John Bolton during a cabinet meeting at the White House in Washington DC, 9 May 2018. Photograph: Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images
Donald Trump’s former national security adviser John Bolton has made a series of explosive claims about the US president in his new book The Room Where It Happened, according to numerous news reports and an excerpt.
Most notably, Bolton claims Trump asked China to use its economic power to help him in the 2020 election, and tried to kill criminal investigations as “favors” for dictators he liked.
The explosive allegations came after a White House lawsuit sought to block the publication of Bolton’s book. But ahead of its scheduled release next week it has now been leaked to the New York Times and Washington Post, which reported on some of the stunning claims. An excerpt also appeared in the Wall Street Journal.
Here are eight of the most shocking revelations:
1. Trump pleaded with China to help win the 2020 election
According to the excerpt of Bolton’s book published by the Wall Street Journal, Trump asked China to use its economic power to help him win a second election.
In one instance, Trump and President Xi Jinping were discussing hostility to China in the US. “Trump then, stunningly, turned the conversation to the coming US presidential election, alluding to China’s economic capability and pleading with Xi to ensure he’d win,” Bolton writes.
“He stressed the importance of farmers and increased Chinese purchases of soybeans and wheat in the electoral outcome. I would print Trump’s exact words, but the government’s prepublication review process has decided otherwise.”
2. Trump suggested he was open to serving more than two terms
In another eye-opening exchange published in the Wall Street Journal, Trump also seems to support Xi’s idea of eliminating presidential term limits. “Xi said he wanted to work with Trump for six more years, and Trump replied that people were saying that the two-term constitutional limit on presidents should be repealed for him,” Bolton writes. “Xi said the US had too many elections, because he didn’t want to switch away from Trump, who nodded approvingly.”
3. Trump offered favors to dictators
Bolton’s book reportedly details cases where Trump tried to kill criminal investigations as favors to dictators. One incident published in the Washington Post includes a 2018 discussion with the Turkish president, Recep Erdoğan. Bolton says Erdoğan gave Trump a memo claiming that a Turkish firm under investigation in the US was innocent. “Trump then told Erdoğan he would take care of things, explaining that the southern district prosecutors were not his people, but were Obama people, a problem that would be fixed when they were replaced by his people.”
4. Trump praised Xi for China’s internment camps
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According to Bolton, Trump was also approving when Xi defended China’s internment of Uighur Muslims in detention camps. “According to our interpreter,” Bolton writes, “Trump said that Xi should go ahead with building the camps, which Trump thought was exactly the right thing to do.”
According to leaked Communist party documents published in November, at least 1 million Uighur Muslims are detained in the camps.
5. Trump defended Saudi Arabia to distract from a story about Ivanka
Trump made headlines in November 2018 when he released a bizarre statement defending the Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Salman over the killing of Jamal Khashoggi. It included lines such as “The world is a very dangerous place!” and “maybe he did and maybe he didn’t!”
According to Bolton’s book, making headlines was the point. A story about his daughter Ivanka using her personal email for government business was also in the news at the time. After waging war on Hilary Clinton during the 2016 campaign for doing the same thing, Trump need a distraction.
“This will divert from Ivanka,” Trump reportedly said. “If I read the statement in person, that will take over the Ivanka thing.”
6. Trump’s top staff mocked him behind his back
From what has been reported, it sounds like Bolton’s book provides one of the clearest insights into the despair of Trump’s top officials behind the scenes.
In one example given by the New York Times, Bolton claims he received a note from the secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, after Trump’s 2018 meeting with North Korea’s Kim Jong-un, simply saying, “He is so full of shit.” On top of this, Pompeo also allegedly said a month later that Trump’s diplomatic efforts with North Korea had “zero probability of success”.
7. Trump thought Finland was part of Russia
Bolton’s book reportedly details some giant holes in Trump’s knowledge. In one instance, Bolton says Trump didn’t seem to know basic knowledge about the UK, asking its former prime minister Theresa May: “Oh, are you a nuclear power?”. On top of this, he also alleges that Trump once asked if Finland was part of Russia, and repeatedly mixed up the current and former presidents of Afghanistan.
8. Trump thought it would be ‘cool’ to invade Venezuela
According to the Washington Post, Bolton claims Trump said invading Venezuela would be “cool”, and that the country was “really part of the United States”.
Bolton's book accuses Trump of widespread misdeeds
In a new book, former White House national security adviser John Bolton accuses US President Donald Trump of sweeping misdeeds in order to pursue reelection, including explicitly seeking Chinese President Xi Jinping's help. Bolton, a longtime foreign policy hawk, also writes that Trump expressed a willingness to halt criminal investigations to favor dictators he liked.
Bolton’s book offers a firsthand account confirming many of the allegations that led to Trump’s impeachment — directly linking the suspension of $391 million in security aid for Ukraine and demands that Ukraine publicly announce investigations into former Vice President Joseph Biden.
News of the upcoming release of the book, “The Room Where It Happened,” coincides with retaliatory threats from China over legislation Trump signed Wednesday calling for sanctions over the repression of China's Uighurs. In stark contrast, Bolton’s book alleges that the president earlier had approved of the mass detention of Uighurs.
What The World is following
In a 5-4 decision issued this morning, the US Supreme Court ruled against the Trump administration's attempt to cancel Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA. The majority opinion, authored by Chief Justice John Roberts, called the Department of Homeland Security's attempt to end the program "arbitrary and capricious." The ruling allows DACA to stay in place for now, ending some of the uncertainty faced by 650,000 undocumented immigrant beneficiaries who were brought to the US as children.
Alan:Obamagate was the biggest nothing-burger in the history of humankind. Absolutely nothing there. Ever "Un-Potty-Trained-73-Year-Old" couldn't identify a single crime. Just more of his "...everybody knows what I mean..." drivel What Trump actually mean is that he's a witless, lying asshole in process of going down.. And if there IS "something" to Obamagate -- if Obamagate does refer to the worst crime ever -- then Trump and Barr should be taken over the coals BY TRUMP SUPPORTERS THEMSELVES for not issuing indictments to bring the most evil politician in history to justice. "Business Insider" -- a dyed-in-the-wool capitalist mouthpiece -- says: "Trump's 'Obamagate' conspiracy theory just got blown to pieces."https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-obamagate-flynn-unmasking-conspiracy-got-blown-to-pieces-2020-5 Oh, well... On to the next turd! Cue QAnon to serve up another dose of bullshit. And my logic concerning Obama applies to Hillary as well. If Hillary is guilty of one thousandth the crimes her critics allege, why are there no indictments? Why does the so-called "Law and Order Party" roll over and play dead? Let me buy free clues for the dimwits. Why to they roll over and play dead? They roll over and play dead because there is NO indictable, actionable evidence... as Trey Gowdy's years-long House investigation into Benghazi proved. Try as he may, Gowdy discovered NOTHING of legal consequence. Nothing to justify an even indictment... which is a pretty goddamn low bar. Benghazi was trumped up to inflame The Republican Base which, in the absence of a single functioning synapse among them, merely reacts to the smell of red meat. But the profoundest proof is in another pudding. Why don't Trumpistas demand that Trump -- in collaboration with lickspittle, brown-nosing AG Barr -- issue indictments? (Again, keep in mind that an indictment is an INCREDIBLY low bar.) If Trump and Barr allow criminals of this MAGNITUDE to roam the streets -- without even putting up a legal fight -- are they not, by definition, friends of monstrous malfeasants and enemies of Justice? Are they not approving, indulging and encouraging the very worst criminality ever? (Remember: Trump said Obamagate was "the worst crime ever.") Just you watch. Not a single Trumpista will attempt to answer my indictment of Trump and Barr's exculpatory collusion with world-class felons Hillary and Barack. Not one. Trumpistas are too addled to even obey the Surgeon General's Warning: http://paxonbothhouses.blogspot.com/2016/10/warning-from-surgeon-general.html
“They know who Donald Trump is: weak, corrupt, ridiculed,” the ad says. “China beats him every time. No matter what he says China’s got his number. Trump even begged China’s leader Xi Jinping to help in the reelection — like a dog.”
The Lincoln Project is an organization launched and operated by Republicans including Kellyanne Conway's husband, George Conway.
Alan: Americans don't read enough history to do the right thing.
Many Americans -- and most "conservative" Americans -- deliberately avoid deeply contextualized historical information in order to persist in the simple-minded idiocy of their "patriotic" lives, ignorantly repeating shibboleths, legendary falsehoods, alternative facts, conspiracy theories and in-your-face falsehoods.
They cling to childish notions of "America the Beautiful" while indulging feelings of righteousness and self-righteousness made possible by strict limitation of any civic involvement to MAGA hats, Trump rallies and -- in the case of Juan de Oñate's statue -- shooting protestors whose integrity and truth impelled them to topple such abominations.
What they don't know -- but easily could know -- reveals flabbergasting ignorance.
Today Oñate is known for the 1599 Acoma Massacre. Following a dispute that led to the death of thirteen Spaniards at the hands of the Ácoma, including Oñate's nephew, Juan de Zaldívar, Oñate ordered a brutal retaliation against Acoma Pueblo. The Pueblo was destroyed.[2] Around 800–1000 Ácoma were killed.[3]
Of the 500 or so survivors, at a trial at Ohkay Owingeh, Oñate sentenced most to twenty years of forced "personal servitude" and additionally mandated that all men over the age of twenty-five have a foot cut off.[3] He was eventually banished from New Mexico and exiled from Mexico City for five years, convicted by the Spanish government of using "excessive force" against the Acoma people.[2]
Today, Oñate remains a controversial figure in New Mexican history: in 1998, the right foot was cut off a statue of the conquistador that stands in Alcalde, New Mexico, in protest of the massacre, and significant controversy arose when a large equestrian statue of Oñate was erected in El Paso, Texas, in 2006.[4][5]
On June 15, 2020, the statue of Oñate in Alcalde, New Mexico, was temporarily removed by Rio Arriba County workers at the direction of officials. Civic institutions will make the final decision on the statue's future.[6]
Oñate was born in 1550, at Zacatecas in New Spain (colonial Mexico) to the Spanish-Basqueconquistador and silver baron Cristóbal de Oñate, a descendant of the noble house of Haro. Oñate’s mother, Doña Catalina Salazar y de la Cadena,[7] was also of Spanish origin and a descendant of recent Sephardic Jewish converts to Catholicism. Some of her close ancestors and other extended family served in the royal court of Spanish monarchs from the late 1300s to the mid-1500s.[8][9] Two of her Jewish ancestral families had only become New Christianconversos recently, one in the 1390s, only 160 years before Oñate’s birth, including Doña Catalina’s own grandfather (Oñate’s maternal great-grandfather), Doctor Guadalupe de Salazar, who converted from Judaism to Christianity and became royal physician to the Catholic monarchs, and one of 16 "regidores" (administrators) of Granada during the struggle to oust the Moors. Doctor Guadalupe de Salazar’s son (Oñate’s maternal grandfather), was converso Gonzalo de Salazar, an aristocrat and leader of several councils that governed New Spain while Hernán Cortés was traveling to Honduras, in 1525−26.
The acceptance of Christianity by Oñate’s maternal Jewish ancestral families was a prominent part of the family history. The descendants of Salazar y de la Cadena‘s Jewish ancestral families, the Maluendas and the Santa María-Cartagenas (formerly the Ha-Levi family), did not attempt to hide their Jewish origins or pretend to be of “Old Christian” heritage. In fact, Oñate’s own maternal grandfather, Gonzalo de Salazar, was said to have been open about his Jewish origin. Some of Oñate’s Jewish ancestors probably converted as a result of the Spanish antisemitism in the 1300s when massacres of Jews began to take place across Spain.[10]
Texas Historical Marker for Don Juan de Oñate and El Paso del Río Norte
In response to a bid by Juan Bautista de Lomas y Colmenares, and subsequently rejected by the King, in 1595 Philip II's Viceroy /Luis de Velasco selected Oñate from two other candidates to organize the resources of the newly acquired territory.[12]
The agreement with Viceroy Velasco tasked Oñate with two goals; the better-known aim was to explore and colonize the unknown lands annexed into the New Kingdom of León y Castilla (present day New Mexico) and the Viceroyalty of New Spain. His second goal was to capture Capt. Francisco Leyva de Bonilla (a traitor to the crown known to be in the region) as he already was transporting other criminals. His stated objective otherwise was to spread Catholicism by establishing new missions in Nuevo México. Oñate is credited with founding the Province of Santa Fe de Nuevo México, and was the province's first colonial governor, acting from 1598 to 1610. He held his colonial government at Ohkay Owingeh, and renamed the pueblo there 'San Juan de los Caballeros'.
In late 1595, the Viceroy de Zúñiga, followed his predecessor's advice and in the summer of 1596 delayed Oñate's expedition in order to review the terms of the original agreement signed, before the previous Viceroy had left office. In March 1598, Oñate's expedition moved out and forded the Rio Grande (Río del Norte) south of present-day El Paso and Ciudad Juárez in late April.
On the Catholic calendar day of Ascension, April 30, 1598, the exploration party assembled on the south bank of the Rio Grande. In an Ascension Day ceremony, Oñate led the party in prayer, as he claimed all of the territory across the river for the Spanish Empire. Oñate's original terms would have make this land a separate viceroyalty to the crown in New Spain; this move failed to stand after de Zúñiga reviewed the agreement.[citation needed]
In October 1598, a skirmish erupted when a squad of Oñate's men demanded supplies from the Acoma Pueblo, although the Ácoma themselves needed their stored food to survive the coming winter. The Ácoma resisted and 11 Spaniards were killed, including Oñate's nephew, Juan de Zaldívar.[14] In January 1599, Oñate condemned the conflict as an uprising and ordered the pueblo destroyed, a mandate carried out by Juan de Zaldívar's brother, Vicente de Zaldívar, in an offensive known as the Acoma Massacre. An estimated 800-1000 Ácoma died in the siege of the pueblo, and the 500 survivors[15] were put on trial and sentenced by Oñate. All men and women older than 12 were enslaved for 20 years. In addition, men older than 25 (24 individuals) had one foot amputated.[16][17]
Great Plains Expedition
In 1601, Oñate undertook a large expedition east to the Great Plains region of central North America. The expedition party included 130 Spanish soldiers and 12 Franciscan priests—similar to the expedition of the Spanish conquest of the Aztec Empire—and a retinue of 130 American Indian soldiers and servants. The expedition possessed 350 horses and mules. Oñate journeyed across the plains eastward from New Mexico in a renewed search for Quivira, the fabled "city of gold." As had the earlier Coronado Expedition in the 1540s, Oñate encountered Apaches in the Texas Panhandle region.
Jusepe probably led the Oñate party on the same route he had taken on the Umana and Leyba expedition six years earlier. They found an encampment of native people that Oñate called the Escanjaques. He estimated the population at more than 5,000 living in 600 houses.[19] The Escanjaques lived in round houses as large as 90 feet (27 m) in diameter and covered with tanned buffalo robes. They were hunters, according to Oñate, depending upon the buffalo for their subsistence and planting no crops.
The Escanjaques told Oñate that Etzanoa, a large city of their enemies, the Rayado Indians, was located only about twenty miles away. It seems possible that the Escanjaques had gathered together in large numbers either out of fear of the Rayados or to undertake a war against them. They attempted to enlist the assistance of the Spanish and their firearms, alleging that the Rayados were responsible for the deaths of Humana and Leyva a few years before.
The Escanjaques guided Oñate to a large river a few miles away and he became the first European to describe the tallgrass prairie. He spoke of fertile land, much better than that through which he had previously passed, and pastures "so good that in many places the grass was high enough to conceal a horse."[20] He found and tasted a fruit of good flavor, possibly the pawpaw.
Rayado people
Near the river, Oñate's expedition party and their numerous Escanjaque guides saw three or four hundred Rayados on a hill. The Rayados advanced, throwing dirt into the air as a sign that they were ready for war. Oñate quickly indicated that he did not wish to fight and made peace with this group of Rayados, who proved to be friendly and generous. Oñate liked the Rayados more than he did the Escanjaques. They were "united, peaceful, and settled." They showed deference to their chief, named Caratax, whom Oñate detained as a guide and hostage, although "treating him well."[21]
Caratax led Oñate and the Escanjaques across the river to Etzanoa, a settlement on the eastern bank, one or two miles from the river. The settlement was deserted, the inhabitants having fled. It contained "about twelve hundred houses, all established along the bank of another good-sized river which flowed into the large one [the Arkansas].... the settlement of the Rayados seemed typical of those seen by Coronado in Quivira in the 1540s. The homesteads were dispersed; the houses round, thatched with grass, large enough to sleep ten persons each, and surrounded by large granaries to store the corn, beans, and squash they grew in their fields." With difficulty Oñate restrained the Escanjaques from looting the town and sent them home.
The next day the Oñate expedition proceeded onward for another eight miles through heavily populated territory, although without seeing many Rayados. At this point, the Spaniards' courage deserted them. There were obviously many Rayados nearby and soon Oñate's men were warned that the Rayados were assembling an army. Discretion seemed the better part of valor. Oñate estimated that three hundred Spanish soldiers would be needed to confront the Rayados, and he turned his soldiers around to return to New Mexico.
Return to Nuevo México
Oñate had worried about the Rayados hurting or attacking his expedition party, but it was instead the Escanjaques who repelled his men on their return to New Mexico. Oñate described a pitched battle with 1,500 Escanjaques, probably an exaggeration, but many Spaniards were wounded and many natives killed. After more than two hours of fighting, Oñate himself retired from the battlefield. The hostage Rayado chief Caratax was freed by a raid on Oñate and Oñate freed several women captives, but he retained several boys at the request of the Spanish priests for instruction in the Catholic faith. The attack may have arisen from Oñate's kidnapping of Caratax and the women and children.[22]
Oñate and his men returned to San Juan de los Caballeros, arriving there on November 24, 1601[23] without any further incidents of note.
Contemporary studies
The path of Oñate's expedition and the identity of the Escanjaques and the Rayados are much debated. Most authorities believe his route led down the Canadian River from Texas to Oklahoma, cross-country to the Salt Fork, where he found the Escanjaque encampment, and then to the Arkansas River and its tributary, the Walnut River at Arkansas City, Kansas where the Rayado settlement was located. Archaeological evidence favors the Walnut River site.[24] A minority view would be that the Escanjaque encampment was on the Ninnescah River and the Rayado village was on the site of present-day Wichita, Kansas.[25]
Authorities have speculated that the Escanjaques were Apache, Tonkawa, Jumano, Quapaw, Kaw, or other tribes. Most likely they were Caddoan and spoke a Wichita dialect. We can be virtually certain that the Rayados were Caddoan Wichitas.[citation needed] Their grass houses, dispersed mode of settlement, a chief named Catarax (Caddi was a Wichita title for a chief),[26] the description of their granaries, and their location all are in accord with Coronado's earlier description of the Quivirans. However, they were probably not the same people Coronado met. Coronado found Quivira 120 miles north of Oñate's Rayados. The Rayados spoke of large settlements called Tancoa — perhaps the real name of Quivira — in an area to the north.[27] Thus, the Rayados were related culturally and linguistically to the Quivirans but not part of the same political entity. The Wichita at this time were not unified, but rather a large number of related tribes scattered over most of Kansas and Oklahoma, so it is not implausible that the Rayados and Escanjaques spoke the same language, but were nevertheless enemies.[citation needed]
Oñate's last major expedition went to the west, from New Mexico to the lower valley of the Colorado River.[28] The party of about three dozen men set out from the Rio Grande valley in October 1604. They traveled by way of Zuñi, the Hopi pueblos, and the Bill Williams River to the Colorado River, and descended that river to its mouth in the Gulf of California in January 1605, before returning along the same route to New Mexico. The evident purpose of the expedition was to locate a port by which New Mexico could be supplied, as an alternative to the laborious overland route from New Spain.
The expedition to the lower Colorado River was important as the only recorded European incursion into that region between the expeditions of Hernando de Alarcón and Melchior Díaz in 1540, and the visits of Eusebio Francisco Kino beginning in 1701. The explorers did not see evidence of prehistoric Lake Cahuilla, which must have arisen shortly afterwards in the Salton Sink.
They mistakenly thought that the Gulf of California continued indefinitely to the northwest, giving rise to a belief that was common in the 17th century that the western coasts of an Island of California were what was seen by sailing expeditions in the Pacific.
Seen by Oñate below the Gila junction but subsequently reported upstream from there, in the area where Oñate had encountered the Coguana, or Kahwans, Agalle, and Agalecquamaya, or Halyikwamai, and the Cocopah.
Concerning areas that the explorers had not observed directly, they gave fantastic reports about races of human and areas said to be rich in gold, silver, and pearls.
Later life
In 1606, Oñate was recalled to Mexico City for a hearing regarding his conduct. After finishing plans for the founding of the town of Santa Fe, he resigned his post and was tried and convicted of cruelty to both natives and colonists. He was banished from New Mexico for life and exiled from Mexico City for 5 years.[29]
Eventually Oñate went to Spain, where the king appointed him head of all mining inspectors in Spain. He died in Spain in 1626. He is sometimes referred to as "the Last Conquistador."[30]
Legacy
Oñate is honored by some as an explorer but vilified by others for his cruelty to the Keres people of Acoma Pueblo.
Oñate High School in Las Cruces, New Mexico is named after Juan de Oñate. Juan de Oñate Elementary School in Gallup, New Mexico, was merged with another school to become Del Norte Elementary School in 2017. [31] The historic central business district of Española, New Mexico, is named Paseo de Oñate, also known as Oñate Street.
Alcalde statue
In the Northern Rio Grande National Heritage Center (until 2017 the Oñate Monument and Visitor Center) in Alcalde, New Mexico, is a 1991 bronze statue dedicated to Oñate. In 1998, New Mexico celebrated the 400th anniversary of his arrival. Shortly before (December 29, 1997), and the close dates are no coincidence, unknown perpetrator(s) cut off the statue's right foot[32] and left a note saying, "Fair is fair." Sculptor Reynaldo Rivera recast the foot, but a seam is still visible. Some commentators suggested leaving the statue maimed as a symbolic reminder of the foot-amputating Acoma Massacre. A local filmmaker, Chris Eyre, was contacted by one of the two perpetrators, saying "I'm back on the scene to show people that Oñate and his supporters must be shamed." The sculptor responded that chopping feet "was the nature of discipline of 400 years ago."[33]
In 2017, the statue's left foot was painted red and the words "Remember 1680" (year of the Pueblo revolt) were written with paint on the monument's base.[34]
Removal of Alcalde statue
The county of Rio Arriba temporarily removed the statue on June 15, 2020, which followed wider efforts to remove controversial statues across the United States.[35] It is unknown whether the statue will be returned to its place in the future, with a statement from Rio Arriba County Commission stating: "Rio Arriba County residents need to understand that a final policy decision has not been made about the Oñate statue other than its removal today to protect it from damage or destruction. The County Commission welcomes a respectful and civil discussion from its residents about the future of the Oñate statue." [36]
1998 400th anniversary of arrival
A memorial for Oñate was created for the New Mexico Cuarto Centenario (the 400th anniversary of Oñate’s 1598 settlement). The memorial was meant to be a tri-cultural collaboration (Hispanic, Anglo, and Tewa Pueblo Native American), with Reynaldo “Sonny” Rivera, Betty Sabo, and Nora Naranjo Morse. Because of the controversy surrounding Oñate, two separate memorials and perspectives were created. [37] Rivera and Sabo did a series of bronze statues of Oñate leading the first group of Spanish settlers into New Mexico titled “La Jornada,” while Naranjo-Morse created an abstract land art from the desert itself of a large dirt spiral representing the Native American perspective titled “Numbe Whageh” (Tewa interpretation: Our Center Place). [38][39] It is located at the Albuquerque Museum.
2014 400th anniversary of exile
In 1614, Oñate was exiled from what is now New Mexico and charged with mismanagement and excessive cruelty, especially at the Acoma massacre in Acoma. In 1599, after killing 500 warriors and 300 women and children, he ordered the right foot be chopped off of all surviving 24 Acoma warriors. Males between the ages of 12 and 25 were also enslaved for 20 years, along with all of the females above the age of 12. When King Phillip of Spain heard the news from Acoma, Oñate was brought up on 30 charges of mismanagement and excessive cruelty. He was found guilty of cruelty, immorality, and false reporting and returned to Spain to live out the remainder of his life. 2014 marked the 400th anniversary of Juan de Oñate's exile from New Mexico. Despite his atrocities, Oñate is still celebrated today at the Española Valley Fiestas.[40]
Texas
In 1997 the City of El Paso hired the sculptor John Sherrill Houser to create a statue of the conquistador. In reaction to protests, two city council members retracted their support for the project.[32] The $2,000,000 statue took nearly nine years to build and was kept in the sculptor's Mexico City warehouse. The statue was completed in early 2006, transported in pieces on flatbed trailers to El Paso during the summer, and installed in October. The controversy over the statue prior to its installation was the subject of the documentary film The Last Conquistador, presented in 2008 as part of PBS's P.O.V. television series.[41][42]
The City of El Paso unveiled the eighteen ton, 34-foot-tall (10 m) statue in a ceremony on April 21, 2007. Oñate is mounted atop his Andalusian horse and holds the La Toma declaration in his right hand. The statue precipitated controversy due to Oñate's war crimes, and was protested by groups such as the Ácoma tribe during the development of the project as well as at the inauguration. The statue, however, was welcomed by segments of the local population (including portions of the Hispanic community), and the Spanish ambassador to the United States, Carlos Westendorp.[citation needed] According to Houser, it is the largest and heaviest bronze equestrian statue in the world.
^Simmons, Marc, The Last Conquistador: Juan de Oñate and the Settling of the Far Southwest, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1991 pp. 193–94[ISBN missing]
^ Jump up to:abTrujillo, Michael L. (2008). "Oñate's Foot: Remembering and Dismembering in Northern New Mexico". Aztlan: A Journal of Chicano Studies. 33 (2): 91–99.
^Simmons, Marc, The Last Conquistador:Juan de Oñate and the Settling of the Far Southwest, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, Oklahoma, 1991, p. 30
^Piety and privilege collide in Juan de Oñate’s Jewish-converso lineage.,BY JOSÉ ANTONIO ESQUIBEL, Fall 2016, El Palacio The Magazine of the Museum of New Mexico, http://www.elpalacio.org/2016/09/blood-oaths/
^Doña Teresa Confronts the Spanish Inquisition: A Seventeenth-Century New Mexican Drama, Frances LevineJune 27, 2016, University of Oklahoma Press
^Piety and privilege collide in Juan de Oñate’s Jewish-converso lineage.,BY JOSÉ ANTONIO ESQUIBEL, Fall 2016, El Palacio The Magazine of the Museum of New Mexico, http://www.elpalacio.org/2016/09/blood-oaths/
^L. Thrapp, Dan Encyclopedia of Frontier Biography: G-O, University of Nebraska Press, 1991, p. 1083
^Ramon A. Gutierrez (February 1, 1991). When Jesus Came, the Corn Mothers Went Away: Marriage, Sexuality, and Power in New Mexico, 1500-1846. Stanford University Press. p. 53.
^Bolton, Herbert Eugene, ed. Spanish Exploration in the Southwest, 1542-1706. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1916, 250-267
^Hawle, Marlin F. European-contact and Southwestern Artifacts in the lower Walnut Focus Sites at Arkansas City Kansas, Plains Anthropologists, Vol. 45, No. 173, Aug 2000
^Vehik, Susan C. (1986). "Onate's Expedition to the Southern Plains: Routes, Destinations, and Implications for Late Prehistoric Cultural Adaptations". Plains Anthropologist. 31 (111): 13–33.
^The Pawnee Indians. George E. Hyde 1951. New edition in The Civilization of the American Indian Series, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, 1974. ISBN0-8061-2094-0, page 19
^Hammond, George P., and Agapito Rey, Don Juan de Oñate, Colonizer of New Mexico, University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque, 1953; Laylander, Don, "Geographies of Fact and Fantasy: Oñate on the Lower Colorado River, 1604-1605," Southern California Quarterly, Vol. 86, No. 4, 2004, 309-324.
^Simmons, Marc, The Last Conquistador: Juan de Oñate and the Settling of the Far Southwest, University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, Oklahoma, 1991, book title
Alan: There is wrongdoing on both sides of the aisle.
But The Republican Party has become committed -- full-time, 24/7 -- to lying, cheating, and theft.
And now Malignant Messiah’s functionaries are extending Trump’s surreptitious passion for nondisclosure to the whole goddamn policymaking mechanism of his administration.
They get away with anything because they conceal everything.
When this nightmare is over - assuming Trump doesn’t cheat his way to victory in November – let’s re-institute public stocks, accompanied by public humiliation, until every one of these bastards has become encrusted with rotten egg, rancid milk and putrescent potato ooze.
Christianity's central sacrament, commemoration and ritual
"Gathering everyone to eat together"
When Jesus gathered the multitude for bread and fish, it is likely that everyone on that hillside was a practicing Jew - including Yeshua and the apostles.
"It" is not about staying inside the tribe.
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Christian Conservatism: The Saved, The Damned, The Rich, The Poor
Alan: I have no expectation you'll act on my suggestion, at least while you're dedicated to convalescence. But one day, I encourage you to google "Trump Supporter Shoots BLM Protester Over Removal Of Conquistador Juan de Oñate's Statue" (with quotation marks). If it happens that you never muster the gumption to check out my "full dose," at least read Wikipedia's entry on Juan de Oñate. If "the assiduously ignorant" -- and they are legion -- just spent 5 minutes reading about this sonofabitch, those right-wing militia men who were policing last week's protest in Arizona would have joined the protesters! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_de_O%C3%B1ate How was it possible that we Americans remained so ignorant -- so long -- zealously sucking the sludge of Pollyanna's "official story?" We were literally enthralled. Made slaves. And we pretended that our diligently-cultivated status as slaves was liberation. We imagined ourselves a "shining city upon a hill" - a "beacon of hope" for the rest of the world. And now "the cat is out of the bag." Trump Cult has revealed the ever-present underbelly. The ongeoing urge to harm people of color, most notably blacks and Native Americans. But people are waking up. Is this "The Apocalypse" as I've always imagined it? Notably, apocalypse meant "uncovering, disclosure, revelation," at least until 1858 when it completely absorbed the current connotation of "calamity, catrastrophe, end-time destruction."
The long-standing English meaning -- which one could represent as "putting an end to non-disclosure agreements, be they explicit or implicit" -- derives from the late 14th century understanding of "revelation, disclosure," from Church Latin apocalypsis "revelation," from Greek apokalyptein "uncover, disclose, reveal," from apo "off, away from" (see apo-) + kalyptein "to cover, conceal," from PIE root *kel- (1) "to cover, conceal, save." The Christian end-of-the-world (as we know it?) story is part of the revelation in John of Patmos' book "Apokalypsis" (a title rendered into English as pocalipsis c. 1050, "Apocalypse" c. 1230, and "Revelations" by Wyclif c. 1380). Its general sense in Middle English was "insight, vision; hallucination." The meaning "a cataclysmic event" is modern (not in OED 2nd ed., 1989); apocalypticism "belief in an imminent end of the present world" is from 1858. As agent nouns, "author or interpreter of the 'Apocalypse,'" apocalypst (1829), apocalypt (1834), and apocalyptist (1824) have been tried.
I interpret "the BLM apocalypse" as "disclosing the Wizard of Oz behind his bafflegab-bombast curtain."
In 2007, author Frank Schaeffer titled his autobiography Crazy for God: How I Grew Up as One of the Elect, Helped Found the Religious Right, and Lived to Take All (or Almost All) of It Back. It tells of his upbringing as the son of a well-known evangelical minister and his later conversion to the Greek Orthodox Church.[13]
Image may be NSFW. Clik here to view.Mrs. Betty Bowers thinks that Trump is the best president for our particular time, one unable to calm and soothe with meaningless platitudes, whose racial animus will propel many people in denial to realize they don't want to be like His Malignancy. "Donald's Birthday Gift"https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hebkaq-KfbQ
Alan: Until 1955, when the Salk vaccine was introduced, polio was considered one of the most frightening public health problems in the world. In the postwar United States, annual epidemics were increasingly devastating. The 1952 U.S. epidemic was the worst outbreak in the nation's history. Of nearly 58,000 cases reported that year, 3,145 people died and 21,269 were left with mild to disabling paralysis,[3]with most of its victims being children. The "public reaction was to a plague", said historian William L. O'Neill.[4] "Citizens of urban areas were to be terrified every summer when this frightful visitor returned." According to a 2009 PBS documentary, "Apart from the atomic bomb, America's greatest fear was polio."[5] As a result, scientists were in a frantic race to find a way to prevent or cure the disease. In 1938, U.S. PresidentFranklin D. Roosevelt, the world's most recognized victim of the disease, had founded the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis (known as March of Dimes Foundation since 2007), an organization that would fund the development of a vaccine.
Alan: Something deep in the American soul assumes that the accumulation of great wealth is a sure sign of success, and -- despite massive evidence to the contrary -- great wealth is the high road to happiness. In the case of Aunt Jemima, this "monetary mindset" presupposes that people have no right to complain about the exploitive racial component of "Aunt Jemima" because she was well-compensated. Money is America's panacea, the mechanism be which America literally "papers over" any wrong. It's true that we use green paper to hide our shortcomings and sins. But it is paper nonetheless. Money is our national excuse for refusing to embody virtue, for putting the enactment of sound principles on hold. The next time you, or a friend, or a relative, suffer permanent physical damage at the hands of a negligent third party, ask yourself whether "the lawsuit settlement" made it "alright." Or even close to alright? There is a huge component of truth in the lemma: "If you don't have your health, you don't have anything." Not only is this observation self-evidently true for physical health, it is also true for social and political health - what we might call "metaphysical health." Tragically, we Americans are crass, materialistic, utilitarian, unusually greedy people, and so -- "out of the gate" -- we hold "the metaphysical" in contempt. Consider this deeply-contextualized quotation by Hannah Arendt, a 20th century intellectual titan and a woman of great personal integrity. "What has come to an end is the distinction between the sensual and the supersensual, together with the notion, at least as old as Parmenides, that whatever is not given to the senses... is more real, more truthful, more meaningful than what appears; that it is not just beyond sense perception but above the world of the senses... In increasingly strident voices, the few defenders of metaphysics have warned us of the danger of nihilsim inherent in this development. The sensual... cannot survive the death of the supersensual." Hannah Arendt In similar vein, Einstein observed: "There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle."
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"The Love Of Money Is The Root Of All Evil" - An Open Invitation To Christian Conservatives