Endurance

From the indigenous point of view, there are only two types of land: the sacred and the desecrated. As indigenous nations defy Canada and the US over the Tar Sands and Powder River strip-mines, the notion of homeland security takes on new meaning. If security is the right to a clean environment and healthy way of life, then the nations whose homelands are under attack by Wall Street, Ottawa and the White House are exercising their rights under international law to defend themselves.

When the World Bank and the Inter-American Development Bank funded genocide in Guatemala under the notorious dictator Rios Montt, they were banking on state-sponsored terror to protect their investments. Now that Montt is on trial for his crimes, human rights organizations like Jubilee International are calling for the World Bank and Inter-American Development Bank to be held responsible. Along with the International Monetary Fund, the two international banks are complicit not only in past genocide against Mayan communities, but in present austerity programs that pour salt in the wounds of the impoverished people of Guatemala.

Supply and demand under the Free Market is a rigged game. Unlike natural economic systems that supply needs and demand only what our planet can sustainably provide, the Free Market artificially creates demands for things we don't need and supplies them by destroying our planet. We see this everyday in Free Market propaganda promoting fossil fuel demands to supply us with a cornucopia of toxic junk.

The Free Market is thus a system using unsustainable supplies to create demands, both without our consent or approval. As a system, the Free Market thereby subverts sustainable lifestyles and democratic governance using deceit, coercion and corruption to ensure the system is impenetrable, even unquestionable. It is only when we question the system itself, that we see that it doesn't have to be this way.

Many indigenous nations and some modern states still practice sustainable lifestyles and democratic governance, but they are under constant attack by the Free Market and co-opted modern states. Fighting the Free Market effectively requires we not get trapped by their nonsensical arguments about supply and demand.