By Pablo Ouziel
Special to PalestineChronicle.com
 
In these trying times of wars, famines and all sort of manmade disasters, I strongly believe that we ought to confront our popular apathy and the abundant arrogance of our business, political, religious and military leaders. It is time for some serious introspection; without it we ‘the common people’, will continue to be duped into the simplistic media view of the world, that of the good and the bad.

Everyday I wonder what atrocity I am going to be enlightened with when I turn on the television set, Google the news or access the newspapers and magazines. Every time I wonder what messaging I am going to hear from leaders and experts, what angle they are going to take, either to justify one atrocity or to prepare us for another.

Why people are not taking to the streets, why we are not having collective global strikes, boycotting our bankers or rejecting the payment of our taxes.

Dramatic as this may sound, I cannot help but wonder if we are witnessing the disintegration of our ‘civilized society’ beneath the challenges permeating our world.

While media conglomerates are in constant expansion, pandering to stats and big businesses, various activist groups are busily engaged in fighting for their own separate causes, human rights of all sorts, poverty, corruption and all the rest.

Doubtless, they are all important key topics, but maybe it is time for a truly united and organized resistance to regain the direction of true democratic values, rather than "staying the course" with our individual fights, without a sense of fraternal and global direction. Considering the global menace of war that unifies the states, the media and the big businesses, maybe it’s time for all groups to organize globally as well, and come together under the banner of peace, justice and equality.

In a letter from Noam Chomsky to Jan Tam