Max’s Way

Intervention in Libya? Hell yes!

To everyone out there who have voiced their opposition to the US/ French/ Brits/ Nato backed intervention in Libya, I ask them to please, think of the outcome of a doing nothing policy would have been to the Libyan rebels.

If some of you were shocked by the retaliation against the Kurdish population of Iraq after the first Gulf War, Gaddafi would have done worst had he not been stopped in his counter-offensive. Can anyone imagine the human tragedy that has been taking place there? Doing nothing would have been similar to being complicit to these murders. Yes, the process by which the UN voted on a resolution to protect civilians should have occurred sooner. Yes, a new war is not what is needed and the risk of the conflict to stall and become another Lebanon or Somalia is real. But at this point, the urgency to protect civilians is bigger than the risks. Gaddafi will take no prisoner and if some have already forgotten, let’s remind ourselves what happened to the Kurdish population after the failed attempt to remove Saddam Hussein after the first Gulf War. Let remember the horrible end of thousands of refugees being bombed while fleeing the battle fields in Spain during the civil war and in western Europe.

Things are really the way they are

There is tremendous pressure on this world and suffice to say, it has started a reaction, reviving a force few believed it could rise again. There has been very few times when on every continent a chain reaction of this magnitude has been felt. Who would have guessed that popular movements of a pacific nature would have stumbled not one, but two icons of the palace of tyranny? Even today most politicians still believe a military threat is more important to attend to than the depletion of our resources and freedom. A war the people of the world have not wanted and though have borne for so long without a clause fight has been going on for a very long time. Lost causes were we led to believe. Imagine : a system built as far away as the time resources became a way to profit, perfected crises after crises in which a few actors control the faith of the world. A system tirelessly trying to prevent the mean to the profit to ask for its share of the wealth it has created. We are to believe that investment is only measurable in terms of assets and these assets are the numbers represented at the end of corporations’ annual reports. That the only type of wealth that counts is the one that can be monetized. This has been the game for longer than one can remember. The game has been to oppress the people more and more as to keep it a controllable mean to the production of wealth. To replace its desire to choose its way, the system has injected fear, always more sophisticated and invasive.

What is happening today is perhaps the beginning of a period bigger than decolonization and our social revolution together. Happening at once. Perhaps we are witnessing the rise of the chained giant. I know, I do sound like a communist, but you’d be wrong to believe this. I am a capitalist, but one that do not believe capital should be above people and the environment. So the movements that have now grown strong enough can shake the established world. What has been happening before our eyes is a sad example of a dreadful apathy. Gee, the materialistic dream is a tough one to repeal. A crime against nature and an attempt to strip us from our dignity. Dignity is a very faithful reflection of our human condition.We have been tolerating from our leaders the worst lies and the bloodiest attack on our freedom, in exchange of a dream of a dream. We understand so much better human nature that we are ready to feel compassionate for a dying child in Africa but blind to the causes of its faith. Should we stop buying Diamonds until producing regions are no longer threaten by a genocide? Should we keep watching pro-democracy and freedom fighters’ attempts at rescuing their dignity or should we join them, pacifically but determined?

The answer is yes, let’s join them.

Overdue

Been very long nights, and days, bringing a bit of sanity in this part of the World. Opinions fly so high and low, change over a beer or tea, but here I go, face to face, in an attempt to convince you that what you’ve been told is not necessarily what it is, and perhaps what one wants you want to believe. The greatest enemy of knowldge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge. But even before starting to question what we hear and eat, we might want to start asking ourselves what we want. And then what price we want to pay to keep it the way we want it …