We are nowadays in a point of the history of mankind in which; we all as the human specie must decide what path we should follow. The first one is the way of capitalism, the maxima of producing and profiting. We are meant to maximize the product and our consumption no matter what it takes. The second one is to be conscious of the implications and effects of our actions, being aware that we just transform not create anything and therefore we totally depend on the primary resources, which are extracted from Earth, and this is the most important of the economical inputs because it is not solely an input for production but a necessary conditions for the survival of humankind and the support of all life. The horizon of our future is clear now in comparison of our expectations on environmental issues in the past; we now know that if we keep our actual way of living and interacting with the environment, the pollution, deforestation, global warming, poverty, and so on; will get worse and worse until it will not be bearable for any of us. This is the problem we are now in the position to choose whether we continue with our extractive, short sighted capitalist way; or if we take a completely different road, that will mean not only a change in our consumption path, but in our way of thinking, and obviously in our standard of living.

It is important to make clear, what should be considering for defining the “standard of living” category, even more what we mean when we talk about “welfare”. Is welfare related to wealth? Well the answer seem simple and obvious, it is a strong but complex yes. The first issue is to what we call wealth: it is just how much a person earns or it is a sum of a variety of factors like cultural heritage, ancient knowledge, technology, education, the aesthetics values like art and music. And the factor that it’s crucial for our purposes, the importance of considering the biosphere, our whole planet, nature or natural resources and services under the category of wealth.

Today, in the traditional national accounting method given by the UN, we consider the first definition of wealth; we measure the income and its rates of growth as a strong indicator of how a country is performing economically, but also as an indicator of welfare. And this is a huge mistake with disastrous effects. A government who is trying to improve the welfare of its country will try therefore to increase the GNP (gross national product). So where is the trouble? Well, if you are a poor country without capital goods or technology but a lot of natural resources, the only way to increase your income is to export primary resources or goods. For example, that country could export wood, and to be able to do this it must use its forests. And considering that deforestation is not measured on national accounts it will be a net increase of that country’s wealth. But this it is not true, when you exploit and cut off your forests you are getting “poorer”, forest provide a lot of goods and services besides wood. That is what is called, natural services: The first one is to be a provider of inputs (wood, oils, fruits, and so on); the second one is residuals processing and storage; the third one is support for life and the forth is the recreational, and aesthetic value per-se. So when you destroy an entire forest and hugely increase your account balance you are not getting richer, you are losing the other three environmental services that that forest provided you. Nobody will be able to admire its beauty, all the animals and life it contained will be gone, and finally it will affect the ecological equilibriums with unknown effects over health and even weather. It is specially true when forests are also the home of “primitive” (as they are called) societies like the “amazonic” Indians that depend on the forest as the basis of his way of living; or to put it simple the they and their forests is the same thing if one is gone the other is too. And if we dare to see our dependence on Earth, we will see that if we destroy it we will destroy ourselves. We will all die, because we cannot eat or breathe or drink money.

SLAVE BOY

The following is a reprinted with permission from The Knight Ridder Tribune Company. All Rights Reserved.
Our purchases keep children in chains
By Joel D. Joseph/Knight-Ridder/Tribune
Tuesday, May 28, 1996 Recently you bought your son or daughter a new soccer ball. There is a good chance that the ball was made by someone your child's age or even younger. Fully half of the soccer balls sold in the United States are made in Pakistan, and every one of those soccer balls had an assist from a child under 14 who toils 10 hours a day in subhuman sweatshops, stitching the ball or cutting material used to make it.
This is not an isolated problem. More than 200 million children worldwide, some as young as 4 and 5 years old, are slaves to the production line. Most of these children work in Asia, especially the nations of India, Pakistan, Bangladesh and Indonesia, but Latin America is guilty of this human rights abuse as well. India alone employs 50 million children between the ages of 10 and 14. These unfortunate children manufacture shoes, matches, clothing, rugs and countless other products that are flooding the American market and driving hard-working Americans out of jobs.
More than 60 years ago the United States banned child labor, sweatshops, long workdays and workweeks. But now we are subsidizing, encouraging and failing to criticize the enslavement of young people in the Third World. The so-called Third Wave, boosted by President Clinton and House Speaker Newt Gingrich in the form of GATT and the World Trade Organization prohibits member nations like the United States from discriminating against the importation of goods made by children.
Indian and Pakistani rug makers love child workers so much that they buy them. That's right, children are bought and sold for cash or for the settlement of a debt. Iqbal Masih was sold into slavery when he was only four years old. His Pakistani parents, desperate for money, sold their young son for less than $16. For six years he was shackled to a carpet-weaving loom most of the time, tying tiny knots 10 hours a day.
Carpetmakers like the young weavers because their tiny fingers can make very tight knots, and also because they are cheap to own and maintain. Masih was a free person by the age of 12 and crusaded against the horrors of child labor. In November 1994 Iqbal spoke on the abysmal conditions in the sweat shops of Pakistan at the international labor conference in Stockholm, Sweden.
The next month, he was given a Youth Action award in Boston. In March 1995 he was gunned down in his village in Pakistan while riding his bicycle. Eshan Khan, chairman of the Bonded Labor Front, a group fighting child labor, said, ``We know his death was a conspiracy by the carpet mafia.'' While Pakistan has laws against child labor and slavery, the government has taken very little action to combat it. Only a boycott by the United States and other nations will have any impact on slave-based industries like the rug manufacturers.
Nike similarly bases its operations on finding the lowest-cost labor to make its athletic shoes. Twelve-year-old girls work in Indonesian sweatshops 70 hours a week making Nikes in unhealthy plants that reek of glue. Blue jeans and cheap clothing made in Bangladesh wind up on the shelves of American shops like K-Mart and Wal-Mart.
The United States needs to take a leadership role in eradicating child labor around the globe. If we are punished for violating GATT for doing so, let us confront it head on. Child labor is a human rights issue. What is more of a human right than growing up a free person, attending school without being shackled to medieval machinery?
Please remember every time you go shopping and see a label that says made in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bangladesh, Malaysia or Indonesia, that a 10-year-old prisoner of a feudal manufacturer probably contributed his or her labor to that product.
Don't buy it. Tell the store why you won't buy clothing and other products from these backward nations. Tell your Senator, Congressman and presidential candidates that we should oppose the cruelest abuse of human rights: child labor. And then buy the American-made alternative. It will make you feel better about yourself and your fellow workers and send the world an urgently needed message.

WHO IS THE REAL TERRORIST?
Actually, this is going to be my real first post in english. I am a Ecuadorian guy who likes to say the truth; but i have discovered that not many like to hear it. For those of you who don't know where of even what is Ecuador. Ecuador is the most beautiful country in the world, it is located in South America, just between Colombia and Perú. Well, this blog is going to be about my country but also against your country USA, which I think is the biggest threat for the survival of mankind and must chage its way of international politics or face the consecuences. I'm not muslim, nor terrorist, nor leftish freak. I am a normal citizen of Ecuador and a latino who thinks that USA and its military, financial and political actions all around the world are dangerous and must be stopped.

And who is going to do it? You will say arrogantly, well I have news for you. You are on your own and we are billions, the people who see the States as a monster.

I want to make clear that I don't hate american people, but I do hate Bush, because he is an even worst terrorist than Bin Laden; who is reponsible for the deaths of thousands of people in Afganistan and Iraq.

You may say that you have the right to take revenge for your deads or that you have the right to protect yourselfs of terrorism. But I will ask you. Who is the real terrorist?

NO MORE POSTS IN SPANISH

Well, from now on, I will post this blog in english. The reason is simple, the audience, the number of bloggers and brookies in Ecuador is so small that they all are friends and they think they live in a happy world where they should be praised as super writers or geniuses; when they are a bunch of f&%%$ing stupids and egotisticals without any sense of art of even a little of intelligence. Having said this, I repeat that Ecuablogs is kidnapped by a group of friends, whose "autism" and traumas are uncapable of making Ecuadorian Bloggers community grow.
So for all those at Ecuablogs, F"·%ck yourself and your momma!