Subject: Republication Corporate Class - Lott to Frist? - Racism to Medical Fraud - msg#00159

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The distorted vision of the American Jewish Committee

Scenario Two: Israel negotiates a cease-fire based on the simultaneous cessation of terrorism and colonisation, then, with international help, a comprehensive peace. It withdraws to its 1967 borders and, within them, devotes its enormous energy and genius to the building of a democratic, just and prosperous society. It lives at peace with its neighbours, makes a positive contribution to the stability and progress of the Middle East, and regains the good-will of humanity. Woe to the shepherds of Israel (Ezekiel 34:2) who lead  or follow  their flock in the wrong direction! Now is a time to urge our people to embrace the way of peace because that is the most Jewish, the most Zionist and the most pro-Israel thing to do, and the only one that holds out any long-term hope for the future. +++ From: TikkunMail <tikkunmail@xxxxxxxxxx> http://www.tikkun.org/ One way that the American Jewish establishment tries to force loyalty to Israel is to claim that there is a world-wide conspiracy to destroy Israel, and soon after the Jewish people. The anti-Semitism is real, and it is deeply troubling to us at Tikkun, but its growth is closely linked to activities of the Israeli government which are morally abhorrent and which therefore provide "cover" for the haters. But the moment that anyone says this, they are told that somehow they are justifying the anti-Semitism (which we certainly are not doing--because racism against Jews or against anyone else is NEVER justified) or that they have revealed that they are "self-hating" Jews or anti- Semites themselves. By switching the dialogue in this way, the Jewish establishment never grapples with our claim that Israeli policy and treatment of Palestinians is so outrageous and hurtful that it would lead anyone to be upset and feeling moral indignation at the behavior, and when Jews world-wide then rally around that behavior and say that this is what their Judaism leads them to, it's not hard to understand how true racist haters can use this situation in the morally disgusting way they do to fan hate of the Jewish people. The blindness of the Jewish establishment is often accompanied by statements about how the peace camp has been shown to have been naive and out of touch with the reality of this crazy hatred of Jews--an approach recently articulated in a public statement from David Harris, head of the American Jewish Committee. Here, in an "open letter," a respected friend of Tikkun Community, Rabbi John D. Rayner of the United Kingdom, exposes the distortions in this way of defending the government of Ariel Sharon. He challenges what he calls "the demagoguery" that has become all too prevalent in the statements of those who portray themselves as "pro-israel" but who are defending policies of the Ariel Sharon government which are in fact weakening Israel. Open Letter to David A. Harris, Executive Director, American Jewish Committee by Rabbi John D. Rayner, London, England Dear Mr Harris, You dont know me, so let me explain that I am a retired rabbi living in London, England, and have been a Zionist since my childhood in Nazi Germany. What prompts me to write is that a friend and colleague has kindly sent me a copy of your ten-page Letter from One Jew to Another of October 29, 2002. It is a brilliant piece of sustained rhetoric, which expresses as powerfully as anything I have read the currently dominant attitude of the leadership of our people both in Israel and in the Diaspora. But though the facts you cite - as distinct from the generalisations you derive from them - are true enough, you omit a whole lot of other facts, inconvenient to your thesis. That makes your letter an exercise in demagoguery rather than a sober appraisal. Briefly summarised, your thesis is that there is a world-wide conspiracy to destroy the State of Israel and that in these circumstances it behoves all Jews to stand solidly together in unqualified support of the general direction of the policies of its present government. In my opinion that thesis is profoundly mistaken, and the policies that flow from it are hugely inimical to the best interests of the State of Israel and the Jewish people. You address yourself to all those Jews who remain fast asleep. Although you dont identify them, I assume you have in mind those who may be broadly classed as the Peace Camp. Since that includes me, I feel bound to say that in my view many of its supporters, far from being asleep, are much more awake to reality than you appear to be. As you must know, they include many men and women of the highest distinction and eminence, both in Israel and in the Diaspora, not least politicians, generals, university professors, lawyers, historians, writers, editors and journalists. You begin by documenting how until 2000 all was going swimmingly for Israel and the Jewish people, then everything went wrong. So sudden, as you see it, was this volte face that any serious supporter of Israel had to be stunned by the rapidity of Israels changed international standing after September 2000. Evidently, you have remained stunned ever since, for you make no attempt to offer any explanation, as though the worlds anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist forces had suddenly decided, for no discernible reason, to have a field day. But there is no mystery. Historical developments have causes, though they may take time to produce their full effects. So let me try to unravel the mystery for you. " The initiation of the Oslo process raised high hopes on both sides. It boosted Israels peace camp, and it prompted 80,000 members of Al-Fatah to demonstrate in favour of it in the major Palestinian cities. " On the other hand, the very prospect of a peace settlement, involving territorial compromise, provoked the rejectionists on both sides, who refused to accept anything less than Greater Palestine and Greater Israel respectively. On the Palestinian side, Hamas immediately launched a new series of terror attacks against Israel. On the Israeli side, Baruch Goldstein massacred 29 Palestinians praying in a Hebron mosque, and Yigal Amir assassinated Yitzhak Rabin. " Under Shimon Peres the Oslo process made some headway, under Binyamin Netanyahu it was virtually halted, then resumed by Ehud Barak. But throughout all those years the building of Jewish settlements in the occupied territories, begun in 1967, went full-steam ahead, in stubborn defiance of UN resolutions and world opinion. This crucial fact, which you dont bother to mention, was bound to arouse ever-increasing resentment among the Palestinians, and slowly to erode their initial faith in the Oslo process. " But the settlement programme involved much more than its mere arithmetic tells. It entailed the deployment of large detachments of the IDF to defend the settlers, the criss-crossing of the West Bank with connecting roads strictly for Jewish use only, the confiscation of Palestinian-owned land, the destruction of olive groves, the seizure of water supplies, and the strangulation of the Palestinian economy. " Furthermore, the measures Israel felt compelled to take to suppress the resultant unrest included collective punishments, house demolitions, curfews, and daily humiliations at the checkpoints. All this intensified the resentment still further - how could it not?  and by September 2000 it was like a powder keg. Then Arik Sharon, by his Temple Mount walkabout with a huge police escort, ignited it and so triggered the Second Intifada. " Israels counter-measures became increasingly harsh, incited the Palestinian terrorists to step up their murderous activities, including suicide bombings, and caused the general Palestinian population, even though most of them continued to disapprove of violence, nevertheless to sympathise with them and to become a source of recruits for them. Hence the vicious cycle of attack, reprisal and counter-reprisal which we have witnessed in the last two years. " All this was sensationally, and not always fairly, reported by the worlds media and so brought the escalating conflict graphically to the attention of the general public. Most people were horrified by the tactics, especially suicide bombings, of the Palestinian terrorists, but scarcely less so by the brutality of Israels reprisals, including helicopter gunship raids and targeted assassinations. Considering, further, Israels persistent defiance of UN resolutions, relentless colonisation of occupied land, vast military superiority, and the consequent disproportion between Israeli and Palestinian casualties, it is hardly surprising that many came to see the conflict as a grossly unequal one and to sympathise with the underdog. " This climate of opinion, in turn, gave the dormant forces of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism an opportunity to express themselves with a new brazenness, further feeding the growing animosity towards Israel to which you rightly draw attention. However, what this phenomenon calls for is not blanket denunciation but sober analysis. Not all anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism. Still less is all condemnation of Israels present policies anti-Zionism. (On the contrary, much of it is pro-Zionism in the best sense of that word.) Consequently your assertion of a worldwide conspiracy to destroy Israel is a gross exaggeration. And now let me comment seriatim on some of your key phrases. Despite a left-of-centre government in power racing against its own self-imposed deadline to achieve a historic peace with the Palestinians, Israel found itself the target of a calculated campaign of Palestinian-instigated terror. What you fail to mention is that under the same left-of-centre government Israel went full-steam ahead with its settlement programme, eroding the Palestinians faith in the Oslo process. Likewise, that, contrary to Israels official version, the eventual breakdown of the process is to be blamed, in some proportion, on both sides, as some of the best informed analysts, such as Dr Menachem Klein, have demonstrated. Furthermore, when you say that Israel found itself the target of a calculated campaign of terror, you absurdly imply that Israels antecedent policies, including its creeping colonisation of Palestinian land, and Sharons Temple Mount provocation, had nothing to do with it. Finally, when you refer to the terror campaign as Palestinian-instigated, you obscure the fact that the terrorist groups involved were opposed to Arafat and the peace process, and did not have the broad support of the Palestinians, who, as opinion polls have repeatedly shown, have continued by a large majority to favour a return to negotiations towards a two-state solution. And the media, with a few notable exceptions, came down hard on Israel. Media bias against Israel has been frequently alleged. I can only say that to the best of my admittedly limited knowledge of the British media, not one major newspaper or radio or television channel has ever editorially denied Israels right to exist in peace and security within internationally recognised borders, or failed to be open to the expression of a wide spectrum of opinions. What is Israel to do in the absence of a credible peace partner and faced by an unending war of terror? Regarding the second clause, Israel must of course take all necessary steps to defend its population. Nobody has questioned that, as distinct from some of the methods employed. As for the first clause, Israel has had several opportunities to make peace with the Palestinians but blown them, e.g., in 1967, when David Ben Gurion vainly urged its government to relinquish the conquered territories in exchange for peace, and has responded inadequately to peace initiatives by King Hussein in 1970, and by Anwar Sadat in 1977, and by American presidents and envoys and other world leaders at various times. In 1982 Israel failed to build on a cease-fire which (apart from one minor incident) the PLO had strictly observed for eleven months on Israels northern border. On the contrary, Sharon invaded Lebanon for the very purpose of destroying the PLO as a potential peace partner, just as in Operation Defensive Shield in 2002, for the same reason, he all but destroyed the PA. Similarly, he repudiated the Oslo process as soon as he became Prime Minister, forbade President Moshe Katzav to negotiate a cease-fire, and whenever any Palestinian terrorist group came close to deciding to cease targeting Israeli civilians, promptly ordered another military action. His whole record shows that what he wants is Greater Israel, or as much of it as possible, rather than a peace settlement involving the sort of territorial compromise that has any chance of being acceptable to the Palestinian people. Since he has done everything possible to prevent the emergence of a credible peace partner, to complain that Israel has none is more than a little perverse. Arafats direct complicity in terror. To the best of my knowledge that is not yet fully proven. In any case the history of conflict resolution has often involved dealing with former terrorists. (Some former terrorists have even become Prime Ministers of Israel.) Are we to succumb to a moral equivalence between Israeli and Palestinian behaviour over the last two years? No, we are not. But that does not entitle us to condone Israels violations of human rights , meticulously documented by its own impeccable watchdog organisations such as Btzelem and Rabbis for Human Rights. A world body hopelessly stacked against Israel. On the other hand Israel owes its very existence to the UN, whose General Assembly and Security Council have consistently affirmed and re-affirmed its right to exist in peace and security within internationally recognised borders. Your failure to acknowledge this fundamental fact, as if it were a minor detail, shows a regrettable lack of balance. A worldwide campaign being waged to isolate, condemn, and weaken Israel. Another wild exaggeration. Besides, to a large extent, Israel has isolated itself by its defiance of world opinion, condemned itself by acts of excessive brutality, and weakened itself by its settlements, which extend its defence lines and entail vast expenditure, to the detriment of its economy, welfare services and social fabric. Above all, the impression you seek to convey, that the whole world is out to destroy Israel, flies in the face of the following facts. " That, as just mentioned, the UN has invariably affirmed Israels right to exist in peace and security within internationally recognised borders. " That the same holds true for most of its Member States. " That Egypt and Jordan have concluded peace treaties with Israel. " That in 1993 Arafat, on behalf of the PLO, made a historic declaration recognising Israels right to exist. " That the Oslo process nearly succeeded. At Taba, in January 2001, the negotiators issued a statement saying: The two sides have never been closer to reaching an agreement. " That there have been several joint peace initiatives, including the 2001 Israeli-Palestinian Declaration, calling for No to bloodshed, No to occupation, Yes to negotiations, Yes to peace, which was signed by a large number of pre-eminent Israeli and Palestinian politicians and intellectuals, and the Israel-Palestine Coalition for Peace. " That less than a year ago, in Beirut, the Saudi peace plan, envisaging normalisation of Arab-Israel relations, was endorsed by nineteen Member States of the Arab League. It constituted a major breakthrough. The combined weight of these highly significant facts, which you disdain to mention, comprehensively confutes your conspiracy theory. Nobody pretends that the present situation is not fraught with great difficulties and dangers. Nevertheless the outlines of a realistically attainable solution have been crystal-clear for some time. They involve an agreement simultaneously to stop Palestinian terrorism and Israeli settlement building (as recommended by the Mitchell Report), evacuation of the settlements, acceptance of the 1967 Green Line (with minor adjustments) as Israels border, the establishment of a demilitarised but viable Palestinian State with its capital in East Jerusalem, and massive world aid to build up the Palestinian economy and to resettle or compensate the Palestinian refugees in a way that does not threaten Israels demography. The achievement of such a resolution of the conflict is completely within the realm of possibility. It only requires that the large majority on both sides, who want peace, should assert their will, if necessary against their political leaders. There is no other way forward, and your letter, far from advancing it, militates against it. It does so by bolstering the currently prevalent mood of the Jewish people, which is one of self-pity and self-righteousness, paranoia and hysteria, denial of reality, refusal to listen, and adherence to the fatal illusion that peace depends on security rather than security on peace. It is the exact opposite of what responsible Jewish leadership requires at the present time. Today the Jewish people face a fateful choice between two scenarios. Scenario One: Continuation of the present policy. More of the same. An increasingly oppressive occupation of an increasingly resentful Palestinian population. An endless cycle of violence and counter-violence. Perhaps even resort to unconscionable expedients such as wholesale expulsions (ethnic cleansing) in a desperate attempt to remove the irritant and preserve the Jewish majority of Israels population. Fortress Israel, loathed by humanity and defying humanity until doomsday. Scenario Two: Israel negotiates a cease-fire based on the simultaneous cessation of terrorism and colonisation, then, with international help, a comprehensive peace. It withdraws to its 1967 borders and, within them, devotes its enormous energy and genius to the building of a democratic, just and prosperous society. It lives at peace with its neighbours, makes a positive contribution to the stability and progress of the Middle East, and regains the good-will of humanity. Woe to the shepherds of Israel (Ezekiel 34:2) who lead  or follow  their flock in the wrong direction! Now is a time to urge our people to embrace the way of peace because that is the most Jewish, the most Zionist and the most pro-Israel thing to do, and the only one that holds out any long-term hope for the future. Yours sincerely, Rabbi John D. 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Vandana Shiva: Earth Democracy Movement

"This is immoral. Life is not an invention. Life cannot be a monopoly. You cannot sell us the seeds you stole from us, and you cannot charge us royalties for the product of nature's intelligence and centuries of human innovation." "We've received our medicinal plants, our seeds, our forests from nature through our ancestors; we owe it to them to conserve it for the future. We pledge we will never allow their erosion or their theft. We pledge we will never accept patenting, genetic modification, or allow our biodiversity to be polluted in any form, and we pledge that we will act as the peoples of this biodiversity." Living democracy then is the democracy that is custodian of the living wealth on which people depend. There isn't any one coordinated language for this movement, and that's the beauty of it. As water scarcity grows, neighbors, families turn against each other. Scarcity is having a mismatch between a culture and nature's giving. Cultures have evolved cultural diversity to mimic the biological diversity of climates and ecosystems. It's when that relationship is disrupted that you get unsustainable population growth. Instead of leaving seeds in the hands of the peasants who co-evolve them in partnership with nature, seeds become a monopoly in the hands of five or six global corporations. Instead of water belonging to millions of local communities, water too is to be controlled by five or six global water giants. These are recipes that use economic systems to appropriate for the few the base of survival of the majority. When you look at why people were fighting, you find they were fighting for their rivers, for fair prices, for a say on when dam waters should be released. More recently there have been clear indicators of how fundamentalism is growing out of the economic insecurity of globalization. we need instead to create virtuous cycles that allow economic democracy to feed political democracy, cultural identities, and cultural diversity. Our system of food security is being destroyed in the name of economic growth and economic liberalization, and people don't have enough food to eat. Our farmers are being ravished by seed companies, being pushed into debt, and committing suicide. I believe that if you just do your little bit without thinking of the bigness of what you stand against, if you turn to the enlargement of your own capacities, just that in itself creates new potential. your commitment is yours to make, and you can make the deepest commitment with a total detachment about where it will take you. You want it to lead to a better world, and you shape your actions and take full responsibility for them, but then you have detachment. And that combination of deep passion and deep detachment allows me always to take on the next challenge because I don't cripple myself, I don't tie myself in knots. I function like a free being. I think getting that freedom is a social duty because I think we owe it to each other not to burden each other with prescription and demands. I think what we owe each other is a celebration of life and to replace fear and hopelessness with fearlessness and joy. +++ Deepening Democracy By Sarah Ruth van Gelder, YES! Magazine December 13, 2002 http://www.yesmagazine.org/24democracy/shiva.htm Vandana Shiva is a physicist and an organic farmer, an instigator of India's historic "tree-huggers" movement, and a renowned author. She speaks internationally on the perils of globalization, while mobilizing fellow citizens to reclaim their rights to life itself. Sarah Ruth van Gelder: Tell me about the Earth Democracy movement. Where did that notion come from, and what form is the movement taking? Vandana Shiva: The notion comes from a very ancient category in Indian thought. Just like Chief Seattle talked about being in the web of life, in India we talk about vasudhaiva kutumbkam, which means the earth family. Indian cosmology has never separated the human from the non-human - we are a continuum. When the issue of the patenting of life emerged, for example, there were two levels of response from those opposing this practice in India. The one level was resistance: "This is immoral. Life is not an invention. Life cannot be a monopoly. You cannot sell us the seeds you stole from us, and you cannot charge us royalties for the product of nature's intelligence and centuries of human innovation." The second level was the reclaiming of democracy: people claimed the right to look after their biodiversity and use it sustainably. This came out of discussions among the movements we've been building at the grassroots. I remember one meeting of 200 villagers who had been involved in seed saving and seed sharing with Navdanya, the trust that I founded to save seeds and promote organic agriculture. These 200 villagers gathered on World Environment Day in 1998 and declared sovereignty over their biodiversity - not sovereignty to rape and destroy, sovereignty to conserve. These 200 villagers, gathered in a high mountain village near a tributary of the Ganges, said, "We've received our medicinal plants, our seeds, our forests from nature through our ancestors; we owe it to them to conserve it for the future. We pledge we will never allow their erosion or their theft. We pledge we will never accept patenting, genetic modification, or allow our biodiversity to be polluted in any form, and we pledge that we will act as the peoples of this biodiversity." These discussions in villages all over India, in many different languages, led to amazing actions. Some wrote letters to Mike Moore, director-general of the WTO saying, "We noticed you have passed a law called 'Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights.' We also notice that under this law you want to monopolize life forms. Unfortunately, these are resources over which you have no jurisdiction, and you have overstepped your boundaries." Similar letters went to the prime minister of India: "You are the prime minister of this country, but we are the keepers of biodiversity. This is not your jurisdiction. You cannot sign away these rights. They were not given to you. We never delegated them to you." But the ones that were the most beautiful were crafted literally under the village trees and addressed to Ricetec, Inc., which patented Basmati rice, and to the Grace Corporation, which patented the name. The letters said, "We've used Basmati for centuries. ... Now we hear you've got a patent number for this, and you claim to have invented it. This kind of piracy and theft we know happens. There are people who steal in our village, and we treat them with understanding. We call them and ask them to explain what is the compulsion that led them to steal. So we invite you to come to our village and explain to us the compulsion that made you steal from us." These communities started in years past by saving locally bred seeds and saving biodiversity. Now they are seeking self-governance over food systems, water systems, and biodiversity systems. If you think of the fact that corporate globalization is really about an aggressive privatization of the water, biodiversity, and food systems of the Earth, when these communities declare sovereignty and act on that sovereignty, they have developed a powerful response to globalization. Living democracy then is the democracy that is custodian of the living wealth on which people depend. Is the same language being used elsewhere to counter corporate globalization? There is, I think, a spontaneous resurgence of thinking that centers on protection of life, celebrating life, enjoying life as both our highest duty and our most powerful form of resistance against a violent and brutal system that globalizes not just trade, but fascism, and denies civil liberties and freedoms. There isn't any one coordinated language for this movement, and that's the beauty of it. The WTO-related events in Seattle created the first experience of a rainbow politics - a successful pluralistic politics, without the working of a master mind, but with the currents and beauty that come out of free thinking. In the new politics, people have different ways of talking, but I feel the core will be living democracy and living economies and that it will include both taking personal responsibility to make change and being part of national and international movements for change. You've written about four types of insecurities - ecological, economic, cultural, and political - and how each results in violence. Could you say something about why you consider each of these forms of insecurity? The ecological crisis is a severe form of insecurity, especially in conditions of poverty when rivers are polluted and you have no clean drinking water, when groundwater is exhausted and you're forced to migrate. There couldn't be a deeper insecurity than this. Many conflicts within Third World countries are related to the practice of exploiting resources faster than nature can renew them or diverting them away from where people need them. Dams in every society have become major sources of conflict. As water scarcity grows, neighbors, families turn against each other. Many people assume that scarcity has always been part of the human condition and that scarcity is closely related to population increases. In my 25 years of work on resource and environmental issues, one thing I have learned is that different parts of the planet are endowed in different ways. There may be little rainfall in the deserts of Rajasthan, but the culture of Rajasthan evolved to manage that amount of rainfall, and they have developed miraculous technologies for harvesting and storing what rain they get. They have sophisticated underground storage systems and water-harvesting systems so that not a drop is wasted. These technologies still sustain cities like Jodhpur and Jaipur. They have enough drinking water because they've developed a conservation culture, and they grow crops that don't need much water. The moment you think the desert of Rajasthan should be growing rice paddy or cotton, you create scarcity. Scarcity is not a result of uneven endowments - that is diversity. Scarcity is having a mismatch between a culture and nature's giving. Cultures have evolved cultural diversity to mimic the biological diversity of climates and ecosystems. It's when that relationship is disrupted that you get unsustainable population growth. There is no society in which you've had so-called population explosions as long as societies have lived within the context of their rights to the resources and the ability to conserve those resources for the future. Just look at two situations. In England, the population explosion started with the enclosures of the commons - when peasants were uprooted from the land and had to depend on selling their labor. In India, 1800 is the watershed for the consolidation of colonial regimes. For centuries before 1800 our population had been stable. When you depend on the land, you know there are five people who can be supported. You work your society out so you have five. When you are selling your labor power on an uncertain basis, in an unstable wage market, you know that having ten is better than having five. So dispossession from the Earth's natural wealth is at the root of instability and population growth. So economic insecurity is actually created? Instead of leaving seeds in the hands of the peasants who co-evolve them in partnership with nature, seeds become a monopoly in the hands of five or six global corporations. Instead of water belonging to millions of local communities, water too is to be controlled by five or six global water giants. These are recipes that use economic systems to appropriate for the few the base of survival of the majority. The 80 percent who are dispossessed of the wealth of nature move into economic insecurity, because their livelihood as peasants, as fishermen, as farmers, as tribals, as forest dwellers, all depend on having the fisheries, the land, the forest, to make a living. When those rights are taken away, they become economic refugees - they become disposable people. This economic model rested on the assumption that the favored 20 percent would gain security as a result of these policies. But recent events on Wall Street show us that this model creates economic insecurity both for the 80 percent who rely on natural wealth and for the 20 percent who rely on virtual wealth, because virtual money is a construct, and that construct can disappear as easily as it is created. Either way, economic insecurity is the legacy of a finance-driven, capital-driven, corporate-driven economic model that is destroying our natural capital and the resilience of local economies. The third type of insecurity is cultural. You've made a connection between globalization and the rise of nationalist violence and right-wing repression. What kind of evidence have you seen that there are links? Well I'm a physicist, not a social scientist. But as a citizen of India, I have had to suffer the violence and brutality that comes with rising fundamentalism, and I've asked myself how a society that is the cradle of peace, the land of Gandhi and Buddha, could be reduced to one of the most volatile societies in the world. One incident that contributed to my understanding of these links was the violence that erupted in the Punjab in the 1980s. As the magic of the Green Revolution started to disappear, as subsidies were removed and an artificial system of prosperity started to decay, the Punjab became the birthplace for anger and discontent. When you look at why people were fighting, you find they were fighting for their rivers, for fair prices, for a say on when dam waters should be released. None of this was decided locally or regionally - it was all decided from the capital, Delhi. So the discontent was against centralized regimes in which people had no share in shaping their future. More recently there have been clear indicators of how fundamentalism is growing out of the economic insecurity of globalization. Let me just give you two examples. In the late 1990s, because of the pressures of globalization, onion prices went up from 2 rupees to 100 rupees. The ruling party lost what became known as "the onion elections" of 1998 because they allowed this price increase. The opposition parties used the onion as the symbol of their fight against globalization, and they won in every state. Immediately after that we saw a round of fundamentalist violence. In Gujarat, we had another set of regional elections, and the WTO, agriculture, and farmers' survival were the major issues. Farmers said they were being destroyed by globalization policies, and they voted the ruling party out of power. Immediately after that the fundamentalist wave erupted, the genocide and warmongering started, and while public attention focused on the violence, the globalization agenda was pushed further. As decision making is centralized away from local communities to national governments - and ultimately to corporate board rooms, financial markets, institutions like the World Bank, IMF, and WTO - representative democracy loses its base in economic democracy. As local and national governments lose control over economic resources and priorities, elected leaders can no longer build a political base by championing programs responsive to family and community needs. Political demagogues of the far right emerge to fill the void by channeling the anger and insecurity created by empire's program of scarcity, injustice, and exclusion into an us-versus-them politics that blames particular national, racial, culture, or religious groups. The rise of the LePens in France, the Fortuyns in Netherlands, Haiders in Austria, and the Narendra Modis in India is a result. So there is a strong affinity between the forces of empire and a politics of hate that justifies policies of domination and exclusion. So long as people's attention is focused on fear and hatred of foreigners or members of a particular religious group, such as Muslims, they are distracted from organizing to deal with the system of institutional domination and exploitation that is the real source of their insecurity. That certainly sounds like what is happening in the United States also. Absolutely. It's a vicious cycle, and we need instead to create virtuous cycles that allow economic democracy to feed political democracy, cultural identities, and cultural diversity. It comes back to deepening of democracy. What we have at this moment is democracy reduced to the rule of lies - lies in the way the popular will is being counted, as we saw in Florida in 2000, and lies in the way the people's wealth is being counted, as we see in today's accounting scandals. That false wealth is influencing who will rule - it's all just too false now. Our system of food security is being destroyed in the name of economic growth and economic liberalization, and people don't have enough food to eat. Our farmers are being ravished by seed companies, being pushed into debt, and committing suicide. This system is going to cost lives even in the US, where people don't know how they'll pay for their health or retirement. The way out of this violent cycle is to deepen democracy - to bring decisions that directly affect people's lives as close as possible to where people are and to where they can take responsibility. If a river is flowing through some communities, those communities should have the power and the responsibility to decide how the water is used and whether it is to be polluted. The state has no business giving to Coca-Cola the groundwater of a valley in Kerala, resulting in rich farmland going totally dry. Communities need to take back sovereignty and delegate trusteeship to the state only as appropriate. What we have now is a regime of absolute rights in the hands of corporations with zero responsibility for the environmental and social devastation and the political instabilities they are creating. If we want to reactivate and rejuvenate democracy, we have to bring back the economic content. Let me wrap up with a personal question. Every time I've heard you speak or met you, you've had so much energy, not only intellectual energy, but personal or spiritual energy. I'm just wondering, what keeps you so alive? Well, it's always a mystery, because you don't know why you get depleted or recharged. But, this much I know. I do not allow myself to be overcome by hopelessness, no matter how tough the situation. I believe that if you just do your little bit without thinking of the bigness of what you stand against, if you turn to the enlargement of your own capacities, just that in itself creates new potential. And I've learned from the Bhagavad Gita and other teachings of our culture to detach myself from the results of what I do, because those are not in my hands. The context is not in your control, but your commitment is yours to make, and you can make the deepest commitment with a total detachment about where it will take you. You want it to lead to a better world, and you shape your actions and take full responsibility for them, but then you have detachment. And that combination of deep passion and deep detachment allows me always to take on the next challenge because I don't cripple myself, I don't tie myself in knots. I function like a free being. I think getting that freedom is a social duty because I think we owe it to each other not to burden each other with prescription and demands. I think what we owe each other is a celebration of life and to replace fear and hopelessness with fearlessness and joy. Vandana Shiva's books include "Water Wars: Privatization, Pollution, and Profit," "Stolen Harvest, the Hijacking of the Global Food Supply," and many others. This interview was reprinted from Yes! A Journal of Positive Futures, PO Box 10818, Bainbridge Island, WA 98110. Subscriptions: 800/937-4451. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] "[C]apital comes dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood and dirt." --Marx, Capital, Vol. 1, Chapter 31 Community email addresses: Post message: marxist@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Subscribe: marxist-subscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Unsubscribe: marxist-unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx List owner: Hunter Gray <hunterbadbear@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Shortcut URL to this page: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/marxist Also take our one-question survey at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/marxist/polls Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/

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The distorted vision of the American Jewish Committee

Scenario Two: Israel negotiates a cease-fire based on the simultaneous cessation of terrorism and colonisation, then, with international help, a comprehensive peace. It withdraws to its 1967 borders and, within them, devotes its enormous energy and genius to the building of a democratic, just and prosperous society. It lives at peace with its neighbours, makes a positive contribution to the stability and progress of the Middle East, and regains the good-will of humanity. Woe to the shepherds of Israel (Ezekiel 34:2) who lead  or follow  their flock in the wrong direction! Now is a time to urge our people to embrace the way of peace because that is the most Jewish, the most Zionist and the most pro-Israel thing to do, and the only one that holds out any long-term hope for the future. +++ From: TikkunMail <tikkunmail@xxxxxxxxxx> http://www.tikkun.org/ One way that the American Jewish establishment tries to force loyalty to Israel is to claim that there is a world-wide conspiracy to destroy Israel, and soon after the Jewish people. The anti-Semitism is real, and it is deeply troubling to us at Tikkun, but its growth is closely linked to activities of the Israeli government which are morally abhorrent and which therefore provide "cover" for the haters. But the moment that anyone says this, they are told that somehow they are justifying the anti-Semitism (which we certainly are not doing--because racism against Jews or against anyone else is NEVER justified) or that they have revealed that they are "self-hating" Jews or anti- Semites themselves. By switching the dialogue in this way, the Jewish establishment never grapples with our claim that Israeli policy and treatment of Palestinians is so outrageous and hurtful that it would lead anyone to be upset and feeling moral indignation at the behavior, and when Jews world-wide then rally around that behavior and say that this is what their Judaism leads them to, it's not hard to understand how true racist haters can use this situation in the morally disgusting way they do to fan hate of the Jewish people. The blindness of the Jewish establishment is often accompanied by statements about how the peace camp has been shown to have been naive and out of touch with the reality of this crazy hatred of Jews--an approach recently articulated in a public statement from David Harris, head of the American Jewish Committee. Here, in an "open letter," a respected friend of Tikkun Community, Rabbi John D. Rayner of the United Kingdom, exposes the distortions in this way of defending the government of Ariel Sharon. He challenges what he calls "the demagoguery" that has become all too prevalent in the statements of those who portray themselves as "pro-israel" but who are defending policies of the Ariel Sharon government which are in fact weakening Israel. Open Letter to David A. Harris, Executive Director, American Jewish Committee by Rabbi John D. Rayner, London, England Dear Mr Harris, You dont know me, so let me explain that I am a retired rabbi living in London, England, and have been a Zionist since my childhood in Nazi Germany. What prompts me to write is that a friend and colleague has kindly sent me a copy of your ten-page Letter from One Jew to Another of October 29, 2002. It is a brilliant piece of sustained rhetoric, which expresses as powerfully as anything I have read the currently dominant attitude of the leadership of our people both in Israel and in the Diaspora. But though the facts you cite - as distinct from the generalisations you derive from them - are true enough, you omit a whole lot of other facts, inconvenient to your thesis. That makes your letter an exercise in demagoguery rather than a sober appraisal. Briefly summarised, your thesis is that there is a world-wide conspiracy to destroy the State of Israel and that in these circumstances it behoves all Jews to stand solidly together in unqualified support of the general direction of the policies of its present government. In my opinion that thesis is profoundly mistaken, and the policies that flow from it are hugely inimical to the best interests of the State of Israel and the Jewish people. You address yourself to all those Jews who remain fast asleep. Although you dont identify them, I assume you have in mind those who may be broadly classed as the Peace Camp. Since that includes me, I feel bound to say that in my view many of its supporters, far from being asleep, are much more awake to reality than you appear to be. As you must know, they include many men and women of the highest distinction and eminence, both in Israel and in the Diaspora, not least politicians, generals, university professors, lawyers, historians, writers, editors and journalists. You begin by documenting how until 2000 all was going swimmingly for Israel and the Jewish people, then everything went wrong. So sudden, as you see it, was this volte face that any serious supporter of Israel had to be stunned by the rapidity of Israels changed international standing after September 2000. Evidently, you have remained stunned ever since, for you make no attempt to offer any explanation, as though the worlds anti-Semitic and anti-Zionist forces had suddenly decided, for no discernible reason, to have a field day. But there is no mystery. Historical developments have causes, though they may take time to produce their full effects. So let me try to unravel the mystery for you. " The initiation of the Oslo process raised high hopes on both sides. It boosted Israels peace camp, and it prompted 80,000 members of Al-Fatah to demonstrate in favour of it in the major Palestinian cities. " On the other hand, the very prospect of a peace settlement, involving territorial compromise, provoked the rejectionists on both sides, who refused to accept anything less than Greater Palestine and Greater Israel respectively. On the Palestinian side, Hamas immediately launched a new series of terror attacks against Israel. On the Israeli side, Baruch Goldstein massacred 29 Palestinians praying in a Hebron mosque, and Yigal Amir assassinated Yitzhak Rabin. " Under Shimon Peres the Oslo process made some headway, under Binyamin Netanyahu it was virtually halted, then resumed by Ehud Barak. But throughout all those years the building of Jewish settlements in the occupied territories, begun in 1967, went full-steam ahead, in stubborn defiance of UN resolutions and world opinion. This crucial fact, which you dont bother to mention, was bound to arouse ever-increasing resentment among the Palestinians, and slowly to erode their initial faith in the Oslo process. " But the settlement programme involved much more than its mere arithmetic tells. It entailed the deployment of large detachments of the IDF to defend the settlers, the criss-crossing of the West Bank with connecting roads strictly for Jewish use only, the confiscation of Palestinian-owned land, the destruction of olive groves, the seizure of water supplies, and the strangulation of the Palestinian economy. " Furthermore, the measures Israel felt compelled to take to suppress the resultant unrest included collective punishments, house demolitions, curfews, and daily humiliations at the checkpoints. All this intensified the resentment still further - how could it not?  and by September 2000 it was like a powder keg. Then Arik Sharon, by his Temple Mount walkabout with a huge police escort, ignited it and so triggered the Second Intifada. " Israels counter-measures became increasingly harsh, incited the Palestinian terrorists to step up their murderous activities, including suicide bombings, and caused the general Palestinian population, even though most of them continued to disapprove of violence, nevertheless to sympathise with them and to become a source of recruits for them. Hence the vicious cycle of attack, reprisal and counter-reprisal which we have witnessed in the last two years. " All this was sensationally, and not always fairly, reported by the worlds media and so brought the escalating conflict graphically to the attention of the general public. Most people were horrified by the tactics, especially suicide bombings, of the Palestinian terrorists, but scarcely less so by the brutality of Israels reprisals, including helicopter gunship raids and targeted assassinations. Considering, further, Israels persistent defiance of UN resolutions, relentless colonisation of occupied land, vast military superiority, and the consequent disproportion between Israeli and Palestinian casualties, it is hardly surprising that many came to see the conflict as a grossly unequal one and to sympathise with the underdog. " This climate of opinion, in turn, gave the dormant forces of anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism an opportunity to express themselves with a new brazenness, further feeding the growing animosity towards Israel to which you rightly draw attention. However, what this phenomenon calls for is not blanket denunciation but sober analysis. Not all anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism. Still less is all condemnation of Israels present policies anti-Zionism. (On the contrary, much of it is pro-Zionism in the best sense of that word.) Consequently your assertion of a worldwide conspiracy to destroy Israel is a gross exaggeration. And now let me comment seriatim on some of your key phrases. Despite a left-of-centre government in power racing against its own self-imposed deadline to achieve a historic peace with the Palestinians, Israel found itself the target of a calculated campaign of Palestinian-instigated terror. What you fail to mention is that under the same left-of-centre government Israel went full-steam ahead with its settlement programme, eroding the Palestinians faith in the Oslo process. Likewise, that, contrary to Israels official version, the eventual breakdown of the process is to be blamed, in some proportion, on both sides, as some of the best informed analysts, such as Dr Menachem Klein, have demonstrated. Furthermore, when you say that Israel found itself the target of a calculated campaign of terror, you absurdly imply that Israels antecedent policies, including its creeping colonisation of Palestinian land, and Sharons Temple Mount provocation, had nothing to do with it. Finally, when you refer to the terror campaign as Palestinian-instigated, you obscure the fact that the terrorist groups involved were opposed to Arafat and the peace process, and did not have the broad support of the Palestinians, who, as opinion polls have repeatedly shown, have continued by a large majority to favour a return to negotiations towards a two-state solution. And the media, with a few notable exceptions, came down hard on Israel. Media bias against Israel has been frequently alleged. I can only say that to the best of my admittedly limited knowledge of the British media, not one major newspaper or radio or television channel has ever editorially denied Israels right to exist in peace and security within internationally recognised borders, or failed to be open to the expression of a wide spectrum of opinions. What is Israel to do in the absence of a credible peace partner and faced by an unending war of terror? Regarding the second clause, Israel must of course take all necessary steps to defend its population. Nobody has questioned that, as distinct from some of the methods employed. As for the first clause, Israel has had several opportunities to make peace with the Palestinians but blown them, e.g., in 1967, when David Ben Gurion vainly urged its government to relinquish the conquered territories in exchange for peace, and has responded inadequately to peace initiatives by King Hussein in 1970, and by Anwar Sadat in 1977, and by American presidents and envoys and other world leaders at various times. In 1982 Israel failed to build on a cease-fire which (apart from one minor incident) the PLO had strictly observed for eleven months on Israels northern border. On the contrary, Sharon invaded Lebanon for the very purpose of destroying the PLO as a potential peace partner, just as in Operation Defensive Shield in 2002, for the same reason, he all but destroyed the PA. Similarly, he repudiated the Oslo process as soon as he became Prime Minister, forbade President Moshe Katzav to negotiate a cease-fire, and whenever any Palestinian terrorist group came close to deciding to cease targeting Israeli civilians, promptly ordered another military action. His whole record shows that what he wants is Greater Israel, or as much of it as possible, rather than a peace settlement involving the sort of territorial compromise that has any chance of being acceptable to the Palestinian people. Since he has done everything possible to prevent the emergence of a credible peace partner, to complain that Israel has none is more than a little perverse. Arafats direct complicity in terror. To the best of my knowledge that is not yet fully proven. In any case the history of conflict resolution has often involved dealing with former terrorists. (Some former terrorists have even become Prime Ministers of Israel.) Are we to succumb to a moral equivalence between Israeli and Palestinian behaviour over the last two years? No, we are not. But that does not entitle us to condone Israels violations of human rights , meticulously documented by its own impeccable watchdog organisations such as Btzelem and Rabbis for Human Rights. A world body hopelessly stacked against Israel. On the other hand Israel owes its very existence to the UN, whose General Assembly and Security Council have consistently affirmed and re-affirmed its right to exist in peace and security within internationally recognised borders. Your failure to acknowledge this fundamental fact, as if it were a minor detail, shows a regrettable lack of balance. A worldwide campaign being waged to isolate, condemn, and weaken Israel. Another wild exaggeration. Besides, to a large extent, Israel has isolated itself by its defiance of world opinion, condemned itself by acts of excessive brutality, and weakened itself by its settlements, which extend its defence lines and entail vast expenditure, to the detriment of its economy, welfare services and social fabric. Above all, the impression you seek to convey, that the whole world is out to destroy Israel, flies in the face of the following facts. " That, as just mentioned, the UN has invariably affirmed Israels right to exist in peace and security within internationally recognised borders. " That the same holds true for most of its Member States. " That Egypt and Jordan have concluded peace treaties with Israel. " That in 1993 Arafat, on behalf of the PLO, made a historic declaration recognising Israels right to exist. " That the Oslo process nearly succeeded. At Taba, in January 2001, the negotiators issued a statement saying: The two sides have never been closer to reaching an agreement. " That there have been several joint peace initiatives, including the 2001 Israeli-Palestinian Declaration, calling for No to bloodshed, No to occupation, Yes to negotiations, Yes to peace, which was signed by a large number of pre-eminent Israeli and Palestinian politicians and intellectuals, and the Israel-Palestine Coalition for Peace. " That less than a year ago, in Beirut, the Saudi peace plan, envisaging normalisation of Arab-Israel relations, was endorsed by nineteen Member States of the Arab League. It constituted a major breakthrough. The combined weight of these highly significant facts, which you disdain to mention, comprehensively confutes your conspiracy theory. Nobody pretends that the present situation is not fraught with great difficulties and dangers. Nevertheless the outlines of a realistically attainable solution have been crystal-clear for some time. They involve an agreement simultaneously to stop Palestinian terrorism and Israeli settlement building (as recommended by the Mitchell Report), evacuation of the settlements, acceptance of the 1967 Green Line (with minor adjustments) as Israels border, the establishment of a demilitarised but viable Palestinian State with its capital in East Jerusalem, and massive world aid to build up the Palestinian economy and to resettle or compensate the Palestinian refugees in a way that does not threaten Israels demography. The achievement of such a resolution of the conflict is completely within the realm of possibility. It only requires that the large majority on both sides, who want peace, should assert their will, if necessary against their political leaders. There is no other way forward, and your letter, far from advancing it, militates against it. It does so by bolstering the currently prevalent mood of the Jewish people, which is one of self-pity and self-righteousness, paranoia and hysteria, denial of reality, refusal to listen, and adherence to the fatal illusion that peace depends on security rather than security on peace. It is the exact opposite of what responsible Jewish leadership requires at the present time. Today the Jewish people face a fateful choice between two scenarios. Scenario One: Continuation of the present policy. More of the same. An increasingly oppressive occupation of an increasingly resentful Palestinian population. An endless cycle of violence and counter-violence. Perhaps even resort to unconscionable expedients such as wholesale expulsions (ethnic cleansing) in a desperate attempt to remove the irritant and preserve the Jewish majority of Israels population. Fortress Israel, loathed by humanity and defying humanity until doomsday. Scenario Two: Israel negotiates a cease-fire based on the simultaneous cessation of terrorism and colonisation, then, with international help, a comprehensive peace. It withdraws to its 1967 borders and, within them, devotes its enormous energy and genius to the building of a democratic, just and prosperous society. It lives at peace with its neighbours, makes a positive contribution to the stability and progress of the Middle East, and regains the good-will of humanity. Woe to the shepherds of Israel (Ezekiel 34:2) who lead  or follow  their flock in the wrong direction! Now is a time to urge our people to embrace the way of peace because that is the most Jewish, the most Zionist and the most pro-Israel thing to do, and the only one that holds out any long-term hope for the future. Yours sincerely, Rabbi John D. Rayner --- [This E-mail scanned for viruses by Declude Virus] "[C]apital comes dripping from head to foot, from every pore, with blood and dirt." --Marx, Capital, Vol. 1, Chapter 31 Community email addresses: Post message: marxist@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Subscribe: marxist-subscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx Unsubscribe: marxist-unsubscribe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx List owner: Hunter Gray <hunterbadbear@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Shortcut URL to this page: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/marxist Also take our one-question survey at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/marxist/polls Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/

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Vandana Shiva: Earth Democracy Movement

"This is immoral. Life is not an invention. Life cannot be a monopoly. You cannot sell us the seeds you stole from us, and you cannot charge us royalties for the product of nature's intelligence and centuries of human innovation." "We've received our medicinal plants, our seeds, our forests from nature through our ancestors; we owe it to them to conserve it for the future. We pledge we will never allow their erosion or their theft. We pledge we will never accept patenting, genetic modification, or allow our biodiversity to be polluted in any form, and we pledge that we will act as the peoples of this biodiversity." Living democracy then is the democracy that is custodian of the living wealth on which people depend. There isn't any one coordinated language for this movement, and that's the beauty of it. As water scarcity grows, neighbors, families turn against each other. Scarcity is having a mismatch between a culture and nature's giving. Cultures have evolved cultural diversity to mimic the biological diversity of climates and ecosystems. It's when that relationship is disrupted that you get unsustainable population growth. Instead of leaving seeds in the hands of the peasants who co-evolve them in partnership with nature, seeds become a monopoly in the hands of five or six global corporations. Instead of water belonging to millions of local communities, water too is to be controlled by five or six global water giants. These are recipes that use economic systems to appropriate for the few the base of survival of the majority. When you look at why people were fighting, you find they were fighting for their rivers, for fair prices, for a say on when dam waters should be released. More recently there have been clear indicators of how fundamentalism is growing out of the economic insecurity of globalization. we need instead to create virtuous cycles that allow economic democracy to feed political democracy, cultural identities, and cultural diversity. Our system of food security is being destroyed in the name of economic growth and economic liberalization, and people don't have enough food to eat. Our farmers are being ravished by seed companies, being pushed into debt, and committing suicide. I believe that if you just do your little bit without thinking of the bigness of what you stand against, if you turn to the enlargement of your own capacities, just that in itself creates new potential. your commitment is yours to make, and you can make the deepest commitment with a total detachment about where it will take you. You want it to lead to a better world, and you shape your actions and take full responsibility for them, but then you have detachment. And that combination of deep passion and deep detachment allows me always to take on the next challenge because I don't cripple myself, I don't tie myself in knots. I function like a free being. I think getting that freedom is a social duty because I think we owe it to each other not to burden each other with prescription and demands. I think what we owe each other is a celebration of life and to replace fear and hopelessness with fearlessness and joy. +++ Deepening Democracy By Sarah Ruth van Gelder, YES! Magazine December 13, 2002 http://www.yesmagazine.org/24democracy/shiva.htm Vandana Shiva is a physicist and an organic farmer, an instigator of India's historic "tree-huggers" movement, and a renowned author. She speaks internationally on the perils of globalization, while mobilizing fellow citizens to reclaim their rights to life itself. Sarah Ruth van Gelder: Tell me about the Earth Democracy movement. Where did that notion come from, and what form is the movement taking? Vandana Shiva: The notion comes from a very ancient category in Indian thought. Just like Chief Seattle talked about being in the web of life, in India we talk about vasudhaiva kutumbkam, which means the earth family. Indian cosmology has never separated the human from the non-human - we are a continuum. When the issue of the patenting of life emerged, for example, there were two levels of response from those opposing this practice in India. The one level was resistance: "This is immoral. Life is not an invention. Life cannot be a monopoly. You cannot sell us the seeds you stole from us, and you cannot charge us royalties for the product of nature's intelligence and centuries of human innovation." The second level was the reclaiming of democracy: people claimed the right to look after their biodiversity and use it sustainably. This came out of discussions among the movements we've been building at the grassroots. I remember one meeting of 200 villagers who had been involved in seed saving and seed sharing with Navdanya, the trust that I founded to save seeds and promote organic agriculture. These 200 villagers gathered on World Environment Day in 1998 and declared sovereignty over their biodiversity - not sovereignty to rape and destroy, sovereignty to conserve. These 200 villagers, gathered in a high mountain village near a tributary of the Ganges, said, "We've received our medicinal plants, our seeds, our forests from nature through our ancestors; we owe it to them to conserve it for the future. We pledge we will never allow their erosion or their theft. We pledge we will never accept patenting, genetic modification, or allow our biodiversity to be polluted in any form, and we pledge that we will act as the peoples of this biodiversity." These discussions in villages all over India, in many different languages, led to amazing actions. Some wrote letters to Mike Moore, director-general of the WTO saying, "We noticed you have passed a law called 'Trade-Related Intellectual Property Rights.' We also notice that under this law you want to monopolize life forms. Unfortunately, these are resources over which you have no jurisdiction, and you have overstepped your boundaries." Similar letters went to the prime minister of India: "You are the prime minister of this country, but we are the keepers of biodiversity. This is not your jurisdiction. You cannot sign away these rights. They were not given to you. We never delegated them to you." But the ones that were the most beautiful were crafted literally under the village trees and addressed to Ricetec, Inc., which patented Basmati rice, and to the Grace Corporation, which patented the name. The letters said, "We've used Basmati for centuries. ... Now we hear you've got a patent number for this, and you claim to have invented it. This kind of piracy and theft we know happens. There are people who steal in our village, and we treat them with understanding. We call them and ask them to explain what is the compulsion that led them to steal. So we invite you to come to our village and explain to us the compulsion that made you steal from us." These communities started in years past by saving locally bred seeds and saving biodiversity. Now they are seeking self-governance over food systems, water systems, and biodiversity systems. If you think of the fact that corporate globalization is really about an aggressive privatization of the water, biodiversity, and food systems of the Earth, when these communities declare sovereignty and act on that sovereignty, they have developed a powerful response to globalization. Living democracy then is the democracy that is custodian of the living wealth on which people depend. Is the same language being used elsewhere to counter corporate globalization? There is, I think, a spontaneous resurgence of thinking that centers on protection of life, celebrating life, enjoying life as both our highest duty and our most powerful form of resistance against a violent and brutal system that globalizes not just trade, but fascism, and denies civil liberties and freedoms. There isn't any one coordinated language for this movement, and that's the beauty of it. The WTO-related events in Seattle created the first experience of a rainbow politics - a successful pluralistic politics, without the working of a master mind, but with the currents and beauty that come out of free thinking. In the new politics, people have different ways of talking, but I feel the core will be living democracy and living economies and that it will include both taking personal responsibility to make change and being part of national and international movements for change. You've written about four types of insecurities - ecological, economic, cultural, and political - and how each results in violence. Could you say something about why you consider each of these forms of insecurity? The ecological crisis is a severe form of insecurity, especially in conditions of poverty when rivers are polluted and you have no clean drinking water, when groundwater is exhausted and you're forced to migrate. There couldn't be a deeper insecurity than this. Many conflicts within Third World countries are related to the practice of exploiting resources faster than nature can renew them or diverting them away from where people need them. Dams in every society have become major sources of conflict. As water scarcity grows, neighbors, families turn against each other. Many people assume that scarcity has always been part of the human condition and that scarcity is closely related to population increases. In my 25 years of work on resource and environmental issues, one thing I have learned is that different parts of the planet are endowed in different ways. There may be little rainfall in the deserts of Rajasthan, but the culture of Rajasthan evolved to manage that amount of rainfall, and they have developed miraculous technologies for harvesting and storing what rain they get. They have sophisticated underground storage systems and water-harvesting systems so that not a drop is wasted. These technologies still sustain cities like Jodhpur and Jaipur. They have enough drinking water because they've developed a conservation culture, and they grow crops that don't need much water. The moment you think the desert of Rajasthan should be growing rice paddy or cotton, you create scarcity. Scarcity is not a result of uneven endowments - that is diversity. Scarcity is having a mismatch between a culture and nature's giving. Cultures have evolved cultural diversity to mimic the biological diversity of climates and ecosystems. It's when that relationship is disrupted that you get unsustainable population growth. There is no society in which you've had so-called population explosions as long as societies have lived within the context of their rights to the resources and the ability to conserve those resources for the future. Just look at two situations. In England, the population explosion started with the enclosures of the commons - when peasants were uprooted from the land and had to depend on selling their labor. In India, 1800 is the watershed for the consolidation of colonial regimes. For centuries before 1800 our population had been stable. When you depend on the land, you know there are five people who can be supported. You work your society out so you have five. When you are selling your labor power on an uncertain basis, in an unstable wage market, you know that having ten is better than having five. So dispossession from the Earth's natural wealth is at the root of instability and population growth. So economic insecurity is actually created? Instead of leaving seeds in the hands of the peasants who co-evolve them in partnership with nature, seeds become a monopoly in the hands of five or six global corporations. Instead of water belonging to millions of local communities, water too is to be controlled by five or six global water giants. These are recipes that use economic systems to appropriate for the few the base of survival of the majority. The 80 percent who are dispossessed of the wealth of nature move into economic insecurity, because their livelihood as peasants, as fishermen, as farmers, as tribals, as forest dwellers, all depend on having the fisheries, the land, the forest, to make a living. When those rights are taken away, they become economic refugees - they become disposable people. This economic model rested on the assumption that the favored 20 percent would gain security as a result of these policies. But recent events on Wall Street show us that this model creates economic insecurity both for the 80 percent who rely on natural wealth and for the 20 percent who rely on virtual wealth, because virtual money is a construct, and that construct can disappear as easily as it is created. Either way, economic insecurity is the legacy of a finance-driven, capital-driven, corporate-driven economic model that is destroying our natural capital and the resilience of local economies. The third type of insecurity is cultural. You've made a connection between globalization and the rise of nationalist violence and right-wing repression. What kind of evidence have you seen that there are links? Well I'm a physicist, not a social scientist. But as a citizen of India, I have had to suffer the violence and brutality that comes with rising fundamentalism, and I've asked myself how a society that is the cradle of peace, the land of Gandhi and Buddha, could be reduced to one of the most volatile societies in the world. One incident that contributed to my understanding of these links was the violence that erupted in the Punjab in the 1980s. As the magic of the Green Revolution started to disappear, as subsidies were removed and an artificial system of prosperity started to decay, the Punjab became the birthplace for anger and discontent. When you look at why people were fighting, you find they were fighting for their rivers, for fair prices, for a say on when dam waters should be released. None of this was decided locally or regionally - it was all decided from the capital, Delhi. So the discontent was against centralized regimes in which people had no share in shaping their future. More recently there have been clear indicators of how fundamentalism is growing out of the economic insecurity of globalization. Let me just give you two examples. In the late 1990s, because of the pressures of globalization, onion prices went up from 2 rupees to 100 rupees. The ruling party lost what became known as "the onion elections" of 1998 because they allowed this price increase. The opposition parties used the onion as the symbol of their fight against globalization, and they won in every state. Immediately after that we saw a round of fundamentalist violence. In Gujarat, we had another set of regional elections, and the WTO, agriculture, and farmers' survival were the major issues. Farmers said they were being destroyed by globalization policies, and they voted the ruling party out of power. Immediately after that the fundamentalist wave erupted, the genocide and warmongering started, and while public attention focused on the violence, the globalization agenda was pushed further. As decision making is centralized away from local communities to national governments - and ultimately to corporate board rooms, financial markets, institutions like the World Bank, IMF, and WTO - representative democracy loses its base in economic democracy. As local and national governments lose control over economic resources and priorities, elected leaders can no longer build a political base by championing programs responsive to family and community needs. Political demagogues of the far right emerge to fill the void by channeling the anger and insecurity created by empire's program of scarcity, injustice, and exclusion into an us-versus-them politics that blames particular national, racial, culture, or religious groups. The rise of the LePens in France, the Fortuyns in Netherlands, Haiders in Austria, and the Narendra Modis in India is a result. So there is a strong affinity between the forces of empire and a politics of hate that justifies policies of domination and exclusion. So long as people's attention is focused on fear and hatred of foreigners or members of a particular religious group, such as Muslims, they are distracted from organizing to deal with the system of institutional domination and exploitation that is the real source of their insecurity. That certainly sounds like what is happening in the United States also. Absolutely. It's a vicious cycle, and we need instead to create virtuous cycles that allow economic democracy to feed political democracy, cultural identities, and cultural diversity. It comes back to deepening of democracy. What we have at this moment is democracy reduced to the rule of lies - lies in the way the popular will is being counted, as we saw in Florida in 2000, and lies in the way the people's wealth is being counted, as we see in today's accounting scandals. That false wealth is influencing who will rule - it's all just too false now. Our system of food security is being destroyed in the name of economic growth and economic liberalization, and people don't have enough food to eat. Our farmers are being ravished by seed companies, being pushed into debt, and committing suicide. This system is going to cost lives even in the US, where people don't know how they'll pay for their health or retirement. The way out of this violent cycle is to deepen democracy - to bring decisions that directly affect people's lives as close as possible to where people are and to where they can take responsibility. If a river is flowing through some communities, those communities should have the power and the responsibility to decide how the water is used and whether it is to be polluted. The state has no business giving to Coca-Cola the groundwater of a valley in Kerala, resulting in rich farmland going totally dry. Communities need to take back sovereignty and delegate trusteeship to the state only as appropriate. What we have now is a regime of absolute rights in the hands of corporations with zero responsibility for the environmental and social devastation and the political instabilities they are creating. If we want to reactivate and rejuvenate democracy, we have to bring back the economic content. Let me wrap up with a personal question. Every time I've heard you speak or met you, you've had so much energy, not only intellectual energy, but personal or spiritual energy. I'm just wondering, what keeps you so alive? Well, it's always a mystery, because you don't know why you get depleted or recharged. But, this much I know. I do not allow myself to be overcome by hopelessness, no matter how tough the situation. I believe that if you just do your little bit without thinking of the bigness of what you stand against, if you turn to the enlargement of your own capacities, just that in itself creates new potential. And I've learned from the Bhagavad Gita and other teachings of our culture to detach myself from the results of what I do, because those are not in my hands. The context is not in your control, but your commitment is yours to make, and you can make the deepest commitment with a total detachment about where it will take you. You want it to lead to a better world, and you shape your actions and take full responsibility for them, but then you have detachment. And that combination of deep passion and deep detachment allows me always to take on the next challenge because I don't cripple myself, I don't tie myself in knots. I function like a free being. I think getting that freedom is a social duty because I think we owe it to each other not to burden each other with prescription and demands. I think what we owe each other is a celebration of life and to replace fear and hopelessness with fearlessness and joy. Vandana Shiva's books include "Water Wars: Privatization, Pollution, and Profit," "Stolen Harvest, the Hijacking of the Global Food Supply," and many others. This interview was reprinted from Yes! A Journal of Positive Futures, PO Box 10818, Bainbridge Island, WA 98110. Subscriptions: 800/937-4451. 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