C. Proyect,
Your problem is that you live in a fantasy world. When power
companies dam waterways to create hydropower they are creating something
that is quite simply more valuable than the fish. It's an ugly reality,
but there it is. As for the drinking water, that is obviously preserved
because modern people don't need to drink out of running streams to avoid
intestinal parasites - we have water treament plants. By the way,
drinking out of a running stream doesn't really give you much protection
from intestinal parasites either. I've tried to explain to you before that
pure water doesn't come from nature, it comes from a filter. For that
matter, *fish* populations are not destroyed by dams, *migratory* fish
population are destroyed by dams. Reservoirs are generally pretty well
filled with fish.
I never implies for a second that indigenous people were savages.
That is simply a lame canard. What I said is that their mode of produciton
is not viable. That is absolutely true.
First of all, I am all for people using rifles tohunt instead of
spears if they want to, although it obviously gives them the capacity to
dramatically over-hunt (and therefore, their economy is changed - Bing!
is the light going on?). My point is, quite obviously, that hunting for a
living is not a viable economic practice. Commercial fishing is barely a
viable practice these days.
People are not "land-based" that is so much Social Darwinism.
People are people and the Yanomami would be a fine and noble addition to
the industrial proletariat. If they want a decent standard of living - and
I guess they do - they will come to the same conclusion. If we all wasted
time hunting for our dinners, there wouldn't be much time left to program
computers, would there? Hunting is a sport, not an economy.
As I said, I'm all for protecting the Yanomami from racism and
violence, but they are obviously going to get with the industrial program
simply because PEOPLE DON'T WANT TO LIVE IN THE STONE AGE! The question
is how they are taken in to the larger society, on what terms and how they
can be a positive force. Their respect for nature is a positive force.
You know what? It's not going to slow down the advance of capitalism one
little bit unless it is allied with a struggle to wrest the reigns of the
industrial economy away from capitalists in order to put it in the hands
of the industrial proletariat. The Yanomami are not forest creatures,
they're people. They want what we want.
peace
