permaculture

["Andrew French" <alienbuddha@gmail.com>]

 Published on Monday, October 8, 2007 by
CommonDreams.org<http://www.commondreams.org/> Columbus
Day - As Rape Rules Africa and American Churches Embrace Violent 'Christian'
Video Games by Thom Hartmann

* "Gold is most excellent; gold constitutes treasure; and he who has it does
all he wants in the world, and can even lift souls up to Paradise."*

– Christopher Columbus, 1503 letter to the king and queen of Spain.

*"Christopher Columbus not only opened the door to a New World, but also set
an example for us all by showing what monumental feats can be accomplished
through perseverance and faith."*

–George H.W. Bush, 1989 speech

If you fly over the country of Haiti on the island of Hispaniola, the island
on which Columbus landed, it looks like somebody took a blowtorch and burned
away anything green. Even the ocean around the port capital of Port au
Prince is choked for miles with the brown of human sewage and eroded
topsoil. From the air, it looks like a lava flow spilling out into the sea.

The history of this small island is, in many ways, a microcosm for what's
happening in the whole world.

When Columbus first landed on Hispaniola in 1492, virtually the entire
island was covered by lush forest. The Taino "Indians" who loved there had
an apparently idyllic life prior to Columbus, from the reports left to us by
literate members of Columbus's crew such as Miguel Cuneo.

When Columbus and his crew arrived on their second visit to Hispaniola,
however, they took captive about two thousand local villagers who had come
out to greet them. Cuneo wrote: "When our caravels… where to leave for
Spain, we gathered…one thousand six hundred male and female persons of those
Indians, and these we embarked in our caravels on February 17, 1495…For
those who remained, we let it be known (to the Spaniards who manned the
island's fort) in the vicinity that anyone who wanted to take some of them
could do so, to the amount desired, which was done."

Cuneo further notes that he himself took a beautiful teenage Carib girl as
his personal slave, a gift from Columbus himself, but that when he attempted
to have sex with her, she "resisted with all her strength." So, in his own
words, he "thrashed her mercilessly and raped her."

http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/10/08/4398/