Posts Tagged → moor
Wow, Columbus Day
Now that a long term study of Christopher Columbus’ DNA has revealed that he was a Sephardic Jew from Spain, and like hundreds of thousands of other Jews also likely a refugee of the 1492 Spanish Expulsion and then the Catholic Church’s Great Inquisition, we have to ask: Columbus Day, now what does it really mean?
By way of background, upon ending the imperialist Muslim “Moorish” occupation of Spain, in 1492 the newly victorious Catholic Spanish Queen Isabella (“Jezebel” in English, Eezavel in Hebrew, one of the most notoriously evil and violent queens of the Hebrew Scripture and Jewish history, and just so was that Spanish namesake queen) dictated that all Jewish citizens of Spain had to convert to Catholicism or get out. Like leave their homes, money, possessions, and just exit the jurisdiction with the clothes on their bodies.
The history of the Spanish Expulsion is well documented, and for our purposes here we will simply use it as the starting point for Christopher Columbus’ career. He, like almost all of the Spanish Jews, cast about for ways to get out of the coming inferno. Forced conversions were bad enough, with small children taken from their parents to be raised as Catholics in convents and monasteries. But the fallout of even the slightest suspicion that the poor Jewish person had not completely and absolutely accepted Catholicism was really bad.
In sum, tens of thousands of innocent Jews were tortured, robbed, and then burned alive by the Spanish government for the simple reason that they were suspected of having retained some loyalty or interest in their former religion, the religion of their ancestors for thousands of years, and their wealth could also be taken. Bad stuff, really evil stuff, very much the low point for the Catholic religion.
Talk about reparations! What would the descendants of the survivors be owed by Spain or the Vatican today?
[The wild excesses of the Catholic Church, such as the Great Inquisition, kick started the Reformation, resulting in the creation of Protestant Christianity, which “protested” the really bad behavior of the Church at that time, at every level, targeting not just Jews but anyone who dared question Church doctrine]
For several months I have been reading “Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean” by Edward Kritzler. This is not a long book, but it is nowhere as whimsical a read as its catchy title suggests, and so I have slogged from one mass auto de fe to another, each set in a different part of Europe or the Caribbean, or South America, or Mexico, or New Mexico…Everywhere the Jewish refugees from Spain and Portugal ran, they were then hunted to the death by the Spanish Inquisition.
To say that the persecuted Jews got tired of this shitty treatment is an understatement, and quite a few of them took to the high seas to attack the Spanish treasure ships bringing slaves, gold, silver, and gems from South America, as well as sugar, rum, spices, and slaves from the Caribbean to Spain. Quite of few of these Jewish pirates who were focused on revenge against Spain made great names for themselves.
One such pirate was named Sinan the Great Jew (see his picture below), who after losing everything his family had built up in Spain for 1,450 years, pledged his seafaring skills in the Mediterranean Sea to the Ottoman sultan. All Sinan wanted were ships and crews to get revenge on the Spanish, and in turn he gave all of his loot to the Ottoman Empire. Sinan lived a long life and never felt satisfied that he had made the Spanish truly pay for their crimes.
So in this 1490s mix of cruelty and ethnic refugees and revenge is Christopher Columbus, who has always been suspected of being a refugee Jew, simply for the timing of his trip and the fact that his ships (Nina, Pinta, Santa Maria) were overwhelmingly crewed by Jewish refugee sailors.
In recent decades, an attack on Christopher Columbus by the political Left has centered on his taking of slaves among the Caribbean Indian tribes, and the fact that he was “white” and somehow treading on someone else’s land. Leftists fail to explain that literally everyone in the entire world took and sold slaves back then, including the Caribbean Indians, including the Africans, including the Arabs, inculding the Turks, and that the entire history of humanity is one migration after another.
So the question is, will the fact that Columbus is now proven to have been a Jew, and himself a refugee from oppression and persecution, somehow change the perception of Columbus? Will his story now be told as no longer the oppressor, but the fleeing oppressed?
It is tough to say why Columbus’ religion and refugee status should have any real impact on how he is taught in history books today. Yes, the Italians who have been so proud of him will probably now disavow him.
A big irony is that Jews like Columbus and Sinan only existed because the Italian Romans fought, enslaved, persecuted, and ethnically cleansed the Jews from their homeland in Judea/Israel starting in the year 67 CE and ending around the year 135 CE. Massive quantities of Jewish slaves were brought into Italy, where they slowly and surely rebuilt themselves into Jewish religious communities and kept their religion and culture going.
Despite being ethnically cleansed from their homeland and enslaved by the Italians, the Jews regrouped and saved themselves by migrating to northern Italy, Spain, and France, reaching soaring heights in science and business, only to be expelled by greedy Spanish thieves who had a recent war to pay off. Spain remains the ass backwards sh*thole of Europe today.
Columbus still has a holiday named after him here in America. I wonder if Iran, Hamas and Hiz’b’alla, and the political Left will try to do in his name, now that he is a known Jew. Or will the Left stick up for him, because he was an oppressed refugee? Guess it is still complicated being Columbus.
Jews being burned alive in ovens, while a madman waves a crucifix about
Sinan the Great Jew, expelled from Spain for his religion, he became a lifelong pirate specializing in taking Spanish ships
Sinan and the famous Ottoman pirate Barbarossa fought together against the Spanish
Ah, a public burning of innocent, tortured Jews? The whole town turned out to watch. Lovely
Downton Abbey’s “field sports” Part II
Guess I shot from the hip, shot first and asked questions later, didn’t identify my target too well, or another euphemism you may enjoy applying to the lack of foresight I brought to yesterday’s analysis of Downton Abbey’s field sports.
Yes, I could have sneaked a peak ahead of the coming scenes, like many other avid watchers of PBS’s hit show do, but because I lack the time and the inclination to sneak anything, I just sat down in my easy chair and watched the show unfold last night without advance knowledge of its content.
My Sunday afternoon essay about the mediocre depiction of the field sports of Downton Abbey was written beforehand.
So, yes, there was a shooting scene last night, or more accurately, some scenes of wing shooting at driven partridge from bona fide shooting butts, using authentic guns and nice clothes, woven in and out of the story about the Scottish castle party.
But once again, there was more focus on the clothes on the people holding the guns than on the Purdeys, Rigbys, and other Best-quality side-by-side shotguns being used to down the birds.
In 1924, $150,000-then-equivalent Purdey shotguns do not get left with the menial help in the kitchen. They are fussed and obsessed over by their owners, kept locked in their rooms, cased with abundant hand-made accoutrements, labeled beautifully by their makers, and often proudly handed down from generation to generation and worn with traditional hunting clothes.
Scottish castles are loaded with arms and armor, and we barely got a peak at the edged weapons welcoming guests through the front door.
The wagons taking the hunters to the field were right, and a nice touch. I have ridden in such wagons on traditional hunts, and they are today an unnecessary throwback. But back then, they were a necessity through muck and muddy moors.
Shooting driven partridge from the butts was mostly done right, with gun loaders ducking to avoid being seen by the birds, and we did see some people bunched up waving white flags, but a real drive could have been filmed for full authenticity. Actual dead birds could have fallen. Smoke could have emitted from the barrels. Etc etc.
Depicting the shooting sports in so briefly and so shallow a manner is the equivalent of dressing Lady Mary in a perfect 1920s top with modern hip-hugger blue jeans below. It is just wrong. Don’t do that!
A lot of non sequiturs occurred last night that really deprive the Downton Abbey audience of a full appreciation of the English field sport lifestyle, which actually reached its pinnacle in the 1920s (when cheap skilled labor was matched with newly superior steel and modern technology to create firearms that even today still command huge sums of money, not to mention the introduction and propagation of Asian pheasants to the English countryside), the time we are watching in the show.
I am sorry to criticize you, Julian Fellowes, because Downton Abbey is otherwise a great show, everything we want it to be.
Last night was disappointing, because the rich details of noble Scottish and English hunting rites should have been indulged. As a student of English history, you are missing a great, even important opportunity here to dig into a meaty subject which your audience will surely enjoy, even if it involves G-U-N-S.
Maybe in January 2016 we will get a more thorough treatment of a subject that may be missing from Mr. Fellowes’ life today, but which was a nearly daily ritual for the actual residents of Downton Abbey and their peers in the 1920s.