Those Who Forget History

On this date, in 1492, Cristobol Columbus, an Italian (Genoan) sailing under the flag of Spain and funded by the Catholic Empire through the pockets of the Spanish king, first caught sight of land at what we generally call Hispanola today.  Hispanola, of course, means Little Spain, and Columbus dubbed the people already living there 'indians,' since his best intel was that he had found the east coast of India.

Columbus did not discover the so-called New World.  His mission was to sail south of the Northern Lands and find a route to Asia that was tradeable.  At that time, North America was well-known in academia.  New Vinland, off the coast of modern Canada, had been a Viking colony for centuries.  An Irish monk had produced a map in 1135, that clearly showed the coast as far south as the current Cape Cod.  Other secret maps showed the east coast of North America and South America, though the central regions were still blank.  Some maps also show parts of Antarctica, while others clearly show the Northern Passage, long before Columbus came along.

But, the well-known northern route was impassable half the year, and dangerous the other half.  Plus, it only came to that annoying thing called the Northern Lands, that stood between Europe and the gold and spices of India and the Spice Islands (Indonesia).  The overland route to get there was treacherous, and the sea route had to cross Cape Hope at the southern tip of Africa, which was famous for ship-wrecking storms.  The Ming emperors of China were laying claim to overland routes and attacking any caravans that didn't pay tribute.

Meanwhile, Admiral Zheng He was doing pretty much what Columbus did, only 50 years earlier.  He was sent by the Ming emperor to map and discover new trade routes, and also to claim everything he found in the name of the emperor.  Though disputed, there is evidence that he landed in modern California and mapped at least part of the west coast of North America.  Zheng describes a plant in his logs that looks and sounds a lot like a prickly pear cactus, which only grows in the Americas.  Rock carvings and glyphs have also been found in California bearing characters that look a lot like old forms of Chinese.

There is even more evidence, completely rejected by the Catholic hierarchy, and thus western civilization, that trade flourished between South America and ancient Egypt.  A great many mummies in Egypt have tested positive of cocaine, which could only come from South America.  There are many other lines of research, as well, that would ties the Old and New Worlds together centuries, if not millennia, before Columbus.  So what, exactly, did Columbus discover, and what was his real mission?

Evidence has come to light in recent years, including the discovery of one of Columbus' wrecked ships, that the hull and keel designs for his ships was radically new.  Supposedly imparting greater speed and maneuverability, these designs were state secrets of Spain until the 1980s.  The king of Spain had given Columbus three of these vessels to test in open ocean as part of the deal.

Zheng He

Columbus had pitched the deal to the king by noting the gap between North and South America on the super secret documents of the time, probably by combining some of the best of the maps.  He proposed that the gap between the continents offered a route through to southeast Asia, thus avoiding the overland routes controlled by the Ming, and sneaking in the backdoor to load up on all those riches.

He also wanted to find tradeable wind currents that would allow travel much father south than the perilous northern Atlantic.  Navigators there were stuck for six months of the year, and ice floes presented major hazards for the other six months.  A more southerly route, both coming and going, would be a major coupe and give the one who possessed that knowledge wealth beyond calculation.

In fact, Columbus believed he had landed in the eastern extent of Indonesia, when in fact, he had hit an island in the Caribbean.  Seeing no other imperial flags around (i.e. the Ming), he stuck Spain's flag in the sand and claimed the land for the Holy Roman Empire.

In the east, Zheng had done much the same thing in southeast Asia, Australia, India, and the Middle East.

Certainly, if Columbus could find the backdoor, it would provide invaluable military advantage.  By this point in history, Europe had been threatened by Attila the Hun and Jengis Khan.  If the Holy Roman Empire had a means to flank an Eastern army, they would have tremendous tactical advantage in the event of another invasion.

In other words, 500 years later, we are replaying the trade wars that first ignited in the 1400s.  East versus West, competing to see who will control which lands and trade routes.  Staking out territory and performing an elaborate dance in order to avoid direct confrontation.

Things never change.

Today, China is staking out its client states and sphere of influence, and the Anglo-American Empire is doing the same.  It involves not only trade and access to mineral wealth, but now has taken to the skies.  The Anglo-Americans have staked out near-Earth orbit with their space station, and the Chinese have launched the first section of their own station, with the second piece to follow next month.  Both sides are still vying for military and economic advantage over the other.  And the brown and black skins are again annoying cannon fodder in the middle, squatting on all that wealth that the empires need to feed their greed.

It serves the interests of the Western Empire to keep these things secret and foster fairy tales like Columbus discovering the New World.  One, it hides the vicious and bloody truth, and two it promotes a benign farce that Westerners have just been casual explorers, wanting to find new things and meet new people.  One has to only read "Bury My Heart At Wounded Knee," to know that this fairy tale is all but true.

What all of this highlights is that current events are nothing more than the playing out of centuries-long global conquest.  The battles have flared up and receded, but the same currents that began even before the Crusades are still influencing modern headlines.  There has been a war raging between East and West for far longer than most of us know or admit.  Because most of us stopped reading and learning somewhere around high school, we labor under the illusions cast over our eyes, and are unable to see the currents of time swirling through our lives.

Our educations have left us crippled and blind.  We were taught by rote, memorizing 'facts' and regurgitating them on tests.  Once we left school, we figured all that 'old stuff' didn't have anything to do with our modern lives.  We just needed to remember October 12, 1492, to pass the test.  What did anything else matter?  There were girls to chase and things to do, and then families and mortgages and car payments.  Who cared about Columbus?

Someone cares, because the battle, of which he was a small part, is still raging and still impacting our lives.  At the highest levels in both East and West, someone hasn't forgotten, and they are still pushing their agendas written centuries ago.  It's as real as the feud between the Amish families that led to the beard cuttings just recently.  These things have been going on forever, but from the outside, they look like strange isolated events without context.  And since it wasn't our beard, we go about our business after a brief chuckle, having no clue about why and having no interest in finding out.

In fact, it is this very history that has kept the truth about UFOs and ruins on other planets and evidence of life "out there" hidden from most of us.  The Brookings Report of 1960 recognized what cultures with superior technology do to those without.  They looked at the history of Columbus and Zheng and all the rest, and saw that advanced cultures always decimate the lessers.  Even the concept of 'advanced' based solely on guns and indoor plumbing is a conceit to justify egregious actions against who are perfectly happy not engineering the world.

Colubus' Notes to Marco Polo

At this very moment, there is a tribe here in Indonesia whose society is commonly termed 'Stone Age.'  They are perfectly happy that way and have avoided contact with the world at large.  But, they made a fatal mistake.  Their ancestral lands were set atop one of the richest tin deposits ever found.  Now a French company is in the process of destroying these people and their way of life to get to the dirt under them.  What's the bet they've already stuck a flag in it?

So, along we go on our merry ways, not a care in the world.  No one looks to see what has gone before to understand where we are.  At the bare minimum, we owe it to ourselves to find out why mistakes were made before, and try to avoid them.  More useful would be to understand our compulsion for empire, and the death and destruction it carries.  Then maybe, just maybe, folks could live in peace and pursue their individual enlightenment and happiness.

Or we could just destroy more people for money.