The descendants of Nimrod

(ES)

God never had a plan for humanity. There is no supreme end, nor harmony at the end of times. There is no vice nor virtue. Nor blame nor sin, nor cause nor purpose. There is no sentence nor redemption, no eternal life, nor righteous nor sinners. There is only consciousness, freedom and passion.

A persistent will that propels the inert and the living as phenomenons of space, time and causality, has fun watching the Universe free and in perpetual conflict, where even the negligible particles that form it, subjected to that will, collide and transform themselves.

It's illusory building a Tower of Babel to reach heaven, since there is no virtue nor truth in it. Why challenge a God that mocks human beings, if we have to give up our freedom and our power in favor of the descendants of Nimrod? Those who know the human being and promise the daily bread and the kingdoms and wealth of this World  in return for his freedom and power.

Rebelling against an unfair God, whose miracles and advent, as a proof of its existence, we are expecting uselessly, is as useless as the wait itself. He, on his heavenly throne, keeps on laughing at his creation, repudiating it for giving up its freedom.

Rebellion of human being is, or should be, a rebellion against itself, against its indifference, against its apathy, against its fear of freedom.

From this rebellion, that recognizes freedom, dignity and passion of all human beings, will be born the man and the woman free, compassionate and able to develop all their potentiality through the empowerment of the individual and collective subject that acts according to a plan: BEING

.

The Suicide of God

(ES)

We can recognize the injustice and indignity of human life where and when it occurs. We can recognize the perversity of any social, political and economic system that objectifies life, reducing human beings to mere automatons, and their relationship with nature to domination/exploitation.

We assume our impotence as creators in front of our civilizing work that dominates us. We forget that history has been an unfinished human creation and unable to continue our work until the end of the story, we accept that the end of civilization is the only end of history that mankind will know.

When humanity gave their freedom to the point that turn men and women in replaceable parts of a system created by themselves, God, discontented with his work, rebelled against his creation and assumed his helplessness to the point of destroying himself. In turn, humanity, abandoned in a unfair world, full of suffering, also rebels against its own God.

With a dead God, no longer able to destroy its creation, the human being, become a God on earth, runs the same fate that metaphysical God, that in an nihilistic impulse rushed to self-destruction.

Gods rebel against their creation, and is their work that finally kills the creator.

We are about to leap into the void, first of all was the metaphysical rebellion, and now is the collective suicide of mankind. We rebel against the system that oppresses us,  assuming our powerlessness to change it, understanding well that we must die at the same time that our creation.

This is the feeling of the rebel, who contemplates his own death as the ultimate affirmation. But if our work does not die with us, if humanity can overcome its nihilistic impulse, there is still hope: let us observe the world with compassion, as well as  we empower ourselves to free us from the control of our creation, with the aim of building up the world we want, not over the ruins of civilization, but on the foundations of the man and woman compassionate with themselves and their environment. 

© Ahmad Mahmoud/IRIN

 
There is only one human experience that we all share throughout history, a life to live and share for the full development of the potentialities of humanity.


.

The lost descendants

(ES)

An absent eternity, far away from consciousness and existence, interrupted only by the loneliness of insistent life.

Children walk through a sandstorm in Tillaberi region, Niger (Feb 2012)
© Jaspreet Kindra/IRIN

Sometimes, the dream: that intermittent death that frees us from our existence.

There is no cruelty in death. Every man and every woman aspires to eternity. Cruelty is life itself which awakens us from that eternal sleep and mercilessly reveals that we are not omnipotent nor omniscient. Cruelty discovered in the absence of divinity and the fight for survival.
Life is a fault of the eternal, an absurd parentheses in which negligible particles of the Universe collide and engulf each other.

I assume cruelty of life without hope. I observe it with compassion on the way to the eternal.

Given the absurdity of life there is no more rebellious attitude than that of being compassionate. Coming into the world is not an act of compassion, but of cruelty and neglect. We are the lost descendants of cruelty, our ephemeral rebellion is that of compassion.

Sometimes compassion: that dream of eternity that frees us from our existence while we are awakened.

.

The heart does not rest

(ES)

Runaway hearts, afraid of the present.
In an immutable and indifferent Universe,
childlike yearnings, hopes dashed:
abandoned lives.

Recover that instant of happiness,
before anguish begins again.
The terror that is repeated in drum rolls of death.
The heart does not rest,
life goes on.

A child's painting from Swat seeking an end to violence
© Kamila Hyat/IRIN

.

A letter to E.

(ES)

 

Hello E,

I haven't found  time nor words to respond, and after reading your letter on several occasions and at different times, it was not until today that I found the right word: recommence.

    "All Sisyphus' silent joy is contained therein. His fate belongs to him"

    "The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart . One must imagine Sisyphus happy"

    The myth of Sisyphus - Albert Camus


Recommence. I also fancy you happy, as well as Sisyphus, fully aware of your existence, of your freedom and of a fate that belongs to you. Recommence, again and again: that is the human dimension. Recommence to make yourself again, in that neverending construction project that is the human being. Recommence despite the absurd, the successes, the failures, the fears, the certainties... despite the life itself. Because life is that: recommence.

In your search for the Absolute, you have found the truth inside of you, where it always was, where it always will be.

You, like Sisyphus, in the hour of consciousness, are superior to your fate; stronger than your rock.

.

Spring yet to come

(ES)

I do not want more springtimes.
Springtimes of betrayed revolutions.
Springtimes of blood and fire, tears and death.
Springtimes of hopes crushed by force of arms.
Patriarchal springtimes of elephants without memory,
that in their power struggles slaughter their people.
Justice, peace and dignity!
No, I do not want more springtimes.

Where then is the revolution?
In the orb of her breasts and ovaries.
In the Goblet of her womb.
No, there is no spring without her presence.
When the Goblet and the orb rise up at last over the cross, the star and the crescent,
the real spring will come.
From her hand, a new renaissance,
to give birth reconciliation, justice and peace.

Spring will be woman, or will not be.

.

Suicide of humanity

(ES)

Love and hate can be a source of the most abject acts, but also of the most sublime ones. In any case, both feelings, require mutual knowledge.

However, indifference can turn the abject into wickedness. Indifference caused either by manipulation or as a defense mechanism against the own suffering or other people's, or even both causes simultaneously.

So, among other reasons such as fear and hatred of the unknown, which inevitably lead to indifference towards "the other", it is explained, but not justified, genocide, mass rape, atrocities in armed conflict, famines, internment camps, forced evictions...

To achieve this level of iniquity is necessary that dehumanization advances inexorably until that ruthless point of indifference and disconnection:

• Perpetrators' indifference to the pain or death of their victims.
• The non-difference with peers: all of them, victims, are equal in the eyes of the perpetrators and do not share any common feature with them.
• Observers' indifference: staring at brutality without doing nothing

Observers, perpetrators and victims: each in its spiral of dehumanization.

We all have cried out for help sometime, and nothing more painful than the silence in response. We all, as human beings, have felt the indifference and silence of this absurd world to our existencial doubts. Victims, all of us, of perversity of life that has just a unique response to give us: the certainty of death. The truth that makes us equal to all human beings. Therefore, victims of indifference, and being aware of the only truth, we can not deny the humanity if our intention is not to contribute to destroy it.

Indifference, unconcern, or evasion of human beings are merely symptoms of progressive dehumanization. Symptoms leading to suicide of humanity.

.

A mediocre God

(ES)

Intelligence is a mental capacity that allows us to understand our environment. We label our perceptions with different attributes, and through that process we build in our thinking the world around us. In the process of labeling different qualities are attributed to what we perceive through our senses. And to the extent that we avoid personal judgments, we refer to the object in its essence.

One consequence of the patriarchal and capitalist society in which we live is that this objectivity that filters our understanding, objectifies what we want to dominate, it becomes an object. So does today with the land, water, air and knowledge: free commons and for free that are objectified and become commodities in the hands of predatory elites, for which there is no more personal judgment that their infinite greed.

So, for that process of commodification that makes inanimate merchandise everything it touches, life itself is nothing but an obstacle to their purposes. Life ceases to be one more attribute and becomes a barrier to be overcome. That is why indigenous people are loosing their livelihoods and are evicted from their lands, the native food crops disappear in favor of foreign crops for export and biofuel production, and forests, jungles and savannahs are natural architectural barriers that hamper progress of extractivism.


 
Human being, imbued with the mentality typical of the capitalist system, has become a mediocre God for himself: being able recreate nature, but without meet any universal human value. Our actions and inactions define our moral and our existence, and facing the progress of self-destruction and death the one and only choice we have is rebellion and passion.

"The goal is not to dominate nature but irrational social forces and institutions that threaten the survival of mankind"

Erich Fromm.

If in our mental categories we are not able to label life with those attributes that differentiate it from the inert, and we only appreciate their market value, the process of commodification will have won the game. Objectively, the death will have prevailed over life.

In these circumstances, the attribute that can best define life is its rebellion. The rebellion of men and women who love life and resist a globalized industrial agribusiness model. Who resist the privatization of the commons. Who resist, ultimately, to the commodification of life itself.

.

Come that day

(ES)

Come that day.
The day that our actions transcend our existence;
and only be judged by our commitment to humanity.
Because no Law can accuse those who defend life,
nor are guilty those who resist the oppressor.

 

In remembrance of Ken Saro-Wiwa

My lord,

We all stand before history. I am a man of peace, of ideas. Appalled by the denigrating poverty of my people who live on a richly endowed land, distressed by their political marginalization and economic strangulation, angered by the devastation of their land, their ultimate heritage, anxious to preserve their right to life and to a decent living, and determined to usher to this country as a whole a fair and just democratic system which protects everyone and every ethnic group and gives us all a valid claim to human civilization, I have devoted my intellectual and material resources, my very life, to a cause in which I have total belief and from which I cannot be blackmailed or intimidated. I have no doubt at all about the ultimate success of my cause, no matter the trials and tribulations which I and those who believe with me may encounter on our journey. Neither imprisonment nor death can stop our ultimate victory.

I repeat that we all stand before history. I and my colleagues are not the only ones on trial. Shell is here on trial and it is as well that it is represented by counsel said to be holding a watching brief. The Company has, indeed, ducked this particular trial, but its day will surely come and the lessons learnt here may prove useful to it for there is no doubt in my mind that the ecological war that the Company has waged in the Delta will be called to question sooner than later and the crimes of that war be duly punished. The crime of the Company's dirty wars against the Ogoni people will also be punished.

On trial also is the Nigerian nation, its present rulers and those who assist them. Any nation which can do to the weak and disadvantaged what the Nigerian nation has done to the Ogoni, loses a claim to independence and to freedom from outside influence. I am not one of those who shy away from protesting injustice and oppression, arguing that they are expected in a military regime. The military do not act alone. They are supported by a gaggle of politicians, lawyers, judges, academics and businessmen, all of them hiding under the claim that they are only doing their duty, men and women too afraid to wash their pants of urine.

We all stand on trial, my lord, for by our actions we have denigrated our Country and jeopardized the future of our children. As we subscribe to the sub-normal and accept double standards, as we lie and cheat openly, as we protect injustice and oppression, we empty our classrooms, denigrate our hospitals, fill our stomachs with hunger and elect to make ourselves the slaves of those who ascribe to higher standards, pursue the truth, and honour justice, freedom, and hard work. I predict that the scene here will be played and replayed by generations yet unborn. Some have already cast themselves in the role of villains, some are tragic victims, some still have a chance to redeem themselves. The choice is for each individual.

I predict that the denoument of the riddle of the Niger delta will soon come. The agenda is being set at this trial. Whether the peaceful ways I have favoured will prevail depends on what the oppressor decides, what signals it sends out to the waiting public.

In my innocence of the false charges I face Here, in my utter conviction, I call upon the Ogoni people, the peoples of the Niger delta, and the oppressed ethnic minorities of Nigeria to stand up now and fight fearlessly and peacefully for their rights. History is on their side. God is on their side.

For the Holy Quran says in Sura 42, verse 41: "All those that fight when oppressed incur no guilt, but Allah shall punish the oppressor."

Come that day.

Kenule "Ken" Beeson Saro-Wiwa (1941-1995)

.

In the realm of possibility

(ES)

We do not choose when and where to be born. Nor when to die.

The beginning and the end joined by the impossibility to choose and the inability of repudiation.
Our existence is delimited by two gratuitous events.

However, life unfolds in the realm of possibility, and from birth, choices are made for us or by ourselves. Morality, civilization, customs... deal to ease the anguish of the decision, and as far as possible, such as following a path without deviation, show us the way forward, while allowing certain branches and evasions.
We read and interpret a map to not get lost in our solitude on a path that inevitably leads us to death.

If we can not reject the instant when life appears or disappears, since they are not a component of the world of the possible, at least, we can reject anything that reduces the path of the possible to the rest of mankind. Since the map we handle today leads us to self-destruction, and takes advantage of our loneliness to guide us as individuals who refuse to choose.

I can not quit choosing, and in my responsibility to choose I commit with mankind to proclaim that we need a new map: that of solidarity, justice, peace, education, culture and respect for life.

.

The paradox of evil

(ES)

For in the presence of God there is less a problem of freedom than a problem of evil. You know the alternative: either we are not free and God the all-powerful is responsible for evil. Or we are free and responsible but God is not all powerful.

A. Camus - The myth of Sisyphus

Wars, global warming, famine... I can not think of an almighty God responsible for such calamities, since no creator would rebel so viciously against his work; unless he wanted to self-destroy himself. I can not think of an non-omnipotent God, because in that case, and in his weakness, would be his creation that would rebel against him.

If the human being were free and responsible, I should assume that there is a human nature and that evil is part of it, since in a totally free manner, he chooses to do evil and self-destruction, which seems to be incoherent with preservation of life itself and the existence of an almighty God who loves his creation.

Thus, I conclude that the human being is not free, because in today's society we hand over our freedom and put it in the hands of the rulers. We experience a false sense of choice, confusing it with freedom. And those governments, pierced by the power of capital, are the ones that lead us to self-destruction: those who decide wars, predators of Mother Earth, those who kill of hunger their own people...

A Somali government soldier outside the ruins of the Mogadishu Cathedral (March 2013)
© Ahmad Mahmoud/IRIN

If almighty God do not want to die, and the human being is not free but responsible for their actions and inactions, I can only think of a non-omniscient God, who is alien to hell on this Earth for Man's work.

When Man is fully aware of the actual and possible things of this world, when he regains his freedom handed over and his alienated power, then and only then we will  be gods on Earth.

.

The paradox of fear

(ES)

© Juan Herrero/IRIN

Fear of disobeying. Fear of resisting. Fear of suffering. Fear of knowing. Fear of loving. Fear of loneliness. Fear of the unknown. Fear of being different. Fear of who is different. Fear of giving. Fear of receiving. Fear of failure. Fear of being.

A Brave New World by the force of fear. In what serve us the senses if fear prevents us from loving others? And even more, by dint of being afraid, we fear of ourselves, without getting to know or develop ourselves fully.

The worst tragedies, armed conflict, where death is perceived as something close, these are the moments when the human being sympathizes, expressing fearless all his being as an spontaneous reaction to the misfortune that surrounds him.

However, we do not perceive, or even worse omitted, the threat of a predator system with nature and with ourselves. The threat of a system that has put us at its service and not on the contrary. The threat of self-destruction by greed. Competition instead of solidarity and cooperation.

In this days when sickness and death seem so alien to us, solidarity is the exception and not the rule. This is the paradox of fear: in the absence of wars, natural disasters, accidents and other tragedies, fear blocks us and keeps us from being free, whereas facing the certainty and nearness of our own death, or the death of others, fear frees the best of ourselves.

.

That we do not resemble the Man

(ES)

Can you beat the feeling of helplessness and isolation by combating the power that oppresses us? Or is this just a way to bring more pain to our existence?

If we can only expect distress or frustration from the power, why to yearn for a change of it?
In other words, the power, whoever that holds it, is a relationship of domination-submission increasingly abstruse for the benefit of a plutocracy. Are we expecting perhaps a benevolent power, incorruptible, under democratic control and under the sovereignty of the people?

It seems then that facing the dystopia of capitalism and corporate governance we find the utopia of the revolution which subverts the established power. An endless power struggle in which the oppressed become dominant and the dominant become oppressed. The necessary and eternal struggle for freedom.

"And remember also that in fighting against Man, we must not come to resemble him. Even when you have conquered him, do not adopt his vices."
Animal Farm - George Orwell (1903 - 1950)

Under the insignia of freedom and democracy, there are only power relationships, while the chains of capitalism that surround the oppressed are becoming more and more subtle as well as intricate.

© QUINO

So before breaking the external chains, it is necessary for the individual revolution of human being to succeed , that which breaks the internal chains to free him from the distress, frustration, helplessness and loneliness, allowing him to expand through the culture, mutual understanding, empathy, solidarity, love and communion with nature.

When this happens, when no internal barriers, imposed by the system or self-imposed by the individual, there will be no external chains with the ability to subdue any human being. Then and only then we will talk about true freedom.

.

The spectre of capitalism

(ES)

A spectre is haunting the World: the spectre of capitalism.

A woman and her family flee ongoing fighting between M23 rebels and Congolese government forces outside Sake, near Goma in the Democratic Republic of Congo (November 2012)
© Kate Holt/IRIN

Nation-states give up their sovereignty at the same time that transnational free trade agreements invent a world-corporate-state whose laws are the laws of capital. Laws made to measure of large corporations to protect their unrighteousness.
Where individuals are subjected to the slavery of consumerism and life itself is a commodity to be traded. Where the commons goods stop being universal to become exclusive to a few.

A world-corporate-state inhabited by millions of dehumanized beings, each in their individual role of producer-consumer, in a virtual society of individuals isolated by technology, overcrowded in mega-cities whose residents compete between misery and scarcity.

A world-corporate-state ruled by a capitalist oligarchy that de facto constitutes the unique class that prevails throughout recent history as a result of the split of the other classes.

Without antagonism there is no progress, and without progress there is no future.

Inhabitants of the world, return to being humans and unite! There is a whole world to win.

.

Silent bombs

(ES)

They kill twice: first, when they explode and take the lives of innocent civilians, mostly women and children, and second, when survivors of the explosion die in life slowly as they mourn the deceased and demand justice. A justice so blind that can barely see the atrocities and the suffering inflicted.

But perhaps the most destructive effect of a silent bomb is the one that endures over time. This absence of noise that kills hope of survivors, and that stifles the screams and laughter of childhood games. A shockwave of silence and destruction. A void life. An endless wait. An unanswered why.

And that silence becomes impunity for attackers, who systematically violate the right to life in the face of the negligence and complicity of our leaders.

I can not avoid innocent people to be killed, but at least I would wish that bombs that have exploded and explode almost daily in Somalia, Yemen, Syria, Sudan, South Sudan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Kashmir, Palestine, Mali and Congo, to name a few countries in almost constant conflict, resonate in our homes with the intensity of bomb attacks committed  in Europe or the United States. That the silence of children resound in our ears unbearable. That the tears of those who weep flood our senses and emotions to dip them in the same loneliness and hopelessness of the victims. And so, react against this apathy, as a drowned person that takes a deep breath when it rises to the surface, so we will back to life, reborn as human beings who share their existence and struggle together for a peaceful world.

.

A life of Passion

(ES)

The invulnerability of the inhabitants of the wealthiest and developed world isolates them from an innocuous present, disconnects them from an irrelevant past and makes them live concerned solely about a future as distant as nonexistent.

Cities of individuals, consumerist leisure, alienating technology, life without passion, life by obligation.

The dispossessed, by contrast, they live with Passion. The necessary to overcome their painful past, and to face a present without future. Survival by obligation.

When it is easier to die than to live, life turns into struggle and only the present exists.

Compassion is useless if not accompanied by passion. The passion to help. The passion to change this reality so unfair and unequal. The passion to stand up for for the belief that another world is possible.

Living the passionate life of the dispossessed ones without opportunities nor future. Filling with passion and compassion the existential void that occupies the material wealth of the rich inhabitants of the developed world.

Transferring passion in exchange for opportunities for a more caring world.

Duino elegies

"Each vague turn of the world has such disinherited ones,
to whom the former does not, and the next does not yet, belong."

"Who has turned us round like this, so that,
whatever we do, we always have the aspect
of one who leaves? Just as they
will turn, stop, linger, for one last time,
on the last hill, that shows them all their valley - ,
so we live, and are always taking leave."

Rainer María Rilke (Prague, 1875 - Switzerland, 1926)

What would you do if today were the last day of your life?  

Leave your comment or use the hashtag #IfTodayWereMyLastDay

.

Grandparents' house is a refugee camp

(ES)

Yes, I admit,  I am not a victim of apartheid or ethnic cleansing. Nor am the victim of an armed conflict or a natural disaster. But I affirm that I am an internal displaced person in my country.

In southern Europe, the Europe of the periphery, not armed conflict has displaced thousands of people arbitrarily, and such displacement, as is reflected in the Guiding Principles on Internal Displacement, generates conditions of severe hardship and suffering for the affected populations. It breaks up families, cuts social and cultural ties, terminates dependable employment relationships, disrupts educational opportunities, denies access to such vital necessities as food, shelter and medicine, and exposes innocent persons to such acts of violence as attacks on camps, disappearances and rape. Whether they cluster in camps, escape into the countryside to hide from potential sources of persecution and violence or submerge into the community of the equally poor and dispossessed, the internally displaced are among the most vulnerable populations, desperately in need of protection and assistance.

No doubt, causes and effects of displacement are mixed together in my case, and not even my intention to compare my life to the millions of people living in a refugee camp, it would be unfair on my part and would invalidate my speech, but I can assure you I am also under conditions of suffering and severe hardship, and that I am a victim of an economic conflict based on a large-scale neoliberal project called EU that does not seek the common good.

Somehow, the grandparents' house has become an economic refugee camp, where they get together again children and grandchildren who live badly with the meager pension of their parents. The family unit has become a haven of this systemic crisis. As a huge refugee camp spread across the geography of the cities and towns of my country.

The Aliu and Lopez families looked out from their window at the arrival of the police, who were coming to evict them from their home in Viladecavalls, north of Barcelona, Spain. Alfredo Aliu and Montse Lopez had been unable to pay their mortgage for two years after their coffee shop went bankrupt.
Samuel Aranda for The New York Times

Young unemployed, families evicted from their homes. A gray panorama of exclusion, recession, unemployment and scarcity to the shadow of the Troika and their fiscal adjustment policies based on social cuts, privatization of public services and deregulation of markets.

I learn from the 25 million internally displaced persons worldwide, their incredible stories of resilience and hope. Their daily effort to survive encourages me to keep fighting against this capitalist violence, genocidal of the middle classes and social welfare, that condemns to poverty millions of people around the world.

When economic violence of the capitalist system is considered as widespread violence, or a violation of human rights, I will be truly an internal displaced person.

.

Planned misery

(ES)

[...] These facts, that shock the conscience of the civilized world, there are not however those who have brought more suffering to the people of Argentina and the worst human rights violations in which you are incurring. In the economic policy of the government must be sought not only the explanation of their crimes but a greater atrocity that punishes millions of human beings with planned misery. [...]
 
Open Letter from a Writer to the Military Junta
Rodolfo Walsh. - C.I. 2845022 Buenos Aires, March 24, 1977.

40 years of planned misery. Corporate governments; connivence between governments and corporations. Speculators. Corporate greed and generalized corruption. Globalization. Debt and structural adjustment; prescriptions of the IMF and the WB. Capitalism without limits to prevent the development of poor countries, to increase the inequality gap in emerging economies, and to put and end to the welfare state of more developed countries.

Consequences:

• The genocide of the middle class where it exists. An economic genocide whose acts are committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, not so much a national, ethnical, racial, political or religious group, but a social and economic class whose development has contributed to the welfare state based on principles of solidarity and equal opportunities.

• The extension of the misery in the emerging and poor countries, where any attempt to prosperity of the working classes and peasants is stifled by force of arms, and by political, corporate and judicial corruption.

The path of neoliberal individualism only leads to inequality, and in these conditions of inequality, the competition is never fair, because it is not possible to compete when opportunities are not the same.

The  "free market" utopia that frees people from state intervention, becomes the "market free" dystopia that enslaves people by the action of the corporate state.

There is only one possible response to the neoliberal economic aggression and impunity of perpetrators: SOLIDARITY AND RESISTANCE

 

"Reproduce this information, circulate it by the means at your disposal: by hand, typewritten, mimeographed, orally. Send copies to your friends: nine out of ten will await them.  Millions want to be informed. Terror is based on the lack of communication. Break the isolation. Back to feel the moral satisfaction of an act of freedom. Defeat terror. Circulate this information. "
 

ANCLA (Clandestine News Agency - Argentina 1976)

.

The sonorous silence of the peaceful crowd

(ES)

I remember a TV show. It was titled "The Magic of David Copperfield". On one occasion the famous illusionist vanished the Statue of Liberty in front of the live audience on Liberty Island. It was unbelievable. A magic performance never seen. The very same Statue of Liberty became invisible behind a large curtain for a few seconds before the astonished gaze of the spectators. Premonitory?

Almost 30 years later, governments and large multinational corporations have improved this trick of invisibility leaving stunned the civil society as a whole.

Millions of people displaced by armed conflicts, many of them fueled by geostrategic interests of governments and greedy corporations exploiting natural resource.
Million of people unemployed, without hope, to the brink of social exclusion.
Millions of workers in precarious working conditions with wages that do not allow a dignified life. One effect of offshoring and free trade agreements, in general, of globalization.
Millions of people living below the poverty line, while a minority live in opulence.
Millions of people evicted from their homes because they can not afford the payments on their mortgages, in front of millions of empty houses result of the property bubble.

© Tommy Trenchard/IRIN

Hardly in the news of mass media. Only one more figure in the statistics. Without taking into account that each one of those millions of people is living a personal tragedy that we can not overlook.

Invisibles. Covered by the curtain of statistics. Covered by the curtain of oblivion. Unemployed and evicted people only on the news when the only way out they find is suicide. Strangers whose stories of misery and suffering only appear on the covers when refugee camps are visited by death, hunger, thirst, or sexual abuses.

But like Statue of Liberty reappeared behind the curtain when it was moved aside for a second time, I am wondering what the underprivileged of the world must do to make visible their terrible situation. Perhaps, like the main characters of the Spanish film "Los lunes al sol" (a group of unemployed people who meet themselves every Monday lying in the sun to share their lives, their stories, their hopes, their frustrations and fears ...) we should establish globally the "Mondays of the invisible ones". One day a week for the underprivileged to appear at the eyes of society, at the eyes of the MPs elected democratically. A day to stop being invisible, all gathered in the streets and public spaces in our towns and cities.

Because before neoliberal capitalism seizes freedoms and people sovereignty, making them disappear as a famous illusionist, it is necessary that the people by themselves take control of their destiny and move aside the curtains that hide the victims of the system.

The "Mondays of the invisible ones", without anger, without bitterness, without hatred, without harangues. Only one day to remind our MPs and society in general that sovereignty resides in the people. And also to make visible the human tragedy that millions of people suffer in silence, but with the hope that another world is possible.

"Sometimes cannot see anything on the surface, but beneath it everything is burning"

Y.B. Mangunwijaya

.

The betrayal of the branches

(ES)

Margaret Bourke-White—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images

The three traditional branches of the State: legislative, executive and judicial.

The fourth estate: media

The fifth, sixth power ...

Checks and balances in essence formulated to protect man from other men and men themselves from the State.

But when the three traditional branches of government are being pierced transversely by the global economic power, who protects men from the greed of the markets?

The traditional powers and the major media have betrayed society. Deliberately, giving way to economic powers in their global advance. Allowing social and ecological injustice. Increasing the gap between rich and poor. Connivance of powers.

Power - Counterpower.
Action - Reaction.
Connivance - RESISTANCE!!

When economic powers have upset the balance in their ultra-neoliberal and globalizing strategy, only the people will be able to become the counterpower to recover or achieve rights and freedoms.

It's not to aspire to the recovery of hackneyed welfare state of the European democracies, but to proclaim and demand social and ecological justice for all peoples of the world. A new economic, political and social model based on solidarity, culture and multiculturalism, on degrowth that returns the balance between human being and nature, and between humans themselves.

"Lupus est homo homini, non homo, quom qualis sit non novit."
(One man to another is a wolf, not a man, when he doesn't know what sort he is)
Plauto (254 b.c. -184 b.c.)


"Homo homini lupus"
(Man is a wolf to man)
Thomas Hobbes (1588 - 1679)


"Capitalism is a wolf to human being and nature."


.