Det danske Fredsakademi
Kronologi over fredssagen og international politik 22. April 2006 / Time Line April 22, 2006
Version 3.021. April 2006, 23. April 2006
04/22/2006
Tom Paxton signed the international "Manifesto against
conscription and the military system"
Tom Paxton from Alexandria (Virginia, USA) signed the
international "Manifesto against conscription and the military
system" on 12 April 2006. As a famous performing artist he has been
a great advocate for Civil Liberties, Social and Economic Justice
and Peace since the days of the New York Greenwich Village folk
music scene and the world famous music festivals in Newport during
the beginning of the sixties when his song lyrics and tunes against
war, nationalism, racism and social prejudices became popular ("The
Willing Conscript", "Jimmy Newman", "Lyndon Johnson told the
Nation", "Born on the Fourth of July"). Since the days of the Civil
Rights' movement, Tom Paxton has composed song lyrics of social
commitment and compassion for the victims of antisemitism,
ethnocentrism and racism ("Train for Auschwitz", "Goodman,
Schwerner and Chaney", "The Death of Stephen Biko", "On the Road
from Srebrenica"), for the preservation of our ecology ("Whose
Garden was This?"), for a future in peace for all children, without
jingoism and militarism ("What Did you Learn in School Today?"):
towards a society of active solidarity and nonviolence, in private
and in public life. In the tradition line of Woody Guthrie, Pete
Seeger and The Weavers, Tom Paxton has been the gentle voice of
compassion and dissent, the committed song poet whose thoughtful
lyrics and whose wit and irony against political corruption and
crime will always contribute to the emancipation of the poor and
the weak, the depressed and deprivileged, the forgotten and
ignored, the invisible and marginalized citizens of our world - you
find his website under: http://www.tompaxton.com
04/22/2006
Manifesto of the Americas, In Defense of Nature and Biological
and Cultural Diversity
adhesion info@alainet.org
We live in a dominant economic system that for centuries has
engaged in the unlimited exploitation of all ecosystems and their
natural resources. This strategy has generated economic growth and,
for some countries, what has been called "development," and has
privileged the consumption and well-being of a small fraction of
humanity. And, unfortunately, it has excluded the great majority of
humanity from access to minimum conditions for survival.
The costs of this system of exploitation of nature and of human
beings, and of uncontrolled consumerism, has been paid with the
sacrifice of millions of poor working people, peasants, indigenous
peoples, pastoralists, fisherfolk, and the poorer people in
society, who give their lives every single day. And this is
accompanied by on-going aggression against Nature, that has been
and still is systematically devastating. The integrity and
diversity of life forms, which are the basis of biodiversity, are
under threat. Nature on our planet is threatened, as is human life,
which depends on Nature. Even the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment
conducted by the UN, and released in 2005, recognizes that, "human
activities are fundamentally and irreversibly changing the
diversity of life on planet Earth. These changes will only
accelerate in the future." In this important recognition of the
planetary crisis, it is critical that we recognize that it is not
all human activity that is so damaging, but rather, above all,
those actions guided by the uncontrolled drive for profit of
transnational corporations.
Faced with this dramatic situation, we feel the need to affirm
alternatives that can assure a hopeful future for life, for
humanity, and for the Earth. We need to pass from an industrial
production society, consumerist and individualistic, that
sacrifices ecosystems and penalizes human beings, while destroying
social and biological diversity, to a society that sustains life.
This must be a society in motion toward a life that is socially
just and ecologically sustainable, and that takes care of the
community of life and protects the physio-chemical and ecological
bases of support for all living systems, including that of human
beings.
As inhabitants of the American continent we are conscious of our
universal responsibility. Through us, also, passes the future of
the Earth. The Amazonian and Andean countries, for example, like
Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Venezuela and Brazil, are
mega-diverse countries. Not just because of the presence of very
rich ecosystems, but also because of of the many indigenous
peoples, peasants, quilombolas and other local communities, that
over centuries and millennia have learned to co-exist with
biological and cultural diversity. The Amazon forest in our
countries makes up a third of all tropical forests in the world,
and contains more than 50% of the biodiversity. In it there are at
least 45,000 species of plants, 1,800 species of butterflies, 150
species of bats, 1,300 species of freshwater fish, 163 species of
amphibians, 305 species of reptiles, 311 species of mammals, and
1,000 species of birds.
Because of this richness, Latin America is the object of the greed
of the "neoliberal global-colonizers," via the action of dozens of
transnational corporations, principally companies from the Global
North, who are shamelessly engaged in bio-piracy. If it once was
the race for gold and silver, today it is the race to monopolize
genetic and pharmacological resources and the traditional and local
knowledge that accompanies them, which have become strategic
resources for the future of business in the global market. And they
want to impose upon us patent laws and protections for their
windfall profits.
We want to confront, decisively, this process of exploitation and
destruction. We propose consistent policies that:
1. Conserve the biological and cultural diversity of our
ecosystems, including all the living organisms in their habitats,
and protect the interdependencies among them, within the dynamic
equilibrium that characterizes each ecological region, together
with the socially and ecologically sustainable interaction with the
peoples that inhabit each region.
2. Guarantee the integrity and beauty of ecosystems and of the
peoples that conserve and depend on them. This implies preserving
the features of ecosystems that assure their functioning and
maintain the identity of living beings in their territorial,
biological, social, cultural, landscape level, historic and
monumental aspects. The preservation of biological and cultural
diversity, and of the integrity and beauty of ecological systems,
can assure the sustainability of the multiple environmental
functions and benefits for human beings today and in future
generations. Among these are: clean water, food, medicine, wood,
fiber, climate regulation, and flood and disease prevention. At the
same time they constitute the basis of recreation, esthetics, and
of spirituality, while at the same time supporting the soil,
photosynthesis, and nutrient cycling, among other vital functions
for all of humanity.
3. We oppose, decisively, the introduction of exotic species that
are non-adaptive for our ecosystems, as has happened in many biomes
with the promotion of homogeneous, industrial plantations of
Eucalyptus, pine, etc., that destroy natural ecosystems and have
severe, negative social impacts on the peoples that inhabit these
areas. What they produce is profit for a few, dollars, cellulose,
carbon, polluted water, a degraded environment, and poverty.
4. We strongly oppose the liberation of transgenic organisms in the
environment, whether in farms, plantations, ranching or whatever
other activity in the environment. Beyond being unnecessary, they
are essentially useless for anything other than transnational
corporate profits. They represent potential risks to human health
and can cause irreversible damage to Nature and ecosystems. We
emphatically oppose the introduction of transgenic trees, which
represent an even grater danger, because, among other reasons,
their pollen can be disseminated over many miles or kilometers,
inevitably contaminating other forest species, including native
species, and they can have multiple impacts on flora, insects and
other components of fauna, and can undercut the basis of the
livelihoods of indigenous peoples, fisherfolk, peasants,
quilombolas and other local communities.
5. We pledge to combat Terminator seeds because they put life
itself -- and its reproduction -- at risk, as they are "suicide
seeds" that only benefit the transnational corporations that
control our seeds, imposing a position of dependence on
farmers.
6. We oppose the attempt of the imperial government of the United
States and its transnational corporations to impose the Free Trade
Area of the Americas (FTAA) on us, as well as diverse bilateral
free trade agreements (FTAs), treaties to protect foreign
investment, and agreements adopted in totally undemocratic manners
at Summits and in the WTO. These agreements put our Nature, our
agriculture, our services, and the living conditions of our
populations at greater risk, and only prioritize guarantees in the
interest of profits.
7. We express our support for, and recognition of, the peoples and
communities who over centuries and millennia have developed our
agricultural biodiversity, through the selection and conservation
of the seeds that today are the basis of the world's agriculture
and of humanity's food supply. To maintain this basis of our
sustenance, this enormous richness of agricultural and culinary
diversity, we must recognize and affirm the rights of peasants,
indigenous peoples, pastoralists, fisherfolk, quilombolas and
others, to land, territory and to natural resources, so that they
can continue to carry out the essential task for humanity of
conserving diverse local seed varieties, which can only take place
at the local level. We will fight those companies that seek control
over our seeds, against the traditions of the peoples who are the
stewards of our seeds, who always understood seeds as the source of
life, which should never be turned into mere commodities.
Finally, we express our hope that these resolutions benefit our
peoples and benefit our food sovereignty -- that is, the right of
each and every people to produce their own food, in conditions of
good health and social justice, and in balance with Nature. We
defend those who work in the countryside, our farmers and peasants.
We defend their right to live as farmers, and to thusly guarantee
the sustenance of our populations. This peasant mode of production
contributes decisively to the sustainability of our planet, and to
integral, broad-based development, essential for the future of
humanity.
April 20, 2006
Curitiba, capital of the state of Parana, Brazil, building an
America free of GMOs and aggression against the environment.
[Translated from Portuguese]
1. Hugo Chavez, President of Venezuela
2. Roberto Requião, Governor of Parana
3. Pérez Esquivel, Nobel Peace Laureate, Argentina
4. Eduardo Galeano, writer. Uruguay
5. Peter Rosset, food sovereignty researcher. USA/Mexico
6. Pat Mooney, ETC-Group, specialist in the impacts of GMOs and
other new technologies, Canada
7. Silvia Ribeiro, researcher ETC-Group, Mexico
8. Noam Chosmki, linguist, MIT, USA
9. Atilio Boron, social scientist, CLACSO, Argentina
10. Violeta Menjivar, Mayor of San Salvador, El Salvador
11. Camille Chalmers, Jubilee South, HAITI
12. Ramon Grosfoguel, Puerto Rico
13. Doris Gutierrez, Congresswomen, Honduras
14. Monica Batoldano, ex-comandante Sandinista. Nicaragua
15. Ernesto Cardenal, poet, priest and ex-minister of culture,
Nicaragua
16. Gioconda Belli, poet. Nicaragua
17. Raul Suarez, Baptist pastor and congressman. Cuba
18. Miguel Altieri, professor of agroecology, Univ. California,
USA/CHILE
19. Fernando Lugo, Catholic bishop. Paraguay
20. Blanca Chancoso, Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities,
CONAIE - Ecuador
21. Hebe de Bonafini, Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, Argentina
22. Aníbal Quijano, social scientist, Peru
23. Leonardo Boff, theologian and writer, Brazil
24. Beth Carvalho, cantautora. Brasil
25. Mons. Pedro Casaldaliga, Bishop and poet - Brazil
26. Mons Ladislau Biernaski, Catholic bishop, Curitiba. Brasil
27. Monja Coen, Buddhist nun, Brazil
28. João Pedro Stedile, leader of MST-Via
Campesina-Brazil
29. Temistocles Marcelos Netto. Nat. Sec'ty Environmet, CUT.
Brazil
30. Leticia Sabatela, actress, Artists Human Rights Movement,
Brazil
31. Nalu Faria, World March of Women, Brazil
32. Pedro Ivo Batista. Eco-socialist Network. Brasil
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