WHAT HAS CHANGED SINCE IN BERLIN SINCE THE COLD WAR?
I am in Berlin now after 35 years since I studied at the Freie Universität Berlin, FUB. I had been working for peace at the UAM in Madrid at the peak of the Cold War in the early eighties and when I came here for a visit I was so moved seeing all at the FUB full of signs and actions against war, against nukes, and such an enthusiasm for peace and reconciliation that I decided to stay here. Now, I have been around here and the students at the FUB only care about the room renting prices, require psychological services for all and the only political proposal to be seen thre is a demo against the right wing parties.
Later I have been to the Humbolt University. At the entrance you see a forest made of columns of photographs and CVS’s of Ukrainian students who died in the war under the common Title for each column: UNUSED CERTIFICATE, and then the deceased’s picture, his studies details and the details about how they were “brutally killed during the Russian invasion”.
During the Cold War the main strain was about the deployment of American nukes in Europe and the possible response (preventive attack by the SU) but now it is about “the unprovoked invasion of Ukraine but the criminal Putin”, where indeed people mainly young ones are dying
Now, if Putin is an autocrat, and the young Russians are dying because of his ruthless and wicked despotism they should be remembered too in the Humboldt Lobby Forest. I am not playing with words, despotism (actually hierarchy) and war is the same, or the two sides of the same coin, as wise people see it. But I think that the case here is not that Russia is a case of more despotism than in the West, I do not think there is a different in despotism, I do not even think it can be.
I wish nobody here (Spanish, Russian, Ukrainian, Americans…) get ungry at me. Please, it is my birthday today. I do not want to bother anybody, but very much on the contrary, I would be so happy if you could understand that peace is at hand, just by by not deceiving ourselves.
This is how liberal democracy introduces its Trojan horse (the East also knows about this key war idea with the YinYang) and conquers through globalization, with the advantage of printing dollars and buying everything of value. Similar scenarios unfolded in China, where Mao shut out Western powers established during the Kuomintang era, and in Russia, where the 1998 crisis marked a shift from Yeltsin’s liberal democracy to Putin’s current authoritarianism/nationalism.
Western leaders believe and assert that this is the only form of ‘progress,’ since there is no alternative—peace is ‘false,’ (just another Trojan horse) and material progress is the only option despite persistent inequality. However, this same design of the West was the good intention behind communism: using the working class as a Trojan horse to establish a unified world system, achieving maximum peace or, at least, maximum hegemonic control. This was also the project of the Spanish monarchy, the Chinese Confucian system, Islam, and every empire: conquest or total dominance through ideological penetration.
I recall when HUM was launched on February 3, 2018, an incredibly intelligent and sensitive woman asked me the difference between HUM’s project and Alexander the Great’s. Alexander propagated this human unity purpose as peace, making political and personal decisions according to it. The answer is simple: if ideology serves the arm, it cannot dispense with it, even if the world falls under a single command, as the U.S. recently did, or China deceives itself with its Confucian vision of a unified and benevolent command imposing peace. An arm implies hierarchy, absolute inequality or injustice, which prevent humanity and common sense, allowing only violent relationships. How can the arm bring peace if the arm is synonymous with war?
Peace is our responsibility as individuals, equal human beings, not as members of a hierarchy or state. It’s about drawing attention to the arm and demanding seriousness from others about it too, not hiding it behind windmills (figurations). We need to unite to disarm and live according to our humanity and common sense. This was unfeasible in the past but is now within our reach by calling for Humanity’s reconciliation on January 30, 2025.