with their descendants, still remain largely edited out of their own history.<\/p>\n<p>Columbus\u2019 legacy is a brewed torrent of half-truths and lies presented over time to place him in world history as the one who &#8220;joined the two worlds&#8221;\u00a0to introduce &#8220;Christianity, civility and humanity&#8221;\u00a0to &#8220;Godless cannibals&#8221;\u00a0in faraway lands.<\/p>\n<p>But Europe\u2019s decimating ravage of the Americas has been so exposed now that there is a growing movement across the continent to not just ban the celebration of Columbus Day, but also to replace it with a day dedicated to its indigenous peoples.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong><em>RELATED: <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.telesurtv.net\/english\/multimedia\/Anti-Columbus-Protests-Sweep-the-Americas-20171009-0030.html\" >Anti-Columbus Protests Sweep the Americas<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>In 1992, the City of Berkley (California) became\u00a0the first to rename the federally-designated Columbus Day as &#8220;Indigenous People\u2019s Day.&#8221; In August 2017 \u2013 a full 25 years later \u2013 Los Angeles took a similar decision. Between the two, cities in Arizona, Colorado, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Montana, Ohio, Washington and Wisconsin did likewise.<\/p>\n<p>Europe\u2019s shaping of the contours of the region and its history eventually saw it labeled as &#8220;Latin America,&#8221; the result of a long process of imperial and colonial cultural domination and assimilation that led to Spanish emerging as the main language spoken across the South American continental shelf.<\/p>\n<p>Today the backlash is continuing \u2013 and not only in America.<\/p>\n<p>A Columbus statue in Los Angeles was defaced at the end of August 2017 following similar treatment of confederate statues elsewhere in the USA.<br \/>\nPublic demands for unmasking of historical sinners presented as saints are also now being made in Australia, where a growing movement is demanding that the real history of the world\u2019s biggest island be exposed.<\/p>\n<p>Busts of British navigator Thomas Cook are also now being defaced across the continental island, with demands that he no longer be described as the one who &#8220;discovered&#8221;\u00a0Australia.<\/p>\n<p>In a country already inhabited by native Aborigines for eons when the first Europeans landed, there\u2019s also a call for a new date for &#8220;Australia Day,&#8221; observance of which still coincides with the prevailing ancient imperial claim that life began &#8220;Down Under&#8221;\u00a0only when Cook and his men landed.<\/p>\n<p>httpv:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=t98_kNFT2Y0<\/p>\n<p>Columbus and his successor explorers are now also being increasingly exposed as having been aided by maps drawn by earlier Chinese navigators.<\/p>\n<p>Many of the myths associated with their claims have been exploded by ex-British Royal Navy submarine commander, Gavin Menzies, in his classic book entitled &#8220;1421,&#8221; with evidence that the first maps of the world were precise and near-accurate renditions by Chinese cartographers using astrological measurements and calculations.<\/p>\n<p>Menzies\u2019 book also shows how the famed Chinese navigator Zheng He had arrived in The Americas in 1421 \u2013\u00a0at least 70 years before Columbus.<\/p>\n<p>The 600th anniversary of Zheng\u2019s presence in The Americas is approaching and Menzies and today\u2019s cartographers of true world history will (hopefully) not let it pass unobserved.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><strong><em>RELATED: <a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.telesurtv.net\/english\/news\/Charlottesville-Adopts-Indigenous-Peoples-Day-20170921-0021.html\" >Charlottesville Adopts Indigenous Peoples Day<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>However, 25 years after the 500th anniversary of Columbus\u2019 first voyage of so-called discovery was celebrated in Spain, Italy, the USA, South America, the Caribbean and across the world, Native Americans are increasingly stepping-up their demands that his falsities be exposed and their true histories more widely disclosed.<\/p>\n<p>The likes of Columbus and Cook, Rhodes and Lee, told many now-proven lies that are still (unfortunately) largely unknown and which today\u2019s mainstream (especially European) historians are simply too ashamed to acknowledge, far less admit.<\/p>\n<p>The loud and just demands across The Americas, Australia, Southern Africa and Europe for revisiting and more accurately rewriting history are far from being fully met, but are by no means dead.<\/p>\n<p>Instead, they are being kept quite alive by those convinced that it\u2019s never too late to correct world history, especially where it\u2019s been deliberately distorted and presented with clear intention to mislead.<\/p>\n<p>Columbus has long been exposed in the Caribbean, where reggae musicians like Burning Spear decades ago wrote the song which boldly claimed \u201cChristopher Columbus is a damn blasted liar\u201d and calypsonian The Mighty Shadow, who also sang \u201cColumbus lied!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Then, on Tuesday October 10, the Daily Express of Trinidad &amp; Tobago reported that \u201cThe Christopher Columbus monument in Port of Spain has been smeared with red paint intended to symbolize the 14th century explorer\u2019s genocide of Caribbean First Peoples as the activist group Cross Rhodes Freedom Project aims to have the statue removed.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>httpv:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=U0SNREDhz5c<\/p>\n<p><a target=\"_blank\" href=\"https:\/\/www.telesurtv.net\/english\/opinion\/Unmasking-Columbus-20171011-0011.html?utm_source=planisys&amp;utm_medium=NewsletterIngles&amp;utm_campaign=NewsletterIngles&amp;utm_content=31\" >Go to Original \u2013telesurtv.net<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The path opened by Columbus to &#8220;The Americas&#8221; led to territories being conquered and claimed, stolen and shared by the Europeans.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[148],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-100208","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100208","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=100208"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/100208\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=100208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=100208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=100208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}