Lost opportunities

(ES)

In our world there are so deeply rooted social inequalities that we live with them and hardly touch our hearts.

Discover that inequality and social injustice that we usually recognize around us, are a problem caused by the lack of opportunities for the sufferer. That there are customs that favor the entrenching of discrimination. That the delusion of happiness caused by consumerism is the food of our ego. And the more our ego and our greed are, the greater the gap in wealth distribution, and we become more tolerant of discrimination and inequality. Omitting that by choosing this hedonistic life, that by accepting the customs without further, we are stealing opportunities to the weak and underprivileged.

Only those who have the chance to choose can break the barriers imposed on us by the system, allowing the underprivileged to recover their lost opportunities.

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The next revolution

(ES)

"Men do harm or for fear or for hatred."
The Prince.
Niccolò Machiavelli (1469 - 1527)

When we hear of the detention and torture of Palestinian children by the army of Israel.
When we hear of the torture and death of children at the hands of the secret services and the Syrian army.
When we hear of children raped and killed in DR Congo by armed militias.
When we hear of Iraqi children killed by American troops during the assault on a house.
When we hear of indiscriminate bombing of civilians.

A boy practises walking with his prosthesis at the ICRC orthopaedic centre in Kabul, October 2010
© Kate Holt/IRIN

What do we think?

We try to find answers to some facts that shudder us. What leads a human being to commit such atrocities? There is no rational answer, a human behavior so contemptible only can be explained by the spiral of hatred and the abyss of fear. Irrational feelings that dominate the actions of those who suffer them.

How much hatred and fear are necessary to torture and murder a child. To tie his hands and shoot to head. To rape a girl in front of their parents and siblings. Impossible to explain. Impossible to understand for those who have never felt that way. Acts that can not go unpunished.

When an innocent child becomes an enemy, the question is not why a soldier or a mercenary is capable of torturing and killing him without mercy. The question is how prejudice and propaganda have influenced to fuel and amplify the hatred of one people to another. Why unfounded fears and nonexistent threats are a powerful means of governments to convince the public opinion of the unavoidable destiny of a people. How the rootlessness and fear of children being recruited against their will as child soldiers get them to become monsters.

The spiral of hatred has no end, and fear is a black abyss of unfathomable depths. The fight against violence starts in each of us, overcoming our prejudices, not getting pulled by the propaganda, being critical of our governments, and above all, forgiving.

Throughout history, we have lived many revolutions, perhaps, the next revolution to come, also the most necessary, is the revolution that is born in each individual so to give it greater social and emotional awareness.


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Escape from fear

Source: Reuters
Recently arrived refugees from Somalia prepare to bury the body of Sahro at the Kobe refugee camp

(ES)

We all have fled and hidden sometime in life.

For many millions of people, fleeing is not an option, is a matter of survival. No choice, no alternatives. For them to escape is the only option and involves difficult decisions. They have lost everything, yet, very reluctantly, have a huge responsibility and power, which forces them to decide on the death of their children and their elders.
Decide who undertakes the journey through the desert for weeks with little food or water, exposed to attack by hyenas and armed militias. Deciding which child is more likely to arrive alive to the refugee camps. A superhuman power in the hands of a humble people. The same power that allows them to move forward after seeing their children and relatives to die on the road. And despite this immense power, can do nothing when, after the hardship of the road, having reached the goal, as in a dream, it vanishes in their hands the lives of children who managed to arrive. Exhausted, dying. The sad toll that pay those who have nothing and need everything.

Facing certain death, fear of losing their lives, is perhaps the greatest fear of human being.
Millions of people in the Horn of Africa are faced daily with their fears and harshly survive without losing hope of winning the battle to the death. That is their power. That is their lesson to the rest of the world.

People in rich countries also flee and hide from their fears. Fear of a reality too complex and hard to face it. The fear of losing their privileges. Fear of an empty and meaningless life. Escape those fears also requires making decisions, choosing among alternatives. Alternatives of life, not of death. Look the other way, build walls, imagining threats, build prejudices, consuming without measure. Human responses that increase the inequality gap. There is still hope, we are taught daily by millions of people living in poverty thresholds. Just have to make the right decisions.

Live without being ashamed of a privileged life. Die without regret not having done anything by the underprivileged.



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The system earns, they die

(ES)

The media repeat like a mantra that the UN has declared famine in different regions of Somalia. They talk of drought and rising prices of staple foods such as triggers, and armed conflict as an element that hinders access to humanitarian aid. But this monotonous chant lulls us until lose our sense of reality.

According to the FAO Cereal supply and demand brief published in July 2011, this UN agency indicates that although much improved prospects for cereal production and supply availabilities have exerted considerable downward pressure on international cereal prices, in June the FAO Cereal Price Index is 39 percent above the corresponding period last year.
FAO’s latest forecast for world cereal production in 2011 stands at nearly 2 313 million tones, 3.3 percent higher than in 2010.
World cereal utilization in 2011/12 is forecast to grow by 1.4 percent from 2010/11.
World cereal trade is forecast to remain close to the previous season’s level.
If grain production increases and demand remains almost the same compared to 2010, why the prices are 39% more expensive than a year ago? Would have to ask hedge funds that speculate on the price of grain in futures markets, financial operations that inflates as a bubble the prices of staple foods for the benefit of large institutional investors.

This increase in prices in international commodity markets have a devastating effect on poor countries that must import most of their food. However, companies such as Compact AS (Norway) and Nutriset SAS (France), continue to import products such as peanuts, milk, oil and sugar to produce therapeutic foods (RUTF) that are distributed in areas of famine without escalating basic food prices seem to affect their business.

According to UNICEF, in its Supply Annual Report 2010, the trading volume of nutritional supplies was $ 117 million. Stand out, among other products, 20,700 tons of therapeutic food (RUTF) purchased during the same year. The demand for this type of food has risen from 3 tons in 2000 to 20,700 tons in 2010, an increase of about 700,000%.
In 2010, UNICEF contracted supplies with Nutriset SAS worth of $ 45.8 million and Compact AS for $ 4.4 million.

As reported Nutriset SAS on its Web site, employs 120 workers, with a turnover of 52 million euros in 2009 and a total purchase budget of 25 million euros (milk, peanuts, oil, sugar, cardboard boxes, etc.). Its production capacity of therapeutic food (RUTF) is 31,000 tons (38,120 tons with a network of producers in different emerging countries). And despite the increased demand and rising raw material prices, leading providers of therapeutic food (RUTF) have reduced prices by 11%.

The ownership of land and natural resources is in the hands of large corporations, so local communities have no assets with which to trade, and also their subsistence economies become more vulnerable to adverse weather becoming more frequent. The occupation of productive land usually requires the displacement of communities that have traditionally lived and exploited its resources. The various militias fighting for control of territory are causing the movement of people, who leave their villages in search of safety. According to the EFA (Education For All) Global Monitoring Report, annual military spending of the rich countries is 1.5 billion USD and is 9 times greater than spending on international aid. Precisely the armament industry in these countries is the one that weapon these militias.

The inhabitants of the world's poorest countries have become the hostages of a system that excludes them, that robs them of their wealth, their hopes and opportunities. The system earns, they die. Every $ donated saves lives. Every $ of donor countries creates wealth to their business conglomerates. Every $ lent to poor countries brings benefits to the big banks. A perverse system that is both the cause and solution of the problem, and is designed to benefit economically to the powerful, the big banks and big industry.

It is paradoxical to think that arable land in countries that are starving is in the hands of large multinationals that export their agricultural production to industries in Europe, which process these raw materials into therapeutic food and then sell to UN agencies and NGOs that fight against hunger on the ground.

At the market everything has a price. And those who own nothing, have to pay with the lives of their children.

Saturn devouring one of his sons

Goya y Lucientes, Francisco de
1746 -1828

An asymmetrical world

© Serene Assir/MSF

(ES)

The threat of terrorism, after the attacks of 11-S, has served the governments of East and West to cut civil rights.
The economic crisis of recent years has served the governments, mainly Western, to cut social rights.

The war conflicts of this decade have been the pretext of the supposed war on terror, and the trace of death they have left, is the wick of the terror they want to fight.
The welfare cuts to fight deficit has mainly served to prevent the bankruptcy of big national banks, at the expense of subjecting states to credit pressure whose debt to the big banks barely will be able to afford.
The food crisis, announced in advance, is merely the prelude to what will happen in coming years on a larger scale resulting from the concentration of agricultural and livestock production, in short, the land owned by oligopolies speculating with prices in the market for staples.

Is this progress? Who benefits from the fear and hatred that comes from outside its borders? Who wins when states implement drastic adjustment measures to contain the budget deficit while central banks raise interest rates to contain inflation? When wealth is no longer tied to the means of production who is the greatest beneficiary of this bubble system?

Perhaps the main failing of this system is that the progress of recent decades has not been accompanied by a genuine social progress. West and some countries of the so-called emerging markets have achieved some levels of social and economic development without precedent in history, but forgetting that their wealth is based on an asymmetrical and unjust world. And now that Western prevalence is threatened, both economically and socially, fear makes us insensitive to the increased suffering of others.

When Western countries grew in prosperity, its citizens did not take advantage of the opportunity to move equally in social, demanding their governments greater effort in development cooperation. Now that the decline is unstoppable, fear paralyzes society and slows down any progress in the realm of social and cooperation. The progress has enriched Western and emerging countries at the expense of impoverishing the rest of the planet. Recession impoverishes us all, including the poorest, at the expense of enriching only a few

This social and economic climate makes that a terrible attack on Norway impacts us more than the humanitarian emergency of millions of people due to starvation in a remote part of East Africa. Again, another sign of the asymmetry of this world.
Any violent death is a tragedy, but is not violence a child death because of hunger?
It is in our hands to stop this violence, which will end when this world ceases to be asymmetric. Only social progress will be able to convert such asymmetry into virtue of all peoples.



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