PEACEFUL REVOLUTION
Somewhere I read that the English language had many substantive realities that did not express but aspirations to realities. I refer to terms like "happiness", "wisdom" or "justice."
I often have wondered if the word 'peace' belongs in this kind of words. Or, put another way: after reviewing the history of humanity century after century, a history of wars and wars on each more terrible than before, I wonder if the concept of peace itself is not an illusion impossible, an illusion or, at most, the length of time between two wars.
In the preface of "Celestina, Fernando de Rojas, quoting Heraclitus and especially Petrarch, explains that" everything must be raised by way of race or battle "and that the stars, animals and human beings are in constant war.
true that nature teaches us how every animal struggle for survival of their own and often kills puppies to ensure their maintenance. True that each species has its own weapons and attack strategies or defensive, but in the animal kingdom, unlike what happens with humans, there is no greed or ambition. Even among the industrious ants, which in good time stored patiently for the long winter, there is this dark passion to possess more than necessary, as harmony prevails between them and the good of each is the good of the community.
The humanist Luis Vives argued strongly that "anyone who has more than you need is a thief." The problem is that the men we are creating new needs constantly. My trips to third world nations have taught me that you can live with very little, almost nothing, and therefore are less fortunate. Would go further: these people, always with a smile on the lips, those human beings who have only the essentials, are closer to the happiness that we, the Epulone, the sick in the feast of this world. And of course: our fill, are supported by their deprivation and exploitation. The history of mankind is the history of abuse of some men over others and the brutal colonialism which we now suffer is just the latest horror, the last link in the chain giant iniquities and excesses.
When I had only eight or ten years, this country was much poorer, but solidarity among the English people then would be ashamed to now. The wealth corrupts our spirits and makes us think we are entitled to everything, even to trample on others. And human desires, as the barrel of Danaides have no background.
In schools we are taught to respect the name of Alexander the Great, Caesar, that of Charles V and so many others whose ambitions led to the deaths of thousands and thousands of people. I find great books "The Iliad", "The Aeneid", "The Song of Roland" and "The Poem of the Cid", but all involve a glorification of war. And if we examine the current film and television will check that violence is the prime ingredient of most programs. So naive, I assumed the position that, in all fairness, every day is winning the women in our society, would reduce or banish this leprosy of our world, but the numerous "iron ladies" of contemporary politics - Margaret Thatcher, Angela Merkel, Condoleezza Rice, Sarah Palin, etc. .- I have made it clear that I was wrong. The ambition and indifference to human frailty not know gender or age limits.
Few filmmakers have analyzed with such expertise as Sam Peckimpach the issue of violence. His film "The Wild Bunch" opens with images of children who enjoy burning a scorpion. In many parts of the entertainment world is a bloody cockfights, dog or even men. How can boxing be considered a sport? How can people pay to see two people being destroyed? And if I go back on the history, what horrors could not count? Suffice read "War of Granada" Hurtado de Mendoza the ruling applied to Aben Aboo, the last King of the Moors, who took the body apart and filled with straw for the guys they played with him, maintaining that yes, in the eyes of everyone in the Granada Plaza Bib-Rambla, the head in a cage for public warning .
In the book he wrote Jacques de Coutre to account for his own life and his adventures, read, for example, pages like this where everything we say no story or novel, but it really happened:
"I also saw Hazer send frying several justices to eight girls aged twenty eight years each, and together with an old and a one-eyed man. It was pitiful sight. First brought to each eye, then they flayed the hands and fingernails pulled; dalli in a while they cut a piece of pork loin and put it in their own mouths. After the freyeron little by little each in its pan to penassen slowly to die. "
Apparently, the strong wind of this torment was that one of the girls, not knowing what he did, gave the key of the old royal treasury.
The English conquest of America no shortage of other examples of extreme cruelty. as those atrocities that López de Gomara tells of Basque Núñez de Balboa and his mastiff dogs that tore apart the Indians before burning, especially those who practiced sodomy. Interestingly, the historian has left us even the names of two of those ferocious dogs who earned their pay as if they were soldiers and Leoncillo Becerrillo.
And closer in time we remember the English massacre by the army of Abdel Krim in Monte Arruit where their bodies were found with their own genitals in their mouths or those of the Jews by the Nazis, or those of the Palestinians by the Israeli army. As we can see, the torture at Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo are just some of the last chapters of human iniquity.
Is it inherent in man's cruelty? I think yes, the scene before burning children referred to the scorpion comes to tell us. But the greatness of being a man or a woman lies precisely in defeating some of the negative instincts that nest within. To be yourself need to be a winner yourself. But just in private and in public there are many easy ways that lead us to violence.
During the long period necessarily suffered in the military academy of Segovia, every morning I stopped at a Latin maxim that brazen letters stood on a wall: SI VIS PACEM para bellum . "If you want peace, prepare for war", this has been the idea that has dominated humanity century after century: peace is possible only if we are afraid. The larger our arsenal, safer we will be. The so-called Cold War, for example, was not open warfare through the balance of forces or the magnitude of Soviet and American arsenals. And now Iran insists on getting nuclear weapons not to suffer a fate similar to that suffered by Iraq. All this seems terrible, but is there another possible view of things?
When the Berlin Wall fell and the communist bloc crumbled, the eyes of all good people were attentive, expectant, hopeful, but not soon see a more horror even stronger than that of the Cold War neo-capitalism. He was born a new universal rule language as hypocritical as all past and with a purpose identical: to subdue the individual, make a slave of a small elite.
Politicians of all time have filled the mouth with big words, but its sole purpose is to stay as foreman of this grand plantation full of slaves who is and has been world forever.
I school teacher and government orders imposed on us the conclusion of a party called "The day of peace." Students and teachers recite poems allude to it, are released white balloons and even pigeons can hear songs of peace known as John Lenon ... And yet the same government that demands the conclusion of the peace party, sells weapons sometimes even land mines to third world countries, countries often do not respect human rights, and in turn buy more weapons to governments of other nations of hypocrisy no less sooty.
The very word "democracy", which is always in the mouth of any politician today is a big lie. This summer I traveled to India where millions of people survive or sobremueren among mountains of garbage and pools of black filth. Here today and gone tomorrow, those are their territories. They are born, eat, reproduce, defecate, dream and die. No possibilities for education or medical care, most of them do not reach the age of eight. Who has listed all these children of poverty? How many of those who reach the age of majority turnout? How does the democratic government of India who are born and who die if many of them do not even have a shack? I have been shivering from hunger, dying, with no other desire since proceeding to another incarnation, and have seen the sheikhs and billionaires in the gardens of the Taj Mahal Palace. And I know that this is one of the nations with emerging economies to the point of being she who bought half the gold the Bank of Spain only a month before the outbreak of the crisis now plaguing the planet. However, the Indian government's social spending is not seen by any party.
But we come to the civilized Europe or the United States. Our perfect democracies also seem papier-mâché. Political parties of left and right are the arms of one body, the great capital, and win the one or the other depends not just what the country wants or needs but the money invested in the campaign: who else has can trick even better.
Media and its extraordinary development in the twentieth century and the twenty-first so far have been a potent weapon used by politicians for their purposes. It is pathetic to discover the struggle for control of such media and try to make us see how popular and sympathetic to those characters whose views have no restrictions other than those of his ambition. It is curious to observe them smiling and confident in international economic forums, always in collusion with the bankers. There is shared misery or prosperity of the kingdoms of this world while in the streets, police, new Praetorian, beat and sometimes kill some young people who shout against globalization and against some of its horrors as the fuel use seeds which alleviated some of the famine in poor countries.
But the media, which could serve to bring culture to the people, are also used for the dumbing down of the masses, to get, in short, that individuals do not have a critical spirit.
True democracy was not possible either in the small states of ancient Greece, for in them was slavery. In the modern era reinvented for their own purposes the wily England, also known export, but make no mistake: this system does not guarantee individual freedom is neither equal, just based on appearances of freedom. People think they have decision-making power to choose between A and B, but the alphabet has many other letters. That is, voters believe they are choosing their own choice, but previously they have been brainwashed.
We say that this is the best possible regime. Of course, I prefer to all dictatorships, but do not we face another more subtle way of dictatorship? Why close to the idea that no other system can? Why not try to invent or build? Look beyond the ideology of our own time. A new world order can be in doors.
So far I have spoken of the horror, the greed of the powerful, the seed of cruelty that exists inside of people and need to win, of monstrosity unbridled capitalism and globalization ... but it all now discover a new perspective.
When the then Prime Minister of Spain was determined to get us into the Iraq war, a war that cost is clearly unfair and is still costing many thousands of lives (a glaring example of abuse of some powerful nations on the weaker), when newspapers around the world appeared a photograph of the three leaders-American, English and English, in the Azores, all the good people of our country took to the streets to protest angrily. And the same was true in almost every country in the world. I was just one of the protesters who shouted anti-war at that crucial historical moment. And I saw the workers went hand in hand of the priests and nuns and students attached to the elderly. There existed no left nor right, but collective solidarity. It was the largest human tide of memory and a the most exciting experiences of my life. But, why? "I've often wondered.
simply because he was attending, I now know with certainty to the birth of a new society governed by supranational solidarity. It was the first sign or glimpse of something wonderful that is still in the future: globalization as something positive. The utopia of many philanthropists through the centuries now reached overtones of reality precisely in reaction to the abuse of the powerful. It was possible other matters chaired by the fraternity, that daughter the revolution is always forgotten and passed over.
In the days before World War II, Leonard Woolf, with true insight, declared that "the key threat to civilization was not so much in the atrocity of the barbarians as the disunity among civilized people. " Today that disunity is disappearing.
few months ago, when Barack Obama was proclaimed president of the United States, millions and millions of people celebrated it with hope for a better world. There it was again the crowd willing to gamble on solidarity, tolerance and peace. But unfortunately, this time all wrong. Politicians, whether they represent the right or left, can never be the solution. And they can not be simply because they are mortgaged to those who financed his election campaign, or with ferocious capitalism. President Obama can go from here to there full of beautiful words and gestures of good will, but it will not fix anything. Regarding the Middle East problem, for example, you can not stop West Bank settlements and much less get the creation of two states. You can not do it because Israel (at least eighty percent of the Israelites with voting rights) is not interested. And, of course, Israel has the full support of the global leaders of the capitalist system: those anonymous characters who constitute the executive council of the International Monetary Fund.
No! A politician can never be the solution since it is only an overseer of the true masters.
which alone can impose a new world order based in the ideals of the French Revolution (equality, liberty and fraternity) are individuals or more specifically the sum of individuals. Marx and asked the proletarians of all nations to get together, but the fall of communist regimes we now learn the lesson. Not only is it necessary to unite but also prevent any dictatorial subjection and prevent it without using violence. I'm talking about a peaceful revolution. Gandhi showed us the way: passive resistance. Many abuses can be corrected, for example, boycotting the use of products! How wonderful to have Internet according to the multitudes!
a peace imposed by force has no future. How long was, in fact, the Augustan peace? How many generations will be needed in Gaza or the Balkans or in Iraq to turn off the hate?
I am optimistic because I see that every day a growing number of those committed to the peaceful revolution oenegés increase and increasingly to big business will become more their manipulation and concealment difficult for new voices appearing constantly denouncing and new bold that given the global economic forums they are drawn by the new praetorian.
must possess critical thinking and teach others to have it and everyone can do much from his position in society. He who is a teacher, their students will, which is working with his colleagues, the journalist, being faithful to the truth ... critical spirit and solidarity: these are the pillars that should settle the peaceful revolution, a revolution that has magnificent precursors such as Noam Chomsky and Ernesto Sabato, a revolution that is already up and nobody can stop him.
FERNANDO DE VILLENA
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| Fernando de Villena |
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