So what if the Ottomans shaped the modern world?

May 15, 2021

Erdogan is mesmerized by Calilph Selim but, unlike Machiavelli, he doesn’t fear him; he wants to emulate him

By Pepe Escobar posted with permission and first posted at the Asia Times

Once upon a time in Anatolia, in the late 13^th century a Turkic principality – one of many shaped in the wake of the Mongol invasion of the 1240s – consigned the Seljuk Turks to the past and emerged as the Ottoman emirate. It was named after its founder, Osman I.

By the middle of the 15^th century, the time of the game-changing conquest of Constantinople by Sultan Mehmet II, the expanding Ottoman empire had absorbed virtually all its neighboring Turkic emirates.

And by the start of the 16^th century, what sprang up was a multi-religious and multi-ethnic empire that – pragmatic and tolerant – ruled for four centuries over the Balkans, Anatolia and Southwest Asia.

Talk about a major historical riddle: How did a small principality in the western fringe of what used to be known as Asia Minor turn into what could arguably be defined as Islam’s most important empire? The key to unlocking the riddle may be offered by Sultan Selim I.

God’s Shadow, which in its original English edition (Faber & Faber) is subtitled The Ottoman Sultan Who Shaped the Modern World, may reveal that author Alan Mikhail, chair of the Department of History at Yale, is uniquely qualified to argue the case.

Mehmet II, who with his endless obsession and cunning extinguished the Byzantine empire on the fateful May 29, 1453, when he was only 21, was a larger-than-life figure for peoples of the Mediterranean, the Balkans and Asia Minor.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan (Left) during an April 17, 2017, visit to the tomb of Yavuz Sultan Selim, a sultan of the former Ottoman Empire 1512-1520, in Istanbul, a day after Erdogan’s victory in a national referendum. Photo : AFP / Yasin Bulbul / Turkish Presidential Press Office

He bridged Europe and Asia. He refashioned Constantinople, renamed Istanbul, into the capital of the sprawling empire. He lorded over the silk roads from the Black Sea to the Mediterranean. The Fatih (“Conqueror”) assumed mythical proportions east and west – and even branded himself Caesar, heir to Byzantine emperors.

Mehmet II conquered the Balkans in the 1460s, finished off with Genoese trading colonies in Crimea and imposed vassalage over the Crimean Tatar Khanate in 1478. That meant, in practice, turning the Black Sea into a virtual Ottoman lake.

Author Mikhail stresses right at the start that the Ottoman Empire was the most powerful state on earth – more powerful than the Ming dynasty, not to mention the Safavids – for quite some time. It was the largest empire in the Mediterranean since ancient Rome and “the most enduring” in the history of Islam.

Then he sets the crux of the – explosive – thesis he will develop in detail: “It was the Ottoman monopoly of trade routes with the East, combined with their military prowess on land and on sea, that pushed Spain and Portugal out of the Mediterranean, forcing merchants and sailors from these 15th-century kingdoms to become global explorers as they risked treacherous voyages across oceans and around continents – all to avoid the Ottomans.”

This thesis will be extremely unpalatable to a hegemonic (at least for the past 150 years) West, now confronted with its turbulent decline. Mikhail does his best to show how, “from China to Mexico, the Ottoman empire shaped the known world at the turn of the 16^th century.”

Obviously ideological, military and economic competition with the Spanish and Italian states – and then Russia, China and other Islamic states – was no holds barred. Still, Mikhail relishes showing how Columbus, Vasco da Gama, Montezuma, Luther, Tamerlan – one and all “calibrated their actions and defined their very existence in reaction to the reach and grasp of Ottoman power.”

Christopher Columbus taking leave of Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon before setting out on his first voyage to the New World, August 8, 1492. Photo: AFP / Ann Ronan Picture Library

Geoeconomic superpower

It takes a lot of balls for a historian employed by an elite American university to offer a self-described “revolutionary” narrative on the role of Islam and the Ottomans in shaping not only the Old World, but also the New World. Mikhail is fully aware of how this will come as “a bitter pill for many in the West.”

Exit Muslims as the “terrorist.” Exit “the rise of the West.” Enter the Ottomans as a civilizing power. Mikhail is adamant: The practice “since the Industrial Revolution and the so-called glories of the 19^th century” of stretching European primacy back to Columbus “is a historical absurdity.” The Ottoman empire “struck fear into the world for centuries before it earned its derogatory 19th-century sobriquet, ‘the sick man of Europe.’”

The fact is that, for all its setbacks, the Ottoman Empire – in over 600 years of history – remained the hegemon in the Middle East and one of the most important states in Europe, Africa and Asia until World War I. From 1453 up to the 19^th century, the Ottomans remained “at the center of global politics, economics and war.”

Just imagine. Ottoman armies ruled over vast swaths of Europe, Africa and Asia; the most crucial Silk and non-Silk trade corridors; key city hubs along the Mediterranean, the Red Sea, the Black Sea, the Caspian Sea, the Persian Gulf and the Indian Ocean. They ruled over Damascus, Istanbul, Cairo, Jerusalem, Mecca and Medina. That’s a long way from their humble beginnings as sheepherders in desolate trails across Central Asia.

And then there’s the ultimate badass: Sultan Selim.

Mikhail spends a great deal of his narrative carefully setting the stage for the eruption of the quintessentially Machiavellian Selim, even before he became Sultan in 1512. Still in Trabzon, in the Black Sea, as provincial governor, consolidating the imperial forces in the East, by 1492 Selim was fully aware how the alliance between Istanbul and Cairo conditioned European trade in what US neo-cons not long ago called the “Greater Middle East.”

The Ottomans and the Mamluks – whom Selim would later destroy as Sultan – controlled all access to the East from the Mediterranean. This geoeconomic fact by itself destroys the fable of European ascendancy during the Renaissance and the much-lauded “Age of Exploration”; it was all about Ottoman control of trade and commerce.

If anyone in Europe wanted to trade with China and India, they would have to adjust to the Ottoman’s “my way or the highway.” The Venetians tried, and it didn’t work. Genoese Columbus went full highway. Mikhail relishes nothing more than showing how the voyages of Columbus, in so many ways, “were a response to the power of the Ottomans.” They were “the political force that shaped Columbus and his generation more than any other.”

Things get positively heavy metal when Columbus is depicted as a Christian jihadi, as “he used the notion of a global civilizational war between Christendom and Islam to push his case for the Atlantic voyage.” Queen Isabella ended up buying it.

And then it all went downhill, in a literally bloody way, as “the vocabulary of war with Islam became the language of the Spanish conquest in the Americas.” The West conveniently forgets that all indigenous peoples were required (Mikhail’s own italics) to acknowledge that the Catholic Church was the universal power and that their own belief systems were absolutely inferior.

From Selim to Erdogan

Machiavelli was a huge fan of the Ottomans, whom he admired and feared. He was particularly impressed by Selim’s strategic acumen, always prevailing over nearly impossible odds. Machiavelli finished The Prince in the exact same year – 1513 – when Selim eliminated his half-brothers to finally secure the Sultanate, which he had conquered in 1512.

Selim started with a bang – with no less than an economic blockade against the Safavids, outlawing the export of Persian silk from the Ottoman empire. (That trade had been how the Iranians reached the Eastern Mediterranean and the lucrative European markets.

Selim casually hanging out with crocodiles in Egypt. Photo: Miniature included in the book

Selim casually hanging out with crocodiles in Egypt. Photo: Miniature included in the book

Selim’s victory over the Safavids in the Battle of Chaldiran was intertwined with something immensely eventful; the Portuguese capture of ultra-strategic Hormuz in 1515. That was the first European possession in the Persian Gulf. And what a prize: The Portuguese would now have control over shipping to and from the Persian Gulf, as well as a key hub linking to their new colonies on India’s west coast.

After the battle between Christians and Muslims crossed the Atlantic, the stage was set for the next chapter: Ottomans and Portuguese fighting for global power in the Indian Ocean.

Selim was on a roll. First he took Syria – incorporating legendary Damascus and Aleppo. Then he smashed the Mamluks – and that meant not only Cairo but also Jerusalem, Mecca, Medina and even Yemen, with its strategic access to the Indian Ocean and infinite possibilities for Ottoman commerce, starting with a monopoly on the silk trade.

The Selim Sultanate lasted only 8 years, from 1512 to 1520 – with geopolitical tectonic plates moving non-stop. Luther plunged Christianity into a religious civil war. The Ottomans controlled more territory around the Mediterranean than any other power. The European imperial drive hit the Indian Ocean. And then there was the ultimate theological challenge presented by the ultimate Other: Native Americans, north and south. They could not possibly be part of “God’s creation.”

When he died in 1520, Selim – sultan and also caliph – thought that being the ruler of the world’s largest empire was a given. He was, indeed, “God’s shadow on Earth.”

By the end of the last chapter in the book, “American Selim,” Mikhail again tackles the most burning question: why (his italics) Columbus had to cross the Atlantic. In a nutshell: “Hoping for an alliance with the Grand Khan of the East, he aimed to retake Jerusalem and destroy Islam; more prosaically, his voyages promised an end-run around the trade monopolies of the Ottomans and the Mamluks.”

After Columbus arrived in the Americas, Europeans inevitably filtered their experiences “through the lens of their wars with Muslims” and engaged “in a new version of their very old Crusades, a new kind of Catholic jihad.” Nevertheless, “Islam would continue to forge the histories of both Europe and the New World and the relationship between the two.”

After so much drama, Mikhail and the book’s editors still manage to present an outstanding image in the next before the last page: Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan ceremoniously staring at Selim’s tomb in Istanbul in 2017, after winning a constitutional referendum that expanded his powers enormously.

Like Machiavelli, Erdogan is mesmerized by Selim. But, unlike Machiavelli, he does not fear him; he wants to emulate him. What – weaponized – imperial dreams still lurk in the mind of the neo-Ottoman sultan?

بعد نهاية التاريخ‎ ‎نهاية أميركا… هكذا تكلّم فوكوياما!‏

محمد صادق الحسيني

لم يكد بريق الذهب يخطف عيني كريستوفر كولومبس في معابد “الهنود” وبيوتهم وزينة نسائهم حتى باح في يومياته (1492) عن رغبته في أن ينكبّ الإسبان 3 سنوات كاملة ومن ثم ميليشيا المستوطنين الانجلو ساكسون من بعدهم برعاية ملكتهم إيزابيلا ومعها البابا في حينه… على حصاد ذهب العالم الجديد… ليكون ضمن العدّة والعتاد اللازم إنفاقها في سبيل تحرير اورشليم، كما يوثق لنا الكاتب والمؤرخ والمحقق السوري الكبير البروفيسور منير العكش في كتابه – تلمود العم سام – عن أميركا المكتشفة صدفة من قبل كريستوفر…!

هذه هي أميركا التي ينتفض ضدها اليوم مواطنوها الجدد وهم من كل الأعراق والألوان والانتماءات تقريباً (عدا البيض الانجلو ساكسون) وهم يصوّبون معاول هدمهم ضدّ تماثيل الرموز المؤسّسة!

فقد جاء في الأخبار في الساعات المنصرمة ما يلي:

قام متظاهرون في مدينة بالتيمور في ولاية ماريلاند الأميركية، برمي تمثال لكريستوفر كولومبوس من قاعدته، وبعد ذلك قاموا بدحرجته إلى الخليج ورموه في مياه المحيط الأطلسي.

حدث ذلك على خلفية إطلاق الألعاب النارية في المدينة، بمناسبة عيد الاستقلال. ويُعدّ هذا التمثال، أحد تماثيل كولومبوس الثلاثة في المدينة.

حدث هذا الأمر بشكل متكرّر في أكثر من مدينة أميركية مع هذا الرمز المقدس لدى الجيل المؤسس لأميركا لكنه الرمز الذي بات مثيراً للجدل إن لم يكن مثيراً للاشمئزاز أيضاً لدى فئة واسعة من الأميركيين، وهو تحوّل مهمّ في العقيدة الوطنية الأميركية..!

وفي واشنطن بالقرب من البيت الأبيض أحرق متظاهرون علم الولايات المتحدة بعد خطاب احتفالي للرئيس دونالد ترامب.

وأظهرت شبكة “إن بي سي” المتظاهرين قرب البيت الأبيض، وهم يحرقون العلم ويردّدون هتافات ضدّ “العبودية والإبادة الجماعية والحرب”…

وأميركا “لم تعد عظيمة على الإطلاق…”!

هذان الخبران ينبغي ان يجعلانا نتنبه لأمر هام ونوعي بدأ يتدحرج كالمدحلة في اللاوعي والوعي الأميركي لا بد من مراقبته بدقة خطوة خطوة…

وهو ما دفع علماء الاجتماع في أميركا والعالم يجمعون بان أميركا القوة العظمى بدأت مسيرة الأفول التاريخية لها رغم كل مظاهر قوتها الشكلية التي لا زالت تحتفظ بها…

نعم أميركا ليست على وشك السقوط قريباً وبسرعة البرق، لكنها لم تعد أميركا التي عرفناها سابقاً أو عرّفت هي عن نفسها، كيف…!؟

يقول الفيلسوف الأميركي الياباني الأصل فوكوياما وهو صاحب مقولة وكتاب نهاية التاريخ التي اشتهرت قبل نحو عقد ونيف من الزمان، وخلاصتها أن تجربة الديمقراطية البشرية تنتهي عند التجربة الأميركية.

باعتبارها نهاية الإنجاز والنبوغ البشريّ وبعدها لا يمكن للعالم أن يقدّم ما هو افضل…!

عاد فوكوياما هذا نفسه، بعد الحوادث الأخيرة في أميركا (التي أعقبت جورج فلويد) ليقول:

إن كل قوة في العالم تعتمد على ثلاثة إمكانات لاستمرار بقائها

الأول نظام الدولة وهو ما سقط بشكل كامل في بلادنا (أميركا) مقابل تحدي فيروس كورونا على عكس ما حصل في دول مثل اليابان وايران والصين التي صمدت دولها أمام هذا التحدّي وقدّمت نموذجا مشجعاً، والكلام لفوكوياما…..!

الإمكانية الثانية وهي الثقة الشعبية وهو ما ظهر أنه يكاد ينعدم وينتهي عند الشعب الأميركي كما حصل في مواجهة حادثة جورج فلويد…!

الإمكانية الثالثة وهي القيادة والهيمنة، فالولايات المتحدة الأميركية فقدت سيطرتها وهيمنتها وقيادتها للعالم على كل الأصعدة اقتصادياً وسياسياً وأمنياً وعسكرياً ومعنوياً…!

انتهى كلام فوكوياما…

من يتابع التحولات الأميركية الاّخيرة بكل المستويات سيلاحظ التالي:

1- أن الشعب الأميركي المنتفض لا يهاجم الشرطة ولا الجيش ولا مؤسسات الدولة إلا ما ندر جداً، لكنه يجمع على مهاجمة الرموز التي صنعت وخلقت وصورت لنا أميركا التي كنا نراها ونعيشها، وآخر المؤشرات على ذلك هو الخبر أعلاه…

أي تماثيل كولومبس والعلم الأميركي وقبل ذلك جورج واشنطن وووو…

أي العبودية والزيف والخداع والحرب والاستكبار والشيطان الذي في داخل “اسرائيل” الأولى أي أميركا…

2- لقد فشل النظام الأميركي من الناحية البنيوية خلال السبعين سنة الماضية التي أعقبت الحرب العالمية الثانية ان يقدم نموذجاً حضارياً اجتماعياً يمكن المراهنة عليه دفاعاً عن طبقات المجتمع المختلفة بعدما حطّم الطبقة الأميركية الوسطى تحطيماً كاملاً وتحوّل الى نظام أقلوي تحكمه الطبقة الأنجلوساكسونية البيضاء الثرية والمتسلطة على ما يزيد على نحو 70 في المئة من السكان المنتمين لأعراق ومجموعات اجتماعية لا تنتمي للعرق الانجلو ساكسوني الابيض، حتى باتت شبه معدمة بالمقارنة مع الثراء الفاحش المتكدس بيد الأقلية الأوليغارشية..

على عكس الصين الشعبية التي نجحت في إعلاء شأن او رفع مستوى نحو 800 مليون مواطن صيني من الفقر لتضعهم على مستوى الطبقة الوسطى..!

3- على مستوى الحضور الأميركي في الموازين الدولية فأميركا ولأول مرة لم تعد الاقتصاد الاول في العالم ولا حتى من الاقتصادات النموذجية التي يشار اليها بالبنان…

لقد بدأت تبيع خاماتها النفطية بطريقة تنافسية متهافتة لتعديل إيراداتها؛ وهو ما ظهر بشكل خاص في زيادة ما مقداره اكثر من 3 ملايين برميل يومياً في محاولة للحاق بالصين وسائر الدول المنافسة لها في الأسواق العالمية…

4- لقد فقدت أميركا نضارتها وحيويتها السياسية كنظام وقدرتها على العطاء او تقديم أي شيء جديد حتى في المثل الديمقراطية التي ظلت تتغنى بها لعقود طويلة…

ان نظرة فاحصة لما يجري مما يمكن تسميته بالطائفية الحزبية مثلاً بين الحزبين الحاكمين يمكننا القول إن النظام السياسي الحاكم لم يعد قادراً حتى ان يتخيل سباقات حزبية ومنافسات سلسة وقانونية معتبرة بين الحزبين الجمهوري والديمقراطي بشكل طبيعي ناهيك عن سماحه أو إتاحته الفرصة لبروز او تبلور تيار او حزب او مرشح ثالث…!

النظام الأميركي اذن بدأ يتآكل ويتصدع في بنيته الاساسية التي بنى عليها كل أوهامه وأطماعه..

نعم قد لا يسقط أمامنا سريعاً..

لكن رحلة أفوله بدأت بالفعل وباعتراف وإجماع كل علماء الاجتماع السياسي العالمي..

أميركا التي عرفناها وهي تتغذّى وترضع من حليب الحروب التي تخوضها بقواتها المقتحمة للأراضي والبحار لم تعد تقوى على الحروب، لقد ودعت الحرب بعد أن فقدت كل أنواع المناعات التي تؤهلها لخوض أي حرب جديدة…

النظام السياسي الأميركي الذي عرفناه حتى الآن بات في عين التحدي والعاصفة داخلياً وخارجياً…

ستنخره “الأرضة” التي نخرت عصا سليمان من الداخل…

هذا هو حال أميركا في هذه اللحظة التاريخيّة…

على مدى أربعة قرون ظلت “فكرة أميركا” تخطف روح كل الشرائع وتطوّعها لأهدافها الامبراطورية الثلاثة التي ورثتها لقاعدتها المتقدّمة “إسرائيل” ألا وهي:

1- اجتياح أرض الغير( الغزو).

2- استبدال سكان الأرض المحتلة بسكان جدد.

3- استبدال ثقافة وتاريخ تلك البلدان بثقافة المحتلين الغرباء وتاريخهم.

هذه الفكرة الأميركية وصلت الى محطتها الأخيرة على ما يبدو، اي الى طريق مسدود وبدأت تفقد بريقها في الداخل قبل الخارج كما يقول فوكوياما.

لذلك كان من الطبيعي أن تظهر بدايات انتفاضة شعبية ضد الرموز وفي مقدمتهم اولئك الذين طمعوا بذهب السكان الأصليين وذهب العالم..

أي كريستوفر كولومبس.

وهذا ما يتوقع ان يمتد قريباً إلى قاعدة أميركا المتقدّمة أي “اسرائيل” الثانية الصغيرة التي زرعوها على يابستنا ومياهنا الفلسطينية العربية…

لقد حان وقت سقوط السامري الذي عبدوه لمدة قرون.

انتهت صلاحيّة أميركا السامرية أو تكاد.

بعدنا طيبين قولوا الله.

It Is the Century of Falling Racism Statues…And White Supremacy

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By Elham Hashemi

George Floyd’s brutal killing was like a stone thrown into the pond, causing a non-stop ripple effect. For the first time in modern history, people across the United States and Europe sound their disgust and unease towards the racist policies carried out by the US administration and the systems across the Western part of the world.

It started with protests and riots, and so far has not come to an end. One interesting scene is how the streets began to fill up with people despite police violence and statues started to fall down; these are not any statues but are in fact statues of racism and white supremacy.

In the United States, more than a dozen statues have been toppled, including several Confederate figures. To begin with, a few statues of Christopher Columbus who is depicted as “THE hero” began to fall down. Rarely do educational texts or reports refer to Columbus’s true image.

Bartolemé de las Casas, who was said to have known Columbus in person, decried the brutality in his “A Short Account of the Destruction of the Indies in 1552”. He described how Columbus and the conquistadors disfigured Native slaves and fed them alive to dogs.

 A statue of Christopher Columbus was beheaded in Boston. A Columbus statue was also destroyed and dragged into a lake earlier in the week in Richmond, Virginia. After the figure was removed from its pedestal by protesters using several ropes in Richmond, a sign that reads, “Columbus represents genocide” was placed on the spray-painted foundation that once held the statue. In Camden, a New Jersey city near Philadelphia, protestors took down a statue of Christopher Columbus, joining others across the country.

A 10-foot bronze sculpture of Columbus was also toppled in Minnesota after a group of protests tied ropes around the neck of the statue and yanked it from its pedestal.

Theodor Roosevelt’s statue at NY museum of natural history was reported to be removed soon for its symbolism of the Native American man and the African man who stands beside him.

In Belgium’s Antwerp, thousands of protesters marching for Black Lives Matter filled the streets and demanded the removal of statues of King Léopold II, a brutal colonial ruler. The Belgian king statue who brutalized Congo was burned and ultimately removed.

It was the statue of King Léopold; infamous for genocide with his orchestration of mass violence against the people in the Congo, a large portion of which he considered his personal territory for cultivating and exporting rubber and ivory.

In Britain, a statue of the 17th-century slave trader Edward Colston was toppled by protesters and dumped into the very same waters of the Bristol Harbor that launched slave ships centuries ago.

Protesters have also made threats against statues of former Prime Minister Winston Churchill, the architect of colonial policies that lead to the mass starvation of some four million Indians, the torture of Kenyans, and was in favor of using poisoned gas against “uncivilized” tribes.

Shamelessly, the British government sealed Churchill’s statue inside a protective steel barrier ahead of the massive London race protest which Prime Minister Boris Johnson claimed has been “hijacked” by extremists. In this context, it is not surprising to hear the racist language of Johnson and his claims that the protests are hijacked.

At the University of Oxford, protesters have stepped up their longtime push to remove a statue of Rhodes, the Victorian imperialist who served as prime minister of the Cape Colony in southern Africa. He made a fortune from gold and diamonds on the backs of miners who labored in brutal conditions.

Also in London, the statue of 18th Century slave trader Robert Milligan has been pulled down from outside the Museum of London Docklands after campaigners vowed to protest every day until it was removed.

New Zealand’s fourth-largest city removed a bronze statue of the British naval officer Capt. John Hamilton after a Maori tribe asked for the statue to be taken down and one Maori elder threatened to tear it down himself. The city of Hamilton said it was clear the statue of the man accused of killing indigenous Maori people in the 1860s would be vandalized.

The statues and monuments that have long honored racist figures are being boxed up, beheaded and sprayed in paint. It is not only because black lives matter, it is because the racist and white supremacist discrimination cannot be tolerated any longer. The New York Times reported that in dozens more cities across the US, statues that still stand have been marked with graffiti, challenged anew with petitions and protests, or scheduled for removal.

Among these statues, a “living statue” named Donald Trump must also be removed in order to preserve human dignity and freedom and end racism. White supremacists and other hateful actors attack immigrants, communities of color, and religious minorities with impunity — all under the Trump administration’s watch.

Tragedies during the Trump time have taken place across the US, targeting African Americans, immigrants and minorities, and these were encouraged by the same force of white supremacy. White supremacists including president Trump and his loyalists deploy disruptive rhetoric and enact racist policies like the Muslim Ban, family separation, attempts silence voters of color. At the end of the day, policies of violence and hate produce acts of violence and hate. The people of America, Europe and the world are rising in face of imperialism and white supremacy, it is no longer a time when the US administration can manipulate the free people of the world.

هل قطار الشرّ الأمريكي قابل للإيقاف

نضال حمد – رئيس تحرير موقع الصفصاف

تابعت مشاهدة الاحتجاجات في الولايات المتحدة الأمريكية على اثر قيام شرطي عنصري أبيض بقتل شاب ( زنجي) خنقاً. فتذكرت أحداث فيلم (غير قابل للإيقاف) التي تتحدث عن قطار مسرع خرج عن السيطرة، في حين يحاول بطلا الفيلم فرانك بارنز (دنزل واشنطن) و ويل كولسون (كريس باين) إيقافه. بعد مغامرة شاقة يستطيع البطلان (الزنجي) و(الأبيض) إيقافه بنجاح.

 لقد عالجت السينما الأمريكية قضية العنصرية والرق والتمييز في عديد من أفلامها الشهيرة والتي تعد بعضها من روائع السينما ونالت شهرة واسعة، لكن على ما يبدو انها لم تساعد السياسيين في أمريكا على التخلص من العنصرية والتمييز والجشع الرأسمالي الامبريالي. وبمناسبة الحديث عن الافلام المذكورة يمكن ذكر الأحداث الشهيرة في أمريكا التي اندلعت على اثر ادعاء زوجين في  16 تموز 1949 إنهما تعرّضا لهجوم من قبل أربعة شبان من أصل إفريقي في غروفلاند. حيث اسفر الهجوم بحسب ادعائهم عن اغتصاب الفتاة نورما بادجيت التي كانت آنذاك تبلغ من العمر 17 عاماً. كان حادثا مروعا ومن أكثر الحوادث الدامية بين (البيض) و(السود). تم تعذيب أحد المتهمين( الزنوج) حتى الموت ووجدت في جسده اثار 400 رصاصة. بعد 70 عاماً تمت تبرئة المتهمين وأفادت المحكمة أن كل ما نسب إليهم من تهم كان باطلاً. كما تبين أن القصة برمتها كانت قضية عنصرية، من تأليف قائد شرطة المدينة ويليس ماكال، الذي كان من أشد العنصريين.

 تنص المادة الأولى من الإعلان العالمي لحقوق الإنسان على أن “جميع الناس يولدون أحرارًا ومتساوين في الكرامة والحقوق”. منذ 1949 بدأ العالم الاحتفال في 2 ديسمبر بـ”اليوم العالمي لإلغاء الرق”، الذي يهدف إلى القضاء على كل أشكال الرق والعنصرية، حيث أقرته اتفاقية الأمم المتحدة. لكن قطار الاستعباد والاستعمار الأمريكي والغربي استمر بأساليب أخرى حديثة ومتطورة.

 بعد انتهاء فترة الرئيس الأمريكي الافريقي الأصل بارك أوباما انتخبت أمريكا رئيسا عنصريا وتاجرا جشعا يدعى دونالد ترامب. لا يخفي عنصريته وعجرفته حتى ضد حلفاء الولايات المتحدة. إذ يتعامل معهم بعقلية التاجر البلطجي وزعيم المافيا. لغاية الآن يرفض توجيه خطاب للشعب الأمريكي حول الأحداث العاصفة التي تدور في المدن الأمريكية. لقد دمر المتظاهرون نصبا تذكارية عديدة منها لجورج واشنطن مؤسس أمريكا ولكرستوفر كولومبس مكتشف أمريكا. وكلاهما عنصريين دمويين ساهما في ابادة الهنود الحمر سكان البلد الأصليين.

عرفت أمريكا أبشع أنواع الرق والعبودية في التاريخ البشري الحديث، فبعد ابادة السكان الأصليين الهنود تم استعباد (السود). حيث جُلب الأفارقة لاستعبادهم بشكل همجي لا مثيل له.  سيبقى هذا العمل الاجرامي اللاانساني وصمة عار تقبح وجه أمريكا حتى الأبد..

إن اظهار الأمر وكأن هناك  مساواة فعلاً بين السكان في الولايات المتحدة لا ينطلي على أحد. إذ لازالت هناك فوارق كبيرة بين الجانبين في كل مجالات الحياة. حتى أن وباء كورنا حصد الكثير من (السود) بسبب الاهمال وانعدام الرعاية من قبل الدولة. كما يدل التعامل العنصري للشرطة الأمريكية مع (السود) على مر السنين وحتى حادثة قتل جورج فلوريد مؤخراً على استعداد النظام الرأسمالي العنصري لقتلهم بكافة الأساليب وبدون الشعور بالذنب أو الرجوع للعدالة وللقوانين.

 ليس أسهل من أن يكذب الانسان حين يصف الولايات المتحدة الأمريكية بحامية وضامنة العدالة والديمقراطية والسلام في العالم. تلك الكذبة وجدت لها مكانة كبيرة وسط شعوب أوروبا الشرقية بالذات، حيث كانت تحكم أنظمة حكم شمولية، ساهمت في تكريه الشعوب تلك بالشيوعية والاشتراكية وفي انجرارها وراء الدعاية الامبريالية والرأسمالي. يبدو أن تلك الشعوب ستنتظر طويلا حتى تعرف أن نظام الارهاب والعنصرية الأمريكي أسوأ بكثير من النظام الشمولي الذي قمعها سواء عبر منع الناس من التملك والحركة وحتى اقتناء أبسط الأشياء مثل جواز السفر والسيارة.

 على كل حال موضوعنا الآن عن العنصرية والاستعباد والتمييز والظلم في أمريكا، حيث منذ تأسيس الامبراطورية الأمريكية على عظام وفوق جماجم سكانها الأصليين من الهنود الحمر، الذين أبيدت غالبيتهم العظمى أما بالأوبئة أو رميا بالرصاص من الرشاشات الثقيلة. كل تلك المذابح وعمليات الإبادة تمت على أيدي الغزاة والمستعمرين البيض القادمين من أوروبا وممالكها آنذاك للعثور على أرض الميعاد، لكنها الأرض التي لم تكن لهم ولم يفكر شعبها يوما ما بميعاد مع الغزاة المجرمين حيث كانت  ابادته ونهايته. ميعاد مع الإرهابي والسفاح الأول كولومبوس وصولا الى جورج واشنطن وتباعا حتى يومنا هذا حيث يحكم رئيس عنصري وشخص استعلائي، تاجر رأسمالي اسمه ترامب، يعادي البشرية والحضارة العالمية.

 أمريكا أرض الميعاد” لشعب الله المختار” أي لمن اعتبروا أنفسهم كما اليهود الصهاينة المحتلين في فلسطين شعبا بلا أرض استطاع أن يؤسس وطنا للشعب  المختار. تأسست أمريكا في البدء بالدم والحديد والنار، عبر مجموعات من المجرمين وقطاع الطرق الذين وصلوا الى أرض الهنود الحمر. وبنفس الطريقة تأسس الكيان الصهيوني في فلسطين المحتلة، الذي حظي ولازال يحظى بكل الدعم الأمريكي والغربي. لأنه يمثل قاعدة متقدمة للاستعمار العالمي الرأسمالي الامبريالي في بلادنا. نفس هؤلاء عندما تمكنوا من ابادة الهنود أخذوا يبحثون عن (الزنوج) الأفارقة حيث تمت عمليات اختطافهم من بلدانهم الأصلية وجلبهم للخدمة والعمل كعبيد لدى السادة البيض حيث تم اضطهادهم على مدار سنوات طويلة.

على كل حال الهبة الشعبية الأمريكية ضد الجريمة والعنصرية لن تنجح بدون ايجاد قيادة تمثلها وتعد لها برنامج عمل واضح للتغيير وتحقيق مطالبها والاطاحة بالادارة الأمريكية الحالية، ثم العمل على تغيير النظام الأمريكي الراسمالي الى نظام انساني وديمقراطي حقيقي وغير عنصري.

A letter to Italian-Americans

Source

June 21, 2020

By POSTFATARESURGO for The Saker Blog

The World Thought Police (WTP) has included Cristoforo Colombo, a.k.a. Christopher Columbus, in his black list. He was a “bad” person, period. Details are not needed. WTP’s decision are not questionable, nor they can be subject to anyone’s appeal, scrutiny or disagreement. Once the WTP issues a red flag on anyone, past, present or future, scores of enforcers are ready, as they were waiting for a signal, to go into action. Even the most neutral observer of current events will have to admit that this ongoing heritage hate frenzy plays along well consolidated tactics, anything but “spontaneous”. Proof of that could easily come from asking participants in the hysteric toppling of statues around the US if they could correctly place dates and events related to the subject to be grounded: somebody has done that and all the answers he could receive were growls from a crowd of rabid Pavlov’s dogs who admit no questioning to their rage. After all a basic tenet of victimhood philosophy is that virtually everyone with problems, perceived problems, or a bad life situation, is a victim. Racial, sexual, age, ethnic, political, or whatever discrimination factor, outside one’s self, is to blame for one’s problems.

As for Americans of Italian heritage, the ultimate date to celebrate is the discovery of the new world by an Italian, Cristoforo Colombo on October 12^th, 1492. But Colombo had no idea of being “Italian”, nor other prominent “Italian” navigators and explorers of the time, incidentally all of them working for national states such as Spain, France or England, simply because there was not a state called “Italy” that could have financed their costly voyages.

Therefore, Colombo always considered himself a Genoese, Vespucci and Verrazzano considered themselves Florentines, and Giovanni Caboto – although probably born in Gaeta – was sure to be Venetian. Giovanni da Verrazzano (whose correct spelling was only recently recognized by the state of New York) was in fact the first European to set foot in North America and Amerigo Vespucci unwillingly gave the name to the entire continent, courtesy of the German cartographer Waldseemüller.

As for Columbus, targeted by many as one of symbols representing a past that must be eradicated, there are indeed records and historical accounts that prove that he was not – by today’s standards – benevolent towards natives he came in contact with. Rather, he probably did not consider them any different than animals or objects, just like the Romans who considered – without any qualms of conscience – other human beings they had reduced to the status of slaves, just that: objects to be used for any labor necessities, whether by a private owner who had purchased them, or by the state for public works such as roads or public buildings such as arenas or aqueducts.

So, where do we go from here? It doesn’t take long to figure out that if we continue to examine history by todays’ “moral standards”, the path becomes endless. Soon there will be an endless list of human beings –under any denomination possible – demanding some sort of compensation for torts, damages, injustices, presumed violence, discrimination, unfair treatment, you name it.

Let’s get back to the Romans. They got their huge empire by conquering, that is by subjugating with violence other human beings, all over western Europe, northern Africa, and parts of Asia. Never mind that eventually those “barbarians” conquered themselves a crumbling Roman empire certainly not waging an olive branch. What about ancient peoples of the Italian peninsula? They were mostly peaceful populations who would have lived happily along the Romans, but the Romans waged war to their neighbors Etruscans, Sabines, Picenes, Ligures, Samnites, Lucani, Celts, Gauls just to name a few.

A possible lawsuit against the city of Rome by anyone claiming “suffering damages” enhanced by racial hatred in a past life is looming in the not so distant future, not to mention that statues of Roman emperors, the Colosseum and Roman arches of triumph are inevitably at risk.

What about the making of Italy as a nation? In 1861, the various states comprised in the Italian peninsula, including duchies and grand-duchies, decided to become all Italians and put aside almost two thousand years of differences and live happily together. At least that’s what history manuals have told us all along, right? Not quite.

Neapolitan philosopher Giovanbattista Vico stated that history invariably repeats itself. And one of the basic lessons of history is that it is written by the winners. The making of Italy was no exception to the rule as it was the annexation of a number of sovereign and independent states to another that simply had the military force to do so, because aided by foreign powers, namely France and Great Britain.

Giovanni Giolitti, the Italian statesman who ruled Italy for decades before Mussolini seized power in 1922, used to repeat that after all the Risorgimento was a fairytale, but a useful one, and as such it should be left untouched. In essence, the making of Italy caused for most Italians, especially from the south, suffering and despair, due to an unbearable worsening of their livelihoods, so bad in fact that millions were forced to emigrate to both North and South America. It was, once again since the beginning of recorded history, one organized elite who prevailed upon innocent populations who lived peaceful lives under their respective Kings and Dukes, which –incidentally – had not declared nor sought any conflict whatsoever with Piedmont or any other Italian state.

Ironically, the Kingdom of Piedmont (also called Kingdom of Sardinia as the island was part of it) was by all accounts the least “Italian” of all other Italian states. In fact the common language used in Piedmont was French, and the opening declaration of the Kingdom of Italy, pronounced on March 17^th, 1861 by Camillo Benso di Cavour were in fact pronounced in French: “Le Royaume d’Italie est aujourd’hui un fait. Le Roi, notre auguste souverain prend pour lui-même et pour ses successeurs le titre de Roi d’Italie”. (The Kingdom of Italy is today accomplished. The King, our august sovereign, assumes for himself and his successors the title of King of Italy)

That the opening statement of the new nation was pronounced in French is one of the many details historians failed to describe or deleted altogether because inconvenient to the official narrative of the making of Italy. Neither Cavour nor the new king himself, Victor Emmanuel II, really knew how to express themselves in Italian, as the common language was the local dialect or, in more official occasions, French. Even after 1861 French was kept in use for most official acts of the new government as most employees and representatives came from Piedmont and had therefore no knowledge of Italian, which was used by no more than 2-3% of the populations of the Italian peninsula. The rest was simply other dialects, or other languages like Neapolitan.

Every basic manual of Italian history will tell you that Italy has its “founding fathers” and incidentally they all came from the Kingdom of Piedmont: Mazzini, the political father, ideologue and mastermind. Cavour, the discreet strategist and diplomat. The first King of Italy, Victor Emmanuel II, who preferred to be named in continuity with the dynastic line of Savoy, instead of becoming what should have been Victor Emmanuel I of Italy. And the quintessential Italian hero, Garibaldi.

Garibaldi enjoys a statue in every Italian city, village or hamlet. Universally recognized as the man who single handedly defeated all the enemies of Italian populations longing for liberty under one state, he also spent quite some time in South America, where he had to make a living, somehow. In 1852, in Lima, he decided to assume Peruvian citizenship in order to be named captain of a vessel that was to offer regular service from Lima to China with a cargo of guamo fertilizer, and sail back from Canton with a cargo of coolies, chinese peasants of the lowest class, who were practically brought to Peru by force to extract Guamo as slave labor force for a job not even the poorest Peruvians wanted to do.

So we have a problem here. Even a champion of liberty as Garibaldi could come under scrutiny as a slave trader and his statues soon could come down as symbols of a past that must be eradicated. Soon a worldwide ban on Garibaldi’s symbols could be enacted by the WTP and his statues – worldwide, but especially in Italy – singled out for immediate demolition.

But Colombo and Garibaldi were simply men of their times who were not burdened by the moral dilemmas of the 21^st century. We should know better than judging with today’s standards men of the past, despite all their flaws. After all we should know that men of the future will judge many of today’s standards with inevitable different ones.

Italian Americans – regardless of their political affiliation – should see Colombo as one “Italian” who embodied one of quintessential American qualities: don’t take the word “impossible” for granted. Most seamen of his time believed that the discovery of another part of the world sailing westward was “impossible” as – in their beliefs – the ocean was simply an endless body of water no human being should dare to challenge.

The making of Italy inevitably caused emigration and suffering to millions of people, just as Garibaldi or Colombo did cause suffering to other fellow human beings, thinking they were doing “the right thing”. That has happened in every country or civilization of the past, and it will happen inevitably again. But statues, or symbols, are essential: they help us remember, no matter what.

Destroying statues is a complete useless damnatio memoriae which serves no one. Neither the perpetrators, who should be remembered and judged for their deeds, good or bad, nor the victims, which will be completely forgotten. But it does serve the same old movers and shakers who are acting – and funding – behind the scenes this wave of hysteria in order to eradicate our symbols, and therefore our memory.

Education Is Offensive and Racist and so is America

June 13, 2020

Paul Craig Roberts

Years of teaching blacks to have grievances against white people for things that happened centuries ago have come to fruition. Rioting and looting are not enough, the violent thugs and ignorant woke creatures are pulling down historic monuments in public parks and defacing public buildings while police and public authorities stand down.

In Richmond, Virginia, a statue eight feet tall of Christopher Columbus in a public park has just been pulled down and rolled into a lake by a group of thugs.  Why?  “Columbus represents genocide.”  What the barbarians mean is that by discovering America, Columbus exposed the inhabitants to invasion from abroad, which is what the US has been undergoing since 1965. 

Who hasn’t suffered invasions?  Why of all the countless invasions in history is European entry into the new world so upsetting.  Columbus wasn’t looking to invade any country.  He was testing a theory and hoping to find a shorter route to the spice trade.

Any number of Confederate memorials are being pulled down.  Not even Robert E. Lee will be spared.  Are public authorities  so stupid that they do not understand that their acquiescence to lawlessness and destruction of property lets the genie out of the bottle?  

The new word for racist is white.  By definition a white person is a racist.  The two words are synonyms.  Every stature of every white person is a statue of a racist and can be pulled down. The Republican-led Senate Armed Services Committee has amended the defense bill to require the US military to rename bases named after anyone who served under the Confederate flag. They don’t understand that as white is a synonym for racist, all whites, including Union officers, are racists. All US military bases will have to be named after blacks or it will be racist.  Grant and Lee were both white and served together fighting for American empire in the war against people of color in Mexico. The only difference between Grant and Lee is that in addition to fighting for American empire against Mexico, Grant also fought for American empire against the South. 

History is also being pulled down.  Future historians will be perplexed to find no signs of the racism on which the NY Times says America was founded.  

Ignorance is everywhere. RT describes Columbus as “another notorious figure in the history of slavery.”  What!? The year 1492 was long before the black Kindgom of Dahomey created the black slave trade and long before there were any colonies needing a labor force.  But facts no longer matter.  Truth is whatever is emotionally satisfying.

America is said to be a superpower, but its inhabitants collapse in excruciating pain over a mere word. The pain felt by mental and emotional weaklings is so severe that it has caused universities to overthrow academic freedom.  At UCLA, once a university and now a propaganda ministry, a faculty member is under investigation for reading Martin Luther King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” to the class he teaches.  The letter (April 16, 1963) was King’s reply to black pastors who expressed their concern to him about his arrival as an outsider to their community to stir up confrontation when they were working to negotiate the achievement of the same goals peaceably. King’s answer was that confrontation sharpens the issue and will aid their negotiations. Creating a crisis, King told the pastors, fosters tension and forces a community to deal with the issue.

What did the professor do wrong by reading King’s own explanation of his strategy?  The professor is in trouble because King in his letter used the word “nigger” and in reading King’s letter to the class, the professor read the word “nigger.”  OhMyGod, a white man said “nigger.”

Oh, the hurt, the offense!  University administrators have denounced the professor. To keep the controversy going students are urged to come forward with complaints. A town hall will be held to outline future next steps. 

Think about this for a minute. According to reports “numerous students plead (sic ) with Professor Ajax Peris to not use the n word.”  But it was King, not Peris, who used the n word. What is the message here?  Does it mean that a white person cannot read out loud Martin Luther King’s letter?  If the professor wanted students to be aware of the letter, would he have to bring in a black guest lecturer to read the letter?  Would the professor still be accused of insensitivity if he gave  Martin Luther King’s letter to the students as a reading assignment?  Does it mean that King himself committed an offense by using the n word?

The professor also showed the class a documentary about lynching. The documentary had graphic descriptions that distressed and angered the students.  Do we have here the plight of what sounds like a leftwing professor trying to rile up blacks against whites and finding that he cannot succeed because the necessary words and images cause them paroxysms of pain?

In our oh-so-sensitive-times, no one is concerned about giving offense to Southerners.  White Republican senators are leading the charge to rename military bases. Not to be outdone, black members of the House want to remove what they call Confederate statues from the vicinity of the Capitol as part of the protest against police violence in Minneapolis. They are having a fit over Jefferson Davis, who for 3 or 4 years of his life was president of the Confederate States of America. Much more of Davis’ life was spent serving the United States of America as a military officer, a US Senator and as US Secretary of War (they were more honest in those days; today they call it “defense”).  Davis was a West Point graduate. As an officer in the US Army he fought for the US empire in the Mexican-American war. It was Davis who led the sucessful charge on the La Teneria fort in the Battle of Monterrey.  He was married to the daughter of US President Zachary Taylor. He argued against secession.  These are the reasons that there is a statue of him.

Davis, like Robert E. Lee, and so many others from Southern states spent their life in service to the United States. They rallied to the Confederacy only because Lincoln invaded their states.  People are so ignorant today, especially those who go around shouting “racist,” that they are unaware that in those days people regarded their home state as their country.  The US Constitution gave governing power to the states, reserving to the states all powers not ennumerated to the federal government.  All of this was changed by Lincoln’s war which consolidated power in Washington and eventually turned largely independent states into vassals of Washington.

Robert E. Lee, a West Point Graduate, spent his life in the US military fighting wars for the US empire. He served as Superintendent of the United States Military Academy. He was so highly regarded that he was offered a Union command in Lincoln’s war. Lee’s response was that as a Virginian, he could not lead an army to invade his country.  If the US was going to invade Virginia, he would have to resign his commission in the US Army.

An ignorant person once wrote in CounterPunch that Lee had 200 slaves.  Lee had no plantation. He spent his life fighting against Indians and Mexicans for the American empire. It did not occur to the peabrain at CounterPunch what a person fighting Indians on the frontier and Mexicans in Mexico would do with 200 slaves.  But as I have often observed, it you are out to demonize someone—Trump, Putin, or Lee—you say whatever does the job.

Lee had to take a leave from the US army for 2 years in order to settle his father-in-law’s estate, which had land holdings and slaves on one side of the ledger and massive debts on the other. The aim was to emancipate the slaves. Knowing that, some slaves pushed it before it could be done. They were punished, and ever since it has been used to blacken Lee who had fiduciary duties.

The current line is that Confederate memorials “pay tribute to white supremacy and slavery,” as the most ignorant Barbara Lee (D, CA) put it.  So, according to a person regarded by people in California of sufficient intelligence and integrity to represent them in Washington, a Southerner who resists the invasion of his country is a white supremacist.

As has been proven so many times, the so-called “Civil War” was fought over economics, not slavery. Lincoln himself intended to send the blacks back to Africa, judging them unfit to live among white people.  Lincoln said over and over that the war was fought to preserve the Union. He gave assurances to the South that they could have slaves as long as they stayed in the Union and paid the tariff. Historians have researched the letters and diaries of participants on both sides of the war and found that soldiers were not fighting for or against slavery. The North was fighting for the Union, and the South was fighting because the South was invaded.  There is a famous book in which the contents of the wartime letters and diaries are recorded.

Yet the real documented history has been replaced with a false made-up history that serves the sole purpose of creating dissention and hatred in a vulnerable and fragile multicultural society.  

As I recently wrote using Richard Weaver’s title, ideas have consequences. The stand downs of police and public authorities while criminals loot and destroy are consequences of the false history that has been created for the United States. 

The United States is a Tower of Babel from which white people should flee. The state of collapse is advanced. With mayors and governors refusing to protect property from black looters, President Trump threatened to call out the US military.  His own Secretary of Defense, Mark Esper, and his own Chairman of the Joint Chief of Staff, Mark Milley, quickly informed the US military that their duty was to the Constitution, not to the President. The two made a show of this to undercut President Trump and to present him as a tyrant for trying to fulfill his constitutional obligation to protect private property and the lives of citizens.  Apparently, both Esper and Milley are too dumbshit to understand that it is a constitutional duty to protect property.

Trump is not Establishment, but his government is. Trump is a President surrounded by his enemies. Trump attempted to be a president of the people, but the Establishment will not permit it.  Trump will be the last president who attempts to represent the American people.  All future presidents will have learned the lesson in advance. An American president serves the ruling elite and no one else.  The elite have worked long and hard to acquire a divided population that cannot unite against them.  They have succeeded. 

Why First Nations People Regard Thanksgiving Day as a National Day of Mourning

(And why Alexander Ramsey Should be Posthumously Tried for Crimes Against Humanity)

By Dr. Gary G. Kohls

Global Research, November 28, 2019

Global Research 25 November 2014

“The Sioux (aka Lakota) Indians of Minnesota must be exterminated or driven forever beyond the borders of the state.” – Minnesota Governor Alexander Ramsey

We turkey-celebrating, obese, sports-addicted, shop-until-you-drop, historically-illiterate couch potatoes are all beneficiaries of the acts of our guilty ancestors who may have been unaware perpetrators of the crimes against humanity that occurred during the never-ending, shameful 500 year-long history of genocide, ethnic cleansing, colonizing and occupation of the people and the land that rightfully belonged the aboriginal tribes that had inhabited North, Central and South America for thousands of years before Columbus (who had no clue as to where he was) and his sex-starved sailors disembarked from their stinking ships and started pillaging the land and raping the most nubile female inhabitants back in 1492. (Soon cutting off the hands of  those  who couldn’t bring in their quota of gold from precious metal-less mines.)

Thus started the systematic genocide against the aboriginal, non-white people that led eventually – and perhaps inevitably – to the cruelty and crimes against humanity that enslaved millions of black Africans, many of whom died in chains even before they reached this so-called “promised land”.

In many cases the psychopathic killer-conquistadors that followed Columbus, were initially welcomed, tolerated and even nurtured (a la the mythical First Thanksgiving) – rather than being killed off as the criminal invaders that they were. Trusting the intruders to return their hospitality – in the spirit of the Christian Golden Rule – turned out to have been a huge mistake, for within decades the slaughter began, performed in the name of Christ – with the blessings of the accompanying priests whose mission was to convert the heathen to Christianity  under threat of death.

Most of our European ancestors were greatly enriched by the US Army’s massacres, the occupation and theft of their land, the exploitation of the resources, the colonization and the destruction of their way of life. We pink-skinned progeny have been conditioned to believe way too many myths about our obfuscated history. Thanks to our cunningly censored history books and the myths learned in Sunday School over the ages, we have been led to believe the story about the “nice” Pilgrims who landed at Plymouth Rock in 1620 and who gratefully shared a feast with their new friendly Indian neighbors (who were soon to be driven off their land and annihilated by the Puritan so-called “christians” and others that soon followed).

The disinformation process about the first Thanksgiving (and the successor long week-end that happens every fourth Thursday of November in the US) has been designed to absolve our ancestors of guilt for the cruel bloodbaths that were perpetrated “in their names” by obedient soldiers against the militarily weaker aboriginals, a pattern that has been repeated against many weaker nations all around the world throughout our history.

The following censored-out stories about a few of our so-called “heroes” need to be told in the context of the true history of the American genocide of the First Nations people that happened right here in River City. Those “heroes” include Minnesota’s first two governors and one humiliated Civil War general.

The following quotes and explanatory commentary will expand on the title of this essay.

“The Sioux (aka Lakota) Indians of Minnesota must be exterminated or driven forever beyond the borders of the state.” – Minnesota Governor Alexander Ramsey in a genocidal declaration made on Sept. 9, 1862. Ramsey had made a fortune in real estate because of his dealings selling property to white settlers and businessmen after he himself had negotiated US-Dakota treaties that cheated the Dakota tribes out of their land. (http://sites.mnhs.org/historic-sites/alexander-ramsey-house/history)

“I shall do full justice, but no more.  I do not propose to murder any man, even a savage, who is shown to be innocent.” “I shall probably approve them (the executions of the 303 Dakota warriors) and hang the villains” — Ex-Minnesota Governor, Colonel Henry H. Sibley, whose troops had defeated Chief Little Crow in the Battle of Wood Lake on August 23. Sibley had appointed the five member military tribunal that tried, convicted and sentenced, via death by hanging, 303 Dakota warriors that had been captured in the battle that ended the 6 week US-Dakota War of 1862.. Sibley was commenting on the fate of the convicted warriors, all but 38 of whom had their death sentences commuted by President Lincoln. Many warriors were imprisoned at Camp McClellan, near Davenport, Iowa and more than 1,600 non-combatants were imprisoned at a concentration camp at Fort Snelling over the winter of 1862 – 63. Those that survived the cold, the starvation diets and the diseases were then deported to concentration camps in Nebraska and South Dakota (Pine Ridge). (http://www.minnpost.com/minnesota-history/2012/09/150-years-ago-us-dakota-war-ends-battle-wood-lake)

“The 38 Indians and half-breeds ordered by you for execution were hung yesterday at 10 am. Everything went off quietly.” – Henry Sibley, in a December 27, 1862 telegraph message to President Lincoln. (http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/dakota/sibley.html)

“There will be no peace in this region by virtue of treaties and Indian faith.  It is my purpose utterly to exterminate the Sioux (aka the Dakota) if I have the power to do so and even if it requires a campaign lasting the whole of next year.  Destroy everything belonging to them and force them out to the plains, unless, as I suggest, you can capture them.  They are to be treated as maniacs or wild beasts, and by no means as people with whom treaties or compromises can be made.” – Civil war Major General John Pope, in a letter to Colonel Sibley, urging an all-out effort to totally exterminate the Dakota, (letter was dated September 28, 1862): The punitive 40 year-old Pope was infamous for his abrasiveness, conceit and loud mouth, with which he alienated his colleagues, his officer staff and his soldiers. Significantly, Pope had recently been summarily relieved of his command of the Union Army of Virginia and demoted to Minnesota after his humiliating defeat by Robert E. Lee at the Second Battle of Manassas just a month earlier (August 31, 1862). (http://www.civilwar.org/battlefields/secondmanassas/second-manassas-history-articles/second-battle-of-manassas.html and

http://usdakotawar.org/history/aftermath#sthash.XxnK8yhx.dpuf)

“As Europeans settled the East coast, they displaced eastern tribes who then migrated to get away from the White civilization, and they, in their turn, displaced weaker local tribes they encountered, and pushed many of those tribes farther from their homelands, as they took over their homelands.

“Westward moving Europeans would give the displaced eastern tribes … guns and gun powder and they would then instigate fights between the newly arrived tribes and the long established tribes in order to force the long established tribes from their homelands; and in doing so, extinguish the long established tribes’ ancestral ties that they had with the land, their ancestors and the spirit world. Evidence of this practice has shown itself time and time again throughout the Americas.

“Around 1750, a displaced East coast band of Ojibwe were pushed into the Dakota’s homeland and they then used French guns and gun powder to force the Dakota from their Mille Lacs Lake homeland.

“This was the strategy the European colonists used to greatly diminish the number of Dakota in their Mille Lacs homeland, which encouraged and made it possible for a French weapons armed, alcohol manipulated band of Ojibwe to violently force the Dakota from their Mille Lacs homeland.”

“Grieved by the loss of their lands, dissatisfied with reservation (aka, concentration camp) life, and ultimately brought to a condition of near starvation, the Dakota people appealed to US Indian agencies (involving ex-Minnesota governors Sibley and Ramsey) without success. The murder of five whites by four young Dakota Indians ignited a bloody uprising in which more than 300 whites and an unknown number of Indians were killed. In the aftermath, 38 Dakota captives were hanged in Mankato (the day after Christmas Day 1862) for ‘voluntary participation in murders and massacres,’ and the Dakota remaining in Minnesota were removed to reservations in Nebraska. Meanwhile, the Ojibwa were relegated to reservations on remnants of their former lands.

“What happened to the Dakota in 1862 and afterward was a grievous crime against humanity. If it had occurred in this present day and age the United Nations and the international community would condemn it and declare it to be ethnocide and genocide. A United Nations world court indictment would be issued and the perpetrators of this ethnocide and genocide would be rounded up, tried, convicted and punished for crimes against humanity.” — Thomas Dahlheimer from his long essay, entitled, A History Of The Dakota People In The Mille Lacs Area (http://www.towahkon.org/Dakotahistory.html)

Gov. Ramsey’s Thanksgiving Proclamation of November 3, 1862:

“WHEREAS, it is meet and in accordance with good and cherished custom of our fathers worthy to be “a statute forever in all our dwellings,” that the people “when they have gathered the fruit of the land,” should “keep a feast unto the Lord,” in commemoration of His goodness, and by a public act of Christian worship, acknowledge their dependence as a community upon Him in whose hands the kingdoms of the earth are but as dust in the balance.

“Therefore I, Alexander Ramsey, Governor of the State of Minnesota, do hereby set apart the twenty-seventh day of the present month of November, as a Day of Thanksgiving to Almighty God for his wonderful mercy towards us–for all the good gifts of His providence–for health and restored domestic peace–and the measure of general prosperity which we enjoy.

“Especially let us recognize His mercy in that He has delivered our borders from the savage enemies who rose up against us, and cast them into the pit they had privily dug for us; that our friends have been rescued from the horrors of captivity, and that our homes and household treasures are now safe from the violence of Indian robbers and assassins.

“And let us praise Him for the continued preservation of the Government of our Fathers, from the assaults of traitors and rebels; for the sublime spirit of patriotism, and courage, and constancy with which He has filled the hearts of its defenders; for the victories won by the valor of our troops; for the glorious share of Minnesota in the struggles and triumphs of the Union cause; for the safety of her sons who have passed through the fire of battle unscathed, and the honorable fame of the gallant dead; for the alacrity and devotion with which our citizens have rushed from their unharvested fields to the standard of the nation; and, above all, for the assurance that their toils, and perils, and wounds, and self-devotion, are not in vain; for the tokens, now manifest, of His will, that, through the blood and sweat of suffering and sacrifice, the nation is to be saved from its great calamity, and the great crime of which it is at once the effect and punishment; and that behind the thunders, and lightnings, and clouds of the tempest, the awful form of Jehovah is visible, descending in fire upon the mount, to renew the broken tablets of the Constitution, and proclaim FREEDOM as the condition and the law of a restored and regenerated Union.

“Given under my hand and the Great Seal of the State, at the City of St. Paul, this third day of November, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-two”.– Alexander Ramsey, Governor of the State of Minnesota

“Since 1970, Native Americans have gathered at noon on Cole’s Hill in Plymouth to commemorate a National Day of Mourning on the US Thanksgiving holiday. Many Native Americans do not celebrate the arrival of the Pilgrims and other European settlers. To them, Thanksgiving Day is a reminder of the genocide of millions of their people, the theft of their lands, and the relentless assault on their culture. Participants in a National Day of Mourning honor Native ancestors and the struggles of Native peoples to survive today. It is a day of remembrance and spiritual connection as well as a protest of the racism and oppression which Native Americans continue to experience.” — Text of a plaque on Cole’s Hill, overlooking Plymouth Rock, Plymouth, MA

Dr Kohls is a retired family physician from Duluth, Minnesota who has been involved in peace, nonviolence and justice issues and often writes about militarism, racism, fascism, imperialism, totalitarianism, economic oppression, anti-environmentalism and other violent, unsustainable, anti-democratic movements.

Why First Nations People Regard America’s Thanksgiving Day as a National Day of Mourning

The original source of this article is Global Research

Copyright © Dr. Gary G. Kohls, Global Research, 2019

Thanksgiving: For what?

Rehmat

Posted on November 28, 2014

Americans, generation after generations have been brought up on myths and lies about how their European ancestors discovered Americana in early sixteenth century. These include crediting Christopher Columbus for the discovery of the New World for the King of Portugal and the mantra, “a land without people for a people without land“, created by early colonists to cover their land theft and Holocaust of between 100-150 million American native people who had lived there for many, many centuries before the arrival of Columbus. In 1930, armed European Jewish settlers also applied the same mantra to whitewash their occupation of Palestine.

The European colonists in United States and Canada also celebrate the myth of Thanksgiving. It’s based on the 1614 story when a band of English explorers sailed home to England with a ship full of American Indians bound for slavery. The left behind smallpox which virtually wiped out those who were lucky to make escape. By the time these Judeo-Christian “pilgrims” arrived in Massachusetts Bay they found only one Indian slave who survived slavery in England and spoke English language. He taught them to grow corn and fish – and negotiated a peace treaty between the “pilgrims” and the Wampanoag Nation. Next year, the “pilgrims” threw a big feast to celebrate “peace treaty”. That feast became the first and last Thanksgiving celebrated together by the Natives and the White settlers. After that, the Natives suffered a century-long Holocaust at the hands of the European colonists. The only other Native who faced a similar Holocaust at the hands of European Judeo-Christians was in Australia.

Some Zionist Jews who believe Columbus in reality sailed to liberateJerusalem from Muslims have called upon Christians not to cook Halal turkey on Thanksgiving.

William Loren Katz, an American Jewish author, editor, historian, andblogger posted an article recently on the truth about Thanksgiving.

“Thanksgiving has a treasured place in the hearts of Americans, established as a national holiday by President Abraham Lincoln in 1863 to rouse Northern patriotism for a war that was not going well. Since then, Thanksgiving has often served other political ends,” Katz said.

“In 2003, in the age of US Middle East invasions, President George W. Bush flew to Baghdad, Iraq, to celebrate Thanksgiving Day with US troops. He sought to rally the public behind an invasion based on lies by having a host of photographers snap pictures of him carrying a glazed turkey to eager soldiers. Three hours later, Bush flew home, and TV brought his act of solidarity and generosity to millions of US living rooms. But the turkey the President carried to Baghdad was never eaten. It was cardboard, a stage prop,” Katz adds.

“Thanksgiving Day in the United States celebrates not justice and equality but aggression and enslavement. It affirms the genocidal beliefs in racial and religious superiority that justified the destruction of millions of Native American people and their cultures, extermination campaigns that began soon after the Pilgrim landing in 1620 and continued through the US Army’s punitive campaigns in the West during the late Nineteenth and early Twentieth centuries,” Katz said.

Rabbi Bertram Korn claims that many Southern Jews believed slavery to be indispensable to their happiness and security. “The road to social and economic advancement and acceptance for the Jews was made easier by the institution of slavery,” wrote the rabbi. Even to this day Blacks, both Jews and non-Jews are hated in Israel.

American celebrates Thanksgiving on November 4 each year. Canadian celebrated it on October 13. Today (November 28) is American Indian Heritage Day.

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MUSLIMS IN ‘AMERICAS’ BEFORE COLUMBUS

MUSLIMS IN ‘AMERICAS’ BEFORE COLUMBUS

NOVEMBER 19, 2014

(EDITOR’S NOTE: West African Muslims traveled to the ‘Americas’, long before colonial Europe, establishing trade routes and cultural exchange through peaceful collaboration with the Natives of the lands. Many historians ignore this evidence to support the narrative of highly civilized and technologically advanced Europe domesticating the tribal barbaric natives . Though we hardly need traitorous scoundrel Tayyip Erdogan to relay this message to us, the discoveries of relics cement the general history of early Islamic pluralism with the Indigenous. Far from aims of  conquest and enslavement, West Africans, especially Mansa Musa Abu Bakari from Mali, came with gifts of gold and silver, spices and tools for the Natives with whom they established new townships through intermarriage and cultural exchange as well as spiritual harmony. The synergistic collaboration of the Africans and Natives is reflected in theTribe of Ben Ishmael, which was ruthlessly eradicated through castration and other modes of eugenics. This eccentric collective of peoples included Africans, Natives and Irish slaves in the “New World”. They lived an Islamic life and intermarried, organizing in a cohesive tribal unit. These topics and more are addressed in depth by my late mentor, Sultan Abdul Latif in his masterpiece, “When Nations Gather“. ~ Khanverse)

Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan says the Muslim faith was “widespread” in America before the arrival of Columbus in the 15th century, and insists that a massive mosque should be erected in Havana, despite the city’s refusal to grant a building permit.

“The religion of Islam was widespread before Columbus,” the longtime Turkish leader told the audience at the first ever Latin American Muslim leaders summit in Istanbul, as cited by Hurriyet Daily News.

“Muslim sailors had arrived in the shores of America in 1178. In his diaries, Christopher Columbus referred to the presence of a mosque on top of a mountain in Cuba.”

The claim comes from a 1996 paper from Youssef Mroueh of the As-Sunnah Foundation of America.

“Columbus admitted in his papers that on Monday, October 21, 1492 CE while his ship was sailing near Gibara on the north-east coast of Cuba, he saw a mosque on top of a beautiful mountain,” it alleges.

The veracity of this statement has been comprehensively disproved in the past.

The actual quote comes from a log of Columbus’ first journey in 1492, as recorded decades later by colonization historian Bartholome de Casas, but it was made on October 29 – likely near a different part of Cuba than claimed by Mroueh. Most importantly, it explicitly does not imply that Christopher Columbus saw an actual mosque – only a hill that looked like a minaret.

“Remarking on the position of the river and port, to which he gave the name of San Salvador, he describes its mountains as lofty and beautiful, like the Pena de las Enamoradas, and one of them has another little hill on its summit, like a graceful mosque,” reads the entry from the de Casas chronicle.

Even if this claim is easily debunked, it is part of a growing volume of Muslim scholarship that seeks to prove that Islam pre-dated Christianity in the New World, using circumstantial evidence. This idea itself has gained traction in swathes of the Islamic world.

Among the usual pieces of proof that form the backbone of the argument is a 1980 paper by Harvard academic Barry Fell, who claimed that some of the ancient engravings in the Americas resembled Muslim fonts.

There are also references to various trans-Atlantic journeys by Muslims made as far back as the 11th century, of explorers bringing back hoards of gold, using the relatively sophisticated navigational equipment possessed by the Islamic world at the time.

Alternative theories additionally propose that common Indian proper names were bastardizations of Islamic terms. For example, they claim that ‘Seminole’ is actually the Turkish ‘Sami nal’ or ‘Semites who ran away,’ while ‘Shawnee,’ another tribe name, is derivative of ‘sah ne’ which means the ‘Great Shah.’

No actual archaeological links – be it buildings or artifacts – suggesting contact between the Muslim world and that of pre-Colombian Indians have been unearthed.

Cuban Muslims listen to verses from the Koran after their Iftar (fast-breaking) meal during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan in Havana.(Reuters / Desmond Boylan)

Rebuilding Havana Mosque

But Erdogan believes the “re-popularization” of Islamic culture can begin anew, starting with a new mosque back in Cuba.

“Now I will speak to my Cuban brother [the country’s delegate at the forum]. A mosque will suit well on top of that mountain today, too. Their permission is enough,” said Erdogan.

The newly-elected Turkish president has contrasted the impact of Islam and Christianity on newly-converted territories.

“Converting people by force, by the sword, has never been a part of Islam. Our religion has never been a tool of exploitation,” said 60-year-old Erdogan, who was prime minister from 2003, until moving into his new post in August. In contrast, Erdogan said that European Christians “colonialized America for its gold and Africa for its diamonds, now do it in the Middle East for its oil with the same dirty plot.”

Islamic leaders used ‘futuhad’ – religiously-motivated military campaigns – to rapidly spread the religion through the Middle East and North Africa within a century of the death of the Prophet Muhammad in 632 AD. Muslim rulers also forcibly converted millions of locals in Spain and Eastern Europe, in the centuries after. Currently, ISIS, Boko Haram, and other militias around the world, say they are following the teachings of the Koran, by establishing new Muslim territories with jihad.

Problematically, a plan by a Turkish company to construct a 3,500-place mosque for Cuba’s estimated Muslim converts – who number up to 9,000 according to five-year-old Pew Research data – has stalled, in what is officially an atheist state.

The project, modeled on the Ortaköy Mosque in Istanbul, was touted in April, following an official visit by Turkish officials – with a sign in Arabic appearing on the proposed site in Havana.

But in October, Lazo Torres, head of the local Muslim community, said that no permit has been given for the building, prompting reports that the project was rejected by the authorities, which have themselves not commented. Recently, Torres has clarified his statements, saying that the future of the project – which he says will serve the entire community, not just Muslims – remains undecided.

Source: Russia Today

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Columbus sailed to liberate Jerusalem from Muslims!

Rehmat

Posted on October 15, 2014

Americans, Latino, Italian and LGBT communities celebrated the annual Columbus Day on the second Monday of October. However, for centuries, these idiots did not know that they had been celebrating one of many Jewishachievements.

On May 24, 2012, Charles Garcia, Jewish CEO of Garcia Trujillo, in a CNN Op-Ed claimed that Christopher Columbus (Cristóbal Colón in Spanish) was a secret Jew whose 1492 voyage was funded by a couple of rich Jews and not by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella as the Christian historian want the world to believe.

Garcia also claimed that Columbus voyage was not meant to reach the spice-rich India but to liberate Jerusalem from Muslims.

Well, readers would be glad to know that Charles Garcia is not the only stupid Zionist Jew.

On October 13, 2014, Rachel Delia Benaim, posted an “investigative article” at the Jewish Daily Forward, entitled ‘Why Columbus Day Should Be a Jewish Holiday?‘. She answered her own question by saying: “Because Christopher Columbus was Jewish – and Jews cannot be mass murderers.

Hilariously, Benaim posted photos of Columbus and Theodor Herzl on top of her post while claiming their “resemblance”.

After making the usual idiotic Zionist propaganda crap to prove Columbus Jewish heritage, Benaim concluded her post, by saying: “So, even though Americans are over Columbus Day – he didn’t really discover America, and his expedition brought nothing but misfortune and suffering to the indigenous Americans – Jews shouldn’t be. After all, if you reframe Columbus not to see him a brutal colonialist, but a visionary looking for a safe home for Jewish people, he’s not all that ideologically different from Herzl and Israel’s founding father, is he?“.

Only some bigot Jew will believe that Theodor Herzl was not only a colonist but even believed in genocide of the indigenous Palestinians.

“We will spirit the penniless people across the border by denying it employment. Both the process of expropriation (theft of land) and the removal (ethnic-cleaning) of the poor must be carried out discreetly and circumspectly,” said Herzl over 50 year before the so-called SIX MILLION myth. Read more on Zionist barbaric ideology here.

Professor S. Federick Starr (Johns Hopkins University) in 2013 article, entitled, ‘So, Who Did Discover America?‘, claimed Muslim scholar and adventurer, Abu Raihan al-Biruni (born 973) discovered Americas centuries before Columbus without sailing to that part of the world.

Dr. Garikai Chengu (Harvard) claimed in 2012 that it were Africans who brought civilization to America.

Read my earlier post, entitled ‘Who discovered America before Columbus’here.

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