August 31, 2007 by Rudolph Ryser.

There has been a revolution in the Fourth World, of sorts, underway for the better portion of the last twenty-five years: Self-governing nations recognized by individual states’ governments and even in the international community.

This last Spring the Catalan’s–more than six million strong–claimed and received Spanish governmental recognition of their status as a nation. The significance of this status is that a state like Spain was not claiming nation status for itself, but rather recognizing such a status of a separate polity in Spain while Spain claims the status of a state. The Catalan nation exercises extensive self-governing powers (taxation, limited foreign affairs, control over police and the courts regulation of civil and criminal affairs, administration of infrastructure, etc.) won for itself in the last twenty-seven years since the death of Dictator Francisco Franco. The Catalan nation is a superb example of a nation working in relation to a state according to the European Union’s principle of subsidiarty.

Seven years ago the Palestinians formed a government that to this day exercises most powers of self-government, functions as an observer at the United Nations and enjoys the recognition of many states and nations in the world including those in Europe, the United States, Russia and China. While it is true that there are many unresolved issues concerning the stability of this government, the fact remains that the Palestinian nations has a government of its own making. The Palestinian nation is not a recognized state, but they have all of the powers of a recognized nation.

There are still many other Fourth World nations in the world exercising different degrees of self-government not derived from a state, but originating as inherent to their political identity as a nation. Among the nations striving for full nation status and recognized self-governing authority are the Tamil, Karen, Naga, Chechen, Tibetans, Uygurs and Manchurians in China, the thirteen nations that are the original occupants of Taiwan including the Atayal, Paiwan, Ami, Bunun, Tsou and the Saisiyats. The nations of Taiwan are seeking now to negotiate self-governing status with the Taiwan-Republic of China government originally formed in the 1940s when Han Chinese set up operations among the Taiwanese Fourth World nations. Land and natural resources are the central issues of debate between the Taiwan (ROC) government and Taiwan’s original nations that occupy most of the territory.

During the last 15 years the First Nations of western Canada have been engaged in a tug-of-war with the Canadians over the negotiation of permanent self-government treaties. Most such negotiations remain stalled in large measure due to a difference in viewpoint. The Canadians, without historical or legal foundation, claim the very lands on which nations like the Nuxalk, Kitimat, and Wuikinuxv have long maintained their original presence in their own territories. The Canadian government wants to insist that these nations become secondary beneficiaries from their own lands and resources while Canada takes these lands and resources as its own. Needless to say, the First nations reject this loopy thinking. “How,” they ask “can a state like Canada that only legally came into being in April of 1982 have ownership of lands on which nations have resided for thousands of years?” Canada can’t, and that is why the negotiations for a self-government arrangement between First Nations and Canada have stalled. When Canada comes to its senses and recognizes that it is the new boy on the block it will seriously negotiate treaties that recognize the prime and paramount rights of First Nations to their own lands and to their own laws and governing authority these treaties will be possible to negotiate fairly. These nations will have true self-government…not merely a fiction created by Canada.

On Tuesday 25 August this week, the Igbo, Igaw, Ogoni, Igbibo and other peoples announced their decision to form a provisional government of the Republic of Biafra. The 40 million citizens of Biafra–southeast of Nigeria astride the river delta including the city of Port Harcourt. The new provisional government includes representation from all of the key leaders and organizations making it a strong consensus government. Announced at the National Press Club in Washington D.C. by Provisional President Dr. Emmanuel Enekwechi the Provisional government of the Republic of Biafra establishes a bicameral legislative system, independent judiciary and a civilian executive branch. With a new government in Nigeria the opportunity now exists for a non-violent political transformation of a region of Nigeria into a recognize Biafran nations exercising the powers of self-government. These powers eminate from the inherent powers of the Biafran peoples and not the Nigerian government. This is an opportunity that Nigeria and the Biafran must now wrap their arms around. Here we have another example of a Fourth World nation moving to govern itself. The state of Nigeria may attempt to prevent the impulse of self-government, but as the last 39 years since the war between Nigeria and Biafra demonstrate…the desire to be free and govern oneself does not disappear–it remains a bedrock reality for the people of Biafra.

More than three hundred nations in the United States began negotiating with the US government in 1991 bi-lateral Compacts on Self-Government. These Compacts have been operating under the separately recognized sovereignties–each nation and the state of the United States of America. After generations of attempts by the United States government to “get out of the business of Indian Affairs” Indian nations took the initiative to force negotiations of Self-government Compacts on a “government-to-government” basis thus attempting to fulfill the reasonable argument offered by the American Jurist Felix S. Cohen in the Handbook of Federal Indian Law: Indian self-government is the only alternative to rule by a government dept and administrative oppression. The decided cases hold that Indian self-government includes the power of an Indian tribe to adopt and operate under a form of government of the Indians’ choosing, to define conditions of membership, to regulate domestic relations of members, to prescribe rules of inheritance, to levy taxes, to regulate property within the jurisdiction of the tribe, to control the conduct of member by municipal legislation, and to administer justice.” for more than fifteen years, these nations have begun to evolve new self-governing institutions though they labor under antiquated bureaucratic structures introduced into each nation through the Bureau of Indian Affairs–the “government dept and administrative oppression” referred to by Mr. Cohen. Some nation’s governments are so choked by bureaucracy there is sometimes a sense that the nation’s government is merely an extension of the US government.

The Miskito, Sumo and Rama fought a war from 1981 to 1990 to win control over their territory and their inherent powers of self-government. The Maya of Chiapas in Mexico and Guatemala (1994–) have also fought a war that continues to secure control over their territory and their powers of self-government. The Maori of New Zealand and the Mapuche of Chile are also among those Fourth World nations pressing to exercise their inherent powers of self-government.

The question of Fourth World nations exercising governmental powers derived from their own people and the power to use and dispose their own land and resources for the health and benefit of their people is central to international law going before the United Nations General Assembly in the Fall of 2007. (The UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples I have noted in an earlier essay is facing serious obstacles by the United States, Canada, Australia, Russia and other states fearful of Fourth World nations exercising self-determination) This question is also central to virtually every regional and subregional conflict between Fourth World nations and states’ governments throughout the world.

The self-government revolution is well underway shaking some states’ governments while others see an opportunity to build a collaboration between Fourth World, self-governing nations and self-governing states. The persistence of bedrock nations to secure their powers of government and their territories does not appear to be slowing, but rather speeding up.

(c) 2007 Center for World Indigenous Studies

Technorati Tags: self-government, nations, states, Canada, Tamil, Biafra, Catalan, Chechen

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August 31, 2007 by Jay Taber.

In this 2003 report by CWIS associate scholar Anke Weisheit, traditional medicine in contemporary Uganda is examined as, “a complex combination of activities, order of knowledge, beliefs, and customs.”

In this article announcing an award for developing herbal medicine and preserving traditional knowledge, Anke observes that these locally produced remedies are “serious science.”

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August 30, 2007 by Rudolph Ryser.

In Ghana there are few orthodox medical practitioners and many traditional healers. By some estimates for every orthodox medical partitioner there are 200,000 people and for every traditional healer there are 200 people. Ghana’s first President Osagyefo Dr. Kwame Nkrumah strongly supported and facilitated government policy for the dominant role of traditional healers in Ghanaian society. Traditional healers consequently flourish and the population has benefited.

HIV and AIDS have decimated many African communities and the scourge continues to expand. Former US President William Clinton’s foundation, William Gates’ foundation and the United States government have pumped money into Africa to reduce the cost of drugs so that more people might benefit from medicines that have extended life. The problem is that to get medicines to people the orthodox medical practitioners need to have access to the people and except in mostly metropolitan areas they do not. Traditional healers are those who have greatest access to the larger parts of African populations.

Here is the problem: most orthodox medical practitioners don’t trust traditional healers and visa versa. Unless they work together, reaching the vast numbers throughout sub-Saharan Africa in particular will be very unlikely. No matter how much money comes to Africa to treat HIV and AIDS those numbers will not be reached. Traditional healers have access to the population, but they are not included in the strategy to meet the treatment and prevention needs of the population. In the case of HIV and AIDS prevention is the most important medicine. Cooperation between orthodox medical practitioners and traditional healers is therefore essential if HIV and AIDS are to be defeated.

Africa First. LLC in Minnesota is headed by William Donquah originally from Ghana. He is spearheading an effort to bring orthodox medical practitioners and traditional healers together to prevent and treat HIV and AIDS. The Center for World Indigenous Studies joined Dr. Donquah, UN AIDS and the Ghanaian Government in this monumental struggle by cohosting an international Conference on HIV and AIDS, Traditional Medicine and Traditional Knowledge in Accra, Ghana in March of 2005. The result of that conference was a Declaration that urged collaboration between orthodox medical practitioners and traditional healers. The Declaration was carried to the United Nations and sent out across the world.

Recognizing the key importance of collaboration, the Conference indicated that this approach could prevent more HIV and AIDS as a result of a simple agreement between orthodox medical practitioners and traditional healers.

This, as it turned out, is not so easy a proposition to accomplish. The hostility by orthodox medical practitioners toward traditional healers is a major obstacle.

The Center for World Indigenous Studies has agreed to collaborate for a second international conference in March 2008. By this means organizers hope to create a more acceptable climate for cooperation to firmly prevent the horrific spread of HIV and AIDS. Perhaps now we can further encourage a simple agreement to work together to respond to Africa and to others in the world where HIV and AIDS have such a dramatic affect on peoples’ lives. Traditional healers are a key element that must become a part of the global strategy. They have the trust and confidence of the vast numbers of peoples in the world. Traditional healers must become a full partner in the fight against HIV and AIDS.

(C) 2007 Center for World Indigenous Studies

Technorati Tags: HIV, AIDS, traditional healers, Africa First, Ghana

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August 29, 2007 by Jay Taber.

There’s a small room attached to the senior center that serves as the museum for the Quileute tribe on the central coast of Washington. On display are artifacts — mostly baskets — that depict large canoes of Indians in pursuit of Humpback whales. Now days, they no longer hunt whales, but still fish salmon and halibut.

Perhaps more amazing than harpooning whales on the open ocean from hand-carved cedar canoes, was the construction of communal structures using two hundred foot long logs — thick as a man is tall — as clear-span ridge beams, by using earthen ramps, cedar fiber ropes, and human muscle power. Both required elaborate preparation and organizing.

My friend Kenny — who was part Hoh and part Lummi, I think — once told me stories of growing up there during and after World War Two. The Hoh res had no road, and was reachable only by friends who came in boats, but the Quileute res had a road that connected their village of LaPush with the Olympic rainforest logging town of Forks. Still, by war’s end, the Quileute had no electricity or phones.

Kenny remembered fondly those days as a kid when everyone gathered for a potluck each night after hunting, fishing and gathering all day, to share food and stories around a campfire until they drifted off to their beds. He also recalled happily the time as a teenager when the Bureau of Indian Affairs offered the Quileute electricity if they would dig holes for the cedar poles that would connect LaPush by copper wire to Forks. This big project of digging miles of postholes, that began each day with a hike in the woods together — often catching a glimpse of bears, elk, and other wildlife — interrupted by a picnic mid-day, and concluded with berry-picking and wood-gathering on their way home, was another highlight of cooperative effort in his youth.

But Kenny also recalled the changes that happened as his friends and relatives acquired refrigerators and radios that allowed them to keep surplus food and eat by incandescent light in their homes while listening to radio programs. Slowly, fewer and fewer gathered around the campfire to hear the stories that had been told there for thousands of years.

About this time of subtle social change, Kenny learned to scuba dive at the Quileute Coast Guard Station, and started borrowing gear to watch the Gray whales each spring and fall when they stopped at LaPush to rub the barnacles off their bellies on the perfectly-sloped, gravelly beach. Most times, Kenny just sat on the bottom blowing bubbles from his diving mask and looking eye-to-eye with his mammalian cousins who’d stopped in on their semi-annual migrations, as they’d done at this rocky shore they’d shared with the Quileute for hundreds of generations.

A few years back, when Kenny returned to the other world to share stories with his ancestors, I remembered these stories he told me over the phone one morning, while holding his drum and the photo I’d sent him of the new canoe carved by his childhood friend at LaPush. He was thinking of maybe going back for a visit during the great gathering of tribal ocean paddlers from Canada and Washington that I told him I’d seen advertised while camping out there on vacation.

I don’t know if he made it back, but I like to think that he’s happy more people are starting to appreciate the values of cooperation, reciprocity, and sharing he grew up with. It would make him feel good.

[ Eye to Eye is from Life as Festival, a collection of short stories by Jay Taber. ]

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August 28, 2007 by Mirjam Hirch.

“New tribe discovered”… could be the title of an old movie about Christopher Columbus’s times. In today’s reality, it is the western centric language used in the media to report on an incident that must feel like a lived horror film to the people it involves: A previously unknown group of indigenous people recently escaped massacre in the Amazon.
The 87 men, women and children of the isolated indigenous group, belonging to the Metykire ethnicity, were attacked by probably either illegal gold miners or loggers. With 15 of their people killed the Metykire group fled from their jungle home, a remote area in the northern part of the state of Masso Grosso bordering Bolivia to the southwest. This area, covered almost completely by equatorial forests- a biodiversity hot spot- is under federal protection and not open to commercial exploitation. This makes what happened to the Metykire a multi-level tragedy.

The Metykire found the indigenous Kayapo village of Peixoto de Azevedo in western Brazil after trekking for five days. Then they were relocated to the nearby village of Kapot.
Steps are being taken currently to protect the Metykire from foreign diseases that they have no immunity from, so that the Metykire are not immediately wiped from the face of the Earth. No intention though can yet be seen that government officials are going to investigate the possible illegal mining or logging operations in the northern forest and take further action to stop those illegal activities. This is a clear reminder that people are endangered of losing their traditional ways of life. Their lives and cultures are being destroyed, without the world taking notice.

The fact that the outside world did not have any knowledge of the existence and contact with the Metykire population speaks of Brazil’s richness in cultural diversity. According to estimates there are more than 100 indigenous peoples without contact to outdside populations world wide, inhabiting the last untouched regions of our planet. With the “wanting it all” greed of development, the ongoing loss of biodiversity, environmental pollution and consequently the run for the last pristine areas, these indigenous communities the world over are under imminent threat.

It is surely important to save the rain forests. It must be equally important to save the indigenous cultures living in them. In other words, maintaining biological diversity should go hand in hand with maintaining cultural diversity. Keeping traditions and culture alive, remembering stories, doing ceremonies and teaching traditional values of caring, sharing, love and honouring one’s own ways is crucial for the health and survival of all humankind.

Should not we all ask ourselves these questions repeatedly: Does it all have to be like this?
How can we turn this world around so it can be good again? It is in our hands……….

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August 27, 2007 by Rudolph Ryser.

When I spoke with African National Congress officials in the early 1980s they were struggling to defeat the apartheid policies of the “white government.” I wanted to know what the ANC attitude was toward Fourth World nations and the role of such nations in the future of the African continent. I was sharply admonished and told to understand that the ANC was opposed to nations and nationalism…”we want control of the South African State,” my informant said. I protested that there were many nations inside the boundaries of South Africa and “don’t they have a right to their own political identity?” “No!” I was told. I later learned when the formerly imprisoned Nelson Mandela spoke at an assembly in Nevada, USA that this courageous and celebrated leader of the ANC movement who became President of South Africa adamantly opposed “anything tribal.” He opposed any return to the primitive tribe.

In my search for answers about the present and future status of Fourth World nations I contacted the Southwest African Peoples Organization (SWAPO) in the early 1980s then involved in an insurgency to gain control over Namibia with the intent of establishing an independent Namibian state. I asked about SWAPO’s intentions and attitudes toward the many Fourth World nations inside the Namibian colony. “We are not interested in the tribes, only Namibians,” I was told. Again I heard what I considered a surprising response from “revolutionary Africans:” opposition to the emergence and political recognition of Fourth World nations and their subordination to state power. Today the state of Namibia is engaged in a violent confrontation with nations located in the Caprivi Strip–a country attached to Namibia in the northeast despite opposition from the nations within.

The Lesotho paramount leader Moshoeshoe II wore a leopard skin, had fathered children in virtually all Lesotho villages and ruled this African country until his death in 1996. Asked by a reporter what he thought about the new leaders being black Africans in many countries: “I think they are no better than the white rulers.” The new black leaders, Moshoeshoe said, have learned from their schooling in England and other white schools only how to be white and not African. “They want to be like the white people,” he said.

Africa has been occupied by European states for more than six hundred years. Yes, it is true that the early occupations were only on the coasts, but later these countries penetrated into the heart of Africa and it is there that they remain. Many leaders in Africa are decedent from African peoples, but they want desperately to be thought of as equal to their former colonial masters. They rule states that were invented in Europe at the close of the 30 years war in 1648. These states are not African. Their boundaries have nothing to do with the peoples of Africa.

Zimbabwe’s president Robert Mugabe is one of those who fails to lead as an African…he is merely a new colonial.

Nigeria’s former president Olusegun Obasanjo is also one of those who failed to lead as an African. He too is merely a new colonial.

There is a new generation of leaders who seek to recognize and affirm the political identity and cultural importance of African nations–the original peoples of the African continent. Sub-Saharan Africa is now beginning to see the reemergence of Africa’s nations–the most prominent of which is Biafra. Yes, that country devastated by Nigerian and British forces in 1967-1970 is once again preparing to affirm its identity as an African Nation. Led by Chief Ralph Uwazuruike, the Movement for the Actualization of the Sovereign state of Biafra (MASOB) may well define what an African nation ought to be in the 21st century. Not a remnant of the colonial era, but an affirmation of the original African continent. Perhaps African political development is now occurring with Biafra. Africa may now restore Africa.

(c) 2007 Center for World Indigenous Studies

Technorati Tags: Biafra, Africa, nation, Lesotho, Mandela

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August 27, 2007 by Jay Taber.

It is often perplexing to citizens of the former British Empire to watch their governments and militaries assist Third World dictators in slaughtering Fourth World peoples in order to deny them their indigenous claims to resources and territories. Especially when they are non-violent, unarmed, and simply ask to be left alone.

Reading of the British warships shelling Biafran villagers during the Nigerian Civil War reminded me of a story my sister told me of talking with Australian Air Force pilots who’d just returned from what they described as a “turkey shoot” in East Timor, where the Australians were murdering native civilians alongside Indonesian forces as part of the ethnic cleansing of the region adjacent to oil fields the two countries planned to divide between themselves once the rightful owners had been eliminated. More recent actions to exterminate West Papuans with US armaments, likewise, seemed destined to clear away tribal peoples for the benefit of Canadian and American mining corporations.

Sometimes, though, I think that the incongruity of British, American, Canadian, and Australian relief efforts for starving children or traumatized adults — in these Fourth World theaters of war instigated by their own governments — must dawn on at least a few perceptive souls. So why is it that no one speaks of indigenous peoples?

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August 26, 2007 by Rudolph Ryser.

President George W. Bush delivered a “hot” and “cold” testimonial in support and with disappointment about Nouri Al-Maliki’s Iraqi government when he spoke before an assembly of the Veterans of Foreign Wars last week. America’s political leaders (both parties) are openly seeking the removal of Maliki, and Bush is pretending support while his operatives are working behind the scenes to replace him with Ayad Alawi–the former “interim prime minister” favored by the American government and particularly the US Central Intelligence Agency.

Maliki represents the success of the Shiite majority population and his selection as Prime Minister symbolically represents the ascendancy of Shiite dominance as a majority population in Iraq. Alawi is an American lapdog who is likely to be inserted as a replacement of a “failed Maliki government” providing an authoritarian alternative to elected officials. Republicans and many Democratic political leaders in the United States are desperately seeking to create the pretense of “political progress” in Iraq by undermining what the US has claimed is a sovereign government. The American answer appears to be: Install an authoritarian government that will do the bidding of American political leaders.

The American incremental coup of the Maliki government appears to be fully underway.

This all reminds me of what the American government under the Gerald Ford Administration and later under the Carter Administration attempted to do with American Indian governments in the middle and late 1970s. Fearing the emergence of political leaders like Joe DeLaCruz of the Quinault Indian Nation, Wendel Chino of the Mescalero Apache and Peter MacDonald of the Navajo Nation who advocated “tribal sovereignty” the American government attempted to organize an “indirect coup” to overthrow as many as twelve tribal governments.

In a memorandum produced in the Office of Management and Budget in the White House (sometimes referred to as the Borgstroum Memo or the Mitchell Memorandum [1976]) government officials put together a plan to facilitate the “departure of Indians from reservations” through the introduction of psychologists charged with persuading Indians to leave. Or, the alternative plan was called “incrementalism” that was more specifically targeted at gradually reducing funds to the “problem tribes” hoping to force the elimination of jobs on which Indians were dependent, then hope that the angry tribal members would force out the “failed political leader.” Then a new leader, it was thought, could be inserted in the tribal government who would be more malleable, made more responsive to American government needs and interests.

American government attitudes toward the tribes in Iraq appears to be no different than its occasional practices dealing with American Indian tribes. The overthrow of Maliki is likely to set the stage for more civil war and polarization in Iraq. The Americans are about to make a mistake if they succeed…and it appears their incremental coup is about to succeed. The “blue finger” elections once considered symbolic of Bushes’ democratic success in Iraq is about to be thrown out and replaced by authoritarian intervention. We will probably see Alawi, a CIA hack, assume control of the Iraqi government and we will see the return of Saddam Hussein’s “heavy hammer” authoritarianism serving American political needs. Hussein once performed this role for the Americans in the early 1980’s and when he was no longer useful he was eliminated. This is bad policy, and will doubtless produce long term complications for peoples in the Middle East and in the United States.

(c) 2007 Center for World Indigenous Studies

Technorati Tags: Iraq, coup, Maliki, Alawi

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August 24, 2007 by Jay Taber.

In his masterpiece novels House Made of Dawn and The Ancient Child, N. Scott Momaday writes about the Plains Culture of the Kiowa during their glorious century of hunting buffalo and fighting on horseback from Wyoming to Oklahoma. In describing the essential character of this robust and self-assured people at the peak of their spiritual power and influence, Momaday uses terms like noble, courageous, honorable, and dignified. He portrays their way of life as delightful and full of joy and wonder and awe.

Momaday also uses the term deicide in conveying how the loss of the buffalo and the Sun Dance broke the spirit of these magnificent horsemen and allies of the Comanche and Crow. Using the metaphors of sight on the endless plains, he speaks of incomparable visions, a good life culminating in the achievement of perspective.

He tells us of how his warrior ancestors failed to comprehend the mechanical aggression of the U.S. Cavalry — utterly devoid of the values the Kiowa deemed most sacred — and their subsequent bewilderment and horror in the face of such inhumanity.

The Plains Culture, as a way of life in its totality, of course, no longer exists, but the underlying values are still possible if challenging to embrace. An opportunity to accomplish a good death.

(Jay Taber — recipient of the Defender of Democracy award — is an author, columnist, and research analyst at Public Good Project.)

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August 24, 2007 by Rudolph Ryser.

As they see it, the nations that won the war in Iraq now control the government, have an alliance with the Kurds and have established increasingly normalized relations with Iran and Syria. No, not the Americans, British and the coalition of the willing. The Iraq government of Nouri Al-Maliki is a success—the Shiites. Of course, the Americans (read Bush Administration and the opposition party leaders) don’t think Maliki is a success because the American military and prestige are caught in a violent quagmire like a stuck pig. They now blame Maliki for their own failures.

The Sunni peoples in Iraq are generally displeased because they have lost (with the help of the Americans) their privileged position of control under the leadership of the now dead Saddam Hussein. Thanks to the unprovoked American attack on Iraq that destroyed civil society, government and the Iraqi military, the long suppressed Shiite majority of Iraq now control the future of Iraq. Majoritarian politics of states’ government says: The majority shall rule. The Shiites are the majority…they want to rule.

The flaw in this messy ointment is that majoritarian politics don’t work in a state where there are more than 150 different nations living next to each other. Each nation has its own rules and its on vision. Compromises are temporary (until new advantages can be identified) and the rule of universal law for all is a fiction. If 150 nations are to run a state, then the only approach that will work is a federation of equal parties where the strongest is more equal than the others. The truth is, the concept of a unitary state simply cannot work with so many different peoples pushed into a single polity.

If left to their own devices after the Americans “redeploy,” now that the Americans have unnecessarily stirred the hornet’s nest, the competing nations of Iraq will over time settle into a kind of equilibrium. For a generation, that may mean (if they are to keep the state) absolute rule by the Shiites in Iraq, autonomy for the Kurds and a kind of modified autonomy for the Sunni peoples. The Americans must now slowly pull themselves out of the mess they created and place their forces on the periphery and on ships for a rapid response if things in Iraq get too much out of hand. Yes, there will be further carnage. The Americans have provided the weapons, the money and the stimulus for that. Just as the Americans (Carter and Reagan administrations) provided the Hussein dictatorship with weapons of mass destruction used to kill millions of Iranians (much to the satisfaction of American policymakers fearful of Iranian dominance in the region) and thousands of Kurds, the George W. Bush administration is now providing all of the parties in Iraq as well as the Lebanese in Lebanon, Palestinians in Palestine, Israelis in Israel and Egyptians in Egypt with the weapons needed to kill each other. Stupid? Yes! But, this is what the American government has been doing for quite some time since the end of World War II.

American government officials, seeking to arrange a balance of power, have succeeded in arranging a balance of terror…look now at what happened in Afghanistan. American weapons now fuel wars and terror. Stupid? Yes! American occupation in regions of the world can only make things worse. Violence will continue to occur…maybe it will be less of a mess if the Americans simply back off.

(c) 2007 Center for World Indigenous Studies

Technorati Tags: terror, Shiite, Maliki, weapons

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