4 The Hampton Roads Messenger Editorial


Before Columbus Is Celebrated or Protested, He Should Be Vetted


the Jews gone and the Moors defeated, Ferdinand and Isabella believed that Spain could fulfill its destiny as a pure Catholic nation -- the New Spain, the New World, the New Jerusalem.


Buoyed by this vision, the BY ANGELA JONES Each year Columbus Day is met


with celebration and protest. Love him or hate him, there is no denying that Christopher Columbus is one of the most relevant world figures, ever. His voyage to the “New World” changed the course of many peoples’ lives, including Native Americans, Africans and Europeans.


There is no doubt that, with the


help of the King and Queen of Spain, Ferdinand and Isabella, and the Catholic Church, Columbus was able to secure a position of dominance for Europeans over most of the world, which may not have otherwise been attainable. We are not sure who actually devised the scheme to take people from Africa and bring them to the “New World” to breed with the indigenous people and Moors, who were already living here. Future generations of the new race were told that they were all descendants of “slaves” and “savages;” however, their ancestors, the Moors, brought the Europeans out of caves and taught them how to build structures and irrigate crops almost 800 years before Columbus “discovered” America. So, when Columbus “discovered” America for Europeans, he was discovering people who had discovered his ancestors almost 800 years prior.


The following text is an excerpt


from pbs.org: “In Spain, Ferdinand of Aragon


and Isabella of Castile recognized that a strong church encouraged social stability and political cohesion. Ascending the throne in 1469, they surveyed a domain torn by more than a half century of war, social unrest and the Reconquista, a protracted struggle against the Moors, Muslims from North Africa who occupied portions of the Iberian Peninsula [711 A.D. to 1491 A.D.]. Determined to consolidate and strengthen their rule, the royal monarchs conquered the last Moorish stronghold and expelled Jews who refused to convert to Roman Catholicism. With


monarchs gave their approval to a Genoan [Italian] seaman, Christopher Columbus, to sail west in search of the riches of the Orient. In 1492, Columbus landed on an island he named “San Salvador,” or “Holy Savior,” and confidently predicted that the Native inhabitants could easily be made Christian [Catholic]. In the years that followed, Spain colonized Mexico and the modern American Southwest, coupling its imperial ambitions with the determination to spread the Catholic faith in the New World.”


Did Christopher Columbus see himself on an apocalyptic mission?


The following comments, also from


pbs.org, were made by Paul Boyer, the Merle Curti Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin, Madison:


“We tend to think of Christopher


Columbus as an explorer, a discoverer. ... In reality, while that is all true, Columbus was also a man of his day, which meant that he was a man who took apocalyptic teachings, who took biblical passages very, very literally. And in fact, we have in his own au- tobiographical writings, toward the end of his life, and in his messages to Ferdinand and Isabella, proposing yet another great enterprise. This time it will be ... to restore the Holy Land as a fulfillment of prophecies in the Book of Isaiah and elsewhere of the end time events. ... He believed that gold from the New World could be used to finance this great crusade to the Middle East to regain Jerusalem.


So in addition to everything else,


Christopher Columbus is very much a prominent figure in the history of apocalyptic belief in Europe. ... I think Columbus very much did have a sense of millennial fulfillment, that from his voyages, from his discoveries, and ... what he saw as the capstone event of his career, which would be the final expedition to the Middle East, as a fulfillment of biblical prophecies that would lead to the millennium.”


Since Columbus’ ultimate goal


was for Catholics to inhabit Jerusalem, one has to wonder if the Europeans, who are living in Jerusalem today, are Columbus’ distant Italian cousins. If Europeans occupied Jerusalem before Winston Churchill designated the land in Palestine for them, there would have been a worldwide uproar; however, if Europeans, who converted to Judaism, were relocated to Palestine and later took over Jerusalem, it would be more acceptable.


It behooves each and


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everyone in the world to study Christopher Columbus because his expeditions had a profound effect on the world, and continues to change it. Was he a clueless navigator, who stumbled on the New World by accident, or was his first voyage the beginning of a master plan for a particular religion’s domination throughout the world? By now, history should have answered that question.


Volume 7 Number 2


New Brain Cleaning System Discovered


BY MEGHAN MOTT, PH.D. Our bodies remove dead blood


cells and other waste through a network of vessels called the lymphatic system. The brain, however, has a different method of keeping clean. Cerebrospinal fluid cleanses brain tissue. But how the fluid moves through the brain and clears waste wasn’t well understood. Until now, scientists could only study brain tissue in animals that were already dead. They thought nutrients and waste were transported through the slow process of diffusion.


In a new study, a research team


led by Drs. Jeffrey Iliff and Maiken Nedergaard at the University of Rochester Medical Center used a method called 2-photon laser scanning microscopy to analyze the flow of cerebrospinal fluid in living mouse brains. This new technology allowed the scientists to study the intact brain in real time. They injected tracer molecules into the subarachnoid space, a cerebrospinal fluid-filled cavity between the membranes that cover the brain and spinal cord. Their work, funded in part by NIH’s National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), appeared in the August 15, 2012, issue of Science Translational Medicine.


To their surprise, the scientists


found that the tracer molecules flowed along a series of channels surrounding blood vessels. In the brain, blood vessels are surrounded by cells called astrocytes. These cells have projections called end feet that wrap around arteries and veins like a layer of piping. It was through this pipeline that the molecules traveled. The system uses pressure to push fluid through the brain. It’s a much faster and more efficient way to carry away waste than diffusion.


Astrocytes are a type of glial


cell—a class of cells that support neurons in the nervous system. The research team named this new system the “glymphatic system” because it is


October 2012


Scientists have discovered a system that drains waste products from the brain. The finding may reveal new ways to treat neurodegenerative disorders like Alzheimer’s disease.


similar to the body’s lymphatic system and is managed by the brain’s glial cells.


The scientists speculated that


disruptions in the glymphatic system might lead to the buildup of harmful waste in the brain. In patients with Alzheimer’s disease, a protein called amyloid beta accumulates in the brain and damages cells. The researchers injected amyloid beta into the brains of both healthy mice and mice genetically altered to disable their glymphatic system. Normal mice cleared the protein rapidly from brain tissue. Mice with faulty glymphatic systems had much slower protein removal.


“Increasing the activity of the


glymphatic system might help prevent amyloid deposition from building up,” says Iliff, “or could offer a new way to clean out buildups of the material in established Alzheimer’s disease.”


“This work shows that the brain


is cleansing itself in a more organized way and on a much larger scale than has been realized previously,” Nedergaard says. “We’re hopeful that these findings have implications for many conditions that involve the brain, such as traumatic brain injury, Alzheimer’s disease, stroke and Parkinson’s disease.”


Presidential Debates FROM PAGE 3


said that all of the attention being paid on the event may be somewhat misguided. The second debate—a town hall format—could feature a climate question, but Watson said the real discussion may come at the third debate, held at his university in Florida two weeks before the election.


“The third debate is all about


foreign policy ... and it seems to me one topic should be, and could be, climate change,” Watson said. “It offers a perfect example to contrast Obama and Romney on global policy, their views on science and their view on the world.”


Whatever happens in the debates


and in November, advocates have made it clear their efforts to build pressure for climate policies will continue.


The Presidential Climate Action


Project, a climate and energy security think tank, released a report on Monday outlining a menu of climate and energy policies the president can take without Congressional approval. The study, which includes recommendations like pricing carbon, follows previous PCAP


reports timed to administration transitions.


The Climate Silence campaign


is similarly looking beyond the 2012 elections, setting up a social media effort to stop the “slow, collective descent toward mute acceptance of global calamity” and compel politicians to bring up the issue.


And 350.org, among other actions,


has organized a national speaking tour led by McKibben that launches the day after the election, called “Do the Math.”


The post-election campaign builds


off an article by McKibben, published in Rolling Stone, that uses math to explain why the world must now transition to green energy. The crux of his argument is that countries can only burn 565 more gigatons of carbon by mid-century to keep global warming limited to a rise of 2 degrees Celsius. McKibben says energy companies now have five times that amount in their reserves.


The goal, said Kessler, is to spark a


new and more substantive conversation after the noise of the campaign subsides. “It’s ... hard to break through during this crazy time around the election.”


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