Saturday 16 April 2011

Equal rights for all

Today I would just like to draw attention to one of the amazing positive things happening in our world. Last week Bolivia passed unprecedented laws that gave equal rights to 'mother earth', formalising their traditional religious views. The increasing involvement of indigenous peoples in the problems of our global society can only be a good thing.

The full story and a lovely video can be found here.
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1 comment:

  1. Alex@TransitionIpswich16 April 2011 at 17:21

    its a good start, and the charismatic Mr Morales is certainly an interesting chap, whose roots appear to be with some traditional indigenous folk.

    The Bolivians are far from backward, I contribute to an open source IT/telecoms project where one of the chaps on the community went up there and set up a very advanced wireless network and VOIP telephone system for the use of their local agricultural co-operative!

    Today though he has to lead his country in the same way as Barack Obama or Dimitry Medvedev or David Cameron - thus not immune from the pressure of the market/big business/international trade, which is the main cause of most of the issues in this part of the world

    I wish him, his cabinet and his people the best of luck, he's got a worthy battle ahead. More importantly I hope that they have sufficient backup - including that of their own Army and the domestic and foreign intelligence services!

    Although the potential worst threats are embroiled in conflict elsewhere, my memory of countries in this part of the world is that when they try to stand up to the globalised capitalist market or the status quo dominated by certain rich countries the consequences can be unpleasant for their *elected* politicians, unless said politicians remain mindful of "security issues". Thankfully I believe Mr Morales and his govt are smart and wary, and the bullies have less power than a few decades ago..

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