Sunday Papers "the state of the union" edition.

international | rights, freedoms and repression | opinion/analysis Sunday May 08, 2005 12:14 by .:. @ * + € $ %

.:. Now that we have your attention listen to what we have to say .:.

It has long been observed that there are families and voices missing. That there are many who are not, were not and will not be here.

More voices than we can imagine.

But they stir to be heard.

he was there. “You cannot imagine what it means, being exposed to this martyrdom, this extermination and to so much suffering.“ Pablo Escribano

Yesterday I took a walk in the park with my partner who is jewish, her sephardic family tree lost branches in the war, and we went for a coffee and passed the memorial to the catalans who were sent to the extermination camps.

As we took our coffee, kids played, parents chatted, the whole display of BCN civilisation strolled by. Teenagers on their skateboards, hippies with their drums avoiding the police and their noise prohibition, old folks and care workers wheeling the disabled. Muslims are so easy to spot, yet I felt no need to count the hijabs.

And then a van drew up, and out tumbled a gitano (gypsey) wedding. Both groom and bride wore white, her train was easily five metres and on her head the crown which traditionally is worn by a gypsey bride on her day. They had their photos taken at the various points of beauty, with flowers in the background, at the fountain, walking through the grass.

This is a ritual which is repeated in every culture, it is I believe supposed to mean "look at us, we met here, we courted here, this is our day, we're staying together till the end, may it be long".

It is certainly curious that of all the contemporary characters whom we write about in this indymedia space, the four who have been depicted in certain german uniforms with certain symbols, the most in the last three years are - Bush, Sharon, Berlusconi and michael mcdowell. & then along came Benedict XVI. Curious, that we have used up the power of the words and those symbols in misusing them as abuse.

The man in the photo in the interpreters booth is
Pablo Félix Escribano-Cano.

He was born in Rasueros, province of Ávila (Spain) in 1917; he grew up in a catholic family of farm labourers from 1930 he learnt the profession of a hairdresser from his uncle in Navalperal de Pinares near Ávila. In October 1936 after the breakout of the Spanish Civil War he escaped to Madrid, where he volunteered in the republican army to defend the 2nd republic.

In February 1939 during the conquest of Catalonia by the Franco rebels he escaped to France, where he lived in several refugee- and then interment camps.

In August 1940 he was deported together with all Spanish republicans in the camp Angoulême (Charente) by the SS to Mauthausen, there he worked in the quarry, as a hairdresser and in the kitchen.

He was liberated 60 years ago today - May 1945

from 1945 he worked in the car factory Renault in Paris-Billancourt until retirement, he still lives in France. He did not choose to return to his homeland, his name was not on the list of sephards which belatedly were welcomed to Spain, he was a catholic, a republican, a bolshevik, just one of 8000 such sent to Mauthaussen, just one of 200,000 inmates, just one of the 100,000 who survived. just one of the millions of citizens of europe who passed from being listed, to named, to imprisoned, to having their property confiscated, to being enslaved, to being starved, to entering the infernal lottery.

After I left the park, I met a student who is troubling with an essay on ethics and social work. We spoke a while on the progress of ethics, and of the changing nature of "social work". Of the limitations of a state which sets upon its legislature the task of regulating all behaviour as a nanny, or the irresponsiblity of a state which sees society as not existing whose needs may only be served in commercial models of intervention or investment.

Yalta, has been attacked by the president of the USA, who though not there, has decided the division of Europe into its polar spheres of influence to have been the disaster of the XX century and not the collapse of the 2nd republic, and the emergence of bipolar tyranny some ten years previous. Still many will not pay attention to the man credited with giving the world the greatest disaster of the XXI century.

A multi-polar world, does not just mean multi-polar government and states, with differing belief systems and prescriptions to remedy the problems of economics, society or politics. It means multi-polar memory, it means multi-polar solutions. It means lifting the curtains on memory, on recognising that there millions of voices missing. Millions of weddings never occured.
Millions of songs were never sung. Millions of words never written.

Gunther Grass has chosen to publish today in various newspapers his thoughts on the 60 years.
Of how the modern union of Germany is in chatteldom to the solely materialist based market
system, which offers no basis for ethics. I'll shall add his piece in the next week in the comments when it goes through the booth and gets it translation. Vaclav Havel has chosen to write yet another open letter calling for increased democracy in Russia, it will be published in english on tuesday and will be appended in the comments. Milan kundera has published a new book can't say I've read it yet. Enough of central european writers?

upcoming events-
The Russian remembrance-
http://www.indymedia.ie/newswire.php?story_id=69625
Leafleting Dublin-
http://www.indymedia.ie/newswire.php?story_id=69674
protest Stock exchange-
http://www.indymedia.ie/newswire.php?story_id=69668
first mediterranean social forum
http://www.indymedia.ie/newswire.php?story_id=69020

we as a movement if I may dare to write, are multi-polar, we hold no single ideology, no single solution, no single leadership, no single kitty for the donations, no single memory system.

& thats how we continue, because each step of the road out of Egypt, out of Babalon, out of the camp, is one of dialogue, concensus, maturity, forgiveness, and ought be led by the hope of those who didn't live, whose grandchildren are not in the park, whose smiling old faces are not in the photo album whose code, whether it was of genius, or strength, or vice or virtue, straight or gay, red-haired or bald, thin or fat, is not with us and has not been voiced.

The legacy of Hitler and his regime,
is their silence.

Democracy and Ethics are taught from the beginning, they are not imposed by either state or institution or educational system which installs from the beginning "fear of retribution" as the reason for obedience to an abstracted morality.
Neither nanny state or nun with a whip will teach our children how not repeat the criminality of the past.


Thank you for your attention.


internment camps in europe-
http://www.indymedia.ie/newswire.php?story_id=69199
spanish republic-
http://www.indymedia.ie/newswire.php?story_id=69411
last week's "sunday papers" article
http://www.indymedia.ie/newswire.php?story_id=69645