For the next few weeks I will be in Mexico visiting the west coast and living in the hot weather. This is a stark contrast, weather wise, from my home in the Pacific Northwest of the United States.
The temperature is about 89 throughout the day contrasted with 58 in the Northwest.
I will have more to say about my stay in Mexico tomorrow.
Powered by ScribeFire.
Big International NGOs (BINGOs) like the Worldwide Fund for Nature, Conservation International and the Nature Conservancy directly cause the displacement of Fourth World peoples from their territories resulting in large numbers of native peoples living as refugees. Former Publisher and Editor of the magazine Mother Jones Mark Dowie writes in his new book Conservation Refugees that conservation organizations succeeded in establishing 108,000 officially protected conservation areas world-wide since 1900 and that half of these resulted in expelling indigenous peoples–forcing them into permanent refugee status. Displaced in the interest of conservation many indigenous peoples have been forced into poverty, assimilation and “trespassing” on their ancestral lands for food and sustainance. Dowie describes in his book the experience of the Maasai and the San of northeastern Africa and the Kalahari Desert; and the Karen forced into of Thailand and the Adevasis of India. Native peoples in North and South America have continued to experience the same adverse relations with conservation groups seeking to expell native people while “conserving the land.” These “conservation” groups fail to recognize that the native peoples are an essential part of the biodiversity in the very areas they seek to conserve. Instead of achieving balanced conservation areas, the BINGOs have succeeded in creating human misery, unbalanced territories and unthinkingly contributed to the adverse effects of climate change.
Mature cultures help ensure the biological diversity of ecological niches all around the world. It is the forced removal of indigenous peoples from their ancestral lands that contributes to the degredation of ecological areas and the violent displacement of whole peoples into destitution and dependency. Forcing indigenous peoples into refugee status contributes to the imbalances that promote the destruction of forests, increased carbon emissions and wider releases of green house gases. The result: climate change and its adverse effects on all life on the planet. While it is true that the BINGO effect is only a small part of the climate change dilemma, there is no doubt that conservation without a balance between culture and the natural environment produces mutliple disasters–none of which are healthy for humans.
The United Nations reported at the end of 2008 there are more than 42 million refugees world-wide. Of these people forcibly pushed from their ancestral lands as a result of conservation, conflict and persecution perhaps half or 21 million are indigenous peoples. These are peoples forced from their territories like the Far pushed by the Sudaneese supported Arab tribesmen into Chad from Darfur. Indigenous peoples in Pakistan, Tanzania, Thailand, Somalia, Republic of the Congo, Lebanon and in Columbia are among those now forced into refugee status. There are native peoples refugees still in the United States, Canada and Mexico resulting from wars against the various indigenous peoples from the 19th century through to the present.
Indigenous peoples forced from their ancestral lands by violent clashes with invading forces continues as it has for more than four centuries. Conservation groups and their big brothers in the non-governmental organization arena should be natural allies to native peoples, yet they persist in their efforts to close off ancestral lands to the very people who balance the ecosystem with their cultural practices. BINGOs failure to fully appreciate the importance of balanced cultural and biological diversity in nature reflects the kind of narrow minded actions of those who would displace native peoples through conflict and oppression. This type of thinking is also responsible for the growing disaster we now recognize as climate change. BINGO conservation efforts and violent conflicts combined with the stupid production of poisonous chemicals and overuse of carbon-based energy sources will make all people refugees one day, but refugees with no place in which to seek refuge.
Powered by ScribeFire.
After reading and listening to columnists and television and radio commentators twist and turn their words to argue against holding US officials accountable for torturing of detainees under the control of the CIA and the US Defense department I now understand how it was possible for Germans to turn their attention away from the genocidal policies of the Adolph Hitler government during the 1930s and 40s. The US government put in place laws against torture and signed international agreements (authored by US representatives) after World War II. I was born just after the end of World War II. I grew up learning that the decisions at the Nuremberg trials holding German officials high and low accountable for war crimes and crimes against humanity was the moral and judicious thing to do. A government’s policy that authorizes war crimes and crimes against humanity is not protection, and must not be a protection, against prosecution and punishment. The German people know this now. The Japanese people who also saw the US commit to trial and punishment violators of war crimes laws and crimes against humanity understand this concept too.
Now, for eight years, the United States government policy was to authorize the commission of a crime–violate US laws and international laws which are required to be made a part of the “Law of the Land.” The law is the law and must be administered by the chief law enforcement officer in the United States. There is no political decision to be made here. Acts of torture were committed against individuals in violation of US law. No one who authorized, authored, directed or directly committed the acts of torture must be relieved of their responsibility. If the “law” means anything then it must be enforced.
Uygurs from East Turkistan (northwest China) have been held in Guantanomo prison for no crime they committed. Other indigenous peoples are being killed and tortured for no crime they committed acts against indigenous peoples are crimes against humanity. US policy has sanctioned such acts.
Americans have a strange notion of their “exceptional” position above all other peoples. Not only is this an ignorant assertion it is dangerous. With such an attitude Americans allow themselves to behave in bestial ways while seeking to condemn and punish others for bestial acts. Stalin’s Russia behaved the same way and Americans condemned Russians and Stalin for acts of torture, gulogs, mass killings and population removals. Countless other horrific actions have been taken by other governments containing individuals who were “following policy” — said another way: “following orders.”
Nuremberg established the rule that “following orders” in the commission of a crime is no defense. Individuals are supposed to make a judgment about the moral good and the immoral. Individuals are suppose to be able to decide good and evil unless they are judged “crazy.”
Stop with the apologies, rationalizations suggesting that “we just move on!” Stop with the suggestion that “the world is in crisis, we don’t need a distraction.” I am sorry, but a crime or crimes have been committed. If the US is to be civilized and exist as a state that acts in accord to laws and not from human emotion, then the laws must be enforced.
As European jurists have already announced, and the authorities in the United Nations responsible for dealing with torture and war crimes suggest…if the US government does not fulfill its legal obligations under domestic and international law to put to trial and convict those deemed responsible for war crimes and crimes against humanity then others must take direct action to seek prosecution of US officials.
That is a determination the US government made long ago when the international torture agreements were made. The US must live by the laws all humanity now subscribes to and seeks to enforce. President Barak Obama does not have a political choice. He should step aside and let the US Justice Department perform its duty as prescribed by the US Constitution.
Powered by ScribeFire.
While Barack Obama urges his supporters to be not complacent, but work and vote for his election to the November 4 end date, he is cautioning for a reason. The American people are rather undisciplined and they often look to others to function as the heavy lifters. In other words, the voters (Republican, Democratic, Independent and otherwise) wish to be applauded for their civic responsibility, but they tend to shirk the actual deed. The greater majority lack civic knowledge to be informed about the vote the are being asked to cast. When they do act, they act emotionally–not on the basis of reason.
American voters, lest we forget, voted twice to endorse George W. Bush for the presidency. Evidence abounded before his election in 2000 and 2004 that he lacked the skill, knowledge, discipline and experience to function in the role of US president. Equal amounts of evidence demonstrated how Vice President Gore not only had the skill, knowledge and discipline, but had the experience and vision to be US president. Dispite the obvious and well established public information, the American voters rushed to defeat their own best interests and the interests of the country and gave their support to Bush. Now 7 in 10 American voters say the country is headed in the wrong direction. The American voters are responsible for the wrong direction. The American voters are responsible for the failures of the last 7 years. Despite the obvious facts, the voters who committed the serious errors of the past now offer themselves as informed voters.
In fact, the level of knowledge held by the voters is as low now as it has been in years past. Emotion guides the vote again and it will give Barack Obama the nod. He will win by a landslide.
The voters are looking for yet another person on whom to place responsibility for their failures. Mr. Obama had better be prepared to make a series of successes in the first six months of his Administration or he will suffer the emotional outrage of the ill informed voters going to the polls next November 4.
Powered by ScribeFire.
I like the millions of others in the world who now Blog have decided to add my words to this growing world of self-published and commentary. As I note at the bottom of the other column, “My Word” is the expression I remember my Mother Ruth saying so often. She loved writing and the written word. She longed to be a chronicular and had handwritten script that was so beautiful one would swear she was an artist who paints or draws. She did neither, but she did cherish the word and spent long hours filling in little boxes in Reader’s Digest crossword puzzles. She liked playing word games, wrote letters to family and friends regularly, and she read books to herself and aloud to her eight children.
My mother had an eight grade education, but she would have gone on to high school and college had her learning not been tragiclly interrupted by the violent death of her beloved father John Dement Gilham. He was killed by logs rolling off a railway car not far from where he and his family lived in Thorp, Washington just a little way south of Mount Tahoma…high in the mountains. My mother so loved my Grandfather she always spoke of him to her children. A month before she died she asked to reclaim photographs for her to see him again.
To Ruth A. Gilham-Ryser I dedicate this ongoing kitchen discussion about the events, ideas and memories of culture, politics and critical analysis.
