Showing posts with label genocide. Show all posts
Showing posts with label genocide. Show all posts
Thursday, November 28, 2019
Monday, October 9, 2017
On This "Columbus Day"
See links for source at bottom:
I recommend reading James Loewen’s eye-opening book about how textbooks distort history, Lies My Teacher Told Me (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995). Among the very interesting myths Loewen exposes are the ones surrounding Christopher Columbus.
You may in fact know the following:
• Columbus–and virtually everyone else at the end of the fifteenth century–was fully aware that the earth was round.
• Columbus indeed recognized that he’d discovered a new continent, even adding a section to his coat of arms reflecting it. He never confused it with India.
• The voyage to the “New Land” took about a month. It was smooth sailing the entire way. There was never any threat of mutiny.
• The Niña, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria were well-equipped vessels.
• Columbus’ accomplishment was immediately appreciated by Spain, which outfitted him for a large second voyage–17 ships, 1200 men, and weapons.
• Columbus may not even have been Italian; he certainly never wrote in Italian.
What you may not know is that Columbus epitomized greed, racism, and sadism. He searched for new lands for one reason only: gold. Where he found natives, he captured, enslaved, or murdered them. Here’s an excerpt from Ferdinand Columbus’s biography of his father:
“The soldiers mowed down dozens with point-blank volleys, loosed the dogs to rip open limbs and bellies, chased fleeing Indians into the bush to skewer them on sword and pike, and with God’s aid soon gained a complete victory, killing many Indians and capturing others who were also killed” (from Kirkpatrick Sale, The Conquest of Paradise [New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990]).
Columbus’s “discoveries” unleashed a world of slavery and persecution that has ramifications to this day.
Taken from this blog.
At this link:
http://blog.seattlepi.com/nealstarkman/2009/10/12/columbuss-day/
Besides, 500 years before Columbus, there was Lief Erikson.
Besides, 500 years before Columbus, there was Lief Erikson.
Leif Erikson Day 2017:
5 Fast Facts You Need to Know
Happy Leif Erikson Day.
Yes, it really is.
Links:
Tuesday, June 20, 2017
Next Up? That Andrew Jackson Statue Downtown
Think about this.
Last weekend, writer, reporter Steve Kraske, of the Kansas City Star and KCUR, the local NPR station, penned an article in the Saturday paper calling for the renaming of the J.C. Nichols fountain on our own Country Club Plaza because, well, the fact is, Mr. Nichols was a blatant, very public racist.
And sure, there are and will be plenty in the city who think it's crazy and/or unnecessary and/or just out and out stupid.
But the fact is, the City Council is meeting today and talking about doing just that.
On another local blog today I saw a comment and it made me realize what's next.
Yeah, that Andrew Jackson statue downtown? The one in front of the County Courthouse?
It will be next up for evaluation.
You want racist? It just doesn't get any more racist than US President Andrew Jackson.
And it's not just that he was racist, though that's bad enough. He's been listed as one of the nation's worst presidents for years and for a range of reasons. Here are links to just three articles, of many, many that are available, spelling out how awful he was.
Here is just a bit for which he's known.
When Jackson was inaugurated, he held a party in the White House to which anyone was invited. People trashed the place, even snipping bits out of the curtains as souvenirs. This story confirmed all the worst fears of Jackson’s critics. His predecessor, John Quincy Adams, who Jackson had defeated in a horrifically bad-tempered election, was so horrified by Jackson’s triumph that he refused to attend the inauguration – the last outgoing president in history to have boycotted his successor’s big day. Men like Adams – who came from a Massachusetts family that had fought for Independence and feared for the survival of the republic (particularly his father, John Adams) – saw Jackson as a profane, unprincipled demagogue; a would-be tyrant in the Napoleonic mode; a man with no respect for the checks and balances of the Constitution or the rule of law.
The first president to have risen from lowly origins, Jackson became famous as the general who had defeated the British at the battle of New Orleans in 1815. Previously known for buying a slave plantation in Tennessee (in 1803) and for taking part in a high-profile duel (with Charles Dickinson in 1806), after the battle of New Orleans he went on to win more fame fighting the Seminole Indians.
In office, Jackson was an aggressive wielder of the president’s hitherto unused veto power. He stopped Congress from spending money on new roads or canals, and he prevented the re-charter of the Bank of the United States, which had attempted to regulate the money supply and served as a lender of last resort. And whatever political challenge he faced, his language was hyperbolic. “You are a den of vipers and thieves,” he wrote to the directors of the Bank of the US, “I intend to rout you out, and by the eternal God, I will rout you out”. When he left office, the country was plunged into the deepest recession anyone could remember.
So, yes, Steve Kraske's idea and proposal struck a lot of people unawares but with all the removal of statues of racists first in New Orleans, then in St. Louis and the national conversations its inspired, I would absolutely look for this one to come up, too, shortly.
Like it, agree with it or no.
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