[statecom-discuss] Fwd: [usgp-nc] Tibet Policy Resolution (Erik Douglas)Natlcomaffairs Digest, Vol 54, Issue 64

[peter ames]

Hi. I will be out of the country for three weeks, so I would
Be VERY grateful if you could take me off this list until further notice.
Thanks, Peter Ames

-----Original Message-----
From: statecom-discuss-bounces at green-rainbow.org
[mailto:statecom-discuss-bounces at green-rainbow.org] On Behalf Of Yarden
Sent: Thursday, April 17, 2008 9:34 PM
To: StateCommittee
Subject: [statecom-discuss] Fwd: [usgp-nc] Tibet Policy Resolution (Erik
Douglas)Natlcomaffairs Digest, Vol 54, Issue 64

I submit a copy of the following comment on the question of GPUS  
endorsement of various actions protesting Chinese government actions  
to suppress Tibetan demands for recognition of rights, self-government  
on the occasion of the 2008 Olympic Games, soliciting other views from  
GRP members.  There is no resolution up for a vote at this time but  
views and opinions are being actively solicited by the International  
Committee of the GPUS.
Elie Yarden
delegate, NCMA GRP


Begin forwarded message:

> From: Yarden <yen.yarden at verizon.net>
> Date: April 17, 2008 1:50:59 PM EDT
> To: natlcomaffairs at green.gpus.org
> Subject: Re: [usgp-nc] Tibet Policy Resolution (Erik  
> Douglas)Natlcomaffairs Digest, Vol 54, Issue 64
>
> Erik,
> It is not necessary that I repeat what has been said thus far, in  
> order to articulate a viewpoint that better accords with an  
> Ecological Politics more directly than much of the traditional  
> American Liberal views that I have heard thus far.  I find that I  
> have learned to favor such an approach, as a result of having  
> observed the failures of more sympathetic orientations produced by  
> accidents of location.  These are notorious in the history of U. S.  
> official foreign policy, and the chief factors enabling territorial  
> expansion,as well as economic and military domination.
>
> From the Spanish-American war, bringing freedom to Cuba and the  
> Philippines, through World War I, making the world Safe for  
> Democracy, to bringing democratic government to Iraq, the actions of  
> the government -- acting within the AL ideology of the 'less'  
> government the better -- have required that the population of the U.  
> S. provide a minimal support, based on just cause politics. And the  
> imitation of this -- in left-wing politics -- seems to have escaped  
> critical scrutiny within GPUS affiliated parties or individual  
> members.
>
> I see little hope in continuing this.
>
> "Ethnic warfare" is one of the more mischievous of the accepted  
> explanations, for sponsored violence of the most destructive kinds.   
> Anyone who understands the ideological nature of the dependence of  
> economic well-being on unlimited growth, as one of the chief sources  
> of future impoverishment of the earth's resources, should also be  
> able to understand the role of getting large populations to engage  
> in mutual extinction. It was well tested in the breakup of  
> Yugoslavia. This is what we have to fear, in part, from ideologies  
> of self-determination as a means of enforcing and establishing  
> locally manipulatable tyrannies, the smaller the better, as long as  
> they well-armed -- even if with surplus ordnance.
>
> China has a very long history of periods of central rule and peace,  
> with intervening periods of warlord anarchy that made it vulnerable  
> to imperial dynastic rule and foreign control.  It is just beginning  
> to come out of the consequences of 350 year of foreign intervention  
> and civil war, and thus has the support of its people -- whether  
> well-informed or not.  It could be easily tricked into engaging in  
> "ethnic warfare."  While this might be a desideratum from the point  
> of view of U. S. foreign policy, there is good reason to believe  
> that most advanced industrial states are more interested in a strong  
> central government that can be gotten into participating in policies  
> that would reduce damage to the physical environment in the  
> territories that that government controls.  The very lack of what  
> the U. S. sees as freedom, may not be what others -- who do not  
> associate freedom with anything more than the rights of corporations  
> (and other 'persons') to act independently of government  
> restriction, maybe very different from what Han Chinese, Tibetans,  
> Mongolian peoples imagine as 'freedoms.'
>
> Let us step carefully and devise our own protests of wrongs instead  
> of always jumping on the bandwagons of traditional radical, liberal,  
> demonstrations.  The lack of political imagination in a political  
> party the claims to bring a new politics to the fore, is truly  
> amazing.  I can do better by attending to the criticisms of  
> columnists in the popular press.  The only things we come up with is  
> precisely the tactics and strategies that the 'authoities' have come  
> to expect of us and know too well how to use for their own purposes  
> -- advertising the glories of American democracy.
> Elie Yarden,
> delegate, NCMA GRP
>
>
>
> On Apr 17, 2008, at 12:01 PM, natlcomaffairs-request at green.gpus.org  
> wrote:
>
>> 1. Re: [usgp-nc] Tibet Policy Resolution (Erik Douglas)
>

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