Sent: Sunday, May 02, 2010
Inspired by Cochabamba: The Rights of Mother Earth and 'Bien Vivir'
in Cochabamba 2010
To have countless brothers and sisters from all around the world at your
disposal to exchange stories, ideas, smiles, handshakes, and hugs, is an
empowering experience.
by Julien Lalonde
Julien Lalonde was one of the delegates of Toronto Bolivia Solidarity to
the Cochabamba Conference in Bolivia, April 19-22.
They say that Cochabamba is the 'corazon', the heart of Bolivia, and that
Bolivia is the heart of South America. So it was very appropriate and only
fitting that the Cochabamba, heart of the world's epicenter of social
change, became the focal point of solidarity by hosting from April 19-22,
2010, the first World People's Conference on Climate Change and the Rights
of Mother Earth.
International presence and exchange was remarkable, with people and
delegations from the U.S., France, Italy, Zambia, Colombia, England,
Brazil, Tanzania, Venezuela, Cuba, Chile, Argentina, and even great
compañeros from Paraguay, and Greece, to name only a few. Canadian
activists had a significant presence among the tens of thousands of
participants.
The conference featured half a dozen different venues with panels and
presentations going on around the clock. Information was accessible and
plentiful, the possibilities and options of what you could take in and
what you could participate in were boundless. There was a lot of activity
condensed into four days and letting it all permeate was a task and a
beautiful privilege.
The conference was structured for 17 different working groups; action
strategies, structural causes, climate debt, agriculture and food
sovereignty, the Right of Mother Earth, and harmony with nature and 'vivir
bien' amongst others. The goal was to draft a declaration for each theme
as an official position statement for the conference, which will also be
sent as a set of demands in the name of humanity and Mother Earth to the
Summit in Cancun taking place in October of this year.
For all its academic content, its theory, and its endless panels, the
summit created new spaces, new connections, and new hope. The experience
was about networking, exchanging contacts, meeting new people and gaining
new perspectives. To have countless brothers and sisters from all around
the world at your disposal to exchange stories, ideas, smiles, handshakes,
and hugs, is an empowering experience. Its our duty to take these messages
back home, to draw the best ideas from the best places from these most
inspiring people and to mesh everything together. Strength lies in the
complexity of our mosaic, in the confidence of our collective threads, and
the summit illustrated this very successfully.
Early on the summit took on a very unique complexion as a dynamic evolved
between the conventional anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist discourse,
and the new call for the ideas of sustainability, permaculture, bien vivir
or living well instead of living better, and an embrace of traditional
indigenous values and practices to get back to a communitarian way of life
in harmony, reciprocity, and respect with Mother Earth. This creative
energy was manifest in the working groups at every turn, in a process of
collective creation. Two correlative schools interacted, which made for a
fruitful and fiery exchange of ideas.
In his opening address, Evo Morales spoke wisely, not so much about the
ravages and inequalities of capitalism, and the destruction of our planet,
but about rejecting foreign, artificial consumption habits, and about
making small daily changes, telling anecdotes about changes that we need
to make in our personal lives. He talked about not drinking Coca-Cola and
that we need to check our indifference to plastic waste.
The message was that the answers already exist, that sustainable solutions
are at our fingertips, and that the way of life we aspire to is there for
the taking. Politically, your mentality can be changed and advanced
tenfold, but if you keep consuming like the system compels you to consume,
if you don't change your way of life, your energy, if personal commitments
are not made, then we are running on treadmills.
The indigenous culture, its values and practices is where we will seek and
find our answers. This involves living a life in affinity with Mother
Earth, and severing ties to the artificial, the chemical, the unnatural.
We need to be living as we should be living - of the earth.
The changes ahead, the changes that we need to establish, are not simply a
distant vision. We have to see the path of change as a tangible entity,
and no longer think of sustainability, equality, peace and justice, a
world free of exploitation, and a communitarian way of life in harmony
with nature only as possibilities.
Humanity has to rediscover humanity, and we have to understand that the
practices needed for a natural and sustainable world already exist, and
that the consciousness and values required to effect that change are
already inside of us.
And, perhaps most importantly, as a great friend of the earth has said, we
have to understand that "the answers to the future lie in the traditions
of the past." (Eduardo Galeano)
There is much to discuss, and much to build on moving forward. Now,
internationally, the local chapters of this gigantic endeavour of the
human family must begin with enthusiasm and adherence.
For more reports and commentary on the Cochabamba Conference and its
decisions, see the Toronto Bolivia Solidarity Web page (LINK) and Climate
and Capitalism's Cochabamba page.
***
From: "Sid Shniad" <shniad@gmail.com>
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2010/04/2010429194642122928.html
*Knesset speaker hints at one-state*
Aljazeera.net: April 29, 2010
Reuven Rivlin, the speaker of Israel's Knesset, has said that he would
rather accept Palestinians as citizens of one country than divide Israel and
the West Bank into two separate states.
"I would rather [have] Palestinians as citizens of this country over
dividing the land up," Rivlin, a member of the ruling Likud party, was
quoted as saying in Israel's Haaretz newspaper on Thursday.
Speaking during a meeting with Kyriakos Loukakis, Greece's ambassador to
Israel, Rivlin said that he did not see any point of Israel signing a peace
agreement with the Palestinian Authority.
He said that he did not believe Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president,
"could deliver the goods".
As speaker of the Israel's parliament, Rivlin would serve as acting
president in the absence or incapacitation of the president.
Last month, Amr Moussa, the Arab league's secretary-general, said that the
league was investigating the possibility of supporting a one-state solution
if Israel left no opportunity to build two states.
Muammar Gaddafi, the Libyan leader, told the UN general assembly last year
that a two-state solution is not a feasible approach to bringing peace in
the Middle East.
Fundamental changes
Rivlin said last year that Israeli Arabs were an inseparable part of the
country that often encounter racism and arrogance from Israel's Jews.
In a speech given in the president's residence, he called for a fundamental
change in relations between Jews and Arabs in Israel, urging the foundation
of a "true partnership" between the two sectors, based on mutual respect and
absolute equality.
"Israeli Arabs are a group with a highly defined shared national identity,
and which will forever be, as a collective, an important and integral part
of Israeli society."
Haaretz also reported him as saying that the establishment of Israel was
accompanied by much pain and suffering and was a real trauma for the
Palestinians.
"Many of Israel's Arabs, which see themselves as part of the Palestinian
population, feel the pain of their brothers across the green line - a pain
they feel the state of Israel is responsible for."
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