The Beginning of Global Order?

Pablo Ouziel

Posted Jun 10, 2008      •Permalink      • Printer-Friendly Version
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The Beginning of Global Order?

By Pablo Ouziel

We can continue to believe our politicians as they echo messages of
stability and order around our planet, and we can continue to feed off the
BBC or the New York Times to get an insight into the normality of the global
situation, but sooner or later, the collapse of our economies is going to
affect us directly by hitting our pockets, and then perhaps we will be ready
to act. Hopefully, against those politicians and global capitalists who are
infecting our daily life by bringing a painful and miserable reality to the
majority of humanity.

Yesterday, as I drove on the motorway towards Barcelona, I was overcome with
tears. Lining the roads were truckers slowing the traffic, waving banners
and making noise to be heard in order to be understood, while the rest of
the drivers in their cars were feeling annoyed at the inconvenience of a
minority obstructing their daily routine. The radio was repeating negative
messages about the truckers, the politicians were repeating over and over
again that these people were a minority, and that the rest of us should not
worry, because they would not achieve the goal of disrupting the flow of
petrol or the arrival of goods from one point to another.

As this was happening in Spain, discontented truckers in different points of
the planet were also complaining. Their complain was a simple one,  “We can
no longer afford to feed our families”. Yet, solidarity is running so short
these days, that isolated groups get affected by the global economic
situation, while the rest of us continue our routine without paying much
attention to their pleas.  What people are failing to see, is the connection
between the truckers today, the fishermen a few weeks ago, the homeowners
losing their homes, and the global revolts because of rising food prices.
The people being affected directly are giving us a warning of things to
come, and the only way this can be reversed, is if we group together and
begin to show support to those who are feeling the pain right now.

We have not been smart enough as a collective of global citizens to
understand that we are being taken on a ride, that affected groups are being
kept isolated by the magic wand of the mainstream media regurgitating the
propagandistic message of the ruling elite. Everyday, the global situation
is getting worse. As strikes are on the rise and unemployment is increasing,
we must be alert, we must understand what is happening. The elites will
continue to keep us divided, because divided is how they can control us, but
we must be smarter than them and understand that the only strength we have
against their policies, is the collective strength of united discontent.

When will we understand that our politicians are lying to us? Will we ever
understand that the mainstream media is not democratic and that the police
are there to defend the interests of the wealthy? One can see clearly whose
interest the police serve when those who protest and strike have guns
pointed at them. Only a few years ago, Argentineans were going to the bank
to retrieve their money, and instead of happy clerks, they found hostile
policemen telling them to go away. Their money was not theirs anymore, it
was gone. Yet, the owners of the banks never lost anything, all their money
was out of the country, and once that country had collapsed, they came back
again with smiles buying things cheap. I often come cross Argentineans, and
frequently they tell me that a global ³corralito² is what is about to
happen. The sad thing is that I do not need their wisdom to understand that,
because I am seeing it with my own eyes. Friends are losing their homes,
others are losing their jobs, oil prices are making life hard for those
close to me who have to commute everyday, and the hopelessness of the
situation is slowly breaking the fabric of the community in which I live.

Because of the internet, I am able to communicate with lots of people around
the world, and everything which I see around me, many in other places are
seeing around them. So, while bankers and politicians speak of inflation
being under control, recession being an illusion, and economic fundamentals
being strong, I am led to believe that in their world —wherever that is
—they are not exposed to reality. Yet the truth is, that they know the
reality much better than I do, they have access to information which I will
only see years from now, when hopefully they are punished for their crimes
against humanity.

Going back to those truckers whom I saw furious yesterday on the motorway,
people must begin to see that they were not obstructing normality, but
rather pointing out an abnormality which global citizens must unite to
correct. Yesterday, we should have all stopped our cars in support of the
truckers, because by supporting the truckers we would be supporting
ourselves. We should have demanded that CEOs of oil companies stop receiving
multimillion dollar salaries, we should have demanded that our governments
implement measures to limit the rising prices of oil, we should have
ultimately asked that our governments seize all their hostilities against
the oil producing countries, many of those currently in the Middle East.

The last time oil prices skyrocketed was in 1973 when the members of
Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries OAPEC, announced, as a
result of the ongoing Yom Kippur War, that they would no longer ship oil to
nations that had supported Israel in its conflict with Syria and Egypt. What
a coincidence that oil prices are rising today, as the West is on a rampage
against the Arab world, supporting the slaughter of the people in Gaza,
supporting the destruction of Iraq and Afghanistan, and showing an ever
growing hostility towards Iran.

We must begin to pave the path to peace in order to gain global stability,
and that must be done by setting measures to stop speculators from
benefiting from the misery of others, by punishing corrupt politicians, and
by collectively understanding that bankers are rich because we have placed
our money in their hands. Ultimately, unless we begin to see the world as a
whole, in which things are truly interconnected, our governments will
continue their hostilities, oil prices will keep on rising, and when the
time comes for us to complain, we will be faced with the guns of the police
whom we have helped to create with the payment of our taxes. The only
positive thing coming out of this chaos, is that we are no longer able to
avoid facing reality, and soon after this social Tsunami which has begun to
unravel is over, we will be faced with a true opportunity to collectively
construct global order.

Pablo Ouziel is a sociologist and freelance writer

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