Endurance

Her fine soul will be warped by the coarse style of life that's overtaking us; she will be destroyed unless she's given preferential treatment for her artistry.
--The Sorrow of War by Boa Ninh

As noted in Upside Down World, Zapatismo is alive and well in the caracols of Chiapas, but self-rule in these autonomous indigenous communities is anything but easy. Community cohesion, the sacred fire of their authentic democracy, is maintained by discipline and sacrifice--an achievement under constant threat and harassment by state authorities and paramilitary vigilantes.

Watching the Zapatistas as they continue to conduct themselves with determined dignity in the face of neoliberal oppression, it is not surprising that they look the world in the eye and ask, What have you done?

In the war between biodiversity and privatization, the battle in the Andes over protecting the genetic diversity of indigenous potatoes from an invasion of genetically modified seeds from the United States illustrates the colonial attributes of Free Trade. As an act of theft, the GMO agenda of supplanting indigenous food and medicine with monopolized foreign commodities is tantamount to cultural genocide. The fact this US-sponsored program is already exacerbating starvation around the world makes it a criminal act.

As we head toward the likely recognition of a Palestinian state by the UN this fall, the imminent opening of Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt signals an end to the siege by Israel. With the return of the Free Gaza flotilla this summer, and a growing sense of Israel being a pariah state, the United States will be hard pressed to continue backing Israeli aggression. Unlike his hero Ronald Reagan, Barack Obama will probably not call for tearing down the wall of oppression, but continuing to fund the Israeli military against what is likely to become the newest member state of the United Nations might be a tough act to pull off.