SHAME ON YOU!
The assassination of Jean Charles de Menezes by the police in London, few weeks ago, may have been a terrible mistake, a necessary police action that went completely wrong. The attempted cover up that followed it by the chief of the police, Ian Blair, is not! This is simply a crime and, as such, must bring punishment to its perpetrators.
Great Britain, no more the British Empire many of its citizens may think it still is, has to face its own weaknesses and mistakes and be accounted for them.
The so called “first world countries” have the silly habit of looking at the less developed ones with undeniable and stupid sense of superiority. They should not.
The recent events in England, the lies its government told the people to convince them that they should send their sons, brothers and husbands to invade Iraq and the terrible consequences of such an absurd demonstrate that bad and corrupt politicians are not bred only by the second, third or any other kind of world.
May the honest people in Great Britain be able to honor their children and bring an end to the official and shameful acts of their authorities.
Before they do it, the only thing one can say to them is: SHAME ON YOU!
(Barcelona, 21.8.2005)
TALES OF JESUS
I was a kid and children forebode kindness in adults. Because of that, since the first time I saw him, I knew he was a good person as testified by his smile, his gentleness.
I do not remember ever to have talked to him but to have met him, many times, in the street. And he would always smile when passing by. I never saw him angry, arguing, offending anyone.
He was tall, thin, his face marked by the wrinkles of God-knows-which-sorrows, possible reasons that made him a drunk and, because of that, a pariah. He was, nevertheless, a smiling drunk who was kind to children.
People say that once, in a Sunday morning of sun and already drunk, he entered the Cathedral when the 9 a.m. mass was going on. This was known then as the "mass of the rich", who could wake up later...
The priest, in the altar, was delivering the sermon of the day. Disturbed by the small commotion created by the drunk that dared to enter the temple, he ordered the sacristan to take him out.
When the obedient sexton was pushing him, firmly, in the direction of the way out door, his words of protest and revolt resounded, stronger than the priest's voice:
"Shame! Shame! They want to kick Jesus out of the church!"
The drunk Jesus was sent out of the temple but not from the memory of the child who never forgot his smile and gentleness.
(Barcelona, Spain, 31.10.2004)