Of Satans, Bush and financial dictatorship

Opinion

Eduardo Galeano

12:11pm Fri Nov 14th, 2003



Power feeds on fear. Without the demons that create it, it would lose its source of justification, impunity, and fortune. Its Satans - Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, and whoever appears next are in reality the geese that lay the golden egg: they create fear. What then do they deserve? Executioners to end their lives, or doctors to improve them?

Fear distracts and deflects attention. Were it not for the services it performs, the obvious would be plain for all to see: that power looks at itself in the mirror and incites fear by telling us what it sees. Danger, danger, shrieks the dangerous.

Patriotism is a privilege of those in power. When practised by those who are ruled, is it reduced to mere terrorism? To take two examples, the suicide attacks by desperate Palestinians evicted from their country, or the national resistance to the foreign forces now occupying Iraq: are these terrorism and nothing more?

A world upside down gives things names with an inverted logic. Power disguised negates common sense. If it weren't thus, could there be any doubt that the current government of Israel is practising terrorism, state terrorism, and spreading madness?