Danger

By Eduardo Galeano

Power feeds on fear. Without the demons it creates, it would lose

its sources of justification, impunity and fortune. Its satans -- Bin

Laden, Saddam Hussein or the next ones to appear -- work, in fact,

like hens with golden eggs: they lay fear. What best to send them?

Hangmen to execute them or doctors to care for them?

Fear distracts and draws away attention. If not for the services it

lends, the evident would be left as evidence: in reality power looks

at the mirror and frightens us by telling us what it sees there.

Danger, danger, cries the dangerous.

Patriotism is a privilege of the rulers. When they enforce their

rules, do they reduce terrorism at all? By way of example, are the

Palestinians, forced out of their own country into desperate acts of

suicide or the attacks of the national resistance against foreign

forces that occupy Iraq terrorist acts and nothing more?

The upside-down world names everything in reverse. Masked power

denies common sense.

If this weren't the case, is there a shadow of doubt that the

present government of Israel practices

terrorism, state terrorism, and spreads madness? The more that

government devours more and more land and inflicts more humiliation

on the Palestinian people, the more criminal responses it generates.

And those attacks, which kill innocent people, serve as a pretext to

kill more innocent people and to commit greater atrocities.

If there is any common sense left in the world it would be

incredible that Ariel Sharon could do what he does with absolute

impunity, and as if it were a normal thing: invade and besiege

foreign territory; raise a wall that dwarfs that of the Berlin Wall

of sad memory so as to shield what he has stolen; publicly announce

that he will assassinate Yasser Arafat, a head of state,

democratically elected by his people; and bomb Syria with the full

knowledge that the United States would veto, as always, any United

Nations Security Council condemnation.

It so happens that in this world nations and peoples have values

estimated at the Stock Exchange and their value depends on the

geography of power.

How many innocent people were blown to pieces in this last war in

Iraq? The victors haven't had time to count their victims, civilians

who existed and no longer exist, because they have been busy looking

for weapons of mass destruction that didn't exist nor exist.

And so there are no official figures. The most serious unofficial

estimates, however, have put the number at no less than seven

thousand seven hundred civilian deaths, many of those children, women

and the elderly. How much are these lives worth? In proportion to the

population, the number of slaughtered Iraqis would be the equivalent

of ninety four thousand North Americans. What would have happened if

the invading country were the invaded? The North American victims of

such a butchery would continue being the perpetual theme of the mass

media. The Iraqi victims, on the other hand, are worth nothing but

silence.

It's well known that theft was the only motive for this treacherous,

premeditated slaughter. But the serial killers continue saying that

they did what they did in self defense, and they're neither repentant

nor prisoners. Crime pays: from the summits of power they threaten the

world with new campaigns, lying of dangers, inventing enemies and

sowing panic.

President Bush loves to cite the Apocalypse, but it would be more

practical if he cited the news, which is more current and says more

or less the same thing.

That hair-raising biblical text, a prophecy told in times past, was

rather exaggerated and mistaken in the way of numbers but it should

be acknowledged that the news of today looks a lot like it. The

Apocalypse said, "Beside the great Euphrates a third of mankind was

killed by fire, smoke and sulphur." And it also said, " A third part

of the earth was burned up, a third part of the trees were burned,

all green grass was burned up. A third part of the creatures of the

sea perished. Many people died from the waters of the river which had

turned bitter."

The author, Saint John, or whoever he was, attributed these

catastrophes to divine wrath. He had never heard anything about smart

bombs nor carbon dioxide nor acid rain nor chemical pesticides nor

radioactive waste. Nor could he imagine a consumer society or the

technology of devastation that would be more terrible than the anger

of God.

Bombs against people, bombs against nature. And the bombs of money?

What would this model of world enemy against the world be without the

financial wars?

In more than a half century of existence the World Bank and the

International Monetary Fund have exterminated a quantity of persons

infinitely greater than all the terrorist organizations that have

ever been or now are in the world. These two organizations have

contributed, in a powerful way, to making the world the way it is.

Now this world, which boils with indignation, frightens its authors.

"The World Bank, apostle of privatization, suffers a crisis of

faith," The Wall Street Journal comments. In a recent report, the

Bank discovers that the privatization of public services, which its

functionaries have imposed, and continue to impose, upon the weaker

countries, isn't exactly manna from heaven, especially for those poor

abandoned to their fates. Alarmed by the consequences of their acts,

the Bank says that now the poor will have to be consulted and they

"will have to supervise private investments," although they don't say

exactly how this little task should be realized. And the poor also

worry the IMF, which has spent its life strangling them: "It's

crucial to diminish social equalities," concludes the director of the

Fund, Horst Kohler, after pondering the issue.

The poor don't know how to express their gratitude for such

nobility.

These organizations who exercise a financial dictatorship on the

democratic order, have no democrats within them; in the Fund five

countries decide everything; in the Bank, seven. The others have no

clout.

Nor is the commercial dictatorship democratic. In the World Trade

Organization there is never a vote, although the vote is foreseen in

the statutes. The colonial organization of the planet would run a

risk if the poor countries, comprising the overwhelming majority,

could vote. They are invited to the banquet -- to be eaten.

National dignity is an unprofitable activity condemned to disappear,

like public property, in the underdeveloped world. But when the

dignities gather together, it's another story. This happened in

Cancún recently in the meeting of the WTO: the disparaged, disdained

nations united in a common front for the first time after so many

years of isolation and fear. And the meeting, called, as usual, so

that the majority might exercise its right to obey, failed.

It's happening everywhere: It turns out that power is not as

powerful as it says it is.

(translation by Clifton Ross)