the Gaia mortgage

"Maybe we should start considering our sojourn on earth as a loan. There can be no doubt that for the past hundred years at least, Europe and the United States have been running up a debt, and now other parts of the world are following their example. Nature is issuing warnings that we must not only stop the debt from growing but start to pay it back. There is little point in asking whether we have borrowed too much or what would happen if we postponed the repayments. Anyone with a mortgage or a bank loan can easily imagine the answer.

. . .

"Either we will achieve an awareness of our place in the living and life-giving organism of our planet, or we will face the threat that our evolutionary journey may be set back thousands or even millions of years. That is why we must see this issue as a challenge to behave responsibly and not as a harbinger of the end of the world.

"The end of the world has been anticipated many times and has never come, of course. And it won’t come this time either. We need not fear for our planet. It was here before us and most likely will be here after us. But that doesn’t mean that the human race is not at serious risk. As a result of our endeavors and our irresponsibility our climate might leave no place for us. If we drag our feet, the scope for decision-making — and hence for our individual freedom — could be considerably reduced."


-- Vaclav Havel, former Czech president, in "Our Moral Footprint," nytimes, 9-27-07

swindle of truths

"Under the false tirade of freedom and democracy, an attempt is made to write in stone the pillaging of the natural resources in the Third World and control areas of increasing geostrategic importance. That and no other is the imperial domination plan that the mightiest military superpower ever to exist is trying to impose through all means possible.

Far from behaving in international relations according to the principles of solidarity, social and international justice, equality and development for all, there is no prudence at all in employing the practices of certifying countries, of imposing unilateral blockades, of threatening through aggressions, of blackmailing and coercing.

If a small country defends and upholds its right to independence, it is accused of being a rogue State; if a power launches an attack against a country, it is said that it "liberates" them. A fighter against foreign aggression is a terrorist; an attacking soldier is a "freedom fighter." That is the media war, the swindle of truths, the tyranny of a one-track mind in a globalized world."



Cuban Foreign Minister Felipe Pérez Roque speech to the UN General Assembly, Sept. 26, 2007