Tweet
************************************************** ***********
This Message is Reprinted Under the Fair Use
Doctrine of International Copyright Law:
_http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html_
(US CODE: Title 17,107. Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair use)
************************************************** ***********
Columbus Day - As Rape Rules Africa and American Churches Embrace Violent OE
Christian¹ Video Games
by Thom Hartmann / Published on Monday, October 8, 2007 by CommonDreams.org
FROM: _http://www.commondreams.org_ (Common Dreams | News & Views)
³Gold 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.²
Christopher Columbus, 1503 letter to the king and queen of Spain.
³Christopher 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.²
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 what¹s
happening in the whole world.
When Columbus first landed on Hispaniola in 1492, virtually the entire
island was covered by lush forest. The Taino ³Indians² who loved there had an
apparently idyllic life prior to Columbus, from the reports left to us by
literate members of Columbus¹s 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: ³When our caravelsS where to leave for Spain, we
gatheredSone thousand six hundred male and female persons of those Indians, and
these we embarked in our caravels on February 17, 1495SFor those who
remained, we let it be known (to the Spaniards who manned the island¹s fort) in the
vicinity that anyone who wanted to take some of them could do so, to the
amount desired, which was done.²
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 ³resisted with all her strength.² So, in his own
words, he ³thrashed her mercilessly and raped her.²
While Columbus once referred to the Taino Indians as cannibals, a story made
up by Columbus - which is to this day still taught in some US schools - to
help justify his slaughter and enslavement of these people. He wrote to the
Spanish monarchs in 1493: ³It is possible, with the name of the Holy Trinity,
to sell all the slaves which it is possible to sellSHere there are so many of
these slaves, and also brazilwood, that although they are living things they
are as good as goldS²
Columbus and his men also used the Taino as sex slaves: it was a common
reward for Columbus¹ men for him to present them with local women to rape. As he
began exporting Taino as slaves to other parts of the world, the sex-slave
trade became an important part of the business, as Columbus wrote to a friend
in 1500: ³A hundred castellanoes (a Spanish coin) are as easily obtained for a
woman as for a farm, and it is very general and there are plenty of dealers
who go about looking for girls; those from nine to ten (years old) are now in
demand.²
However, the Taino turned out not to be particularly good workers in the
plantations that the Spaniards and later the French established on
Hispaniola: they resented their lands and children being taken, and
attempted to fight back against the invaders. Since the Taino where obviously
standing in the way of Spain¹s progress, Columbus sought to impose discipline on
them. For even a minor offense, an Indian¹s nose or ear was cut off, se he could
go back to his village to impress the people with the brutality the Spanish
were capable of. Columbus attacked them with dogs, skewered them with pikes,
and shot them.
Eventually, life for the Taino became so unbearable that, as Pedro de
Cordoba wrote to King Ferdinand in a 1517 letter, ³As a result of the sufferings
and hard labor they endured, the Indians choose and have chosen suicide.
Occasionally a hundred have committed mass suicide. The women, exhausted by labor,
have shunned conception and childbirthS Many, when pregnant, have taken
something to abort and have aborted. Others after delivery have killed their
children with their own hands, so as not to leave them in such oppressive
slavery.²
Eventually, Columbus and later his brother Bartholomew Columbus who he left
in charge of the island, simply resorted to wiping out the Taino altogether.
Prior to Columbus¹ arrival, some scholars place the population of
Haiti/Hispaniola (now at 16
million) at around 1.5 to 3 million people. By 1496, it was down to 1.1
million, according to a census done by Bartholomew Columbus. By 1516, the
indigenous population was 12,000, and according to Las Casas (who were there) by
1542 fewer than 200 natives were alive. By 1555, every single one was dead.
This wasn¹t just the story of Hispaniola; the same has been done to
indigenous peoples worldwide. Slavery, apartheid, and the entire concept of
conservative Darwinian Economics, have been used to justify continued suffering by
masses of human beings.
Dr. Jack Forbes, Professor of Native American Studies at the University of
California at Davis and author of the brilliant book ³Columbus and Other
Cannibals,² uses the Native American word wétiko (pronounced WET-ee-ko) to
describe the collection of beliefs that would produce behavior like that of
Columbus. Wétiko literally means ³cannibal,² and Forbes uses it quite intentionally
to describe these standards of culture: we ³eat² (consume) other humans by
destroying them, destroying their lands, taking their natural resources, and
consuming their life-force by enslaving them either physically or economically.
The story of Columbus and the Taino is just one example.
We live in a culture that includes the principle that if somebody else has
something we need, and they won¹t give it to us, and we have the means to kill
them to get it, it¹s not unreasonable to go get it, using whatever force we
need to.
In the United States, the first ³Indian war² in New England was the ³Pequot
War of 1636,² in which colonists surrounded the largest of the Pequot
villages, set it afire as the sun began to rise, and then performed their duty: they
shot everybody-men, women, children, and the elderly-who tried to escape. As
Puritan colonist William Bradford described the scene: ³It was a fearful
sight to see them thus frying in the fire and the streams of blood quenching the
same, and horrible was the stink and scent thereof; but the victory seemed a
sweet sacrifice, and they [the colonists] gave praise therof to God, who had
wrought so wonderfullyS²
The Narragansetts, up to that point ³friends² of the colonists, were so
shocked by this example of European-style warfare that they refused further
alliances with the whites. Captain John Underhill ridiculed the Narragansetts for
their unwillingness to engage in genocide, saying Narragansett wars with
other tribes were ³more for pastime, than to conquer and subdue enemies.²
In that, Underhill was correct: the Narragansett form of war, like that of
most indigenous Older Culture peoples, and almost all Native American tribes,
does not have extermination of the opponent as a goal. After all, neighbors
are necessary to trade with, to maintain a strong gene pool through
intermarriage, and to insure cultural diversity. Most tribes wouldn¹t even want the
lands of others, because they would have concerns about violating or entering
the sacred or spirit-filled areas of the other tribes. Even the killing of
³enemies² is not most often the goal of tribal ³wars²: It¹s most often to fight
to some pre-determined measure of ³victory² such as seizing a staff, crossing
a particular line, or the first wounding or surrender of the opponent.
This wétiko type of theft and warfare is practiced daily by farmers and
ranchers worldwide against wolves, coyotes, insects, animals and trees of the
rainforest; and against indigenous tribes living in the jungles and rainforests.
It is our way of life. It comes out of our foundational cultural notions.
So it should not surprise us that with the doubling of the world¹s
population over the past 37 years has come an explosion of violence and brutality, and
as the United States runs low on oil, we are now fighting wars in oil-rich
parts of the world. It shouldn¹t surprise us that our churches are using
violent ³kill the infidels² video games
_http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/07/us/07halo.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin_
(http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/07/us...mp;oref=slogin) to lure in children, while in parts of
Africa contaminated by our culture and rich in oil (Congo) rape has become
so widespread as to make the front page of yesterday¹s New York Times
_http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/07/world/africa/07congo.html?hp_
(http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/07/wo...7congo.html?hp) .
These are all dimensions, after all, our history, which we celebrate on
Columbus Day. But if we wake up, and we help the world wake up, it need not be
our future.
Excerpted and slightly edited from ³The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight: The
Fate of the World and What We Can Do Before It¹s Too Late
_http://www.amazon.com/dp/1400051576?tag=commondreams-20&camp=0&creative=0&linkCode=as
1&creativeASIN=1400051576&adid=1CQHG2T3HW8 TWZK5H476&_
(Amazon.com: The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight: Revised and Updated: The Fate of the World and What We Can Do Before It's Too Late: Books: Thom Hartmann,Joseph Chilton Pearce,Neale Donald Walsch
Code=as1&creativeASIN=1400051576&adid=1CQH G2T3HW8TWZK5H476&) ; ,²
a book by Thom Hartmann which helped inspire Leonardo DiCaprio¹s new movie
The 11th Hour
_http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00005JPX9?tag=commondreams-20&camp=0&creative=0&linkCode=as1& creativeASIN=B00005JPX9&adid=06CBFR9
88PW4N7Y7K1FB&_
(Amazon.com: The 11th Hour: Movie Showtimes: Kenny Ausubel,Greg Watson,Stephen Hawking,James Woolsey,Wangari Maathai,David Suzuki,Leonardo DiCaprio,Paul Hawken,Michel Gelobter,David Orr (IX),Gloria Flora,Bill McKibben,Wallace J. Nichols (II),Andrew We
06CBFR988PW4N7Y7K1FB&) ; . Hartmann¹s most recent book is Cracking The
Code: How to Win Hearts, Change Minds, and Restore America¹s Original Vision
_http://www.amazon.com/dp/1576754588?tag=commondreams-20&camp=0&creative=
0&linkCode=as1&creativeASIN=1576754588& ;adid=01SAYXG4C6B5H6MWV2FM&a
mp_ (http://www.amazon.c
om/dp/1576754588?tag=commondreams-20&camp=0&creative=0&linkCode=as1& creativeASIN=1576754588&adid=01SAYXG4C6B5H6M
WV2FM&) ; . Thom Hartmann - author, Air America progressive liberal talk radio show host, books, and writings _http://www.thomhartmann.com/_
(Thom Hartmann - author, Air America progressive liberal talk radio show host, books, and writings)
_http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/10/08/4398/_
(Columbus Day - As Rape Rules Africa and American Churches Embrace Violent ‘Christian’ Video Games - CommonDreams.org)
This Message is Reprinted Under the Fair Use
Doctrine of International Copyright Law:
_http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html_
(US CODE: Title 17,107. Limitations on exclusive rights: Fair use)
************************************************** ***********
Columbus Day - As Rape Rules Africa and American Churches Embrace Violent OE
Christian¹ Video Games
by Thom Hartmann / Published on Monday, October 8, 2007 by CommonDreams.org
FROM: _http://www.commondreams.org_ (Common Dreams | News & Views)
³Gold 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.²
Christopher Columbus, 1503 letter to the king and queen of Spain.
³Christopher 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.²
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 what¹s
happening in the whole world.
When Columbus first landed on Hispaniola in 1492, virtually the entire
island was covered by lush forest. The Taino ³Indians² who loved there had an
apparently idyllic life prior to Columbus, from the reports left to us by
literate members of Columbus¹s 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: ³When our caravelsS where to leave for Spain, we
gatheredSone thousand six hundred male and female persons of those Indians, and
these we embarked in our caravels on February 17, 1495SFor those who
remained, we let it be known (to the Spaniards who manned the island¹s fort) in the
vicinity that anyone who wanted to take some of them could do so, to the
amount desired, which was done.²
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 ³resisted with all her strength.² So, in his own
words, he ³thrashed her mercilessly and raped her.²
While Columbus once referred to the Taino Indians as cannibals, a story made
up by Columbus - which is to this day still taught in some US schools - to
help justify his slaughter and enslavement of these people. He wrote to the
Spanish monarchs in 1493: ³It is possible, with the name of the Holy Trinity,
to sell all the slaves which it is possible to sellSHere there are so many of
these slaves, and also brazilwood, that although they are living things they
are as good as goldS²
Columbus and his men also used the Taino as sex slaves: it was a common
reward for Columbus¹ men for him to present them with local women to rape. As he
began exporting Taino as slaves to other parts of the world, the sex-slave
trade became an important part of the business, as Columbus wrote to a friend
in 1500: ³A hundred castellanoes (a Spanish coin) are as easily obtained for a
woman as for a farm, and it is very general and there are plenty of dealers
who go about looking for girls; those from nine to ten (years old) are now in
demand.²
However, the Taino turned out not to be particularly good workers in the
plantations that the Spaniards and later the French established on
Hispaniola: they resented their lands and children being taken, and
attempted to fight back against the invaders. Since the Taino where obviously
standing in the way of Spain¹s progress, Columbus sought to impose discipline on
them. For even a minor offense, an Indian¹s nose or ear was cut off, se he could
go back to his village to impress the people with the brutality the Spanish
were capable of. Columbus attacked them with dogs, skewered them with pikes,
and shot them.
Eventually, life for the Taino became so unbearable that, as Pedro de
Cordoba wrote to King Ferdinand in a 1517 letter, ³As a result of the sufferings
and hard labor they endured, the Indians choose and have chosen suicide.
Occasionally a hundred have committed mass suicide. The women, exhausted by labor,
have shunned conception and childbirthS Many, when pregnant, have taken
something to abort and have aborted. Others after delivery have killed their
children with their own hands, so as not to leave them in such oppressive
slavery.²
Eventually, Columbus and later his brother Bartholomew Columbus who he left
in charge of the island, simply resorted to wiping out the Taino altogether.
Prior to Columbus¹ arrival, some scholars place the population of
Haiti/Hispaniola (now at 16
million) at around 1.5 to 3 million people. By 1496, it was down to 1.1
million, according to a census done by Bartholomew Columbus. By 1516, the
indigenous population was 12,000, and according to Las Casas (who were there) by
1542 fewer than 200 natives were alive. By 1555, every single one was dead.
This wasn¹t just the story of Hispaniola; the same has been done to
indigenous peoples worldwide. Slavery, apartheid, and the entire concept of
conservative Darwinian Economics, have been used to justify continued suffering by
masses of human beings.
Dr. Jack Forbes, Professor of Native American Studies at the University of
California at Davis and author of the brilliant book ³Columbus and Other
Cannibals,² uses the Native American word wétiko (pronounced WET-ee-ko) to
describe the collection of beliefs that would produce behavior like that of
Columbus. Wétiko literally means ³cannibal,² and Forbes uses it quite intentionally
to describe these standards of culture: we ³eat² (consume) other humans by
destroying them, destroying their lands, taking their natural resources, and
consuming their life-force by enslaving them either physically or economically.
The story of Columbus and the Taino is just one example.
We live in a culture that includes the principle that if somebody else has
something we need, and they won¹t give it to us, and we have the means to kill
them to get it, it¹s not unreasonable to go get it, using whatever force we
need to.
In the United States, the first ³Indian war² in New England was the ³Pequot
War of 1636,² in which colonists surrounded the largest of the Pequot
villages, set it afire as the sun began to rise, and then performed their duty: they
shot everybody-men, women, children, and the elderly-who tried to escape. As
Puritan colonist William Bradford described the scene: ³It was a fearful
sight to see them thus frying in the fire and the streams of blood quenching the
same, and horrible was the stink and scent thereof; but the victory seemed a
sweet sacrifice, and they [the colonists] gave praise therof to God, who had
wrought so wonderfullyS²
The Narragansetts, up to that point ³friends² of the colonists, were so
shocked by this example of European-style warfare that they refused further
alliances with the whites. Captain John Underhill ridiculed the Narragansetts for
their unwillingness to engage in genocide, saying Narragansett wars with
other tribes were ³more for pastime, than to conquer and subdue enemies.²
In that, Underhill was correct: the Narragansett form of war, like that of
most indigenous Older Culture peoples, and almost all Native American tribes,
does not have extermination of the opponent as a goal. After all, neighbors
are necessary to trade with, to maintain a strong gene pool through
intermarriage, and to insure cultural diversity. Most tribes wouldn¹t even want the
lands of others, because they would have concerns about violating or entering
the sacred or spirit-filled areas of the other tribes. Even the killing of
³enemies² is not most often the goal of tribal ³wars²: It¹s most often to fight
to some pre-determined measure of ³victory² such as seizing a staff, crossing
a particular line, or the first wounding or surrender of the opponent.
This wétiko type of theft and warfare is practiced daily by farmers and
ranchers worldwide against wolves, coyotes, insects, animals and trees of the
rainforest; and against indigenous tribes living in the jungles and rainforests.
It is our way of life. It comes out of our foundational cultural notions.
So it should not surprise us that with the doubling of the world¹s
population over the past 37 years has come an explosion of violence and brutality, and
as the United States runs low on oil, we are now fighting wars in oil-rich
parts of the world. It shouldn¹t surprise us that our churches are using
violent ³kill the infidels² video games
_http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/07/us/07halo.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin_
(http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/07/us...mp;oref=slogin) to lure in children, while in parts of
Africa contaminated by our culture and rich in oil (Congo) rape has become
so widespread as to make the front page of yesterday¹s New York Times
_http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/07/world/africa/07congo.html?hp_
(http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/07/wo...7congo.html?hp) .
These are all dimensions, after all, our history, which we celebrate on
Columbus Day. But if we wake up, and we help the world wake up, it need not be
our future.
Excerpted and slightly edited from ³The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight: The
Fate of the World and What We Can Do Before It¹s Too Late
_http://www.amazon.com/dp/1400051576?tag=commondreams-20&camp=0&creative=0&linkCode=as
1&creativeASIN=1400051576&adid=1CQHG2T3HW8 TWZK5H476&_
(Amazon.com: The Last Hours of Ancient Sunlight: Revised and Updated: The Fate of the World and What We Can Do Before It's Too Late: Books: Thom Hartmann,Joseph Chilton Pearce,Neale Donald Walsch
Code=as1&creativeASIN=1400051576&adid=1CQH G2T3HW8TWZK5H476&) ; ,²
a book by Thom Hartmann which helped inspire Leonardo DiCaprio¹s new movie
The 11th Hour
_http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00005JPX9?tag=commondreams-20&camp=0&creative=0&linkCode=as1& creativeASIN=B00005JPX9&adid=06CBFR9
88PW4N7Y7K1FB&_
(Amazon.com: The 11th Hour: Movie Showtimes: Kenny Ausubel,Greg Watson,Stephen Hawking,James Woolsey,Wangari Maathai,David Suzuki,Leonardo DiCaprio,Paul Hawken,Michel Gelobter,David Orr (IX),Gloria Flora,Bill McKibben,Wallace J. Nichols (II),Andrew We
06CBFR988PW4N7Y7K1FB&) ; . Hartmann¹s most recent book is Cracking The
Code: How to Win Hearts, Change Minds, and Restore America¹s Original Vision
_http://www.amazon.com/dp/1576754588?tag=commondreams-20&camp=0&creative=
0&linkCode=as1&creativeASIN=1576754588& ;adid=01SAYXG4C6B5H6MWV2FM&a
mp_ (http://www.amazon.c
om/dp/1576754588?tag=commondreams-20&camp=0&creative=0&linkCode=as1& creativeASIN=1576754588&adid=01SAYXG4C6B5H6M
WV2FM&) ; . Thom Hartmann - author, Air America progressive liberal talk radio show host, books, and writings _http://www.thomhartmann.com/_
(Thom Hartmann - author, Air America progressive liberal talk radio show host, books, and writings)
_http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2007/10/08/4398/_
(Columbus Day - As Rape Rules Africa and American Churches Embrace Violent ‘Christian’ Video Games - CommonDreams.org)
Comment