Klaus Hart Brasilientexte

http://www.adital.com.br/site/noticia.asp?lang=PT&cod=53929

NEBUCHADNEZZER’S DREAMThe rich Western countries, whose democracy is based merely on the power of money, have interests but lack principles. They accuse Cuba of being a dictatorship that does not respect human rights because they cannot accept the socialist character of the Revolution which for over 50 years has resisted the aggressions of the greatest economic and bellicose empire in the history of humanity.However they sing China’s praises and turn a blind eye to a regime of proslavery and cheap labour which produces everything that in the West would requires higher salaries and would reduce the profit margin of Western businesses. Innumerable products sold in our shops, in spite of having Western trademarks, are “Made in China”. For governments such as those of USA, the United Kingdom, France and Germany, the fact that a dictator like Hosni Mubarak held power in Egypt for 30 years was of no importance at all as long as it served their geopolitical interests in an explosive region. What John Foster Dulles said of dictator Anastasio Somoza of Nicaragua, served equally for Mubarak: “He is the son of a b…. but he is our son of a b….”With their eye on petroleum, Western governments always backed tyrannical governments in the Arab world. Business is business, principles apart. Which of the European powers broke off with any of the many military dictatorships which devastated Latin America in the 1960s and 1970s?The West never bothered about the lack of periodic elections in Arab countries, the oppression of women, the persecution of homosexuals or the opulent luxury of governors contrasting the poverty of most of the population. How many African dictators fill the coffers of European banks?The USA are at present like the king in Hans Christian Andersen’s fairy tale: naked, bereft of its supposedly democratic arrogance, of its imperial despotism. What is worse, placed between a rock and a hard place, if Mubarak had remained, the White House would be sustaining a dictatorship and disrespecting the Egyptian peoples’ clamour. Now that he has gone, there is the risk of Egypt becoming, like Iran, an Islamic nation, hostile to Israel and to Western aims.The Bible tells that the prophet Daniel (2:31-36) was called on to interpret a dream which disturbed King Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon: “It was a very large and exceedingly bright statue, terrifying in appearance as it stood before Your Majesty. The head was of solid gold, its chest and arms were silver, its belly and thighs of bronze, the legs iron and its feet partly iron and partly clay. While Your Majesty looked at the statue a stone which was hewn from a mountain without a hand being put to it, struck its iron and clay feet, breaking them in pieces. The iron, clay, bronze, silver and gold all crumbled at once, fine as the chaff on the threshing floor in summer and the wind blew them away without leaving a trace. But the stone that struck the statue became a great mountain and filled the whole earth.”[1] <#_ftn1>The stone, in the case of the Arab world, is the popular desire for democracy understood as social justice and peace. What does an Iraqi think when he sees his country dominated for years by Western troops who treat the inhabitants like the dregs of humanity? What does an Afghan think when he sees Western aircraft bombing villages, killing children, women and the elderly with the excuse that his country is a Taliban refuge?The stone is the religious culture, Moslem, which spreads in those countries and has nothing to do with the supposed Christianity of the West. In the name of God and of Jesus, the West subjugated Africa, Asia and Latin America for centuries. It enslaved the inhabitants, it violently stole riches, transferred archaeological treasures to Europe like the Rosetta Stone – which sits in the British Museum – a fragment of a granodiorite stone from Ancient Egypt whose writings were crucial for the modern understanding of Egyptian hieroglyphics. Its inscription registers a decree promulgated in 196 BC in the city of Memphis in the name of King Ptolemy V.Islamic thought does not make a distinction between the frontiers of religion and politics. One must be monitored by the other. Religious authority is seen as it was in the medieval West, as the guardian of political power.In this conjuncture, the West only offers one response: arms, wars, occupations, bribery and dictatorships, for it is not capable of entering interreligious dialogue, of recognising the right of those peoples to self determination, of being led by principles and not by the obsessive voracity of market  profits.If Islamic fundamentalism imbues in young people the mystique of martyrdom which produces a form of uncontrollable terrorism, the fundamentalism of the market imbues Westerners with the conviction that churches and mosques should give way to shopping centres, temples of consumerism and diminishment of the Earthly paradise.Here is the question being asked at the World Social Forum in Dakar this week and which demands an urgent response: Is another world possible?*Frei Betto is a writer, author of “La Mosca Azul – reflexao sobre o poder no Brasil” (The Blue Fly – a reflection on power in Brazil) (Ocean Sur).

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http://www.hart-brasilientexte.de/2009/03/09/das-menschenrecht-auf-personliche-sicherheit-unter-lula-die-deutsche-botschaft-in-brasilia-informiert/