TIL: Today I Learned

[Berzerker]

But...I heard he took a Hebrew interpreter with him because he believed Hebrew was very similar to Chinese.

I googled it and got a bunch of hits but I dont know how many derive from these researchers

https://www.cnn.com/2012/05/20/opinion/garcia-columbus-jewish/index.html

Recently, a number of Spanish scholars, such as Jose Erugo, Celso Garcia de la Riega, Otero Sanchez and Nicholas Dias Perez, have concluded that Columbus was a Marrano, whose survival depended upon the suppression of all evidence of his Jewish background in face of the brutal, systematic ethnic cleansing.

Somebody wrote a book comparing Chinese to Sumerian but I didn't know Hebrew might be related too, at least in Columbus' mind.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Marc Bolan was an early (the first?) glamrock star.

Link to video.

 

[Traitorfish]

I read something claiming Columbus was Jewish and anxious to get outta Dodge when he sailed for the new world (I mean India )

It's "Today I Learned" not "Today I Was Badly Misinformed".

 

[Takhisis]

Those claims that Columbus was Jewish have been ‘substantiated’ and ‘backed’ by comparing him to other ‘fellow landgrabbers’ in present-day Israel, because obviously only a large-nosed Semite would ever take another person's lands and freedom.

 

[Cutlass]

Those claims that Columbus was Jewish have been ‘substantiated’ and ‘backed’ by comparing him to other ‘fellow landgrabbers’ in present-day Israel, because obviously only a large-nosed Semite would ever take another person's lands and freedom.

TIL that the US was founded and expanded by Jews.

 

[Berzerker]

It's "Today I Learned" not "Today I Was Badly Misinformed".

Today I learned some researchers think Columbus was Jewish, if they're wrong they are the ones who are badly misinformed.

 

[MagisterCultuum]

All the research I've seen said that XPo-Ferens Columbus was a fanatical Roman Catholic whose main aim was to bypass Muslim traders in order to acquire enough wealth to finance a new crusade to purge all of the infidels from Constantinople and Jerusalem, and maybe burn Mecca to the ground while he was at it.

 

[Broken_Erika]

It's "Today I Learned" not "Today I Was Badly Misinformed".

TIL, we need a TIWBM thread.

 

[H4run]

TIL The Uyghur in China concentration camp already reach 3 mil, this is alarming

 

[Lexicus]

TIL The Uyghur in China concentration camp already reach 3 mil, this is alarming

It's really sad. I've known about the Uyghurs for years, since I first got interested in the Mongols and other horse nomads, and it's heartbreaking to think that whatever is left of the old horse culture is probably being destroyed by the Chinese government now.

 

[H4run]

It's really sad. I've known about the Uyghurs for years, since I first got interested in the Mongols and other horse nomads, and it's heartbreaking to think that whatever is left of the old horse culture is probably being destroyed by the Chinese government now.

Many of my Uyghur acquaintances in Turkey who were doing Master Program are really in a huge fear right now, they are unable to contact their family because they are aboard and refuse to go back because of fear of concentration camp, while their family most probably in the camp because of them, they cannot prolong the visa and the Turkish government cannot help them because of Turkey-China alliance, and if they go back to Xinjiang we can be sure that they will go straight to the camp. I cannot believe this happened in 21st century.

Maybe I should push them to go to Europe or something. It is very scary when you live a life without any national identity, you are suddenly very vulnerable and exposed to any kind of exploitation.

 

[Lexicus]

Many of my Uyghur acquaintances in Turkey who were doing Master Program are really in a huge fear right now, they are unable to contact their family because they are aboard and refuse to go back because of fear of concentration camp, while their family most probably in the camp because of them, they cannot prolong the visa and the Turkish government cannot help them because of Turkey-China alliance, and if they go back to Xinjiang we can be sure that they will go straight to the camp. I cannot believe this happened in 21st century.

Maybe I should push them to go to Europe or something. It is very scary when you live a life without any national identity, you are suddenly very vulnerable and exposed to any kind of exploitation.

That is really awful. Wish I had something or some advice to offer. I'd suggest coming to the US, but...

 

[rah]

You could always just give them their own country because historically that has always worked out well.

 

[Lexicus]

The Uyghurs already had a state but it collapsed by like 900 CE if I remember rightly.

 

[H4run]

That is really awful. Wish I had something or some advice to offer. I'd suggest coming to the US, but...

The only logical step they should take right now is move to a country that have enough ball to gives them asylum, which Turkey proves to betrays the Uyghur several time, when they somehow need to please their Chinese allies they just send them back to China. Maybe Europe or US.

 

[H4run]

You could always just give them their own country because historically that has always worked out well.

I think that idea that makes the Chinese government goes full paranoid and start putting people in a camp in order to integrates them.

 

[Birdjaguar]

It's really sad. I've known about the Uyghurs for years, since I first got interested in the Mongols and other horse nomads, and it's heartbreaking to think that whatever is left of the old horse culture is probably being destroyed by the Chinese government now.

Did they learn those techniques from the US cavalry actions in the late 19th Century west? We were pretty effective at destroying the Native American horse culture such that it crippled them for 150 years. Just to keep things in perspective.

 

[Takhisis]

It's really sad. I've known about the Uyghurs for years, since I first got interested in the Mongols and other horse nomads, and it's heartbreaking to think that whatever is left of the old horse culture is probably being destroyed by the Chinese government now.

It's made even more alarming by learning that the Chinese government is exporting mass surveillance to countries as part of financial aid packages. I.e. they lend money to those countries on relatively lenient terms if a comparatively tiny part of the money is spent on Chinese security firms being allowed to install cameras everywhere, laying the groundwork for state surveillance to become the norm. The idea is that if people in those other countries are used to their own governments spying on them then they won't pressure their governments to pressure the Chinese into at least pretending they are a democracy.

Instagram/Tinder/FB also help a lot with getting people accustomed to living in a goldfish bowl that resembles a Huxlo-Orwellian dystopia.

 

[Ferocitus]

It's really sad. I've known about the Uyghurs for years, since I first got interested in the Mongols and other horse nomads, and it's heartbreaking to think that whatever is left of the old horse culture is probably being destroyed by the Chinese government now.

It has nothing to do with their old "horse culture". That loss was going to happen anyway.
It's about secession, violent means, and the creation of a separate Islamic state.
If that did happen (and it won't because you'd want over-whelming numbers for it to succeed) how would the Islamists treat atheist, communist Han Chinese?

 

[Dachs]

The Uyghurs already had a state but it collapsed by like 900 CE if I remember rightly.

The Uighur khaganate spread across most of modern Mongolia and southern Siberia in the eighth and ninth centuries, but it stopped being a Thing before 900, yes. It didn't really intersect much with modern Altishahr, the place most people recognize as the modern Uighur homeland: it was further north and significantly further east, for the most part. The final demise of the Orkhon Uighurs was messy and brutal and a lot of Uighurs left for better prospects elsewhere. They became prevalent in the Tocharian Tarim Basin oasis cities within a few centuries, and after that people started calling them Uighur cities and the region Altishahr.

The cities of Altishahr didn't throw up a classic steppe empire for the most part, but they often enjoyed autonomy under whatever Turkic or Mongolian empire happened to dominate the area at any given time. Until the seventeenth century, that was the khanate of Yarkand, and after that it was the empire of the Zunghars. When the Qing conquered the Zunghar Empire and launched their genocidal cleansing project, they shipped thousands of Uighurs north to keep Zungharia a productive province - although they were still a minority compared to the Han and Hui, and most Uighurs remained, as they do today, in Altishahr.

Did they learn those techniques from the US cavalry actions in the late 19th Century west? We were pretty effective at destroying the Native American horse culture such that it crippled them for 150 years. Just to keep things in perspective.

They don't really intersect much. If anything, the Chinese take cues from their own millennia-long past history with a) steppe nomads and b) the Muslims of the northwest. The wars and atrocities of Kangxi and Qianlong and the suppression of the Hui and Dungan rebellions are probably more relevant to them.