However, there is hope. Each of these murderous mechanisms is man-made and can be broken by man. Kant wrote: "The cruelty inflicted on another, destroys humanity in me." This awareness is what we have to awaken in the ruling countries.
Who will then manage that?
You! I. We. There is no impotence in a democracy. The constitution gives us all the weapons in our hands. Food speculation tomorrow may be stopped by law. Bioethanol can be banned tomorrow. The Federal Minister of Finance may be required to push for a different policy in the IMF.
However, you need to win over the majority.
Che Guevara said, also the strongest walls fall when they crack. Peasant movements from Bolivia to the Philippines get their land back, even if nobody here takes any notice of it. And in Europe too people are moving.
You're joking.
Civil society is becoming stronger. Take the Attac movement. Twelve years ago, the German branch was established to enforce the tax on financial transactions. Today, that is in the German government's program. If that is not a crack in the wall! The French writer Georges Bernanos once said: "God has no other hands than ours."
God? Are you religious?
I reply with a quote, because you can hide well behind others. Victor Hugo said: "I hate all churches, I love people, I believe in God." That's how I also see it. I can not imagine that after death there is nothing, with all the love and all the self-sacrifice that people are capable of.
You have fought as a parliamentarian against the Swiss banks, as a UN rapporteur aiding the hungry, as an author reaching millions of readers and speaking from 1000 stages. Has all this made ??the world somewhat better?
We should be careful not to ask that question. I hope so, I do not know. We don't know the fruit of the trees that we plant.
After your years as a commissioner for the right to food, have more people gone hungry than at the beginning of your term. That is a bitter balance.
When I hear this, I think my life is too short. But it does not stop me from fighting. When the U.S. ambassador at the UN Human Rights Council simply asserts that there are no social rights, no right to food, that drives me up the wall.
The Swiss like it really quiet, discreet, and Calvinist modest. They are against such a verbal slap in the face. Where does your fury come from?
I have always been in an incredibly privileged position. My father was president of the court, my mother a farmer"s daughter, a loving family. I just suddenly saw my life as a mere repetition of what already existed, and I also saw the poverty-stricken children who had been hired to work for the rich. There was something wrong! That's why I then left all that behind me ...
"and you became a radical in Paris in the 60s along with Jean-Paul Sartre.
I argue perhaps a bit more radically, because I know the victims. The German tax evasion in Switzerland does not interest me, because no one dies from it. But at the hospital in Kinshasa, there are no antibiotics, people die when they are infected from a cut. And where is the money to change that? With the bandits in Zurich, the banks. At that time I was a professor, the most pleasant job there is, you receive your salary without achievement control, then my seat in Parliament and, of course, the UN, and they paid for my co-workers and my travels. These incredible privileges obligate me to fight.
Translation by Siv O'Neall from the German article "Ich bin so radikal, weil ich die Opfer kenne" in Der Tagespiegel
Who will then manage that?
You! I. We. There is no impotence in a democracy. The constitution gives us all the weapons in our hands. Food speculation tomorrow may be stopped by law. Bioethanol can be banned tomorrow. The Federal Minister of Finance may be required to push for a different policy in the IMF.
However, you need to win over the majority.
Che Guevara said, also the strongest walls fall when they crack. Peasant movements from Bolivia to the Philippines get their land back, even if nobody here takes any notice of it. And in Europe too people are moving.
You're joking.
Civil society is becoming stronger. Take the Attac movement. Twelve years ago, the German branch was established to enforce the tax on financial transactions. Today, that is in the German government's program. If that is not a crack in the wall! The French writer Georges Bernanos once said: "God has no other hands than ours."
God? Are you religious?
I reply with a quote, because you can hide well behind others. Victor Hugo said: "I hate all churches, I love people, I believe in God." That's how I also see it. I can not imagine that after death there is nothing, with all the love and all the self-sacrifice that people are capable of.
You have fought as a parliamentarian against the Swiss banks, as a UN rapporteur aiding the hungry, as an author reaching millions of readers and speaking from 1000 stages. Has all this made ??the world somewhat better?
We should be careful not to ask that question. I hope so, I do not know. We don't know the fruit of the trees that we plant.
When I hear this, I think my life is too short. But it does not stop me from fighting. When the U.S. ambassador at the UN Human Rights Council simply asserts that there are no social rights, no right to food, that drives me up the wall.
The Swiss like it really quiet, discreet, and Calvinist modest. They are against such a verbal slap in the face. Where does your fury come from?
I have always been in an incredibly privileged position. My father was president of the court, my mother a farmer"s daughter, a loving family. I just suddenly saw my life as a mere repetition of what already existed, and I also saw the poverty-stricken children who had been hired to work for the rich. There was something wrong! That's why I then left all that behind me ...
"and you became a radical in Paris in the 60s along with Jean-Paul Sartre.
I argue perhaps a bit more radically, because I know the victims. The German tax evasion in Switzerland does not interest me, because no one dies from it. But at the hospital in Kinshasa, there are no antibiotics, people die when they are infected from a cut. And where is the money to change that? With the bandits in Zurich, the banks. At that time I was a professor, the most pleasant job there is, you receive your salary without achievement control, then my seat in Parliament and, of course, the UN, and they paid for my co-workers and my travels. These incredible privileges obligate me to fight.
Translation by Siv O'Neall from the German article "Ich bin so radikal, weil ich die Opfer kenne" in Der Tagespiegel
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