A man who (even though discovered a world unknown to the Europeans) did nothing but cause turmoil, death, starvation, sickness and slavery to the native people of the Americas? A man who did nothing but search for weath and power when it wasn't his to begin with? A man who was merely a theif, a pirate if you will, on a very large scale?
If it was turned around and say Taino cheif got in his man made boat and sailed to...oh say a beach in Spain and said "I hearby decree that I, Chief Twofooted So-n-So, have discovered a new world and thus claim it as our own" all the while hoity toity unbaithed socialites walked by in caked faced and silk wondering who the tan dude was in the loin cloth and feathers... Something tells me that he wouldn't have been met with the same sort of greeting as Columbus. The Native Americans, on the majority, were atleast gracious to newcomers and that lesser majority was simply fighting for what was theirs...
Wouldn't you do the same if your house was broken into? Wouldn't you protect your family and property?
The Americas weren't undiscovered, lest we forget the Chinese people and those Swedish guys with horns on their helmets... How do they account for the trade market with the Aztecs? There have been many discoveries but 99.99% have been nullified due to Columbus.
Now I'm not knocking colonization. Not discounting modernizing the free world but no one ever stopped to think...did they want it? Ok, Columbus hit shore in the Bahamas. He and his subordinates played nicey nicey for how long before Infants were ripped from nursing mother's breasts and thrown against rocks, children abandoned when their mothers were slammed into chains and sold in open markets, men were worked to death in labor camps and within 150 years after Columbus arrived 85% of the known Native American peoples were gone.
(yes there is documented proof of what I just wrote so don't even start)
As we all know, History repeats itself...I can go so far as bring up our own issues like the Natives of North America who were slaughtered, tortured, mutilated, raped and ultimately decimated for the rights of the land below our feet when we had NO RIGHT to do so considering it didn't belong to the settlers in the first place.
(once again, documented many times, or shall we visit a reservation where the remainder of the Native American people have been rounded up like cattle and forced to live on the measily barren land we so graciously afforded them)
James Cook did the same to the Hawaiians.
Do I dare go on?
Who are the savages?
So I ask...Why are we celebrating Columbus Day?
Monday, October 13, 2008
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