SRV

My concern, on the other hand, is that our governments do have the ability to command culture that disfavours First Nations. The Canadian and other governments exercise that power in a way that, at best forces non-voluntary assimilation, and at worst wipes out cultures who fail to integrate into or make their resources available as commodities in the global marketplace. I am not advocating Canada and other nation states dictate if, when and how First Nation cultures should evolve and adapt and evolve --introduce legislation to preserve the 'purity' of First Nations; those are decisions that should be the sole purview of these nations themselves. An example of existing laws and practices that disfavour First Nations: Here in Canada and globally their is no requirement to obtain the Free Prior Informed Consent of First Nations in any country before FTAs are negotiated. FTAs include the traditional territory of First Nations. Another example: The Canadian mining industry does not seek FPIC either. The imposition of such development models may not quite meet the definition of cultural genocide; the objective is not to wipe out other cultures but rather to acquire access to their land and resources. Nevertheless, because the elimination of native cultures is a predictable, inevitable and avoidable consequence of land and resource grabs, it certainly qualifies as criminal negligence! The status quo threatens the survival of First Nations, and recognizing the nationhood of First Nations would help address that injustice. Our sovereignty and control over the environment has and continues to be undermined by the handing over of control to a global corporatocracy. We, the settlers, are now being colonized by a global corporatocracy. Recognizing native autonomy and land rights might undermine the power of that corporatocracy. I have never said that First Nations or native people are more biologically or genetically disposed to look after the environment. I believe their respect for and appreciation of the environment (Pacha Mama or Mother Earth) is cultural and religious, not genetically programmed into their DNA. Life experiences of First Nations taught them that nature can be both hospitable and hostile --a benevolent or vindictive force that must be reckconed with. She could not be controlled, and must therefore be respected, accommodated and worshipped as a Higher Power. People could exercise control over each other, their neighbours or other tribes, but not over Mother Nature. The dictates of Mother Nature had to be obeyed, and she had to be appeased and worshipped. There are many variants as to how they worshipped and showed appreciation, but for the most part nature was seen as an omnipotent power that could not be subdued. The European settlers, on the other hand, were influenced by a Judaeo-Christian set of beliefs. None of the ten commandments handed down by Moises or even the laws set out in the entire book of Leviticus talk about protecting or respecting the environment. On the contrary! In Genesis Adam and Eve were told by God to "Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth, and subdue it; and rule over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the sky and over every living thing that moves on the earth." Instead of worshipping nature Europeans were ordered by God to subdue it. And that's what they did and continue to do! Today many have abandoned their religious beliefs, but these values live on in the globalization of a neoliberal economic model that seeks to exploit and commodify everything it comes across, regardless of on whose territory they 'discover' resources. The Catholic Papel Bull and the Doctrine of Discovery, along with the Protestant 'Manifest Destiny', have given way to corporate 'bull' and a 'moral imperative' to subdue and 'develop the underdeveloped' --i.e. all peoples and all resources on the earth. Both of these beliefs and values systems are human constructs, and neither of them are programmed into the DNA. European settlers and their descendants, or settlers from anywhere else for that matter, can and do adapt a more wholistic worldview that includes respect for the environment. I am simply arguing that First Nations have less adapting to do in this regard than the rest of us, and therefore there is a lot we can learn from them, Meanwhile, while we settlers are learning new things, we should appreciate, protect, encourage and learn from the wisdom of First Nations and decolonize the resources we have taken away from them.

Am I using an ideological construct? My opinion is that no ideology or religion or construct embodies the whole truth and nothing but the truth. I thought I was arguing for respect for and the protection of a huge and diverse body of opinion, beliefs, knowledge and insights, and against the proliferation and imposition of a singular one-size-fits and knows all world view! What seems like a 'better story' to some may not resonate with the life experiences and values of others. Finding what one for the moment one considers to be a better or even the best story does not justify burning everyone else's library. That would be a recipe for intolerance and conflict, not to mention arrogant. It would also be ill-advised. You might find a better story, or wish to modify your own after having heard other people's stories and/or after having had new life experiences and gained new insights. Leonard Cohen on human constructs:

My argument is that the current coalition military attempt isn't working, and most of the examples I cite are why I consider it to be counterproductive. I mentioned, and readily acknowledge that many of the civilian deaths have resulted from sectarian violence. I think that in both Afghanistan and Iraq the level of sectarian violence has increased exponentially as a direct result of the coalitions' overthrow of pre-existing governments. I am not quite yet cynical enough to believe that there was a deliberate strategy by the West to stir up the hornets' nest in the hopes that sectarian violence would result in everyone killing each other. Bush had said that he'd rather defeat terrorists on their own soil, and not on the streets of America, and the Iraqi Jordanian border was completely open to anyone and everyone who wanted to cross over into Iraq at least up until early 2004. I can't help but wonder if this was deliberate to entice Al Qaeda to come into Iraq, since they were not welcomed by Saddam. In any case, after the invasion of Iraq the Coalition Governing Body had no plan as to how go about providing even essential government services such as policing, garbage collection or staffing hospitals and schools, never mind foreseeable problems like a rise in sectarian violence. Libya and Syria we can debate, since they weren't the direct results of invasions, but rather deliberate attempts to control the outcomes of democratic civil revolutions in both of these countries. I certainly hope that those currently being recruited by the Taliban, Al Qaeda, ISIL or whomever do not decide to join the side of the coalition instead! On the contrary, I hope both sides run out of people willing to fight for them!

Thanks! I too love a debate. It makes me hone and occasionally rethink some of my arguments. You and I may well be in agreement on more things than I first thought! By the way, I was composing my response to yourself and Bush_Chaney when you sent this, so it was written before I read this.

. Gees, you're almost as cynical as I am! But I think you are probably right. Concern for human rights get trotted out only when and if it is politicly expedient to do so. The rest of the time we sell arms to the Saudis, sign FTA's with Colombia etc., and invite dictators like Suharto to economic trade summits as the legal representative of Indonesians and East Timorese. Harper even abolished CIDA because he reasoned that global capitalist expansionism was doing a better job at bringing development to the 'under developed', and Canadian embassies around the world have become lobbyists and PR firms for Canada's corporate mining sector. The Canada-Colombia FTA is the only FTA that even pays lip-service to human rights, so now every year they produce a farcical human rights non-report. I haven read Michael Ignatieff's book, nor do I intend to. I'll take you word for it! Rue seems to think I suffer from some kind of a Messiah complex, and that I am trying to come up with some 'strategy' to save the world. I have given that quite a bit of thought, even long before I read Rue's comments. I have in fact spent much of my life as a human rights defender, in El Salvador, here in Canada, in Iraq and over ten years in Colombia, and also for briefer periods in other countries. If i thought that there was a global 'strategy' that could and should be imposed on all and sundry, I certainly no longer thinks so. Their are many different cultural perspectives out there, a different answers to the question: "What does it mean to be human and integrated into life on this planet?" Personally I don't totally agree with any of them, and would never want to impose one or the other on all and sundry, least of all the neoliberal colonialist free-market capitalist viewpoint! Rue goes on, at some length, to describe the world as we know it, and attributes conflict to inevitable freeze, fight or flight response amongst individuals in Darwinian terms --the survival of the fittest or most adaptable. (At least that's how I interpreted his comments, but I've been wrong before!.) Now I do believe there is hard scientific evidence to prove that things have and continue to evolve. However, theories as to why and how they evolve is in the realm of social or soft sciences --ideologies, etc. Harper took the position that we are all equal competitors on an equal playing field, and that things like the long-form census for instance, was a waste of taxpayers money. Others of a more socialist bent considered detailed information on how certain sub-groups were impacted by a certain phenomenon or policy was useful indispensable information. Perhaps Rue would agree that cultural and religious viewpoints play a significant role in how we collectively act and respond to create, control, or minimize conflict and violence. There are of course gross imbalances of power, and abuses of power, and imbalances in whom gets to decide what constitutes an abuse and misuse of power and what doesn't. For the most part 'might makes right', and while the mighty are imposing their will on all and sundry, others are vying for the same thing or trying to form some kind of block that can resist the mighty. These are the subjects in the life sentence --the actors. The rest of us powerless individuals are the objects --the acted upon (to borrow from Paulo Freire). The question is can objects aspire to become subjects and regain some control over their lives, or must the always remain unwilling objects of someone else's script? Can peoples unite to regain some autonomy and control over their own destiny and local resources? Can local groups organize to reclaim the human rights and local resources that have been 'co-opted'? The quality of all of our lives has less to do with being united in a singular pursuit of an objective or particular outcome than it does with how we treat each other along the way. (the way Mahatma Gandhi put it is 'the means is the end in embryo) A plurality of missions, objectives, religious or ideological beliefs can peacefully co-exist as long as they are mutually respectful of each other. Not one has the whole truth and nothing but the truth, and not one should be allowed to impose their particular 'truth' on all and sundry. On this point I think Rue and I agree. (?) So these days, as a human rights defender I seek to strengthen grass-roots initiatives of threatened and marginalized groups to regain control over their own lives and local resources --to reclaim and regain control over what has been co-opted, Bush_Chaney. Admittedly these grass-roots initiatives have been and likely will continue to be unsuccessful. But, to quote Wendell Berry, "Protest that endures is motivated by something far more humble than any prospect of public success. It endures because acquiescence would be detrimental to one's own heart and spirit". Or is that motivation just one more Messianic strategy to save the world Rue? So, in short, given than no one has the whole truth and nothing but the the truth, we should make every effort to protect and respect the diversity and plurality of opinion that exists, not allowing one to overpower and obliterate the other. Hence my insistence on the need to recognize human rights as universal, for all homo sapiens we share a planet with.

You are right. I have no strategy. M greatest concern is that there are those who do, and that strategy is counterproductive. This from the US Department of State: The War on terrorism cannot be successful if it creates in more terrorists than it eliminates. The invasion of Afghanistan, and Iraq, countless drones strikes, the incarceration of tens of thousands without trial or due process, the abuse and torture of detainees and hundreds of thousand of civilian casualties as collateral damage of military intervention by the West, combined with the rise of sectarian violence after invasions have collectively created an ideal recruitment ground for newly radicalized terrorists. ISIS is largely the child of the invasion of Iraq and Islamic extremists who thought Al Qaeda wasn't effective enough. While the current WOGT strategy may have immobilized or killed a large number of terrorists, it has created even more new ones. Now I know you can't make people do anything. Certainly not terrorists. But you can create options for those living near them and most affected by the WOGT. If you don't want them to be easily recruited by ISIS and the like, you must first of all convince them that they are not the target, and you must certainly make sure that you treat them as innocent until you have very compelling evidence to the contrary. All of these people have families, neighbours, relatives and friends. Wrongly killing, detaining or otherwise mistreating even one of them will cost the hearts and minds of dozens and create an ideal climate for recruitment by ISIS, Al Qaeda, the Taliban or whomever. It will feed the ISIS narrative that the West has declared war on all of Islam and Muslims must therefore join forces to defend themselves. Like fish need water terrorists need a certain amount of civilian support to live and carry out their terrorist operations. If we are able to win the hearts and minds of significant numbers of civilians we can begin to drain the pool that terrorists live, thrive and recruit in. And to achieve that all we have to do is apply the human rights we believe in universally. Is that a strategy? I don't know. It's a moral imperative, and we can't make anyone do anything, but perhaps we can entice significant numbers by offering them this more appealing alternative. Failing that, I think we should do nothing. It is better to do nothing than to do something counterproductive.

Canada, along with other countries, did not wait for NATO to sanction their operations. That is correct. And yes, ethnic cleansing was going on and human rights were being violated. I am not trying to argue that we shouldn't try to protect innocent civilians and their rights from those who threaten them. I just want to get away from the idea that terrorism and acts of terrorism are only committed by people from a particular geographical area with a particular ethnic background or religious affiliation, Western and non-westerner innocent civilians alike can be terrorized when their right to life and liberty is threatened. Respect for life and liberty and human rights must be universal, and we must be consistent and careful to apply the same rules and dhow the same concern for all people, regardless of their religious beliefs, ethnicity, cultural background or the geographical area or nation in which they were born and/or reside.

Sorry. I misread your meaning. You agree that human rights apply to all homo sapiens but cannot or should not be applied if... If what? If the homo sapiens in questions are 'terrorists'? We've already discussed the ambiguity of that term. Because they reject human rights? Or because they reject (do not also recognize and respect) our human rights? Surely they do not refuse their own rights to legal council and a fair trial? to be considered innocent until proven guilty? Civilians are the victims of terrorism, whether they are threatened by a drone attack, a suicide bomber, the commandeering of a civilian airliner, or the illegal unsanctioned invasion of a their country. Most civilian victims do not want vengeance, they want protection and assurances that the won't be re-victimized. (Unless they've become radicalized and want to take vengeance on other civilians, but that's another discussion) The treatment of detained suspects and presumed perpetrators of such acts should at the very least meet the same universal standards as the treatment of soldiers or POWs in a declared war, should it not? In our struggle against terrorism if we are not going to get pulled down to the same level as our adversaries surely we must hold ourselves to a higher standard!? I do not think terrorists are humanitarian. I want to find a strategy that will make them act more humane, and stop this counterproductive strategy in WOGT that makesopponents of terrorism less humane as well. I was in Iraq during 'Shock and Awe' and stayed until the summer of 2004. Most Iraqis were initially delighted that Saddam had been deposed by the invasion, and looked forward to a new life in which they would enjoy the same freedom and liberty as American citizens. But they quickly became horrified and dismayed to learn that they were not extended the same rights and freedoms as American citizens. They were incarcerated in large numbers as 'suspects', and almost everyone had a friend, neighbour or family member who had been picked up after an IED went off, or after a house raid, or after an accusation by an anonymous informant. Tens of thousands of Iraqis were being picked up and detained for indefinite lengths of time, often for years, and often at unknown locations. When the pictures of the sexual abuse that they were subjected to surfaced Iraqis of all stripes were outraged. The deaths of hundreds of civilians, including elderly, women and children during the bombings of Fallujah, in retaliation for the deaths of four Blackwater mercenaries,offered further proof to Iraqis that their lives were insignificant as far as their "liberators" and "benefactors" were concerned. It is impossible to exaggerate the number of hearts and minds that were lost in Iraq due to this double standard and the disregard for Iraqi rights. Nevertheless this seems consistent with everything I've read about the treatment of Guantanamo prisoners, the treatment of suspects in Afghanistan, and Canada's treatment of "security detainees" including Canadian citizen Maher Arar. The message we are sending is that the rights and freedoms we seek to protect are not universal, and don't apply to Muslims and/or peoplw who were born or reside in certain geographic areas we consider to be breeding grounds for terrorism. Instead of winning the hearts and minds of potential allies in our fight against terrorism we are creating more enemies , and selling our souls in the process, becoming the evil we wish to defeat. That is my perspective. I'm afraid I'm still not clear on yours. Please explain a little more about what you mean by 'it must flow both ways'.

One applies human rights to humans. Are you saying that terrorists aren't humans? And who do you mean you use the word terrorist?

Again, I appreciate your post and insights. You are right, I am an advocate for celebrating, learning from, and protecting diversity. It would be stupid to burn our whole library after having found what for the moment is our favorite book. And I don't very much like the book that seems to have become the favorite. I liked the mining the empty mine analogy, and your point that we err if preserving the status quo requires us deny new realities. I also liked your insights into cultural values and difference in how they view property etc. I take issue with your last statement however. I will invoke a Wade Davis quote: Returning to or retaining traditional values does not mean native people must return to their former lifestyles before the arrival of the Europeans. That would be the equivalent to working an empty mine. Even if it were desirable it is not an option. And, as other posts have pointed out, native peoples are not a single homogeneous group that subscribed to a single set of values. Further south --in Colombia for instance, where I spend most of my time-- native people engaged in agriculture as well as hunting and gathering, and were not as transient as they were here in Canada. But they shared very similar understandings of economics which differ greatly from those of the predominant global culture in which they have been immersed. Again, they are not one homogeneous group, and some have assimilated much more than others. But on average, a greater percentage of native people than members of the dominant European culture believe that the basis of their economy is the water, land, air, flor and fauna in their traditional territory, and that these must be looked after. Even largely mestizo campesinos in Latin America have more in common with indigenous peoples in this regard than with the dominant culture. They belong to the land, not vice versa. By contrast the dominant European culture considers the harvesting, processing and marketing of these resources to be the basis of their economy. The former requires integrating and living in harmony with the ecosphere; the latter requires dominating, manipulating, controlling and ultimately selling the ecosystem. This difference of cultural values isn't obliterated by new technologies. It does, however, determine how they are used. This is important for two reasons. First, our own governments have ceded control over national resources to global corporations. Attempts to limit or bar corporate access to these resources are met with law suits in international trade tribunals who will sue us for lost future profits if we pass environmental laws or introduce social policies that cut into their profits. We have lost sovereignty over our own resources. (Lone Pine Resources Files Outrageous NAFTA Lawsuit Against Fracking Ban) Secondly, native peoples --Canada's First Nations-- still have a legal right to control access to these same resources. Natives like the Mi'kmaq on the East Coast have never ceded territory and only signed friendship treaties, while in central Canada natives have retained fishing, hunting and logging rights over their traditional territories, and in the British Colombia 98% of natives have not signed any treaty at all! (Supreme Court's Tsilhqot'in First Nation ruling a game-changer for all )Natives have retained their sovereignty and a legal right to Canada's resources while Canadians have forfeited those same rights in favour of trade agreements. The happy coincidence that natives have legal rights over much of Canada's territory and that many natives have retained or are in the process of recovering their traditional values is very hopeful! They are fighting to regain control over resources that corporations seek to exploit to the detriment of us all! They actively, often at great sacrifice, resist mines, tailings ponds, pipelines, gas-fracking operations, clear-cutting,etc., often rejecting generous offers for compensation. This phenomenon is not unique to Canada. It is happening all over the world! And I am very much in favour of and heartened by it!

I really appreciate your post! And, yes it has given me food for thought. You see religions as forms of ideology, not as an alternatives to or in competition with ideologies. And both are political insofar as they seek to exercise and control the distribution and use of power justified by their faith in their own conviction that their particular "truth" is the right and only one. That sounds about right to me. Thanks for that! When I began this thread I was concerned by a growing number of people I encounter who shared a conviction that the incompatibility of differing religious beliefs are the primary reason for most of the war and violence on the planet today, and believed that the abolishment of religion would contribute greatly to justice and world peace. My analysis causes me to believe that the imposition of ideological convictions contributes more to war and violence than religion does, and that the abolishment of the latter would do little to promote justice and world peace. In short, I think those who focus on abolishing religion fail to see forest for the trees. After the collapse of the Soviet Union Free Market Capitalism has asserted itself as the only viable economic system --the end of history on a Darwinian chain of social evolution, and being the most evolved, without rivals, considers itself to have the right and moral duty to recreate the world in its own image. It isn't anti-religious per say, and has shown itself more than willing to invoke God and peoples' religious beliefs (in God we trust), and the Devil (the Axis of Evil) to gain control over the world's resources. Western governments, in the service of a global corporatocracy, have found it more expedient to market their imperialistic war as religious. I don't think we should buy into that. I don't believe free market capitalism ever has or ever will result in the optimal allocation of the world's resources, nor will it manage those resources in a life-sustaining way. I don't really have a one-size-fits-all ideology or religion to propose. They are all human constructs, and, to quote Leonard Cohen, "There's a crack in everything. That's where the light gets in" (Anthem). I believe that there are many different answers to the question "What does it mean to be a human being integrated in life on this planet?", and that we should respect and protect the collective and individual rights and value systems of all peoples and all cultures to control the use of the resources in their traditional territories. The cultures that are being wiped out in the name of development by the globalization and imposition of run amok neoliberal capitalism may have better answers and values systems than we do!

The original thread starter --that`d be me. I'd be okay with the following definitions of terrorism: noun 1. the use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, especially for political purposes. 2. the state of fear and submission produced by terrorism or terrorization. 3. a terroristic method of governing or of resisting a government. I do believe there is such a thing as state terrorism, and that it is no less evil. And I think semantics obfuscate things. If your objective is to intimidate or coerce for political reasons your objective is to terrorize. You can call it "Shock and Awe" or whatever you want, but it is terrorism, and if you engage in it you are a terrorist. The premise that you can make your enemy more afraid of you than you are of them relies on terrorism as a strategy. It requires that you become the evil you set out to defeat or neutralize. Now I would add that I consider victims of terrorism to be all innocent non-combatant civilians who get killed, get thrown in prison without trial and/or are tortured. If we were to stop thinking that terrorists must by definition be radicalized Muslim extremists and/or suspected ISIS, Al Qaeda, or Taliban operatives, and simply compare the number of innocent-until-proven-guilty civilian casualties in this so-called war on terrorism, it is clear that rather than defeating terrorism we are promoting terrorism and becoming terrorists oueselves. Furthermore our ill-advised military interventions in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libia have opened up Pandora's boxes of extreme sectarian violence in all three of those countries as a direct result our interventions. In the US the terms 'terrorism' and 'terrorist threat' are used much the same as the terms 'communism' and 'communist threat' were used during the Cold War by McCarthy and others. Today merely insinuating that someone might be a terrorist serves the same purposes as during the Cold War when merely insinuating that someone was a communist was enough to strip someone of their civil rights, arrest and detain them indefinitely, often without evidence and without right to a trial; . As during the Cold War the current 'terrorist threat' is used to justify the invasion of countries, the toppling of foreign governments, extrajudicial drone killings on foreign soil, and the arbitrary arrest and even torture of thousands. (Not to mention the curtailment of civil liberties, invasions of privacy, electronic surveillance, eavesdropping and spying on the legal communications and activities of its own citizens at home.) This self-serving definition of terrorism obfuscates and justifies terrorist acts of the US and its allies while it simultaneously circumvents laws and conventions that safeguard and protect the rights of civilians who have never been tried and convicted of any crime. It is not a definition of terrorism that I subscribe to. According to Wikipedia: The international community has never succeeded in developing an accepted comprehensive definition of terrorism. During the 1970s and 1980s, the United Nations attempts to define the term floundered mainly due to differences of opinion between various members about the use of violence in the context of conflicts over national liberation and self-determination.[15] Clearly you and I are not the only ones who disagree on the definition of terrorism. How would you define it?

Yes, poor governance. The corporatocracy, aided and abetted by governments of wealthy countries, prefer corrupt tyrannical two-thirds-world governments as trading partners to honest brokers who look after the interests of their own citizens. The latter would make access to resources in two-thirds-world countries much more difficult and less profitable, and the cost of accessing two-thirds-world countries labour much more expensive. So Canada and other countries negotiate trade deals with the likes of Indonesia's Suharto, Colombia's Uribe, and the Saudi princes. Rich countries legitimize and encourage poor governance in two-thirds-world countries, and even overthrow democratically elected good governance (Chile's Allende, Iran's Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh, to cite but two examples). Poor countries would not be better off bringing in a corporate management group. The problem is that these so-called leaders have sold out their citizens to a corporate management group who are managing things in a way that benefits the corporatocracy at the cost of the freedom and welfare of the local population. Canadians, by the way, are not immune to this. The white European settlers that colonized Canada are now being colonized themselves by this global corporatocracy, to which our own governments have sold our sovereignty. Corporations are suing Canada for impeding or barring access to Canada's resources. For instance, Lone Pine Resources is suing Canada, not for lost investments, but for lost future profits because Quebec decided not to let them frack under the St Lawrence River. I was part of a blockade in Rexton New Brunswick in which the entire local population --the Mi'kmaq joined by the Acadian and Anglophones-- were united in resisting and opposing a fracking company from operating in the area. Both the provincial and federal governments sided with the corporation and deployed hundreds of RCMP to dismantle the blockade. This is but one of many examples of how Canadian Security Forces are used to protect the sovereignty of corporations over that of the local population,

Your link reference calls in question the authenticity of Chief Seattle's speech, and points out that Iron Eye Cody, the man who portrayed the “crying Indian” was not Native American at all. You and your link are probably right. Both Chief Seattle's speech and Iron Eye Cody being a native are probably myths. But the Native American's concern for and protection of the environment are not based solely on these two myths, What we refer to as 'resources' they refer to as 'our relations'. When they 'harvest' one of their relations they leave tobacco in recognition of the sacrifice. I have followed and accompanied native people in their struggle to protect water, forests and land from logging, fracking and pipeline projects. Contemporary examples abound. I will cite a couple of them: I could go on. The point is not only do indigenous peoples have a long tradition of having looked after Pacha Mama (Mother Earth); they are still doing it! You go on to say: I can Except the facts. Accepting them is what I'm having troublee with. If wealth is money (it isn't), and "able to protect" means throwing money at a problem "when such protection is necessary", I would say that it is necessary now, and native people are throwing their bodies in the way of further destruction. I concede that the dominant culture's technology has rendered them far more destructive to the environment than any other society, past or present.

Your argument seems to be in line with a premise that we are on top of some imagined chain of Darwinian social evolution, and that the collapse of the Soviet Union means the end of history as was claimed at the time, and that in terms of social evolution capitalism was proven to be the best. Both systems --Soviet communism and free-market capitalism-- were based on an assumption that wealth was primarily the result of industrial production. The Soviet model was state-owned and controlled industrial capital, while the West believed in free-market owned and controlled industrial capital. I believe that both systems had a very narrow and misguided definition of social progress and the meaning of wealth and prosperity, and that the reality of finite resources and scarcity mean that neither of them are sustainable. On the contrary, in the long run both threaten the ability of this planet to sustain life and thereby undermine the basis of every economy --the land, water, air, flora and fauna we all depend on. In fact cultures often deemed to be primitive, backward, underdeveloped --cultures we destroy in the name of capitalist development and economic growth-- are more advanced in terms of recognizing the need for preserving and protecting essential resources --the land, water, air, flora and fauna we all depend on. Both free-market and communist development are out of touch with reality, arrogantly thinking themselves to be superior because their technological achievements cause them to imagine themselves to be more evolved on some ill-conceived Darwinian chain of social evolution. As for Venezuela, the failure of the left to hang onto power has to do with a number of things: the dramatic fall in the the price of oil, failure to get control of its own military and police, and the mobility of capital (The inevitability of capital flight has made the redistribution of wealth pretty much impossible in a world in which neoliberal economics sets the terms of trade for the entire planet.)

Unfortunately the cultures being wiped out by the predominant global economic development model seem to be the only ones that understand that no economy can be sustained without sustaining the natural world --the water, land, air, flora and fauna we all depend on.

I share that concern.

There is still a significant percentage of the world's population whose food security depends on producing their own. It is easy to forget that. It is easy to assume that everyone's security depends on a good job with good pay and benefits. Those who depend on direct entitlement --growing their own food, using local materials to build their own houses etc.-- are being pushed off of their land to create room for agri-industry, mines, hydroelectric dams and other mega-projects. Now we can add climate refugees to that number. Typically this kind of economic development only creates jobs for about 20% of the people it displaces, while the other 80% join the millions of dispossessed economic refugees. This has created a huge pool of cheap labour that has allowed 20% of the world's population to keep on consuming 80% of its resources despite moving production off shore. Members of that top 20% are largely unaware of or indifferent to the cost of this economic development model, although the on-going refugee crisis may make growing inequality harder to ignore.

In large part I agree with you here. It seems to me that both religion and ideology are too often invoked to justify and impose the interests of its proponents, be it on religious grounds or ideological. Both lend themselves to abuses of power, often oppressing and dispossessing outsiders --those deemed to be other and less deserving or entitled than the adherents to a particular ideology or religion. Both ideologues and dogmatic religious fanatics justify systematic dispossession and cultural genocide, both supposing themselves to be in possession of some universal truth that entitles them to subject others and the resources of others to their rule. And, as you point out, it depends on the moral principles, and I would add, the relative power over others wielded by the religious fanatics and/or ideologues (often religion and ideology are wedded in some unholy matrimony). There are indeed religious and ideological actors whose ethics or moral principles inspire them to use religion and/or ideology for the greater good. But I would argue that there are more peoples and cultures being wiped out today in the name of development than religion, and that the premise that banning religion will somehow protect the most vulnerable is misguided, since there are more cultures being destroyed and resources co-opted in the name of development than in the name of religion. And since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the predominant global ideology is free market capitalism, which, despite evidence to the contrary, insists that the benefits of economic growth will eventually trickle down and benefit those at the bottom of the hierarchy as well as those at the top.

You do blame them, but do you accept that the West, and especially the US also bears some responsibility for keeping and sometimes installing the most brutal amongst them in power?

I think Pandora's box can't be easily closed, but it would have been better if we hadn't been feeding those monsters for all those years before we opened it. And with the wars on Afghanistan and Iraq we opened it. Osama Bin Ladin was a paid ally before he became an adversary. The Shah, which helped bring Iran out of the dark ages, was ousted by a US supported bloodbath and was replaced by very conservative sharia law Khomeini. Saudi Arabia, which squelches Arab Springs and nonviolent attempts to gain freedom in neighboring usually US-backed dictatorships, and treats its own citizens, never mind foreign workers, atrociously, is nevertheless considered a friend and ally. (Either that or the princes are on par with the banks: Too big to fail and too big to jail) Before the invasion Iraq was a secular state where secular laws were in place and Christians and Muslims lived in relative peace, and Muslims dressed however they wished. (I`m not saying Sadam wasn't a dictator. He was, even when he was on friendly terms with the US. So was Assad. He used to torture terrorist suspects for us before the Arab Spring, remember?) Some Muslim societies are backwards and conservative and violent, but we can`t blame them for this; we want and have helped keep them that way! And we have furthermore made it clear that non-violent Arab Springs will be tolerated only if the West has vetted and approved whomever they want to replace our dictator with. Oh! And the West must not in any way be held responsible for propping up the dictators that they turf out. The old terrorists will eventually die off. I maintain that the best way to fight terrorism is to stop creating new ones. I put my body where my mouth is.

Exactly! Whether you abdicate your responsibilities because of your blind fanatical faith in an invisible divine God's invisible hand or once-visible Adam Smith's pseudo social science construct is irrelevant. Either way you are wrongfully endorsing the misallocation of the worlds resources and contributing to growing global inequality and misuse of resources. The West is increasingly choosing the latter, or some combination of the two (i.e. Providence is God rewarding those who help themselves). You should only get to choose your poison if your the only one that's gotta drink it!

To a large extent I agree with you, at least insofar as we need to find real solutions to a very real and growing problem. The thing would be to prevent the creation of refugees, be they climate, economic or violence refugees. It was to that end that I moved to Colombia, which is second only to Syria in terms of displaced and dispossessed peoples (5.5 million). There's that old parable about upstream -- downstream. Downstream you are fishing bodies out of the river; resuscitating, providing medical aid to, feeding, clothing or burying the bodies you fish out of the river. But sooner or later you end up asking what is going on upstream: Who is throwing all these people into the river? These days my upstream presentations in Canada could be paraphrased as: "I have discovered the enemy! It is us! Give me some money and I'll find out more." The world we live in has fallen into the hands of a monolithic global corporatocracy, and her resources commodified and sold in a single global marketplace. Those who still enjoy human rights have purchasing power; those who don't are robbed of what little still remained to them, be it water, food or land. Countries willing to sacrifice human rights, the environment, and the freedom and safety of their citizens have a comparative advantage over those who don't. We are all in a race to the bottom, and the refugees are winning.

I am by no means an expert on the ME, although I have spent a couple of years in Iraq. But are you telling us that we are in bed with the Saudis because our government has carefully studied the alternatives and arrived at the conclusion that the current regime, 'despicable as it is', would be more respectful of human rights than whomever is likely to replace them?!! That may be an argument for why we shouldn't have invaded Afghanistan and why the US shouldn't have invaded Iraq, but its not an argument for getting into bed with the Saudis. Isn't it simply that we prefer pro-West and pro-US regimes who squelch potentially anti-West Arab Springs and civil nonviolent attempts to regain their freedom wherever they find them? Is it really democracy and freedom that we are promoting and exporting or economically beneficially trade relations often at at the cost of freedom and democracy? Harper says if we didn't sell the Saudis weapons somebody else would, so it might as well be us. Despicable as it is, at least that's a little more honest than the usual argument that gets trotted out, which goes something like: "We have more influence over a trading partner than someone we have no relations with", which sounds more like a ludicrous argument for buying products from pimps, thieves and drug-dealers to gain 'influence' over their behaviour! I am not suggesting we invade Saudi Arabia. I am just suggesting we end the hypocrisy and be consistent about defending human rights!

I meant to say that Canada conforming to US immigration policy was but one instance of how we negatively impact refugees, and that Canada's disregard for human rights in other countries contributes to the creation of refugees. I did not mean to imply Canada's immigration policy creates refugees. Canada's trade relations and even diplomatic relations with known human rights abusers makes them complicit in creating a climate of impunity and human rights violations that contribute to the problem. Colombia dis hold elections, and the current Santos government as well as the previous Uribe government has had scandal after scandal, including Para-politics (the collaboration of all levels of government with right-wing paramilitary death squads that massacred 100s of thousands and displaced 5.5 million), false positives (the extrajudicial killing of tens of thousands of civilians which are postmortem dressed up as insurgents and presented as guerrillas who died in combat), and countless corruption charges involving the embezzlement of public money. The deadly suppression of dissent and land0grabs are what have paved the way for Canadian and other investors to gain access to Colombian resources. Despite national and international campaigns to have Canada refrain from signing a FTA with Colombia until there was and end to these abuses and restitution for the victims Canada went ahead and signed an agreement anyway. All this is well documented. Furthermore, state security forces are used, not to protect the local population, but rather the corporations that have come to pillage local resources and destroy the local environment. (This happens all over the world, including in Canada itself.) Trade does mean investment in infrastructure --infrastructure designed to extract and bring Colombia's national wealth to the nearest port. These mega-projects typically involve hydro electric damns, huge quantities of water which becomes contaminated, and only create jobs for about twenty percent of the people they displace. The other 80% of the local population typically become dispossessed economic refugees and victims of cultural genocide. (The destruction of cultures is not the intended objective, but a known and predictable inevitable outcome when you systematically dispossess campesino, Afro and indigenous Colombians of the land that feeds them both physically and culturally.) Colombia is not an anomaly. I only use it as an example because it is the place I am most familiar with. (I have spent the better part of the last ten years living in Colombia.