April 24, 2008 by Jay Taber.

While indigenous leaders like Bolivia’s president Evo Morales call on the UN member states to disinvest in war in order to invest in reversing environmental catastrophe, American citizens are once again asked by corporate media to choose between warmongers to lead their country into further economic and social disaster. As Morales notes, it is time for a new way of living.

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April 23, 2008 by Rudolph Ryser.

Speaking at the Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues at the United Nations (23 April 2008) Bolivian President Evo Morales called on indigenous peoples’ delegates to recognize the importance of ancient traditions and knowledge held by Fourth World nations as the essential ingredient for reversing the adverse effects of Climate Change.

Morales, according to Climatewire, said “Climate change offers proof that the world must undergo a fundamental realignment of its economic system.” The alternative to persistent consumption, according to President Morales is the balance between human need and natural reproduction provided by Fourth World cultures–the knowledge and practices rooted in intergenerational experience.

Economies centered on capital accumulation are the cause, not the cure for global warming, food shortages, massive refugee movements, fuel shortages and the perpetual impoverishment of most of the world’s people. The goal of capital economies, market economies, is accumulation and concentration of wealth and power into the hands of a very few; impoverishing the many and raping the natural world. Capital economies install the vast human population as consumers while limiting the number of producers in massive corporate conglomerations. The basic assumption and necessity of capital economies is that nature’s wealth is a commodity essentially free for the taking and that human labor is a commodity that must be kept at a minimum. The constant emphasis on capital growth assumes endless natural wealth and human labor. This is a fundamental error in thinking. Nature has limits and human labor cannot long sustain abuse.

Modern subsistence economics, based on the concept of life renewal and natural balance is now essential as a corrective for more than four hundred years of intensified capital growth and consumption. Economies centered on subsistence where human need is balanced against the capacity of the natural world to reproduce can reverse global warming and stabilize global climate. Subsistence affirms life as the central concern of human economic activity while ensuring that more of human societies become producers and consumers of their own produce. The goal of modern subsistence economics is the replenishment of life and respectful use of the natural world. Subsistence economics is deeply embedded in the cultures of Fourth World peoples throughout the world. (For a thorough and insightful discussion of the subsistence perspective read Maria Mies and Veronika Bennholdt-Thomsen in their excellent book “The Subsistence Perspective,” Zed Books: London. Professor Mies emphasizes that her book along with Claudia von Werlhof and Veronika Bennholdt-Thomsen discusses the “subsistence perspective” and not an economic model. Mies argues that the subsistence perspectives emphasizes the economy and society, culture, history and all other aspects of life. While I agree with this analysis, I suggest that economics is indeed about all aspects of life just as it is true that culture is about all aspects of life.)

Many Fourth World nations, like the states governments of India, China, Singapore, Saudi Arabia and others have turned their backs on their own culture, their own knowledge, to become acquisitive societies. These nations have joined in the headlong rush to consume the natural world in excessive ways. They have become contributors to global warming, food shortages, and all the rest. These indigenous peoples believe they have long been denied the “fruits of progress,” and have waited too long to become consumers like metropolitan populations. These nations are making the same mistake as the consumer, commodified populations. These Fourth World economies are showing the same signs of widening gaps between rich and poor, sharply reduced natural wealth, and wild swings between enrichment and impoverishment.

US President Bill Clinton proclaimed in the early 1990s “It’s the economy stupid” to call attention to a political point of emphasis in that electoral campaign. The phrase is now the point to understand why climate change, fuel shortages, food riots, desertification and deforestation are a product of the capital economy Mr. Clinton then lauded. Capital economics assumes perpetual growth and consequently perpetual consumption. It is argued that the capital based economy and environmental balance can go hand in hand by generating “green jobs” and “green technology.” The problem with this thinking is that it essentially no different from the constant growth and consumption emphasis of straight capital economics. Technology is supposed to save the environment and prosper the population. There is no evidence that such an approach has any legs.

On the other hand, there is powerful evidence supporting the notion that subsistence economics is the appropriate alternative that can reverse the sins of the last 400 years. Now it is up to Fourth World nations that still have confidence in their own cultures to persuade modern states like the United States, Germany, China and India that they must adopt the tried and true practices of modern subsistence economics. By so doing, President Morales’ urgent call for an alternative to the greed of capital economics that solves the problem of climate change, food shortage, fuel shortages and more will indeed be realized and Fourth World nations will resume their place in the global dialog for human life.

A fundamental shift must take place in the way human beings transact the distribution of goods and services. We must reclaim localism, and restore human productivity as well as human access to land. These are essential elements of the subsistence perspective and of these the most immediate change that must take place in the relationship between people and the land. Restore land to those who have become landless owing to state and corporate confiscations of land. People must have access to the land to produce food and life. Changing the economy in this fundamental way can restore the balance needed to reverse the calamities now confronting the world’s peoples.

(c) 2008 Center for World Indigenous Studies

Technorati Tags: climate change, Evo Morales, subsistence, capital

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April 22, 2008 by Jay Taber.

60 years into the UN human rights regime, the Human Rights Council has issued a report on the “governance gaps” in addressing corporate liability for international crimes. In the Report of the Special Representative of the Secretary-General on the issues of human rights and transnational corporations, the HRC rapporteur — while noting widespread corporate complicity in human rights abuses — asserts the bedrock role of states in redressing them.

Not to belittle the responsibility and power of states to accomplish this duty under the UN charter, but the bedrock role lies with indigenous nations and their civil society allies. Reining in corporate as well as state actors requires we recognize and act on this reality.

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April 21, 2008 by Mirjam Hirch.

It is a rich ghetto. Block-type, closed- shaped buildings form a concrete jungle of cold steel and glass constructions: Living in a Bock’s in newly developed little SoHo, Deutschherrnviertel, in Mainhatten, Bankfurt, alias Frankfurt on Main, Germany. The incarnation of a trendy locale, modern lifestyle- the urban principle of the global city.
Functions are mixed: living and working in the upper areas, below are studios and offices, restaurants and shops, swimming pools, a health club. The quarter, Deutschherrnviertel, is named after the Teutonic Knights (in German Deutschherrn), an old germanic crusading military order during the Middle Ages and much of the modern era. In former times the imagery of the Teutonic Knights was used to promote German nationalism, the symbol of the German Empire’s policy used by the Nazis to spread their propaganda and ideology.

The image of the Deutschherrnviertel residents is not one of the traditional local families but one of the dynamic, cosmopolitan, young and happy ladies and gentlemen.
The comfortable neighborhood draws the most affluent residents. The Capital Aristocracy, a class of gentry whose wealth is the dictate by which they rule, seperate from other people and the land. It is an atmosphere of self- ghettoization or “monetary apartheid.”
Most residents base their actions on external pressures - the pressure to appear to be a certain kind of person, the pressure to adopt a particular mode of living, the pressure to ignore one’s own moral and aesthetic objections in order to have a more comfortable existence.
This insularization of the wealthy on the side of the Main river tells tales of similar recent developments within European societies and of the global mentality that affects peoples the world over.

Walking down the streets of the quarter instills one with a feeling of sterile monotony, alienation, loneliness, even threat. The sidewalks in this area- empty. Where are the kids the elderly, the people. Where are laughter, love, life?
Here and there are plants. They look like parts of a scenery, not allowed to grow and develop naturally, but arranged in line or planted in big plant pots.
Where in this is the room for existential experiences of a deeper reality, the feeling for the mysteriousness of life? The marvel and wonder at fantastic constructions, their inspiring forms and shapes that stirs our curiosity, makes us want to explore and fills us with respect for all of creation? Where is this essential quality of life there?
What types of mentality must places like this shape? What is a child’s experience of reality growing up in such modern lifestyle surroundings?

The children sure grow to understand that public housing is sold to international investors. And that a landlord is not a living being you can see, hear, and talk to. The landlord is some sort of property group based somewhere in this world where taxes are low, created to develop, invest and manage funds in real estate. The administration of the buildings is completely disconnected and anonymous, without anyone feeling responsible. The residents simply appear as a number in a computer system.

Certainly digital numbers on screens of their bank accounts, the newest technology, fancy cars, fashionable (and expensive) clothing, personal comfort and concentrating wealth are the dominant preoccupations on these residents’ minds. Only occasionally a neighbor might quietly disappear due to insolvency. But there is no time in the busy day to give this a second thought. Nor is there room to think about justice and life, humanity, the loss of cultural and biological diversity. Whatever that is, it must affect someone else, happen somewhere else, at another time, in another world maybe?

Technorati Tags: lifestyle, housing, culture

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April 19, 2008 by Jay Taber.

Captive Daughters Media has released its new anthology Pornography: Driving the Demand in International Sex Trafficking, including an essay by our colleague and associate scholar Melissa Farley.

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April 15, 2008 by Jay Taber.

Vanity Fair’s Alex Shoumatoff explores the spirits of the underworld in his article The Arctic Oil Rush. Tundra methane that could dwarf fossil fuel emissions as a greenhouse gas, as well as dormant pleistocene bacteria capable of producing plagues, comprise just two of the dramatic elements of what Shoumatoff terms the ‘mammoth’s revenge’. Indigenous Siberian shamans claim it all has to do with disrespecting nature and disrupting the dead. I’d be hard-pressed to put it any better.

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April 14, 2008 by Mirjam Hirch.

It is a quiet war. In the face of brutality against peoples in numerous countries around the world European governments are banging their doors. People seeking asylum are made to “leave of their own free will.” Private organizations, hired to do the governments’ dirty work take care of this voluntary deportation- in many cases even through wrong legal advice. The organization bearing the euphemistic name Human Rights Austria is one such “private governmental organization.“ Officially a Non Government Organization (NGO) Human Rights Austria is completly financially dependant on the Austrian government.

Simultaneously medical doctors, so called “fit-to-fly experts,” are paid by governments to immediately provide the medical opinion needed to send the refugees back to their home countries to avoid delay and additional costs.

Traumatized and full of fear those refugees have to return to places of utter insecurity. Oftentimes life threatening circumstances are awaiting them upon their return.
These days European countries are thinking of allowing in some of the 4.5 million Iraqis seeking refuge, fearing murder, persecution and brutality. About 20 thousand of them might find temporary refuge in Germany.

The situation of the Assyro-Chaldeans, Mandaeans, Yazidi and many other minorities in Iraq are recognized to be especially precarious as they are brutally persecuted. Their security situation is worse than ever before with neighboring countries having no more capacity to accept more refugees.

During a two day conference on ethnic and religious minorities in the current Iraq this past weekend in Frankfurt am Main, Germany Iraqi minorities voiced their concerns. They reported first hand about the ongoing persecution and systematic terror which threatens whole peoples in south- central Iraq and which might mean the end of their almost two thousand year old history.

What needs to be ensured is the survival of Iraqi minorities. This is not merely about offering first aid to the people threatened by death, searching refuge in other countries, the indigenous groups maintain. This is about finding political solutions in the region- through an extensive constitutional amendment including an expansion of the federal system which grants safety and equal rights to self-determined indigenous peoples of Iraq.

Technorati Tags: Iraq, refugees, political solutions

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April 14, 2008 by Jay Taber.

The National Congress of American Indians, Thomas W. Cowger’s history of the organization’s first twenty years (1944-1964), is a thoughtful, articulate and informative account of one of the brightest members of the Native American intertribal constellation. For anyone curious about how the federal–Indian relationship has evolved over the last century and a half, this book is essential reading.

If for no other reason, it gives one an appreciation of the sacrifices made by earlier generations in order for ours to continue the struggle for human dignity in North America. As a bonus, it also provides valuable lessons of practical politics in dealing with dominant society institutions.

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April 11, 2008 by Jay Taber.

Sinn Fein is now on YouTube. As the only party committed to ending British rule in Ireland, they steadfastly oppose imperialism, fascism, and racism nationally and internationally. I can see where the United States government might have a problem with that.

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April 10, 2008 by Jay Taber.

If you’re in the mood to experience aboriginal endurance in 20th century Australia, check out The Tracker DVD, with awesome soundtrack by Archie Roach. For those not familiar with Mr. Roach, he’s the premier Aborigine recording artist, who along with his wife provides vital support to troubled aboriginal youth.

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