Tear down all of the fences!

13 years ago, in 2003 the focus of P-CED's work was a Muslim group known as the Crimean Tatars who had recently been repatriated after decades of forced exile. Arguing for a new way of thinking about the "War on Terror", founder Terry Hallman wrote in a proposal for social enterprise development:

Once a nation or government puts people in the position of defending their own lives, or that of family and friends, and they all will die if they do nothing about it, at that point all laws, social contracts and covenants end. Laws, social contracts and covenants define civilization. Without them, there is no civilization at all, there is only the law of the jungle: kill, or be killed. This is where we started, tens of thousands of years ago.

By leaving people in poverty, at risk of their lives due to lack of basic living essentials, we have stepped across the boundary of civilization. We have conceded that these people do not matter, are not important. Allowing them to starve to death, freeze to death, die from deprivation, or simply shooting them, is in the end exactly the same thing. Inflicting or allowing poverty on a group of people or an entire country is a formula for disaster.

These points were made to the President of the United States near the end of 1996. They were heard, appreciated and acted upon, but unfortunately, were not able to be addressed fully and quickly due primarily to political inertia. By way of September 11, 2001 attacks on the US out of Afghanistan – on which the US and the former Soviet Union both inflicted havoc, destruction, and certainly poverty – I rest my case. The tragedy was proof of all I warned about, but, was no more tragedy than that left behind to a people in an far corner of the world whom we thought did not matter and whom we thought were less important than ourselves.

We were wrong.

He was referring to which warned about the risk of global uprisings by the increasingly disenfranchised. As you now know, in 2011, the Arab Spring would spark the crisis which is now Syria.  

Can we tear down the fences between us, before the game is called on account of darkness?     

Before the last shadow falls