Columbus' 'discovery' of America: the greatest hoax of all times?

Columbus' 'discovery' of America: the greatest hoax of all times?

By Franz J. T. Lee

"How dey ken lie, man ... time longer dan rope!"
Wise Caribbean saying.

Across America and elsewhere, on Monday, October 12, 2009, we will again be celebrating "Columbus Day", our "Día de la Raza". Except in Venezuela, Cuba and some of the ALBA countries, like Bolivia, as usual we will be honoring the day of our 'discovery' by Cristobal Colon, by European colonization, by the Spanish Inquisition, Roman Catholicism, civilization, culture and the emerging bourgeoisie. As we should know, Venezuela has declared October 12 officially as the Day of Indigenous Resistance. In Asia, Africa, America, Oceania and the Caribbean, with reference to 'pre-Columbian times', many racist European politicians, philosophers and historians have considered us as things next to nothing, that is, as natives, slit eyes, red skins, kaffirs, coolies, pagans and barbarians. Surely, such things cannot discover America. Surely, 'evil dictators' in Venezuela cannot reach out for the stars and 'Latinos' cannot discover "Jayú," a small planet revolving at the outskirts of our solar system, beyond Pluto.

During the European Dark Ages, were we really just vegetating like starving monkeys and baboons outside history?

Before we comment on Columbus' "rediscovery" of America, let us briefly highlight the historic context, the function of such Big Lies!

In the past, could we, Africans and Arabs, really not construct powerful ships? Not direct a fleet across the oceans? Or had  we to wait for Henry to teach us how to navigate?

The Herrenvolk, the master race, the chosen people and their ideologues were (and still are) convinced of the following at the end of the 15th century: that we saw the white (rather pink) men  coming, began to worship these pale-faced  gods, then we jumped down from the trees, fell on our fours, and with their aid, at last, finally we  began to walk in upward gait. This is one of the biggest lies ever told by ruling class man.

As taught worldwide to the innocent school children, for us, the 'discoveries' of Columbus (that the earth was round and that a 'New World' existed outside Europe) are rated by us as the greatest hoaxes of all times. The ancient Greek scientists and the Middle Age Norsemen, who traded with Iceland, Nova Scotia and Greenland, respectively, knew very much about 'America' already. This Big Lie about Columbus, as a political and psychological strategy, over the centuries, became a racist ideological dogma, a formal logical 'absolute truth', to celebrate global European 'race' superiority. This is the alienating essence of all the busts and statues of Columbus across the globe and of the "Day of the Race"!

Obviously, in every epoch, not only are the ruling ideas the ideas of the ruling classes, also the ruling big lies are the lies of Big Brother, of the big lying classes. These big ruling class lies, embedded in 'de-naturalization', 'dis-socialization', religion, education, culture and ideology pervade all capitalist social fibers, strata and structures and permeate all walks of class society. The hoaxes, myths, dogmas and absolute 'truths', disseminated by mass media, propaganda, sermons, songs, music, prayers and advertisements, already across centuries are beautifying the unscrupulous economic exploitation of labor forces, nature and society, by capital, in a nut shell, by global master and slave class relations.

Another religious Big Lie is very simple: Only the poor will enter the 'kingdom' of heaven; hence: folks, please, do not wash too many plates, like Rockefeller once, you could end up as a billionaire and later would be roasting in eternal hell fire!

Lies, lies, everywhere ... to veil capitalist cardinal crimes!

Nowadays, as Shakespeare and Orwell predicted: Truth becomes a Lie, Freedom becomes Slavery, War becomes Peace, Ignorance becomes Bliss and it is folly to become wise. What this all has to do with discovering America, we will see later.

Politically, domination of the working classes has been glorified by all kinds of big promises. These range from the Platonic apartheid rule of philosopher kings with golden hearts, who nurture the 'Highest Good', to Augustine's 'City of God', to States by the grace of God. The real historic truth about the 'Prince' (Maquiavelli), the 'Leviathan' (Hobbes), the 'Fuehrer' (Hitler) and 'Big Brother' (Orwell) we will not find in the 'Breaking News' of Fox News, CNN or in the news agencies of the Murdoch Empire. Even if they would publish the truth now and unmask all the current big political lies, ... they have done their job so perfectly ... nobody would believe in any wrongs of United States foreign policy.

Good shepherds, god-men and men-gods, are incapable of telling big lies to their flock, only "terrorists" and "commies" are capable of such diabolical crimes. Our State defends Christianity, civilization, culture and world peace in the Near, Middle and Far East.

Wherever our dollar and our army go, they, like all of us, "In God We Trust!"

Across the ages, a galaxy of Big Lies were fabricated: black Africans "have no souls" (Montesquieu); they "neither serve for the use nor for the abuse of philosophy" (Voltaire). According to Hegel, Africa does not even appear in world history. Of course, according to European racist arrogance, such 'barbarians', Arabs and Africans like Avicenna, Averroes and Ibn Khaldoun, the "white man's burden", cannot develop natural and social sciences; historically they cannot 'discover' anything, least of all America. In the ambit of racism tons of Big Lies are being told about the 'children of Ham', about the 'Kaffirs' and 'Coolies'. Millions, even innocently, out of ignorance,  believe in these racist, fascist diatribes. Among other avenues, these big untruths  infiltrated the Talmud of Babylonia, the Holy Bible, Apartheid, Zionism, Fascism, 'Democracy' and 'National Socialism'. Who would doubt such big 'truths' coming from the Holy Scriptures, as revealed by Great Men?

In the military spheres, in capital accumulation, big lies launch big business, big world wars, and the workers, the millions of bamboozled lambs happily march towards the slaughter house, to certain death. The 'Reichtagsbrand' caused by the Nazis themselves, the big lies about 'Pearl Harbor' and '9/11' are just among the most tragic, detestable machinations of recent ruling class hoaxes.
 
During the 'Cold War', in the Stalin epoch, even the Soviet Union used the Big Lie strategy, especially during the capitalist 'arms race' campaigns to win world hegemony. The world was told that Yuri Gagarin was the first man in space. Till today many still believe in this story. The truth of the matter is that it was
Sergei Vladimir Ilyushin junior, who flew around the earth a few days before Yuri Gagarin, and who crashed in China and was lucky to be returned to the Soviet Union alive. In the arms race to the moon, this mishap would not have been favorable propaganda for the Soviet Union. Gagarin upgraded the then Soviet inferiority complexes. Russian and even American astronauts have also discovered the United States secret military base 'Area 51', near Paradise Ranch in the Nevada Desert. Many began to doubt that Neil Armstrong ever jumped around on the Moon like the cowboy hero Hopalong Cassidy. The area in the desert looks like a moon landscape, a perfect background for Hollywood to film honeymoon sagas.

However, in a short commentary it is impossible to verify all these strange theories and events. To celebrate 'Columbus Day' consciously, this is just urgent food for thought, to take up arms against an avalanche of new hoaxes, a sea of imperialist lies, that is, to learn to differentiate between virtuality and reality.

Now let us look at the big 'transhistoric event: The Old World discovers the New World! Generally, historians must wait about 50 years to study classified material about big lies, like '9/11', that is, our historians have to guess, to use 'trial and error' methods to discover the truth about  capital crimes against humanity. The 'rediscovery' of America by Columbus still will necessitate another 500 years to be verified scientifically.

As the African-Caribbean writer, Richard B. Moore, in his book "The Significance of African History" has explained, European "scholars", affirming the imperialist lies, in many cases have simply  falsified African history. Guyanese historians like Walter Rodney and Ivan van Sertima have supplied us with sufficient scientific materials, at least, to doubt the Big Lie versions about the Columbus 'discovery' of America. At best, the joint venture and adventure of Columbus brought about a third grade 're-discovery', the colonization of America, the latter is not a 'discovery', it was creating the world market, acceleration of the accumulation of capital, founding modern history.

There are many claims with reference to who discovered America but none about  indigenous America discovering and colonizing Europe. According to North European sagas, it seems that Norwegian pre-Columbian presence in Northern America was a reality. Well, we could consider these possible discoveries, after all, they originated in Northern Europe, and not in the ancient Arab-African University of Timbuktu, in the Mali civilization, the ancient El Dorado of Africa.

Because these facts are practically unknown to us, allow me to quote some relevant passages from the excellent work  'The Norse Discovery of America', by A.M Reeves, et al:

"Here it is proper to add that the Norsemen were the discoverers of pelagic navigation. Let me here state with all the emphasis that I am able to compress into so many words, that the navigation of the ocean was discovered by the old Norse Vikings. Before them, the only navigation known was coast navigation. The Norsemen were excellent ship-builders and knew how to calculate time by the sun, moon and stars, and into every history of the world, and into every encyclopedia I would have the fact conspicuously stated that pelagic navigation was discovered by the Norsemen." 1)

Who doubts that in the 'Middle Ages' or even earlier, that North and West Africans scientifically could not have done likewise?

Nonetheless, according to this work, the Norsemen visited North America already in 1347, '145 years before the rediscovery by Columbus'.

Why were the Norwegian-American trade relations terminated?

"The last expedition mentioned in the sagas was in 1347, 145 years before the rediscovery by Columbus. In that year it is stated that a vessel came from Markland (Nova Scotia) to Iceland with a cargo of wood. ... But this, as the reader will see, carries us down to a memorable period in European history. It brings us to the breaking out of the terrible black plague, or black death." 2)

It seems to be exaggerated, however, there are historic claims that the Egyptian "Nubian-Kemmiu peoples arrived in the Americas around 1200 BC". 3)

Based on serious research materials of world renowned historians, in an article "Pre-Columbian African Presence in the Americas", published on May 16, 2006 by Mathaba.Net, we stated:

"There exists definite historic evidence that between 1307 and 1312 AD, West African Mandinga fleets have sailed to America and later have also returned to Africa. In 1324 AD, the famous Mandinga emperor of Mali, Mansa Kankan Musa I on his way to Mecca, stopped over at Cairo, and was interviewed by the eminent 14th century Islamic historian, Al-Umars, to whom the emperor had related his rise to 'power" and that "his predecessors had launched two expeditions from West Africa to discover the limits of the Atlantic Ocean' ". 4)

Let us listen further to the reports of the eminent 14th century Islamic historian, Al-Umars, who wrote:

"I asked the Sultan Musa how it was that power came into his hands. ... 'We are from a house that transmits power by heritage ... the ruler who preceded me would not believe that it was impossible to discover the limits of the neighboring sea. He wanted to find out and persisted in his plans. He had about 200 ships equipped and filled them with men, and the same number of ships filled with gold, water and supplies in sufficient quantities to last for years." 5)


Many European and North American 'scholars' do not consider such evidence as being 'scientifically correct'. They especially accused Ivan van Sertima as follows:
"Van Sertima's work has been criticized by academics for making ill-founded Afrocentric claims. A 1997 Journal of Current Anthropology article criticized in detail many elements of Van Sertima's 1976 book They Came Before Columbus.[3] The book had not earlier received a thorough professional academic review. They stated that in claiming African origins for prehistoric Olmec culture (in present-day Mexico), Van Sertima had ignored the work of Central American researchers. They stated no evidence of a prehistoric African influence or presence had been found in controlled archaeological excavations in the New World." 6)

However, let Al-Umars inform us about the Big Truth:

"He told those who commanded them, return only when you have reached the extremity of the ocean or when you have exhausted your food and water. They went away ... Finally, a sole ship reappeared, We asked the captain about their adventure.'"

Let us read on; this may be a tale, but it is more interesting than big lies about Hussein's "arms of mass destruction"!

"He told the Sultan about their long voyage and how finally they entered something like a river with violent currents. He was last in the row, and saw how the other ships disappeared. He returned, to tell his story. However, "the emperor did not want to believe him, He equipped about 2000 more vessels and conferred power on me and left with his companion on the ocean. This was the last time I saw him and the others. ..." 7)

The solution to this historic riddle lies in the library of the museum of the Vatican; there we could find the historic evidence, the charts and calculations which could verify that Columbus knew with precision where he was going and how to return to Europe, thanks to African and Arab Mandinga  scientific and philosophic knowledge.

The irony of history, the strange ways of Truth: two hundred years after the visit of Musa I of Mecca, Christopher Columbus in his "Journals" personally testified about the presence of the Mandinga expeditions in the Americas.

According to the NEW AFRICAN, he said "that West African merchant fleets periodically left the Guinea Coast and sailed to Middle America with gold and other merchandise and introduced the art of alloying gold. ... The Indians brought handkerchiefs of cotton, very symmetrically woven and worked in colors like those brought from Guinea, from the rivers of Sierra Leone and of no difference ... The Mandinga traded gold and cloth called 'almaizar' ..."

For posterity fragments and quotations of Columbus' "Journals" were saved by Fraile Bartolomé de las Casas; if the following should be genuine, then we have just illustrated one of the greatest hoaxes launched against Africa and America, and that we should urgently study and rectify our history; also we should tell the true story and not fabricate new myths about socialism and emancipation.

Columbus himself informs us:

"The Indians brought handkerchiefs of cotton, very symmetrically woven and worked in colors like those brought from Guinea, from the rivers of Sierra Leone and of no difference ... The Mandinga traded gold and cloth called 'almaizar' ... "

Hence, in conclusion, even Christopher Columbus himself testified that the Mandinga had arrived in America long before him. 8)

Instead of winning Nobel Peace Prizes, who in Washington D.C. will ever discover the flowing, over flowing Mandinga truth about this world one day?

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Footnotes:
1) http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/nda/nda03.htm
2) ibid.
3) See: NEW AFRICAN (London), "They Came Before Columbus", January, 2001, N° 392, pages 16-20
4) http://mathaba.net/0_index.shtml?x=537389
5) ibid.
6) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_van_Sertima
7) The following quotes are from the NEW AFRICAN article.
8) http://www.aporrea.org/tiburon/a21932.html
http://mathaba.net/0_index.shtml?x=537389.
Also: http://espanol-franzjtlee.blogspot.com/
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