Anti-Globalization

Thu Jan 9 16:46:20 2014

The potential collapse of European civilization is manifest in its dependence upon the multi- and transnational production and distribution networks, and upon open lines of communication and related infrastructure.

But apart from catastrophic events and related effects, which might result in disfunctioning global markets and serious disruptions of the lines of communication, or competition among the great powers escalating into direct war among them, we cannot see any imminent collapse in the foreseeable future.

Like any other civilization we hear about will ours be gone at one time. But it could possibly also continue for many generations and destroy most of the earthlife as we know it. It will remain our responsibility to help speed up the demise of our rotten civilization, which is based upon death and destruction to an extent never known before.

European History

European 'official' history is mostly speaking about great powers competing among themselves and violently expanding their realm by subjugating, assimilating and exterminating lesser peoples. The focus is on rulers and their war and trade records, on tools and modes of production, on magnificent buildings and artworks. It is a history of wars and conquests, of tycoons, kingdoms, empires and such.

Manifest Dominion

For centuries the Europeans colonized the earth and its living for their narrow selfish interests. The destructive consequences of their actions are obvious and widespread. Numerous peoples and whole species were extinct. Others decimated, disintegrated, dispossessed, impoverished, displaced and subdued. Wherever the Europeans went, they brought harm and suffering, dependency, diseases, hunger and war. This remains essentially the same since the times of Prince Henry the Navigator and Christopher Colon.

Still the Europeans today seem convinced of their manifest dominion over all other peoples. They claim supremacy no longer as a race, but as a superior civilization. Instrumental in reflecting this are the idea-values (like democracy, rule of law, human rights, freedom, equality), which are spun between the moral and ideological claims, and the factual realities of colonial relations.

The ability to impose their categories and thought patterns has been crucial to manipulate and control the subjected peoples and their development. With this came, often violently imposed, the widespread loss of languages, rituals and customs.

Myth of Progress

The myth of progress and a timeline based linear conception of history construct a hierarchy of 'civilizations', where the most 'advanced' and 'emancipated' dominate the 'underdeveloped' or 'backward' people. In whatever terms expressed, the claim of superiority is fundamental in European thinking. It is the moral and intellectual legitimization of White Supremacy (WS).

Peoples, who lived unspectacular and relatively peaceful lives, who left no big 'footprint', are mostly ignored. Therefore, the best examples, how humans structured and organized their communities, and how they took care of the earth to provide them with whatever they needed, are seen as 'loser' of history, damned to be dissolved or dominated by 'superior' forces. The 'winners' are seen as somehow entitled to rule. The many peoples exterminated on the way are treated as collateral damage.

From another point of view there is no way 'forward' or 'backward', no scale of progress and no advancement. There are many different ways to organize life among peoples and between them. Some have been remarkably successful for millennia. European civilization can primarily teach us what to fear and avoid, mainly the objectification of life and the accumulation and concentration of power. It also teaches us the need to check the greed and enviousness of people, and to refrain from bad speech.

Truth and Relativity

Truth can be both absolute and relative. And different truths can all be true, even if they contradict each other. To try to impose one truth upon others is violent. To try to impose one truth upon all is totalitarian.

What we do, like it shows in our acts and the consequences they have, is factual. What we say or write are just words used in communication, which is also an act with consequences. Speaking one way and acting another is an integral part of the European culture, where speech and truthfulness have largely been separated. Speech is generally used to advance interests and can therefor only be understood tactically. Children learn at an early age to lie and use bad speech.

From a spiritual point of view, the universe and all living may be the creation of whatever divine entity as an authority to set rules and limits for all peoples. As humans we can never have that kind of authority, because we are just like those who disagree. We are always relative to other humans.

Relativity means that different points of view are essential for understanding another. When it comes to ethical questions, proper conduct, obligations and rights, we are always relative to others. No ideology can reasonably claim to be valid for all peoples.

Apart from a spiritual understanding and the natural conditions of our species, the claim to speak for all humanity and set standards and make rules for all people is totalitarian. There is no way to legitimize this claim but through arrogance and some kind of herrenmenschen-ideology. There is no way to enforce any of this but through overwhelming violence.

The claim of the Europeans to be the standard setters, investigators, prosecutors and enforcers for all is fundamentally totalitarian. For example, people are made to believe, that they have 'universal human rights', while in reality they have not. If you have a right or not written on paper, if you want or need it, and what a difference it makes, may not be as important as the realities of peoples lives. Either a right is factual, or it is not.

For most humans basic human rights have always been a reality. Only the gross violations of these rights, which culminated in the giant mass extermination and destruction of WW II made people think in terms of 'universal human rights'. Only a few decades later, these human rights have become a justification for all kinds of interventions including military aggression and occupation. We should see those 'rights' as lies and understand them as an idea-value used as a tool to impose White Supremacy.

Colonizer and colonized peoples

Colonial relations created a fundamental division between the colonizers and the colonized. For many generations both the colonizing and the colonized societies developed on the basis of colonial relations. The accumulated wealth of the colonizer societies is based upon the domination, dispossession, degradation and exploitation of the colonized societies.

The development of the colonized societies was violently interrupted, and continued under foreign hegemony. Dependencies were established and rules of interaction imposed, which allow only very limited possibilities of independent development. The anti-colonial struggles brought nominal independence of the colonized as recognized states in the international order. Yet this order was developed by the colonizers and tailored to their needs, and is still dominated by them. Also, the dependencies in financial and economic matters remained largely intact, and were reinforced again since the 1970s.

Whatever is being thought and said cannot be understood without the colonial context. Do we belong to the colonizers or the colonized peoples? To a significant extent and depth our perception and mindset, cognitive patterns and ontologies are determined by the colonial divide. Our words carry different meaning, and our acts happen in a different context and have different implications.

The only way we can get beyond the colonial divide is through anti-colonial struggle. Unfortunately, the colonizer societies did not even begin to seriously decolonize their thinking processes and never decolonized their relations.

Globalization

What is called 'globalization', the multi- and transnationalization of banks and corporations, the inter-, multi- and supranationalization of politics and the multinationalization of armed enforcement, was a reaction to peoples struggles in the 1960s and 70s. A technology-driven restructuring made possible through a massive expansion of international credit and foreign investment, reinforced by policies to invade and conquer markets of the countries of the periphery.

Surely do people always adjust to developments changing the circumstances they are living in, and explore new possibilities, thereby also influencing these developments through their responses. Regarding globalization these adjustments were largely defensive and opportunistic, people reacting to changes directed against and forced upon them.

Solely from the 'top'

Humans are physical beings belonging to a particular space. Whatever means of transportation increased the spacial mobility of those with access came down from the 'top', mostly through the military and trade. In time, when higher mobility of the workforce became desirable for the large corporations and their mass production facilities, mass transportation developed into a growing consumer market. Only lately the holiday, meeting and travel industry grew into a huge market.

Much of this communication has clearly deepened the colonial divide, while it mostly failed to deepen our understanding of it. We see (moving) pictures and may read texts about far away countries and peoples, and some can even travel there and spend some time among those people(s), yet what is it good for?

The internet as a means of communication is just the transmission of digital data between interfaces. For the M/TNCs it is essential to control their multi- and transnational production and distribution networks. For the governmental bureaucrats it is critical to administer and monitor the individualized particles of their mass consumer societies. For the 'bottom', the ordinary user, it is the consumer devices for digital media. The users physical activity is looking at a screen and listing to loudspeakers, interacting with the devices mostly through moving fingers.

The internet is being used effectively to mobilize and organize public protests, while greatly expanding the ability of the oppressive forces to monitor and manipulate the communication. Relations between the people are less personal and their ability to grow as communities badly hampered.

Colonial relations have made people dependent and subjected them to conditions forcing them to adjust. It would be an affront to state that these adjustments were a 'colonization from the bottom'. Likewise, it is solely from the 'top' that 'globalization' has been forced 'down' to the 'bottom'. There is no such thing as a 'globalization from the bottom' and cannot be.

The 'bottom' people have few relations on their own with far away lands and peoples. We simply don't have much to do with each others. Also migration is as peoples to another place, or from one people to another, although today many are also forced into isolation as particles of mass societies.

Individualized members of mass consumer societies

The individualized members of mass consumer societies usually love their lifestyles. Facing their near complete dependence upon the multi- and transnational corporations and upon governments and bureaucracies to deliver the goods and services they rely upon and to keep order, most will shy away in angst from contemplating any serious decolonization.

Consumerism and individualism

Mass production needs mass consumption. In the overconsuming societies, demand has been decoupled from need and was instead linked to growth. Mass production needs consumers buying all those things they don't really need. A need for growth has long been postulated and is hardly ever seriously questioned. It largely explains the simultaneity of abundance and starvation, of overconsumption and scarcity.

Consumerism is part of a disease subverting and disintegrating communities, taking people captive and manipulating their actions. It is highly infectious and people can easily become addicted and corrupted.

Especially the young people today are heavily infested with consumerism and attracted to the globalizer culture and lifestyles. They tend to believe in 'modernity' and 'progress'. Individualism and multiculturalism are emphasized, yet increasingly without substance. Emptiness in substance is overplayed with a focus on form and style.

Usually, the more schooling and university courses they went through, the more ideological globalizers people are. This is naturally so because they got the highest doses of indoctrination in European thinking and perspectives, and are most alienated from the traditional ways of their ancestors. Schooling has long been a colonial tool of choice. Best the colonizers invade the minds and bind lucrative jobs to academic grades. How convenient, when the colonized believe their traditional knowledge and customs to be inferior and not the best foundation for rebuilding their societies.

Defending privileges through mass extermination

The development of the first ever Global Totalitarian Order (GTO) under hegemony of the Democratic Totalitarian Societies (DTS) is the latest effort to extend White Supremacy.

The DTS use all means at their disposal to maintain their lifestyles and defend their privileges. They do this violently, like they usurped, expanded and enforced their dominion for many centuries. It seems unreasonable to assume that anything fundamentally different will come out of continuing the same path we walked for such a long time already. We have been there and done it, over and over again.

Mass extermination of people has been systematically increased since the 1970s with the use of population control policies and economic impoverishment, mostly through hunger, diseases and war. Many are dying very early, many malnourished and deprived of access to healthy water, catching various diseases while lacking access to adequate basic health care and medicines. Simplest diseases and deficiencies lead to chronic illnesses. Many are being worked for cheap to an early death. Forced displacement, expulsion and evictions have also been accelerated, and the trade of humans, mostly women and children, continues to grow. We have to expect the dominant powers to continue permanent war and to further escalate mass extermination.

The 'new world order': attacking Iraq

On January 29, 1991, with the 'Cold War' ended, then US-President George Bush Sr. spoke about the 'new world order'. At that time, the USA were leading a broad coalition of countries in the massive bombardment of Iraq. With few exceptions, the world now stands as one. Combined with the blockade, embargo and sanctions in the name of the UN, the campaign succeeded to exterminate hundred thousands of Iraqi people already before the invasion and occupation 2003.

War escalated in Africa

War was also escalated in Africa, which became a major battleground for colonial influence and control. The aggression reminds of the times following the Congo-Conference in Berlin 1884/85. Great powers competing among themselves for influence while banding together against African aspirations for independence and self-determination.

Great Lakes region

In the Great Lakes region, in October 1990, Ugandan troops, in the name of Rwanda Patriotic Front (RPF), supported by the USA and Britain, invaded Rwanda, supported by France (and initially Belgium). The RPF took power in the genocidal showdown of 1994, and soon Rwanda began to attack the DRCongo, where Mobutu had turned from an anti-communist ally into a Cold War liability for the USA. Frequent military incursions and interventions culminated in the 1998 invasion of the DRCongo by Uganda and Rwanda, prompting SADC to intervene in defense. Estimates of war-related deaths are in the millions.

Greater Horn of Africa

In the Greater Horn of Africa, Somalia was invaded in 1992 by US-marines in a 'humanitarian intervention' in the name of the UN. The intervention helped fuel the internal fighting, which had escalated after the overthrow of Siad Barre in 1991. Since that time, the only brief period of hope for peace in Somalia came with the rise of the Islamic Courts Union, but was interrupted by the Ethiopian invasion and occupation of Somalia in 2006. Today Somalia is occupied by Ethiopian, Kenyan, Ugandan and Burundian troops, supplemented by US special forces. Meanwhile, the navies of many countries patrol the Somali waters.

Targeting Sudan, the USA and other western and northern European countries financed and supported the SPLM/A rebels in southern Sudan, escalating and extending the fighting for many years. Sudan was embargoed and sanctioned by the usual suspects since the early 1990s. In 1998, the USA bombed the Al Shifa pharmaceutical plant in Sudan, depriving the country of urgently needed affordable medicines.

In 2003, during the negotiations of a 'Comprehensive Peace Agreement', fighting broke out in the Darfur region of Sudan. The war in Darfur was used in a massive propaganda campaign for foreign military intervention as an obligation for the 'international community'. The thread runs under the subject 'Responsibility to Protect'. To throw fuel in the fire, and to pressure the Sudanese government, the International Court of Criminals (ICC) in 2009 issued a warrant of arrest against the President of Sudan.

After a referendum, South Sudan formally separated from Sudan in 2011. The new state doesn't provide much identification for its citizens. Moreover, the government failed to significantly improve the living conditions for the many and to make itself felt through efficient and fair public services. Fighting between tribes broke out and escalated quickly.

North Africa

In 1992, in response to the electoral victories of the Islamic Salvation Front (FIS), an Algerian political party, the Algeria military took power and began to persecute and kill FIS members and suspected supporters. The Algerian military and secret services organized a vicious counterinsurgency war, largely financed by France and the EU, and with assistance from the IMF. Henceforth it was clear, that the electoral route was conditional upon approval of the hegemonic powers.

West Africa

In West Africa, war was escalated and manipulated in Liberia and Sierra Leone, which went through different stages of foreign occupation and direct colonial overrule in the name of the UN. The Ivory Coast is dragged along a similar path. These are typical examples of foreign dominated nominal countries.

Other war 'theaters'

My country, Germany, took the lead in promoting the violent disintegration of Yugoslavia. NATO began attacking Yugoslavia in 1992, with major bombing campaigns in 1995 and again in 1999. Bosnia was held under occupation and colonial overrule for years. Kosovo is still occupied by NATO troops.

Russia waged war on tiny Chechnya in 1994 and again 1999. A few thousand Chechen guerrilla fighters successfully resisted the Russian forces for years, despite being badly outgunned and outnumbered. Only through massive destruction and mass extermination could the Russians regain some level of control.

Permanent War

These are only a few examples to indicate that permanent war is the hallmark of the 'new world order', which we call the Global Totalitarian Order (GTO). The war has many episodes and parallel fronts. The Democratic Totalitarian Societies (DTS) are the major aggressors, competing globally for hegemony and influence both among themselves and with upcoming challengers, like the often mentioned BRICS.

Adding to direct military interventions, aggressions and occupations by the DTS, the use of mostly 'Third World' colonial troops in the name of the UN has been systematically expanded. June 2014 the top contributing countries with more than 4000 troops were Bangladesh (8,766), India (8,123), Pakistan (7,203), Ethiopia (7,203), Nepal (4,740), Nigeria (4,717) and Rwanda (4,650). End of May 2014 the main target countries were the DRCongo (21,166), Sudan (18,472 and 4,105), South Sudan (9,387), Lebanon (10,287), Mali (9,289), Ivory Coast (8,919), Haiti (7,622), Liberia (6,321).

The DTS have the military means to quickly establish supremacy in the air and on the oceans. Only on the ground can they be directly challenged with guerrilla tactics. The resistance against the occupation in Chechnya, Afghanistan, Somalia, Iraq and Palestine has shown the limits of military enforcement.

But in the military field things are always in flux. For example, targeting civilian airliners can render airspace insecure and cause panic among passengers, forcing the airlines to adjust their routes to avoid war areas. And the transnationalization of guerrilla warfare is an option hardly explored so far.

Anti-imperialist solidarity fading

Already in the early 1990s, in the DT S, many on the political 'left', even 'anti-imperialist' currents, came into troubled positions and failed to clearly position themselves on the side of the attacked countries and peoples. The participation of their own countries in military aggressions, invasions and occupations was at times mildly protested, but mostly ignored. Mainstream narratives to justify war were progressively accepted and repeated. Successful demonization and erosion of solidarity went hand in hand.

Very few were showing solidarity with the peoples under assault and occupation, and many even condemned those resisting against the occupiers and their collaborators, like in Iraq, Somalia, Afghanistan, or Chechnya. There has been some level of solidarity with the Palestinians, but also only selective and conditional. For example, the militancy of the Second Intifada prompted many to retract their support for the Palestinians struggle.

Movladi Udugov, Head of the Chechen Defence Committee Information Politics, expressed it most clearly:

A bloody and terrible war is fought in Chechnya, and it got initiated by the Kremlin in order to eliminate the whole Chechen ethnos. The nation offers as hard a resistance as it can. No one has the right to forbid the nation, which fights to defend its own rights for existence, to choose the methods and means for defending their own lives.

War on Islam

After 911, the USA officially declared the Global War on Terror (GWoT), which is ongoing. From their language and actions it was obvious, that they are targeting Muslims in particular, and Islam in general. This basic theme went through different phases as things developed, but the core remained the same.

Islam is a faith and religion, which gives guidance and rules to its believers through the words of God, written in the Qur'an. God is the highest authority and the words of God are immutable truths. Political authority, at a minimum, has to allow the Muslims to live according to the laws and obligations given from God. Islamic law and jurisprudence are different from christian or enlightened legal and judicial doctrines and principles, which were widely imposed upon the colonized societies.

There is no way Islam could be separated from politics. 'Political Islam' is just a eurocentric term from a particular secular perspective. 'Islamists' is a degrading term, because Islam is a religion, and 'Islamists' are just people acting in the name of Islam. Principally, a faith or religion cannot be blamed for the actions of people acting in its name.

Surely, religion is notoriously being used to legitimize those in power and to keep people obedient. But this is true also for whatever secular worldviews, ideologies and beliefs. Propaganda uses whatever works to manipulate peoples minds.

All together against Afghanistan

Even before the GWoT was officially announced, largely driven by 'civil society organizations' in the DTS, the Taliban government of Afghanistan was targeted by propaganda focusing on the oppression of women. It was a nasty campaign, which didn't help the Afghan women at all, but helped the US/NATO with a prepared demonization to justify the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan 2001.

The Taliban government was the only chance for peace in Afghanistan since the Russian invasion 1979, much like the Islamic Courts Union in Somalia some years later. Their immediate priorities were national unity, to restore peace and public safety, and to advance national development wherever possible. The Taliban were neither monopolizing political power to enrich themselves and their cronies, nor did they rule primarily by repression. Mostly, it was a government of people with no prior political or diplomatic careers. They made their mistakes, but largely succeeded to end the war and to significantly reduce criminal activities. They achieved much in a relatively short time, even while the country went through several years of drought and despite sanctions and non-recognition of the government by the 'international community' and its agents.

Hundred thousands of occupier forces (NATO, PMSP) and their colonial support troops (ANA) haven't succeeded in subduing the Afghan people. The armed resistance against the occupation and their collaborators has been proven sustainable and strong. Anti-imperialists should at least salute them for that and show solidarity by demanding the unconditional and immediate removal of all NATO-troops from Afghanistan.

United in defense of White Supremacy

In the DTS, there are no protests against massive use of violence and collective punishment and persecution, no solidarity with political prisoners, no outcry even against massacres and mass extermination - if the victims are Muslims. The attribute 'islamic' before 'suspects', 'radicals', 'extremists', 'terrorists' is usually enough to justify whatever actions of their governments against Muslims. They may frequently change their wording, but the essence is clear.

What we see is the fundamental consensus among the peoples of the DTS, regardless of their political affiliation. It is the same arrogant claim of superiority we associate with the Europeans since the beginnings of their colonial expansion. Islam is simply not compatible with their enlightened dogmas and values. And they won't accept any fundamental challenge to their hegemony. Therefore, a sort of 'Islam' is only tolerated in 'enlightened' terms, and those struggling to implement Islam are generally rejected as 'backward' and 'reactionary'. Building on their consensus, any movement and struggle of Muslims can easily denunciated as 'terrorist' and attacks launched on them.

National sovereignty is a farce

During all these years since the end of the Cold War, the DTS have clarified violently, that national sovereignty of all peoples and countries, not able to effectively defend themselves, or to credibly threaten serious retaliatory damage to the aggressors, is just a farce. International law on paper is merely propaganda and a diversion from factual realities.

Wherever peoples get together and try their own way to solve the problems they face, to establish their independence and self-determination, they are being targeted with aggression to enforce and secure access to whatever sources of profit and to exert control over development.

Probably the most advanced insurgencies and guerrilla struggles have been in Chechnya, Afghanistan, Somalia, Iraq and Palestine. Their struggles are undoubtedly anti-colonial, as they were about self-determination against colonial intervention and occupation. They were also anti-imperialist, defending themselves against imperialist aggression and setting the limits to military enforcement by the imperialist countries.

Political ideologies failed

During the 'Cold War', and already since the mid 19th century, socialist and anarchist analysis of capitalism and nation states, and their visions of a better world without exploitation and poverty, dominated the political discourse on the side of those who organized to overthrow the capitalist order and install the rule of the masses. The political landscape was painted in an ideologically polarized context, 'capitalist' versus 'communist'. Yet when the 'Cold War' ended we could see that both ideologies had failed to fulfill their promises.

To better understand this, we can look at the common roots of both ideologies. Industrialization was only possible on the basis of colonial relations, and was largely financed by the transatlantic slave trade. Socialist ideas came out of struggles against the destructive consequences of industrialization upon the lives of the affected peoples, particularly the workers in the factories and on the docks. But with their livelihood firmly bound to industrialization, the working class struggles focused mostly on wages, benefits, and working conditions. The colonial relations, on which the whole industrial enterprise depends, were largely ignored.

Capitalism had proven to be the more successful economic order on the path of growth and mass consumption. Capitalism doesn't really need to justify itself, because it is factual and powerful. And democracy as an idea-value is by definition always 'good', regardless of contradictions and factual realities. On the other hand, socialist/communist ideologies have not much to show neither in terms of fulfilling the hopes and aspiration of their followers, nor in terms of verifying proclaimed truths.

No serious questioning

The actual phase of mass mobilizations can teach us certain lessons, which we just begin to see. It seems as if primarily the distribution of power and wealth is contested. The colonizer way of life is hardly ever seriously questioned and largely accepted as given. Not questioning the basic structures and relations governing our lives means to give up on the struggle for decolonization. Indeed we find that people often don't even recognize or acknowledge the continuation of colonial and imperialist relations as such.

Globalizers and Anti-globalizers

Globalizers are those who either endorse globalization or accept it as an irreversible given. They like to view themselves as global citizens of global villages and demand to be equal and free. They think in terms of global problems and solutions, global resources and standards, global justice and universal rights.

If it comes to the question of globalization we see differences and contradictions transcending political categories of 'left' and 'right', and also of 'race', 'class' and 'sex'. Globalizers dominate international politics, big business, the sciences, the media. For anti-globalizers politics is largely lost territory. At best it can provide rudimentary support on a local level.

Politics is a corrupt and dirty business

Politics has become a corrupt and dirty business to divert and oppress the resistance of peoples, to collect fees and taxes, and to cash in as governments in the international order and for the services provided to the investors. Ever optimized and intensified propaganda and other mind control measures, combined with monetary incentives and selective repression, ensure that political organizations and struggles will be diverted and compromised unless the people unite around specific limited issues directly affecting their lives, and only if they stay focused and practical towards their common goals.

Decolonization is possible

Globalization is reversible, decolonization is possible. For millennia peoples have lived highly stable and sustainable lives. Hunger and starvation, and also spreading diseases and pests remained rare occurrences. Multiple food sources guaranteed survival even in difficult times. They had both a stability through generations while remaining flexible enough to adjust to changing circumstances.

Surely there used to be far less people than today, but on the other side much of the earthlife was destroyed and thereby more of the earth claimed by humans. We don't know for how many humans the earth can provide, but the question is merely academic and hypothetical. The realities of hunger and starvation on the one side and extensive overproduction and over-consumption on the other should be enough to reveal the concept of overpopulation as propaganda to justify mass extermination.

Different ways

When we look at anti-colonial and anti-imperialist struggles, it is obvious that there is not one way, but many different perspectives, priorities and preferences. To find common ground and open the blockades to independence and self-determination, we could principally unite against 'globalization', the institutions of the GTO in general, and the M/TNCs in particular.

But beyond common rejection of the dominant order, we find fundamentally different perspectives about the way to go, and about the goals and means to realize them. Fighting among each others for hegemony can only divert and corrupt our struggles. Instead, we should stand in solidarity with another against our common enemies, regardless of our differences and even antagonisms otherwise.

In order to allow peaceful relations among different peoples, we must keep ourselves out of others affairs and refrain from judgment and intervention against them. We have to accept, that peoples walk different ways and in different directions. As far as there is need for common spaces and interaction, the rules must be negotiated with utmost respect and self-constraint to minimize discrimination and conflict.

Migrating back to the rural areas

When we think about food and water, large cities are both a drain and major source of pollution and waste. A high concentration of humans on a particular land for an extended time is always destructive to most non-human life. Moreover, city dwellers tend to look down on the farming and herding communities. The interests of small farming and fishing communities, like those of pastoralists, are generally disregarded where industrialization is prioritized.

Many traditional farming and herding methods are superior to 'modern' agroindustrial mass production in several aspects. Diversity of plants and varieties hinders the spreading of pests and decreases the likelihood of crop losses due to whatever natural occurrences. Locally adjusted varieties integrate much better with their natural environment. Traditional methods don't need toxic herbicides, fungicides and pesticides. They need much less water and conserve the soil better using animal excrement and compost instead of fertilizers from the chemical industry.

Growing plants for profit means to look into cost calculations and price fluctuations on the markets. If peoples grow food for themselves, they most likely look to plant what has the best potential to fulfill their dietary needs.

Most of the most fertile lands are used for agroindustrial production and will have to be taken back and resettled. This will often require armed rebellion to push the current occupants off the land.

Escalating struggles for land and water

Especially the water situation is dramatic. Industrial activities contaminate many waters on which people depend for drinking and household activities. Many groundwater reservoirs are being intensely exploited and water levels are sinking in large areas of the earth. Numerous springs, wells and rivers have already dried. Meanwhile water is being commodified and access to clean water made dependent upon purchasing power.

The latest surge of investment in agriculture will further shrink available land for local peoples to support themselves and feed their animals. Again many are being forced to give up their farming and herding activities and migrate into the cities in search for income. Numerous communities are being broken apart this way. As in the past, trade, investment and debt are the main tools to create divisions and strife among the peoples and to keep them in dependence.

Living as part of the earthlife

For numerous millennia have humans lived as part of the earthlife, successfully adapting to all kinds of natural habitats. In just a few centuries has the way of enlightenment and progress destroyed much of the earthlife.

Whose knowledge and way of life is superior? What kind of knowledge is important for whom, when, and for what goals? What does it mean to build all kinds of devices and machines we didn't need to begin with? Creating needs and dependencies where there were none, replacing natural life with human-made environments and industrial cycles, thinking of the earth in terms of resources, investment and profit - all this shows a profound moral and spiritual decline, accompanied by a major strengthening of destructive human tendencies like greed, enviousness, falsehood and bad speech, and the will to use violence to exploit and subjugate others.

We see a loss of balance in many relations as a consequence of our manipulating the natural elements, polluting the land, water and air, destabilizing and disintegrating communities into replaceable individuals of mass societies with highly unstable social relations. At this time it seems that what we need most urgently is guidance how to build functioning and largely independent communities, and how to live with earth instead of abusing it for the exclusive use of humans. This seems the only way we can take care of 'the future generations yet to come'.

Colonial sciences and technologies

Modern technologies are essentially colonial and can only construct oppressive relations. Peoples cannot become independent when they don't control the means of (re)production they need. Whoever wants to walk a different way must develop techniques and technologies based upon different principles and serving different goals. To a large extend the technologies people use have to be built with locally available materials by themselves, based upon their knowledge and requirements. There is no need to 'catch up' or imitate what the colonizer societies do.

Some knowledge of the sciences will be necessary, mainly to clean up and depose of the poisons introduced by industrial activities, and to safely disassemble dangerous installations. Very little of the machines and devices in use today are even interesting from a self-sufficiency perspective. Everything will have to be adjusted and (re)invented to enable small scale production of highly durable goods easy to maintain and repair. Mass production won't make sense without mass consumer markets and many materials won't be available without global access to the so called resources.

Independence and self-determination

In the area of politics there is near universal agreement about the continuation of the path of economic growth with mass production and mass consumer societies. If the actual production and distribution of goods and the goal of more of the same are accepted, and as long as the faith in technological progress is intact, we will see no fundamental rethinking and reevaluation of how to best organize life as peoples. Independence from world markets and separation from the GTO is either laughed about or bombarded out of existence, but generally not respected.

Self-determination seems only possible on the basis of self-sufficiency in all crucial matters. As long as people depend upon the M/TNCs to deliver the goods they need, they cannot expect to effectively challenge their hegemony. Struggle for food sovereignty and access to clean water and land are a crucial foundation for peoples to become independent and begin to determine their own affairs themselves.

With localization (indigenization) of production and markets, de-monetarization and de-bureaucratization of internal relations and processes, and self-administration of community-affairs, peoples can develop apart from the dominant society and gain control over their own affairs. Only independence can allow peoples to free themselves from the shackles of world markets and international laws and rules.