before the official commemoration of columbus day here in one nine hundred ninety four and i want we want to talk about the man to talk about the event which i see as an incredibly important event  voyage the first order of christopher columbus but i wonder if maybe you want to comment on it and generally past the five hundred anniversary of this event and there wasn't the kind of salvatore kind of nature to this that many people anticipated from years him up to a great deal of difficulty because it came to represent in a certain sense in the minds of many a clash between the advantage of the world but i wonder jennifer you want to comment on we've gotten five hundred two years now since  you said to me before we stated that i look like a professor your question makes me feel like a professor because you asked me the same question about three things that are in fact extremely different brands that is the way which we're celebrating columbus day today or misrepresented for many americans of every problem the triumph of a man the hopes of america and the power of america which was becoming at that point of those two things has very directly much to do in my judgment with what happened five hundred years ago which is a whole separate issue and can be looked at from mangere all from an ad lib but it seems to me that frames are much closer to our vision at the moment is that we're looking at an hour frames have to do with where we stand in the history of the united states of america and it is through those positions in time that we tend to think about agreements now we're in the middle of the world trade organization the well to do nations of the world are coming against the less well to do the less developed and so it you know if you're going to say one thing they sure are north south sort of quality to the east west conflict  speaking back in eighty ninety two i have seen testimonies from some groups that ninety ninety to protest a very strongly against the celebration in eighty ninety two sometimes they were protesting because they were being included and the fact that he had gone i kind of would as a member of the ways we want to talk about you have a sort of epic pam you've written that we want to talk about i want to give you a chance to read some of and let people know you're going to actually be reading that on the night that this program is down down down town for people i want to get to that and you've also been interested in that but i've been interested i wonder if i could maybe just talk a little bit about the west as a geography and it just seems to me that that we have to try and get a perspective on it in a world scale i mean a lot of things going on since eighty ninety two in terms of understanding the whole question of the evolution of the human species has gone through incredible revolutions auster look at the scene  and the development of home ability has and the fact that we seem to have come to almost universal agreement that mankind as a species first evil act and develop and was shown to develop in the long probably the eastern rift valley of a mitochondrial d n a studies which seem now to be accepted or correct probably about two hundred thousand years ago that we come five point five billion people in the world today come from a common small gene pool in the east of africa and that's love regina home of a song that we look at a world scale mankind was very very effective in terms of being able to move eastward i figured it out and that if we go from that original route the the people who were the precursors or the ancestors the intrepid ancestors of the american indian or indigenous people had gone two hundred eighty degrees of longitude to the east were they had managed to cross the pacific over the bering strait or whatever and those people who were on the island of san salvador as columbus approached it on october eleventh the night of october eleventh they had come perhaps seventy five degrees of the way around seventy percent of the way in a circle navigating of the globe and east for direction if you take their east there if you take their cousins in brazil they've gone virtually ninety five percent of the way around the world in an eastward migratory pattern to the west we've been very much less able to do that the europeans themselves have hadlee ventured more at the very most even from the original site where we originated not more than ten percent of the way around the world they ventured hardly a tall into the western in a western erection but the meeting of columbus vikings notwithstanding possible trans pacific to transatlantic contact from africa phoenician or other kinds of legendary or other kinds of thoughts i was manning the meeting of columbus on that day of october twel october eleventh how we read it was a monumental meeting of the easternmost in the westernmost extensions of mankind from our original place does that make sense to you or is that something that you can see in a on a broad condo context and does it have any meaning well the picture is that your track is clear enough it's hard for me to understand exactly what it means i get your thinking very much compromised if you're looking over the show a bit of god almighty right beyond weight is written records it seems to me that the possible narratives that you can generate the number of possible narratives you can generate is sort of infinite because there's so little to hold you back from you have this and you have that if you connect the dots this way or that this was the most monumental night in the history of all mankind in a certain sense are there since the birth of christ no night was so propitious as october eleventh as these people boarded out because we were closing the gap but we were closing the circle in a certain sense i mean what had been an eastward and a westward direction and if we're thinking in terms of the coming together of mankind that was a monumental event that was taking place five hundred years ago who went through a whole set of historical processes which had very little if anything to do with him but how i want to do with the forces that propelled him had a lot to do with the forces that developed the are the people who were laborers and very poor people impoverished miners found themselves best symbolized by this person who was the agents the paid agents of the king of spain and a lot of very rich good to underscore the fact that these other intrepid peoples who were in the new world indigenous peoples advertently circum navigated the world ninety five percent of the way around the world in eastern iraq and i think that do due ought to be prodded to account to the europeans had hardly ventured away from where our regional war roots were i think that's an important context and i wonder if i could bring up one of the things i discovered i mentioned to you on the telephone preliminary conversation we want to get to your poem also i think is there is an interesting kind of thing because we come into a world now where i mention to you before the gathered remains and these kind of words and there's a tremendous development of technology and all kinds of things that develop since these five hundred years since christopher columbus we live in a very precarious world in a certain sense and we live in a world that marshall mcluhan called a global village so the linking of these two things and they're increasingly a world economy is emerging often these kind of people to regard to move to the west or that their way was a debate among the pins on brothers the captains of his his cabinet and the group that they really were many who were very frightened they really did want to have there was great sentiment to turn about and go by the trade winds are going to bring them so far out work further than it ever been before and he actually did on the nine morrison exception actually did say the pennzoil brothers that if we do not find land there were signs with floating with true leaves or flowers and so forth if we do not find land within three days we will really give clues serious consideration to turning about and on the night of the eleventh morrison right so dramatically no one was asleep on those ships all eyes were peering on the western horizon they had seen evidence they were birds that are brought him out of west south westpac for a while they had some stormy seas that night had been generally smooth sailing but at a eyes were were on the western  and this incredible story that columbus and at ten o'clock in the end of the log at ten o'clock at night on the night of october eleventh on the far distant western horizon from the stern castle of the santa maria cla that he was it's a bit of greed that columbus must have been by the bows this is been much written about he must have been twenty seven nautical miles this is the best agreement that they can come to where he would have been on the santa maria twenty seven nautical miles off the eastern coast of san salvador and most people have said there is no possibility that any light of a torch the peoples of the island were in need in fishing people they ventured out they had torches that fire are the heights of the highest hill as one hundred forty feet high san salvador but no torch could be possibly seen that far the horizon generally seven miles or so as we look out no towards could be possibly same but it twenty seven miles but conditions as existed on the night of october eleventh this night that war since it was the most propitious and important night since the birth of christ as these two worlds east and west were about to meet and that they had a bon fire to be built on the on the on the island the bonfire might have been a signal for fishermen who were away the seas were up but and he saw they were able to see this light just as columbus described it in the log and if you take that point twenty nautical miles you come up with a reading longitudinal rating of seventy three degrees fifty eight minutes and six seconds of west longitude seventy these should go and bisect the world headquarters of the of the united nations which perhaps if we get a longer term perspective is an institution which is the hope of the world in a certain sense we need to have some sort of a world purview going i think the coincidence between those two things is quite amazing if it does hold up that way i don't know if you see that is amazing that should be a coincidence of the point where he saw the light and the fact that this institution would have all this institution which may be the hope of the world would  so many hundreds of years after he made that sighting and if we might have the basis for a stab wishing a new point at which we were orient ourselves for the rest of our tenure on earth in an east west direction other than the prime meridian that we i don't know what we could give added support to the united nations and if there's a rationale for dividing the earth and demarcating here on an east west basis since this was after all the meaning of east and west in a historic frame reference i just i just find it absolutely staggering that these two things would come absolutely the same and you could look it up if anyone want to go and look it up in these things a little and then once you paid attention to that well i wonder if it means in every night maybe the mines were every mind's made of a kind of parameters and instead you find this secret underground russia christian mathematical sat that explains that quite a different way it could be web so hard to really know what a thing like eurocentric to bury him the whole world in the nice west and after all we're setting up a demarcating end of grip on this planet that is going to serve us now from the end of our ten year to the end of our tenure on earth and i think it doesn't before us anyway listen i don't want to go and i'm just interested not put out there for what it's worth going to it and if you go look it up it's a fact it's a fact that these two things have this coincides and it's on it's amazing it practically splits go right between the general of christopher columbus ok please i just read the beginning maybe the first five minutes over and well i found christopher columbus hiding in the ashtray took what they like people used to fight over columbus the spaniards said he was spanish became a quince and terry no one wanted columbus except the italians they he represented the renaissance as technologically both also i mean it's certainly the case that the whole enterprise of invading the new world that that is the best work for the whole enterprise was technologically mercantile tradition of people who have been plying the mediterranean in the north sea of the coast of africa very successfully for a very long time he represented as a battle the intensive push of anyone you were talking about we went through this other stuff i mean the decolonization of the world has just occurred recently relatively recently in the world history and this theme about the conflict between the well to do with the leading elements of the world and those who are indigenous people is something that has been taken up the plight of those who have not been so so you know you know i'm not in such a position of power in the world i think it's also i think it's also the case that the european real arrangement of the western hemisphere in this in the hundreds of years subsequent to columbus is for has been out there things are changing nobody exactly knows how to change but them happens next it's clear that people who have been silent for hundreds and even thousands of years i finally managing to make their voices heard so that all of this this whole agenda of european culture is up for discussion is open to question in a way that i think it really wasn't even twenty or thirty years ago  is going to become a major issue is begin to look at here and we have incredible discontent within our own society between the special interests and those who are well in doubt and those who are not and i think that that was all i think that there were many the ideological dismantling of western empire is a constant project of peoples all over the world including well you the heart of the western empires that's one thing  equally consequential in these days is the rearrangement of the map of the world how the end of the cold war has produced a softening really of american ideological intensity communication has meant that people think very differently than they used to because they know different things from the things that they used to know people per view used to be considerably more constrained by look hourly in place time class race gender all of that you know now with that kind of complicated conversations that we really specialize in the names like multiculturalism we're just much more aware of how things look to other people whom i think i turn to i'm not sure if i told you on the phone  minute and said columbus was working for the king of spain yeah these people came here in our ability to work on the rare worlds which one do you have more in common with you just grandfather come here working for the king of spain  italian american than anything else i wasn't happy with the official conversation that i was hearing from some italian american leaders i thought they were taking a very defensive posture and they have to say they're don't lay hands on our sacred figure i can understand is that colum that after all the the complaints that indigenous peoples the complaint that african peoples were making a baptist celebration of the european triumph was sensible complaints away with there wasn't any way that we could italians in this country and i'm not i'm not claiming columbus for us but a tangle in the summertime at times in this country for all kinds of reasons have made a great deal of columbus over the past hundred years of community identification that were inherited by us italy we were disinherited from here the catholic church for example we got here was pretty much in the hands of an irish given the kind of glorious kind of representation that you might have felt deserved and yet it did absolutely i would say i underscore the fact that the sensibilities of the world had gone wrong to play a place where instead of just seeing the glory of the star columbus coming over across the world and coming in discover this new world and what came to the sensibilities of the tremendous suffering that had been inflicted upon the indigenous peoples of this new world with smallpox and i mean that and the main thing was i tremendous holocaust and so there was a sensitivity among the peoples of the up this country and of the world to the plight of those who had been who had been disadvantaged by the colonial expression and the expansion of european power at that time in the sixteenth century seventeenth century eighteenth century and even continues on into the world in that in the present sense we only have just come back from college colonial low expansion of europe all over the world and this is still you know the can only expansion of the trilateral countries and that sort of thing begins to create among the peoples of the world a sense of a need for some sort of elemental justice between the rich and the powerful and those who will do you know those who must do as they you know they must do as those who are powerful would have them do and this injustice that does exist is part of the dialogue that is going on among the human family right now and something new and new and different kind of way paradigm shift that we're heading back and we see it in our general society here we call it the special interests not whether there are various nationalities here in this country we have a tremendous unbelievable same's of to establish some sort of a new system of social organization that can be more just in its in its in its ultimate outcome that columbus representing the negative side of that is putting all of the weight of history on the that history is a nightmare from which you are attempting to one which is the term whether we are in with to awaken or not is one of the major problems confronting us and i can't help thinking again the fact that the man and with this mysterious quality to it the support equality of the linking of these two picks stanchions of mankind the eastern wars in the westernmost and to have that point go right through the united nations which is a group of  a gathering and institutional gathering that if we take a two hundred three hundred year perspective we have to move toward a world of something other than just the nation states  whether the political war the corporations run rampant with the capital and so what we can't there's going to have to be some sort of countervailing measure to the inequities that exist in this world and i can't help thinking that it might be the final resurrection of the importance of him says i look forward much later it's as i look forward to the rise of a colombian ology columbus it will teach lived five hundred years in the character of a god once he died a cult of the here food considered future and we considered past and the reason that these things are going there he said it seems to me that the whole conversation world and that sensitivity is widely abroad in the world now thanks god my life and i columbus probably will be made at least for the near term and perhaps for a very long time the  is the break in the brain in the democratic sense and in the among the peoples of the world there's tremendous technological capability that's not being the mcintyre's and spread out there's tremendous problems that exist and they exist on a world scale and if they come to find a focus for that if they come to find a focus for that upset and that nervousness and that bad that sense of disquietude and alienation then that focus can become very laser beam like and become very very difficult and i think that happened to mr columbuses image of two hundred a couple years ago we should begin to get out of that we should begin to get past that and see what's going on at the same time that we see that the need for there being an empathetic inclusion and change now in terms of a world that is going to be a better space ship navigating vision that is going to be able to make us find elemental justice in the world for all the trends are not good my brother as we begin to if we look at it over the longer haul the rich are getting richer the poor getting poorer on a large scale the population congress in cairo just showed us that other kinds of trying to show that we have fundamental problems that confront this world and we need to need to address these problems and all of the destructive capability this build up i would remind you in terms of the historical experience the technology extended consciousness is not even though the western the downfall of the soviet union is not going away the new now it's bases there the capability is there and as an anti intro pig function in the universe mankind in the biological process might need to find a new functioning in this universe if we're not going to commit species wide suicide first ecological trauma and then weapons are there by which we might be able to would say give support to the institution that we do have that has a global purview that has and we have to give it something more than i won half the annual budget that the mars candy bar has now i mean the united nation needs to be supported in a way that it has not been and the fact that mr columbus spotted the land on the line do sounds right to the second when the color of that came to be located later seems to me a coincidence of very great importance we have to take advantage of these