Madhouse
By Eduardo Galeano
Translated by Frank Berinstein
Times of fright. The world lives in a state of terror, and the terror
disguises itself: it claims to be the work of Saddam Hussein, an actor
already very tired of working as the enemy, or Osama Bin Laden,
professional intimidator.
But the real author of the planetary panic is called the Market. This
character has nothing to do with that place in the neighborhood were one
goes for fruits and vegetables. It is an almighty terrorist without a face
that it is everywhere, like God, and believes to be, like God, eternal. Its
many interpreters announce: "The Market is nervous", and warn us: "Do not
irritate the market".
Its thick criminal record makes it fearsome. It has spent its life stealing
food, assassinating jobs, kidnapping countries and fabricating wars.
To sell its wars the market sows fear. Fear creates a climate. The
television is in charge of making the towers fall down every day. What is
left of the Anthrax panic? Not only an official investigation that found
out very little about those lethal letters: it also left a spectacular
military budget increase for the USA. And the millions that the country
spends on the death industry is not just chicken feed. Barely a month and a
half of those expenses would be enough to end misery in the world, if the
numbers of the United Nations do not lie.
Each time the Market gives the order, the red light alarm blinks in the
danger metering machine; the machine changes all suspicion into evidence.
The preventative wars kill just in case, not for the evidence. Now it is
the turn of Irak. Again the country that has been condemned has been
punished. The dead would comprehend: Irak has the second largest oil
reserve in the world, which is just what the Market needs to assure
combustibles for the wasteful consumption society.
Mirror, mirror: Who is the most feared? The imperial powers monopolize, by
natural right, weapons of mass destruction.
In the times of the conquest of the Americas, when what is now called the
Global Market was born, smallpox and flu killed far more indigenous people
than the sword and the harquebus. The success of the European invasion had
bacteria and viruses to thank. Centuries later, those providential allies
were converted into war weapons by the world powers. A handful of those
countries monopolize the biological arsenal. A couple of decades ago, the
USA allowed Saddam Hussein to launch epidemic bombs against the Kurds, when
he was pampered by the West and the Kurds were receiving bad press, but
those bacteriological weapons were made with stock bought from a company in
Rockville, Maryland.
In military matters as in everything else the Market preaches freedom, but
it does not like the slightest competition. Saddam Hussein is very scary.
The world supply is concentrated in the hands of a few in the name of
universal security. The world shivers. Tremendous threat: Iraq could use
bacteriological weapons again; even worse, they could have nuclear weapons
sometime. Humanity cannot allow that danger, proclaims the dangerous
President of the only country that has used nuclear weapons to assassinate
a civilian population. Could it be that it was Iraq who exterminated the
elderly, women and children in Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
Millenium landscape:
- People do not know whether tomorrow they will be able to find something
to eat, or whether they will lose their roofs, or how will they survive if
they get sick or experience an accident; - People do not know whether
tomorrow they will lose their jobs, or if they will be forced to work
double in exchange for half, or if their pensions will be eaten by the
wolfs in the stock market or by the inflation mice; - Citizens who do not
know if they will be assaulted around the corner, or if their houses will
be emptied, or if someone desperate will stick a knife into their bellies;
- Peasants who do not know if tomorrow they will have land to work and
fisherman who do not know if they will find rivers or seas that are not yet
poisoned; - People and countries that do not know how they will pay their
debts multiplied by usury.
Are these daily terrors the work of Al Qaeda?
The economy commits transgressions that are not published in the
newspapers: every minute 12 children die of hunger. In the world terrorist
organization that the military power guards against, there are one thousand
millions with chronic hunger and six hundred million overweight.
Strong currency, fragile life: Ecuador and El Salvador have adopted the
dollar as their national currency, but the population emigrates. Never have
those countries produced so much poverty and so many immigrants. The sale
of human flesh abroad generates loss of roots, sadness and currency. The
Ecuadorian people forced to look for work elsewhere have sent to their
country, in 2001, a sum on money higher than the banana, shrimp, tuna,
coffee and cacao crops combined.
Uruguay and Argentina also expel their young sons and daughters. The
immigrants, grandchildren of immigrants, leave behind destroyed families
and memories that hurt. "Doctor, my soul has been broken": in which
hospital can that be cured? In Argentina, a Television program offers the
most sought after prize: a job. The lineups are very long. The program
chooses the candidates and the public votes. The one who gets the job is
the one who sheds the most tears and makes the most people cry. Sony
Pictures is selling the successful formula all over the world.
Which job? Whichever. For how much? For whatever it be. The desperation of
those looking for work and the anguish of those afraid of losing it oblige
them to accept the unacceptable. The "Wal-Mart model" is imposed all over
the world. The number one company in the USA forbids unions and stretches
the hours without paid overtime. The Market exports its lucrative example.
The more desperate the nations are, the easier it if to convert labor right
into paper obscured by water.
And it becomes easier to sacrifice other rights as well. The fathers of
chaos sell the order. Poverty and unemployment multiply delinquency,
disseminating panic, and in this hot soup the worst blossoms. The
Argentinean militaries, who know a lot about crimes, are being invited to
fight crime: please come save us from delinquency, shouts Carlos Menem, an
employee of the Market who knows a lot about delinquency because he
exercised it when he was President.
Very low cost, big profits, zero control: an oil vessel splits in half and
a deadly black tide attacks the coast of Galicia and beyond.
The most profitable business in the world generates fortunes and "natural"
disasters. The poisonous gasses that oil spews into the air are the main
cause of the hole in the ozone layer that it is already as big as the USA
and the climatic craziness. In Ethiopia and other African countries,
drought is condemning millions of people to the worst famine of the last 20
years; meanwhile Germany and other European countries have been suffering
floods that are the worse catastrophe of the last 50 years.
Oil generates wars as well. Poor Iraq.
http://www.infoshop.org/inews/stories.php?story=03/01/21/6557980
