Happy Columbus Day! Really? Why?

Happy Columbus Day! Really? Why?

When I was a kid, Columbus Day was excellent. We got a day off. My older brother's birthday fell on that day, October 12th. Columbus had after all, discovered America, right? Columbus Day was, awesome. But is it? He was a Hero. But was he? Why are some ethnic groups in America so down on him? Why has he fallen from grace?

Many of you by now have probably heard some or all of this, but it's good to know what the deal is and why we don't celebrate it like we used to. He was (is?) a National Hero, so we should know what the deal is. There is plenty of official Historical documentation available, one need only go look it up. And anymore, you can do it right from your home computer, or a touch pad on the bus, for that matter, or your phone. So there is no excuse to remain ignorant about things like this, when they are brought up.

I know my brother was bummed years ago when they changed the day Columbus Day fell on so that it could be attached to a weekend, which frankly now a days, is kind of superfluous. I know I don't get that "holiday" off from work, although I am taking it off this year. But I'm just using that day for some vacation time. I'm not doing it because it's Columbus' day, but rather because I just want a day off and that seemed like a good day to do it, when some people are getting a day off anyway.

So, why is Columbus the Great, being slammed and slandered like this? What in the Hell did he do to deserve this after his great adventure?

This is a tough article, because Columbus' actions were tough, brutal really while he was Governor. So, if you don't want to know or read further, simply know that we shouldn't be celebrating Columbus Day as it is really offensive if you consider his actions. It wouldn't be far different than celebrating Hitler's second in command, Himmler as a national Holiday. But if you don't believe me, or if you think that is nonsense, then please, read on.

Well, in a way, Columbus really hasn't  done do anything to deserve losing his Holiday; not recently anyway, not to change his bearing. Actually History did. That is to say, Columbus already did whatever he did to deserve his fall from grace. People just finally got around to reviewing what his History was about and what else he did other than "find" America (remember that people where here when he got here); and he didn't actually get "here", but to an island south of what is now the US; he did commercialize access to America, however; he then retired to the islands as Governor, and slaughtered a lot of natives one could easily argue was genocide.

Starting at the beginning, Columbus wasn't even actually the "discoverer" of America. As I said, Natives were already here. There is some evidence that Africans, possibly Egyptians, had made it to South America a long time ago. Norsemen (Vikings) had made it to North America before him. So he loses that "discovered America" title. Like I said, he was the one that lead to its commercialization and indeed that is important.

One down (okay, half maybe)

"Under the terms of the Capitulations of Santa Fe, after his first voyage Columbus was appointed Viceroy and Governor of the Indies, which in practice entailed primarily the administration of the colonies in the island of Hispaniola, whose capital was established in Santo Domingo. By the end of his third voyage, Columbus was physically and mentally exhausted: his body was wracked by arthritis and his eyes by ophthalmia. In October 1499, he sent two ships to Spain, asking the Court of Spain to appoint a royal commissioner to help him govern. By then, accusations of tyranny and incompetence on the part of Columbus had also reached the Court." - Wikipedia

So, he was made Governor.

"The Court appointed Francisco de Bobadilla, a member of the Order of Calatrava, but not as the aide that Columbus had requested. Instead, Bobadilla was given complete control as governor from 1500 until his death in 1502. Arriving in Santo Domingo while Columbus was away, Bobadilla was immediately peppered with complaints about all three Columbus brothers: Christopher, Bartolomé, and Diego. Consuelo Varela, a Spanish historian, states: "Even those who loved him [Columbus] had to admit the atrocities that had taken place." - Wikipedia again

I like this cartoon. I like it because it sums up my feelings. I'm not impassioned on this topic about Columbus. He didn't kill my ancestors. I don't even know anyone this affects. But especially with our modern attitude toward terrorism, it just doesn't make sense to celebrate Columbus Day any longer. And this isn't one of those things where the current consideration says ban him, then in a few years we'll change our mind. You cannot wipe out or ignore, Genocide. It really just does not make any sense, we're just continuing to do something because we've always done it. We need to evolve and make changes as time dictates.

According to the web site American Indian Source:

"The United States honors only two men with federal holidays bearing their names. In January we commemorate the birth of Martin Luther King, Jr., who struggled to lift the blinders of racial prejudice and to cut the remaining bonds of slavery in America. In October, we honor Christopher Columbus, who opened the Atlantic slave trade and launched one of the greatest waves of genocide known in history."

"From his very first contact with native people, Columbus had their domination in mind. For example, on October 14, 1492, Columbus wrote in his journal, "with fifty men they can all be subjugated and made to do what is required of them." These were not mere words: after his second voyage, Columbus sent back a consignment of natives to be sold as slaves."

"The Holocaust of Columbus alone killed four million people on San Salvador in four years. The genocide did not stop after this first four million people; they were only the beginning."

From my own readings in previous years I had found that the numbers were more like around 250,000 natives killed. Still, any number over zero, is a lot. Though back in those days, some were to be expected and even thousands would seem to be a lot. So in finding this next article, the numbers from the site above aren't so ridiculous.


A web page on the web site at MIT titled "History Not Taught is History Forgot: Columbus' Legacy of Genocide", says:


"Columbus's programs reduced Taino numbers from as many as eight million at the outset of his regime to about three million in 1496. Perhaps 100,000 were left by the time of the governor's departure. His policies, however, remained, with the result that by 1514 the Spanish census of the island showed barely 22,000 Indians remaining alive. In 1542, only two hundred were recorded. Thereafter, they were considered extinct, as were Indians throughout the Caribbean Basin, an aggregate population which totaled more than fifteen million at the point of first contact with the Admiral of the Ocean Sea, as Columbus was known."

That pretty much sums it all up. Should we continue to celebrate Columbus Day? I don't know. The MIT site says that we shouldn't try comparing him to Hitler or the Nazis in the terms of Genocide.

Again, the MIT article:

"To be fair, Columbus was never a head of state. Comparisons of him to Nazi SS leader Heinrich Himmler, rather than Hitler, are therefore more accurate and appropriate. It is time to delve into the substance of the defendants' assertion that Columbus and Himmler, Nazi Lebensraumpolitik (conquest of "living space" in eastern Europe) and the "settlement of the New World" bear more than casual resemblance to one another. This has nothing to do with the Columbian "discovery," not that this in itself is completely irrelevant.

"To this extent, he not only symbolizes the process of conquest and genocide which eventually consumed the indigenous peoples of America, but bears the personal responsibility of having participated in it. Still, if this were all there was to it, the defendants would be inclined to dismiss him as a mere thug along the lines of Al Capone rather than viewing him as a counterpart to Himmler."

So, celebrate Columbus Day? It's up to you. Check the documentation. For myself, I would prefer we drop that day. I have found memories of it from my youth, but how many lost their youth, that of their children, parents, loved ones and so on? I don't think that public figures should so much be held to account for many of their personal actions, President Clinton should never have been taken to task over his sexual conduct in my mind, that was the Republican Party literally throwing away millions of tax payer's dollars on a witch hunt.

So many others have lost their careers over, granted, stupid personal decisions, but as long as they govern adroitly, I don't have a problem with their personal lives, which should be held sacrosanct unless there is a real public bearing upon their actions.

However, genocide I believe, is a good ground to drop someone lite a melting rock.

So, thanks Columbus for the good times, and the good things you did. Good bye for you really bad judgement, regardless of your times and the Zeitgeist of your culture.

Ciao, fella....

Weekend Wise Words

Be Smart! Be Brilliant!

Considering the current climate of the times, where revolution, or at least, protest, is in the air with such events as the "Arab Spring" and the "Occupy Wall Street" (or "Occupy insert the name of your city here"), the protest and/or revolution that is sweeping not just our nation but the world, a few words of warning and consent for first those opposing the movements, and then for those who support them:

Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.
John F. Kennedy

When dictatorship is a fact, revolution becomes a right.
Victor Hugo 

I cannot help fearing that men may reach a point where they look on every new theory as a danger, every innovation as a toilsome trouble, every social advance as a first step toward revolution, and that they may absolutely refuse to move at all.
Alexis de Tocqueville

The revolution is not an apple that falls when it is ripe. You have to make it fall.
Che Guevara

The seed of revolution is repression.
Woodrow Wilson

Revelation can be more perilous than Revolution.
Vladimir Nabokov [think... WikiLeaks?]

The American Revolution was a beginning, not a consummation.
Woodrow Wilson  [this implies the revolution is an ongoing thing, to monitor government and force change when it has gone far enough astray, as it has today....]

The main object of a revolution is the liberation of man... not the interpretation and application of some transcendental ideology.
Jean Genet 


And now warning or a comment or two, to our heroes, I mean, the Protesters:

Every revolution evaporates and leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy.
Franz Kafka

You can never have a revolution in order to establish a democracy. You must have a democracy in order to have a revolution.
Gilbert K. Chesterton

In a revolution, as in a novel, the most difficult part to invent is the end.
Alexis de Tocqueville

Revolution, n. In politics, an abrupt change in the form of misgovernment.
Ambrose Bierce

The scrupulous and the just, the noble, humane, and devoted natures; the unselfish and the intelligent may begin a movement - but it passes away from them. They are not the leaders of a revolution. They are its victims.
Joseph Conrad

Promise yourself to live your life as a revolution and not just a process of evolution.
Anthony J. D'Angelo  

Occupy your world

I haven't been downtown Seattle for a while, but I made the trip over for the day. I walked through West Lake Park downtown and wasn't that surprised to find people occupying the park as if they'd been there for days. It seems they were, since last Saturday.

Seattle's Downtown West Lake Park Occupation 10/6

There weren't a lot of people in the park but there was a presence that had obviously been there over night. When I returned through there at 3PM today, it was about the same. The Bellingham Herald up north from Seattle has a good article about it.

Seattle's Downtown West Lake Park Occupation 10/6

I've been watching the stream from New York. My daughter video Skyped me a couple of weeks ago to ask me what was going on in America. She was in Iceland then, she's is in Berlin, Germany now.

Seattle's Downtown West Lake Park Occupation 10/6

I had to ask what she was talking about. She said there were Americans in Reykjavik who were leaving to go home back to New York out of concern and to join the protest. I had heard nothing on the news (not that I regularly watch it; have you watched the news lately, geez).

Seattle's Downtown West Lake Park Occupation 10/6

So she sent me a link and for a few days I watched the live stream from N.Y. until I couldn't take it anymore, they seriously need a wind sock on their mic as it was really irritating to the ear. I saw Susan Sarandon walking around the protesters, talking to them, offering her support. I saw Michael Moore talking to people and the cameras. And I wondered what they were really protesting. It was obvious though, people were pissed off about something and they had really had it. With something. And it is growing. Worldwide.

Seattle's Downtown West Lake Park Occupation 10/6

It took a day or so but I finally got it. People are sick, basically, about what I've been complaining about for twenty years. This isn't a blog to pat myself on the back. It's a blog to say that finally what I and many famous others, have been trying to tell people about, is finally coming forward in the public consciousness.

Jon Stewart had an excellent gag on his show last night. I especially liked his saying the media has swung from media blackout to circus (watch the video), which explains why I hadn't heard a thing about it. Please, just go to the Huffington page and watch that video. It's goofy in places but funny and one of the most succinct and directly right on the mark moments he's ever had. Granted, he's had a lot of them. But this one was good too.

Huffington Post's comments on the video:

"Previously, Jon Stewart only touched on one incident at the downtown Manhattan protests known as Occupy Wall Street (OWS), but on Wednesday night's "Daily Show," he spent nine minutes comparing the 2011 protests with 2009's birth of the Tea Party [and the original Tea Party], and the media's disparate reactions."

Stewart also played a video of Sean Hannity explaining exactly what the protest was about; then turned the tide by explaining it was from a few years ago and Hannity had been talking about the Tea Party: that ineffectual group of Republicans who were well intentioned but starting at a loss as they were starting out for change in the Republican party to begin with (and no, I'm not a Democrat). Again, the video is better at this.

Here is the issue, and then I'll move on to something just as interesting, curious, and reassuring (if you ask me...) "The Corporation", has infected our culture. We have a cancer and it is, The Corporation. No this isn't some stupid conspiracy nut thing, it is serious, it is so a part of American culture that we can't even see it. That's part of the problem, you see? If you were a spouse abuser, but couldn't see it, and someone tried to point it out to you, well, you see the problem. What? You don't? Uh oh.....

epitome of a nightmare corporation

The Corporation, and Corporate Thought. Really, it is Corporate Thought that is the more insidious. The law and the theory, the business of Incorporation, that's the problem. Look back into the beginning of corporations, why they were legally created, what it means to be a corporation, what rights corporations have, and you immediately begin to see gist of the problem.

You see, Corporate Thought is one of those things that sounds really good in theory. But in practice, yes, it does what it is designed to do, but it also destroys, it eats alive that which feeds it. For one thing, greed comes into play almost immediately. The disparity between how much a worker makes and the CEO is as great as spitting a spitwad from goal post to goal post on a football field (no it doesn't matter what kind of football field, it's like, BIG). Why in the world is that? Because, better to give lots to one guy, than little to so many who could really use it?

Yeah yeah, watch The Corporation if you want

Corporate Thought has found its way into our school systems, our home life, our credit (cards), our banks, our retirement savings, our politics, hospitals and medical care. And, more. People think our Healthcare system is screwed up. It's not really, not so much, it's working how it's designed to work, by Corporate Thought and Theory. And that, you see, is the problem. It's using Corporate Thought to manage our world of Human Beings. And you know what? It sucks! And WE Hate it! It walks over us, pins us down, and sometimes, it kills us.

And that, is what the protesters are protesting about. They are tired of their lives being screwed up and they don't know why it is that way. Or how it got that way, or even and most importantly, how to change it. This, could be the start of a revolution, and one we've needed for a long, long time. Just ask Thomas Jefferson. Some of them are starting to get it. They are mad at the Corporations, at our government, our corporate bailouts who then pay themselves huge bonuses with the money we gave them, to save them. They want to know why in the greatest country in freaking world History, we don't have healthcare for everyone!

Okay, okay you say, but corporations did a lot of good for our country for a long time. Yes, maybe. Maybe not. Perhaps, had they been reigned in more, they would have done us one better, and another one, and another one, but rather than go to us (no, I'm not a socialist, but some socialism is inherent in ever government, so wake UP and read a book, or simply look around you; socialism isn't bad, full socialism is... maybe).

But even if corporations were good for us, anything, once started, needs to be reigned in and controlled  directed, focused, and wrangled under control to, "do the right thing".

Now here is my complaint and I've said it before. I want to know why I don't have at least two months off a year, work four day weeks, six hour days, and retire young. Relatively speaking, I had wanted to retire at 50 and well we all know that you can't retire until you are 67 and they want to raise that to 70. EARLY retirement age is 62! Wasn't it once 55? Has anyone asked why that is?

I figure Human Beings once didn't live much past 40, naturally speaking (yeah, like a thousand year ago). I'm giving that another ten years after that and hoping to retire though I should by then be dead ten years; going by how Christians would say, God created us. That's all I ask, that ten years after I should be dead I want to retire. But not, 22 years after should I get to retire, no wait, that's early retirement; I mean, 27 years after I should naturally be dead. Oh man....

But yes, we live longer now. Still, I think you see my point. Sometimes it just takes looking at things from a slightly different vantage point. Okay, moving along....

I was also watching Ken Burns' Prohibition, his new documentary.

What I am finding fascinating is our situation in History right now at this moment. Prohibition flew out the window because people wanted it alcohol (hang on there is going to be a comparison to Cannabis here), and because of the depression. Times were hard and people wanted a way to let off steam. Alcohol had been drunk everywhere in America up to the 1800's where just about everyone was drinking. But alcohol was low wattage back then, beer was maybe 2%. People drank a lot of cider that was alcoholic but very low compared to now.

Hang on, I'm getting to the reason for bringing this up and it's kind of amazing.

Then alcohol started to grow in percentage, specific gravity kept getting higher. It got stronger. People kept their attitudes about it as it being a good thing (as cigarettes were considered, both had been prescribed by doctors at some point). People were drinking three times the amount of alcohol around the late 1800s than we do now. People were going into debt, falling along the roadside drunk, losing their jobs, just going to pot (pun intended).

So the temperance movement actually had a damn good reason for coming into existence.

It sounds a lot like what has been said about the Native Americans and alcohol back then. That they couldn't handle it, that it ruined lives. But it would seem, this was true for the White Man too.

But in the end, banning alcohol was a fools errand. It lead to people ignoring the law to such an extreme degree that it was a joke. When the depression hit, they really had to wonder what they were going to do and Prohibition was obviously not working. Starting to sell alcohol again solved so many issues. Plus by now, people had done what most people do now in their teens. They learn how to "drink" and the appropriate place for alcohol in one's life. Not daily but for entertaining, and self medication (self medication as gotten a bad rap because of so much abuse, but self medication was the way people took care of themselves for thousands of years and only recently have we gotten lazy and allowed ourselves to abuse it; once we no longer had to work to eat, to live, things changed).

And here we are today, now. We have a severely bad economic situation. We have an alcohol like substance, Cannabis, that we have Prohibition against. You know the funny thing about that is ask anyone if they think that Prohibition worked and they'll tell you No. Yet, we do this with pot, or whatever you want to call it: weed, hemp, Cannabis, or that old racist favorite, Marijuana.

During Prohibition, some of the ways that people got around the legality of alcohol restriction was, as in the beginning you simply couldn't sell it, bartenders would charge exorbitant fees for pretzels at the bar and you could get a drink for "free". Doctors would "prescribe" alcohol for "patients" and so you were legal. Speakeasies were every where and a badge of honor to know a good one and get into it. These are all signs of a country needing to ban prohibition.

Now a days we have Cannabis facilities, stores and clubs. Doctors can prescribe you medical marijuana cards. We are expending billions of dollars on trying to eradicate Cannabis, decade after decade and failing. We have criminals running Cannabis distribution, helping them therefore to sell harder dangerous drugs. If we legalize it again (yes, again, Cannabis was legal to begin with, remember), we could tax it, control it, take it out of the hands of criminals and decrease their ability to distribute and sale very dangerous drugs. Drugs that really, ARE dangerous.

My point in all this is this... we are in exactly the same situation we were in  until they finally re-legalized alcohol, only this time we're dealing with Cannabis.

So be prepared, because just perhaps, during the next Presidential term, we will finally see legalization. I hadn't thought this was going to happen for some time. But after seeing the Prohibition documentary, now I"m not so sure. I have a funny feeling, this just might be, the right time for it to happen. You need  certain conditions, the more widespread the more likely it is to happen. Well, we have problems that are nationwide, in fact, they are Global, and you can't get much bigger than that.

So, maybe, light up. Better times may be just ahead.