doom over the world

Well, this book I read, Thom Hartmann’s “The Last Hours Of Ancient Sunlight” (picture somewhere below) was a decent one although it was, albeit point-on dead serious, somewhat, for the lack of better word, hippie w/ emphasis on ecological values and peace. All in all though, in spite of my nihilistic self, it was alright because it didn’t really rant and bellow that much, or pointed fingers for that matter, just served them “facts” (I use apostrophes for the sake or argument and lack of enough contradictive arguments) in easily acceptable/understandable manner. The main focus of attention was on oil wells running dry (they will last less than 45 years), the ocean fish stocks that have been exploited and “overfished”, new and ancient diseases that prevail (staphyloccus aureus bacteria, bird flu, H4N1 type-A strain, AIDS, hantavirus, encephalis, coronavirus and the worst of them all, tuberculosis, that old fucker TB which is now killing more people than the others combined), pesticides, immune insects, survival of the fittest, inevitable World War III, and so on.
An informative book, frightening some could say, it warns you about breathing the wrong air, of having sex, of travelling and eating. So there you go, quit doing them, you’ll be just fine. Time’s-a-wasting, die with fucking dignity, right?
Seriously, it had some good points, some really interesting stuff, which I may return to later on (or then I don’t), but for now merely a few words of the explorer Christopher Columbus of whom this book touched briefly because of the fucked-up state of Haiti today:
When Christopher Columbus first landed on Hispaniola (off Haiti) in 1492, almost the entire island was covered by lush forest. Now the island looks like somebody took a giant blowtorch and a pocketful of napalm, and burned the damn thing to the ground. I don’t go much further why the island today looks the way it does, it’s a long story (it’s thoroughly explained in The Last Hours Of Ancient Sunlight), it’s the same old story of mass population, erosion and creating farmland to herd cattle so McDonalds can make them inexpensive supersized burgers. I found more interesting the story of Columbus and what took place in Hispaniola, which was originally inhabited by Taino Indians. One of Columbus’s crew, Miguel Cuneo, made notes of their journeys, so it ain’t just speculation what was destined to those friendly Indians living an idyllic life in paradise. And the Indians weren’t cannibals, as generally assumed. To put it short, after Columbus’s crew had raped The Taino people (teenage girls, mostly), they enslaved a few (in Cuneo’s words: “One thousand six hundred male and female persons of those Indians”) and slaughtered the rest.
Miguel Cuneo himself took a teenage girl as his personal slave (if I recall, she was a personal gift from Columbus), but when he attempted to have sex with her, she, again in his own words, “resisted with all her strength.” So, he “thrashed her mercilessly and raped her.” Columbus himself was a major player in the sex-slave business; this is what he wrote in 1500: “A 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 of nine to ten [years old] are now in demand.”
Sure enough, the Taino people resented their lands and children being taken, and attempted to fight back against the invaders. Columbus didn’t like that one bit, so he sought to impose discipline on them. In a twinkling of an eye, Columbus attacked them with dogs, cut off noses and ears, skewered Indians on poles from anus to mouth, and shot them. No wonder why Indians began seeing suicide as a better option. It was reported that a hundred Indians committed mass suicide. Also, they killed their children with their own hands, so as not to leave them in such oppressive slavery.
By 1555, every single one of Taino Indians was dead.
Nothing out of ordinary of course, not much different were the atrocities colonists practised against Native Americans, or doings of Ceaser, Pizarro, Hitler, Pol Pot, Tutsis and Hutus, or the modern genocides, but I wish I once saw a Christopher Columbus –movie where he isn’t portrayed as a charming little fucker.