September 13, 2008 by Rudolph Ryser.

Originally posted 2008-07-26 10:14 am

The battle between the “haves” and the “have-nots” has been joined as Bolivia begins to consider fundamental changes in that country’s constitution. Originally designed to disenfranchise the majority indigenous populations and confirm power in the hands of the fewer descendants of conquistadors and immigrant settlers the present Constitution leaves the majority of Bolivia’s population on the outside of Bolivia. When the United Nations adopted the Universal Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples on 13 September this year one question immediately emerged: how will the Declaration be implemented and where will the opposition come from in the world’s the states that voted favorably? We are seeing in Bolivia what will occur throughout the world as pressures begin to build in favor of implementing the Declaration.

Power and wealth are at the center of the growing confrontation between realizing the promises of the Declaration and preserving privilege among those who benefit from taking land, labor, living abundance and knowledge originally used and possessed by indigenous peoples. In Bolivia, the Aymara, Quechua and other indigenous peoples have long suffered as a result of the privileged using the government to confiscate indigenous peoples’ wealth. President Evo Morales and his supporters have advanced a new Bolivian Constitution that will redress the balance between the privileged few and the majority population.

The new constitution would recognize the right of self-government in the indigenous communities among other things.  The power elites of four Bolivian Departments reject this fundamental right and seek to expand departmental powers to control tax revenues, land titles and security forces.  The five other departments have not joined the wealthiest.  Notice that land, revenue and security forces are at the center of the power elites’ concerns.  Indian peoples want to reclaim lands taken from them, maintain revenues coming from those lands for the benefit of all of the people and security that is used to enforce the laws and not become a club of violence used against indigenous peoples.

Indigenous peoples in countries the world over are pressing more vigorously for self-government and self-determination since the adoption of the Indigenous Peoples Declaration. In Taiwan, England, Spain, United States, Canada, Mexico, Guatemala, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Belgium, and many other states, indigenous peoples seek a peaceful transformation of their lives to become fully self-determining peoples. Bolivia’s President Morales is moving to redress the balance between the “haves” and the “havenots”–to give meaning to the promise of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

(c) 2008 Center for World Indigenous Studies

Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Bolivia, self-determination

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September 12, 2008 by Rudolph Ryser.

Manuel Rozenthal (Manuel Rozental <em_rozental@yahoo.com>) sent this dispatch on the growing political crisis in Bolivia. As I have discussed in earlier posts what happens between the minority wealthy and indigenous people majority in Bolivia will say volumes about the future of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. New laws in states with indigenous populations must be developed to give meaning to the UN Declaration. Mario Murillo’s dispatch suggests that this process will probably get bloody before it produces human results respectful of indigenous peoples’ social, economic, political and cultural rights.

The Dispatch:

President Evo Morales received a massive popular mandate with close to 70% support for his Government. This was followed almost immediately by an uprising coordinated between the US Embassy and Government and the elites and landowners in Eastern Bolivia. Mr Branco Marinkovic, of Croatian ancestry, part of a community that arrived after WWII where they participated as Nazi collaborators, is the leader of the right’wing elite insurgency. Soon after arriving from the US, the uprising began. The US Ambassador Goldberg, was expelled by President Morales once the Government found evidence of his participation in organizing the coup against Bolivia´s legitimate democratica popular Government. Mr Goldberg had been the US ambassador in the forme Yugoslavia, instrumental in the partition of that country and the civil war that ensued. It seems like the skills deployed in Yugoslavia with Croat and Serbs are being used in Bolivia now. These Croat landowners enslave Guaraní indigenous peoples in the lands they illegaly acquired. They favour the Free Trade Agreement with the US and the delivery of natural resources to transnational Corporations, something the people of Bolivia have objected and one of the main items of the popular agenda that lead Evo to the Presidency after outsting Gonzalo Sanchez de Losada, who was privatizing the countrie´s resources on behalf of these US and corporate interest. The US used September 11th again to launch a coup. The US has expelled the Bolivian Ambassador.

Hugo Chávez also exposed US lead coup intentions in Venezuela from a recorded telephone conversation made public yesterday. As a result, he expelled the US ambassador and recalled his own ambassador from Washington.

The US is attempting to launch an Andean War for the ´profit of its corporations. The following message was sent by Mario Murillo from WBAI, Pacifica Radio in NYC and Hofsta University. We call for solidarity.

Press release: For Immediate Attention (Spanish Version Follows)

La Paz, Sept. 10, 2008

The violence experienced on September 9 in the city of Santa Cruz has forced
organizers to suspend, for security issues, the events planned in this city
to launch the IX International Festival of Indigenous Peoples Film and Video.
Following occupations by “civic” groups of the opposition of different
Public institutions and communication media centers related to the government,
fearing potential attacks to participants of the festival. These have
reasons forced the indigenous organizations to suspend the Festival in Santa Cruz.

Since 1985, the Coordinator of Latin American Cinema and Communication
Indigenous Peoples, CLACPI, alongside indigenous organizations and allies of
different countries, promotes the development of International Film and
Video Festivals of Indigenous Peoples. In this edition, violence and intolerance
Have silenced the message of Indigenous and originating in many parts of the
world.

After the triumph of violence and unreason, the festival has little choice
but to now move on to the city of La Paz, where the film “The Cry of the Jungle”,
the first indigenous feature film produced in Bolivia, was planned to start next
Sunday September 14. This film narrates the struggle of indigenous peoples
Defending their territory in the Bolivian Amazon in the face of subjugation suffered
at the hands of large landowners. These landowners and other opposition groups are
precisely those who now seek to halt the process of empowerment of
indigenous peoples living in our country.

However, hardline opposition violence will not prevent the Ninth
International Festival of Film and Video of Indigenous Peoples from: asserting full
social, political and cultural recognition of indigenous peoples; highlighting the
value of images and communication that uphold a pluralistic world in which
Indigenous peoples can build the future we seek; motivate the production of film and
Video works that give voice to indigenous peoples and that portray indigenous
Peoples with dignity; strengthening the ties that bind and Native and non-indigenous
people from different continents fighting for a more just world and for the
full recognition of self-determination rights.

Organizing Committee
IX International Festival of Indigenous Peoples´ Film and Video.
www.clacpi.org

La Paz, 10 de septiembre, 2008

Los actos de violencia vividos el pasado 9 de septiembre en la ciudad de
Santa Cruz han obligado a suspender, por cuestiones de seguridad, los
actos previstos en esta ciudad en el marco del IX Festival Internacional
de Cine y Video de los Pueblos Indígenas. Después de la toma por parte
de los grupos de choque de la oposición “cívica” de diferentes instituciones
públicas y medios de comunicación afines al gobierno, se temen ataques
a los participantes de dicho festival. Este es el motivo que ha obligado a
las organizaciones indígenas originarias convocantes a suspender el
festival en Santa Cruz.

Desde 1985 la Coordinadora Latinoamericana de Cine y Comunicación de
los Pueblos Indígenas, CLACPI, junto a Organizaciones Indígenas y
aliados de diferentes países, impulsa el desarrollo de los Festivales
Internacionales de Cine y Video de los Pueblos Indígenas. En esta
edición, la violencia y la intolerancia han acallado el mensaje de los
pueblos indígenas y originarios de muchas partes del mundo.

Después del triunfo de la violencia y la sinrazón, el festival no
tiene más remedio que trasladarse ahora a la ciudad de La Paz, donde
estaba previsto su inicio el próximo domingo 14 de septiembre, con la
presentación de la película “El grito de la selva”, primer
largometraje de ficción indígena producido en Bolivia. En esta
película se narra la lucha de los pueblos indígenas de la amazonía
boliviana por defender su territorio del avasallamiento sufrido por
parte de grandes latifundistas. Precisamente, estos latifundistas y
otros grupos opositores, son los que ahora pretenden frenar el proceso
de emancipación que viven los pueblos indígenas en nuestro país.

Sin embargo, la violencia de los intransigentes no impedirá que el IX
Festival Internacional de Cine y Video de los Pueblos Indígena
consiga: afirmar el pleno reconocimiento social, político y cultural
de los pueblos indígenas; resaltar el valor de la imagen y la
comunicación para celebrar un mundo plural en el que los pueblos
indígenas puedan construir el futuro que buscan; motivar la producción
de obras cinematográficas y videográficas que dan voz y que los
retratan dignamente; ni fortalecer los lazos que unen a las y los
comunicadores indígenas y no indígenas de diferentes continentes
luchando por un mundo más justo y por el pleno reconocimiento del
derecho a la autodeterminación.

Comité Organizador

IX Festival Internacional de Cine y Video de los Pueblos Indígenas
www.clacpi.org

Mario A. Murillo
Host/Producer, Wake UP Call
WBAI Pacifica Radio
99.5FM in New York

Bolivia, Morales, LaPaz, Natural Gas, Oil, Land, UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples

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September 3, 2008 by Rudolph Ryser.

Global biological and cultural diversity are essential to the Earth’s health, and ancient native “forest gardening” practices are of major importance to promoting such diversity.

The Kuikuro people of the Upper Xingu region of the Brazilian Amazon are apparently the descendants of a remarkable civilization that built a complex of hamlets and villages around a jungle economy. Sustained by a combination of “forest gardening” and a mil-pa system of growing foods in cycles of 2 years of cultivation and eight years of fallow soils the estimated 50,000 people living in the ancient cultural complex appears to have prospered in the jungle for at least 400 years from 1250 to 1650. Researchers from Brazil and the United States led by Michael Heckenberger from the University of Florida worked with the Kuikuro, learning from them about the 350-750 year old ruins and the “terra petra” (black soil) that served as a gigantic carbon sink. The intimate relationship between the Kuikuro ancestors and the deep jungle ensured the diversity of the tropical forest while maximizing the forest as a source of animal and plant foods and medicines. Cultural practices evolved over time created a co-dependency between the people and the environment where the interaction ensured prosperity for the large population and balanced continuity for the jungle.

The Kuikuro culture continues to contain the knowledge embedded by the ancient experiences of Kuikuro ancestors. The intimate relationship between the people and the tropical forest produces beneficial results for the Kuikuro and also all of humanity since the jungle plays such a profound role in the carbon cycle and the climate throughout the world. The Kuikuro and the jungle together are essential to human survival.

The presence of disease infested Spanish conquistadors introduced epidemics of measles and influenza for which the ancient peoples had no immunity. Their numbers were swiftly reduced without Spanish presence…they merely passed by the heavily populated regions of the upper Amazon.

Forest Gardening employs companion planting and “intercropping” where human interventions are aimed at selecting plants that produce useful foods, medicines and promote animal presence. The Passamaquoddy and Maliseet are peoples descended from complex societies living along the coast and interior of what is now the state of Maine in the US and New Brunswick in Canada. These peoples practiced Forest Gardening so successfully that their forest was manicured and orderly. Their efforts made possible large numbers of communities all along the coast–noted with surprise by early English explorers in the early 1600s.

When the English returned some years later, the formerly manicured forests and sizable native communities had completely changed. The forest was overgrown and the people were gone. Disease had rubbed this society out. Without the people, the forest went wild again.

Slash and burn or slash and char techniques have long been used by native peoples throughout the world to clear underbrush from forests–reducing their tendency to become tinder boxes in hot summers; and used to selective grow foods, medicines and improve animal presence in forests.

All of these approaches to human/environment codependency reflect the biological and cultural diversity of which human beings are an intimate part. The Quinault, Quileute, Humptulips, Copalis and other peoples along the Washington State coast in the United States, and the Nuxalk and Wuikinuxv are among the diverse nations in the world who live a culture that echoes the Passamaquoddy and the Kuikoro.

Forest Gardening ensures biological and cultural diversity while ensuring the presence of life sustaining plants and animals that contribute to environmental and climate balance. Nations are essential to biocultural diversity.

A global policy on BioCultural Diversity should seek to protect the status of native peoples whose cultures ensure the intimate relationship between the people and the environment. Native peoples must not be disturbed in their use and control over the world’s remaining biological diversity. Removal of peoples from these vital lands creates a cascade of environmental breakdown that threatens human survival and global climate stability. This may be the most important policy that states’ governments could agree to include in the new Copenhagen Protocols that in 2012 will replace the Kyoto protocols.

(c) 2008 Center for World Indigenous Studies

Kuikuro, culture, biocultural diversity, gorest gardening, kyoto, climate change, terra petra, Brazilian Amazon, milpa, slash and char, slash and burn

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September 2, 2008 by Rudolph Ryser.

Fourth World nations are serious parties to local, regional or international negotiations concerning mitigation and adaptation to changes in the climate. Climate Change due to global warming is attributed to human initiated releases of carbon and human created toxins into earth’s atmosphere. These nations occupy territories containing 80% of the world’s biodiversity; and with a combined estimated population of nearly 1 billion, the world’s original nations are least likely to contribute to carbon release or toxin release. Fourth World nations are also not invited to sit at the negotiating tables where decisions are being made about how humans mitigate and adapt to climate change. While the vigorous debate rages between economic partisans whether climate changes are a natural process or a human created process or both major changes in the climate all over the world are palpable. Fourth World nations are among the world’s peoples most likely to notice these changes first owing to their proximity to the natural world.

Fourth World nations see first hand the melting of ice flows at the North Pole. Fourth World nations see and experience dramatic floods and droughts. Forests and jungles wither and wild animal populations become seriously unbalanced. And perhaps most noticeable among Fourth World nations: the rise of human chronic diseases associated with increased heavy metals, toxins in the air, the loss of wild game and declining fish stocks and the destruction of plant medicines and foods. The effects of Climate Change directly on Fourth World nations is immediate and a part of daily life.

Despite the immediacy of negative climate change effects known for many years throughout the Fourth World, native communities have had little to say about mitigating or adapting to climate change. Few if any Fourth World nations have offered solutions to the regional and global problem of global warming drawing from their own knowledge, experiences or understanding of nature. Indeed, just the opposite has been heard. At the United Nations Forum on Indigenous Issues last Spring, nations’ delegates pleaded with the United Nations to recognize the adverse effects of climate change on indigenous peoples. Delegates called for the UN to understand that indigenous peoples contribute little to the climate change problem, but experience extreme effects.

In other words, Fourth World nations have been making an appeal to those who created the problem (and who cannot figure out how to solve the problem) to step forward and solve the climate change problem for Fourth World peoples. Twenty six representatives of indigenous peoples traveled to the G8 meeting in July 2008 to plead with the economic power house states to solve the climate change problem. Again those who are being most dramatically affected by global warming are turning to those who created the problem to solve theirs. Again, I suggest, Fourth World nations must become contributors to the solution by generating their own ideas–their own proposals for mitigation and adaptation to climate change.

States’ governments, corporations, and selected non-governmental organizations have met in Bali, Indonesia in late 2007; Bangkok, Thailand in the Spring of 2008 and Accra, Ghana in late summer 2008 wrestling with an agenda for the Conference of Parties to use for negotiating a new set of protocols to replace the Kyoto Protocols. The agreement that is supposed to be completed in 2009 is supposed to be finally ratified by governments in 2012. Fourth World nations are not now scheduled to sit at the table as full participants in negotiations intended to define solutions to the problem of climate change.

Here are some suggestions for Fourth World nations to consider proposing for mitigation and adaptation to climate change:

1. Tribal Lifeways Risk Assessments: that follow a “native holistic approach.” Each nation must define its own environmental risks and the necessary adaptations appropriate to the ecology and culture. This requires that each nation draw on its own historic knowledge-base, its own traditional systems for evaluating risk.

2. Maintaining BioCultural Diversity There is a mutually dependent relationship between an indigenous people and the environment in most regions of the world. Adopting this policy will promote nation’s subsistence economy where human productive activities are primarily focused on producing and protecting life. Each Nation has individual families participating in hunting, fishing, foraging, and “wildcrafting” with the natural environment. These cultural practices regulating social interactions between animals, plants, soils, air, and water have the benefit of enhancing the natural environment through the mechanism of BioCultural Diversity. BioCultural diversity encompasses biological diversity, cultural diversity, and the geographically coterminous, mutually dependent relationship between them.

3. Capacity Building The indigenous nations should make major adjustments in their current technical, organizational and political capacity to address both Global Warming issues. Training and retraining opportunities should be developed to maximize each nation’s ability to function as a leading influence on Climate Change Policy within a state and in the international community as well as its ability to undertake the necessary internal changes and adjustments of social, economic and political practices.

4. Native Carbon Dividend that rewards those who systematically reduce their contribution of carbon to the atmosphere and those who succeed in achieving the absolute minimum for life. Where it can be determined that a family in the nation produces less carbon emissions and hazardous waste, that family should receive a Carbon Dividend from the nations decision-makers in government on behalf of the nation. If there is a relationship with the state government, and that state government has a policy to reduce carbon emissions, and the nation uses a currency based economy, the nation should receive funds to provide for family carbon dividends.

6. Each Nation should Participate in UN Sponsored Negotiations Each Nation should fully participate in the replacement agreement for the Kyoto Protocols, due to be tabled in 2009. All native governments should be invited to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change to act as reviewers of extant scientific knowledge and as participants in the UN sponsored negotiations offering their own solutions. The Conference of Parties meeting in Poland in December 2008 and in December 2009 in Copenhagen should become venues for Fourth World nations to offer their own proposals for mitigating and adapting to climate change.

7. Division Policy vs. Growth Policy. When anything becomes too large, it becomes a threat to life and the maintenance of a relative balance between human need and the environment’s capacity to produce. Within a division policy, the maximum size of an organization or organism is determined and upon growth to that size, it is systematically divided it into smaller parts. This policy has emerged in response to the “perpetual growth” arguments issued by “market economy” advocates. This approach should be advocated vigorously at the Conference of Parties (14 and 15) meetings. Fourth World nations and states’ governments must control growth and limit demands on earth’s life.

These are only a few policies Fourth World nations could advocate for themselves and for the world. Each nation is in a locality where variations on these approaches may be applied, but the Seven Climate Change Policies can be introduced with the necessary variations.

These approaches can provide effective mitigation as well as support for adaptation. Fourth World nations do have solutions. There is a deep well of knowledge in Fourth World nations that must now be explored. The world’s ancient nations must step forward and offer that knowledge to solve the most threatening problem humanity faces.

(c) 2008 Center for World Indigenous Studies

Climate change, COP14, COP15, climate mitigation, climate adaptation, wildcraft, indigenous people, Fourth World nations, Risk Assessment, global warming, UN forum on Indigenous Issues, G8

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August 14, 2008 by Rudolph Ryser.

Shortly after al Qaeda’s attacks on New York’s World Trade Center towers and the US Pentagon I sounded an alert to a deeper, long-term problem that will undermine states around the world. I argued that al Qaeda’s Saudi leader, Osama bin Ladin will seek to advantage his non-governmental, non-state organization by intimidating indigenous nations into providing safe haven. That is precisely what is happening in the tribal areas between Pakistan and Afghanistan, in Somalia, in Indonesia and in Iraq.

Harpers contributor Ken Silverstein quotes Doug Frantz (Washington Independent) who explains how al Qaeda intimidation, threats of violence and outright murder have become common practice in the eastern Pashtun territory where the organization maintains its headquarters. Frantz describes a campaign to kill and otherwise terrorize Pashtun declared to be spies. Taliban and al Qaeda cannot command support on the basis of ideas or public benefit. They must force compliance with their view of the world. Success at terrorizing Americans so they become adherents to authoritarianism (spying, torture, denial of civil rights, increased populationa control measures and survelliance) is reflected in the violence al Qaeda and the Taliban impose on Fourth World peoples.

Fourth World nations have a duty to organize counter measures against the violence of a cult like the Taliban and a non-governmental group like al Qaeda. States’ governments have a responsibility to work with Fourth World nations to defeat this profound threat. The Anbar Province example makes some sense. Support Fourth World nations to defend themselves.

(c) 2008 Center for World Indigenous Studies

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August 14, 2008 by Rudolph Ryser.

I wrote here (”Frustration Building” May 30 2006) about a Center for World Indigenous Studies sponsored plan in the Spring of 1992 for the organization of a Congress of Nations and State as a response to the collapse of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. I wrote two-years ago:

“In 1992, immediately after the collapse of the Union of Soviet Socialist
Republics, the Center for World Indigenous Studies was invited by then
president of the Supreme Soviet, Ruslan Kasbulatov, to consult with the
withered Russian government on appropriate approaches to dealing with
the 150 non-Russian peoples remaining with the Russians in what was
left of the USSR. We suggested that Russia, Germany, Japan and the
United States of America join ten Fourth World nations including the
San Blas Kuna of Central America, Tibet, Sami of Scandinavia, Massai of
southern Kenya and Northern Tanzania, Lummi of the United States of
America, the Crimean Tartar and others in a planning body to organize
an international Congress of Nations and States in Moscow.

The Russian government and the government of Germany were open to working
with the ten indigenous nations to plan, organize and convene this
unprecedented Congress of States and Nations at a venue in Moscow.
…The United States, under the leadership of President George H.W. Bush,
held back and finally opposed this hopeful effort at establishing
dialogue between Fourth World nations and the world’s states’
governments on a peaceful approach to long and festering conflicts….”

The point of the Congress of Nations and States was to avoid, and indeed, provide an alternative to state and nation conflicts or state to state conflicts over nations and their territories. Precisely the situation now presented by Abkhasia and South Ossetia. The situation involving Russian violence against Chechnya is another situation that could have been avoided.

The current US Administration has been simply inept in its foreign policies. The next administration may be better. European, some Asian and a number of Arab and African states may well be open to convening an historic Congress to reorganize international efforts to address flash-points that involve indigenous nations. Since the UN adopted on 13 September 2007 the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, a new basis for a Congress of Nations and States has now be created. The Russian/Georgian kerfuffle provides an opportunity for a bold initiative.

While it is quite clear that Russia is using South Ossetia and Abkhazia to justify a deeper effort to gain control over Georgia, this is still an opportunity to find a solution to a persistent threat to the peace.

A Congress of Nations and States offers all parties an opportunity to define an approach to stabilizing international relations when indigenous peoples are involved. As I suggested in 1992 and again in 2006, states and nations have a responsibility to come to the table and work out new structures for peaceful relations.

(c) 2008 Center for World Indigenous Studies

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August 12, 2008 by Rudolph Ryser.

When Georgia declared it’s independence from the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the Nations of Abkhazia (on the western edge of Georgia) and South Ossetia (on the north-central edge of Georgia also declared their independence. Under the internationally recognized right of political self-determination Georgia had not only the right, but the self-proclaimed duty to establish its independence. No less can be said of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. These are both lands dominated by distinct nations (with Fourth World populations of about 200,000 and 70,000 respectively) long established and clearly recognizable as distinct, unto themselves. Mature peoples can live next to each other without injuring or threatening one another.

Recent acts by the Russian Federation and by Georgia demonstrate immature and destabilizing behaviours threatening to the peace of the region. Russia is cynically reaching beyond its borders to reclaim its power over weaker peoples in an obvious revanchist attempt to rebuild the USSR empire. It is clearly demanding that Georgia, the Ukrain and other countries in what Russians call the “near abroad” to knuckle under to Russia’s commands. Russia has killed thousands of Chechnyans next door to North Ossetia to keep that country under its tow. While Russia basks in the richness of its new found wealth from Europe’s purchase of its oil and gas, the Russian leadership–Putin the Authoritarian–has once again sought to express its political will at the end of a gun barrel. Violence and threats of violence have been used by Russia much too long to consider this imperial state to responsible member of the international community.

Georgia, attempting to act bigger than its own pants chose to ignore a popular vote (done twice) by the South Ossetians and by the Abkhazians to affirm their political independence. Like their bigger neighbor, Russian Federation, they chose to use the gun barrel instead of responsible diplomacy dealing with the self-proclaimed independent countries. Georgia must be denounced for its failure to act responsibly and maturely.

The European Union, United States of America, United Nations and the Organization on Security and Cooperation in Europe must act quickly to directly address the claims of independence by Abkhazia and South Ossetia. It is clear that Abkhazia wants closer relations with the Russian Federation…it s economic future is closely connected to Russian oil and other exports. If Abkhazia wants to establish an uncoreced association with the Russian Federation, then that arrangement should be facilitated and sanctioned by the EU, USA, UN and OSCE. It is equally clear that South Ossetia would like a closer association with North Ossetia and in all probability a balanced relationship with both the Russian Federation and Georgia. This too is motivated by economics.

What appears largely to be a debate over political freedom and economic rights is being addressed by guns and bombs from Georgia and Russia. None of these concerns can be dealt with through these means. Russia must be pushed back inside its nest. Georgia must step back into its nest and a regional conference of nations and states should be convened to sort out the political and economic concerns of nations in the Caucusus. Nations invited to the table should be both Abkhazia, the Ossetias, Katmyk, Chechnya, Daghestan, Inguishia, and Karachai-Cherkess.

The states invited should include Georgia, Azerbaijan, Turkey, the EU, USA, Russian Federation and Kasakhstan.

This Caucusus Regional Conference of Nations and States would address the concerns states governments have about the independence of smaller countries along the Caucusus, procedures for each country to establish a new political status, economic relations, Caspian Sea oil development and transport to the Black Sea, and strategic concerns of the nations and states. All the parties to the conference must have equal right of participation and access to information. The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe should host the Conference of Nations and States and convene within the next few months.

Responsible diplomacy recognizes legitimate economic and political concerns of parties conflict with one another. To prevent a major explosion of violence in this strategic choke point, the world’s political leaders have a duty to take responsible and immediate action.

(c) 2008 Center for World Indigenous Studies

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August 8, 2008 by Rudolph Ryser.

There are usually three ways people think about the Olympic Games no matter which state government hosts: Power Politics, Athletics and Corporate Greed. Athletics is the purest of these with a motive uplifting to humanity. The vast majority of athletes engaged in Olympic contests have worked to achieve excellence…the kind of excellence one imagines achievable by the very best. Each seeks to achieve perfection. Peoples throughout the world are inspired by the individual commitment, strength of character and mark of perfect success that athletes in the Games make their goal. Like dancers, musicians, sculptures, painters, composers, writers, and spiritual explorers, athletes have one primary goal: the perfect.

The “Games” have their roots in the nations of Macdeonia and Greece, but lest we forget the Mayans in their time invented “Games” too. A game similar to soccer or football has been played for more than three thousand years. The Uygurs of East Turkestan invented games involving perfection in horsemanship; and the Houdenousaunee invented the exacting and strenuous game: Lacross. The nations of the northern Pacific Coast have canoe races for which participants train for years to achieve the highest and best.

The Peoples’ Republic of China hosts the Olympics in Bejing amid considerable controversy over its power politics: Treatment and invasion of Tibet, Treatment and invasion of Uyguristan (East Turkestan), Treatment of genocide in the Darfur region in the Sudan, and Treatment of Biafrans over Nigeria’s oil policies. the PRC is deeply responsible for serious problems in places that benefit its economy such as in Indonesia, and Burma. Should these matters be ignored and set aside while the games go on? No, I don’t think so.

Corporations like Exxon and Nestle benefit enormously from the Games when they shield their indiscretions behind the contests that inspire.

Should we all appreciate the virtues of atheletic achievement? Certainly. Should be ignore the hurt and desctructon policies caused by the Peoples’ Republic of China that undermine the life and cultures mainly Fourth World nations? Definitely not.

Should we ignore the indescretions and greedy behaviour of corporations while the Games proceed? Absolutely not.

We must praise those who are praise worthy and condemn those who bring misery to the lives of our fellow human beings.

(c) 2008 Center for World Indigenous Studies

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August 4, 2008 by Rudolph Ryser.

Fourth World nations in the United States, Canada and throughout the Americas have often sounded the alarm about industrial waste, pollution of the environment and the need to slow demand for petroleum, electricity and coal. Why have nations indigenous to the Americas been so persistent in their calls for slowing the process of growth? Every year that industrial and now information-based economies grow in their demands, they push deeper into Fourth World territories causing environmental damage, disrupting traditional societies, introducing violent conflict while further attempting to marginalize native peoples. Human survival is the concern and has been the concern all along.

Despite persistent efforts to resist development growth, native peoples have generally been unsuccessful. Greed and unrelenting demands for more and more metal ores, petroleum, forests and water to feed the explosive production of consumer goods now threaten all of human, plant and animal survival due to over production of carbon emissions into the atmosphere. The earth simply cannot absorb all of the excess carbon. Now the oceans are increasingly acidified causing dramatic changes in the plant and animal life of the seas. Populations of jelly fish in the Atlantic and in the Mediterranean Sea are rapidly growing in part due to overfishing the very species that eat jelly fish. Oolichan (smelts) on the Pacific coasts of Canada and the US have nearly disappeared and Salmon runs are significantly depleted. There are dead zones in the ocean where all oxygen has been taken from the water.

Had the greedy listened and responded to the Fourth World over the last fifty years, the world would not now be in its present fix. Energy demands are replaced by still greater energy demands even as others have joined Fourth World nations sounding the alarm. Many political leaders say the solution to present day high prices for petroleum is: Drill more holes. Such nonsense! The solution to higher prices is a rapid decline in petroleum use and a more frugal approach to living.

Failure to shift gears quickly will result in forced conservation by draconian means. Perpetual growth is impossible and on the face of it a ridiculous idea. The earth will simply turn on humanity and say: “Enough is enough! What you are doing is not sustainable. If you will not chose to stop, I shall force you to stop!”

Rationing by governments will soon become the norm unless immediate stops are placed on carbon-based energy production. The next step will have to be draconian measures that prevent usage–probably by the poor first–of carbon-based energy sources. The age of carbon-based energy is over. The sooner the world makes a consensus the less harsh will be the transitional remedy.

(c) 2008 Center for World Indigenous Studies

Posted in Artby - Rudolph Ryser, Environment, Daily | Print | 1 Comment »

July 26, 2008 by Rudolph Ryser.

Six months before the “American Surge” in Iraq…that escalation of troops in Baghdad that many credit for reducing violence in Iraq…Sunni tribal forces became the real reason for removing groups sympathetic to al Qaeda gangs from Anbar Province. There is a lesson here for defeating al Qaeda: support the local indigenous leaders to stabilize and strengthen their communities by defending themselves against al Qaeda gangs.

The United States and her allied countries would do well to recognize that they should make an alliance with indigenous nations…Pashtun communities where the Taliban and al Qaeda hide…and provide them financial, infrastructure and military support. They will clean out the cancer of al Qaeda.

This has all along been an essential truth. Indigenous nations will no longer provide a haven for al Qaeda or similar gangs if states’ governments like the United States, France, Germany and Britain take the deliberate step of recognizing the strategic role indigenous nations play in the present struggle. The “Anbar Solution” is more significant than most states’ government military and foreign policy leaders currently recognize. For a few pieces of silver, Pastu inside Afghanistan and Pakistan will become allies. It is an approach that has already demonstrated great success—more valuable than the “surge.”

(c) 2008 Center for World Indigenous Studies

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