THE UNITED STATES OF TRUMP WITHDRAWS FROM UNESCO

The Israel of Netanyahu follows them as well. It was expected. When Yitzhak Rabin ruled, Israel was very active in UNESCO, the intellectual Organization of the multilateral democratic System of the United Nations. But he died assassinated and, since then, the chances of success in the peace process are vanishing.

The United States withdraws from UNESCO because the Republican Party, with hegemonic ambitions, is incompatible with a multilateral democratic system. Already in 1919, they did unachievable the activities of an efficient League of Nations because they imposed the immense contradiction that the United States were never members of the League of Nations! created by an American President, Woodrow Wilson.

And then they have always been hostile to the excellent design of the United Nations System created by the Democratic President, Franklin D. Roosevelt...

In the 80s, at the end of the "Cold War", when was finally possible to empower the necessary expansiveness, perspective and efficiency to multilateralism, providing it with proper personal, security, technical and financial resources, President Reagan with the Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher as an obedient acolyte, left UNESCO and created the plutocratic groups (G6, G7, G8 ...) set up by the richest countries, to marginalize the United Nations, not subscribing the Convention on Human Rights of Children in 1989 -it is the only country in the world that has not subscribed it-, placing the World Trade Organization directly outside the System ... and then invading Iraq without the authorization of the Security Council ... And the neoliberalism has resulted as well in the decrease of the Aid for Development increasing the number of emigrants because in their countries of origin they die of hunger. It is an intolerable fact, from all points of view, that each day more than 4 billion dollars are invested in military expenditures and armament, while thousands of people, most of them children from 1 to 5 years old, die of starvation and abandonment.

This daily colossal contribution to the economy of war has seemed scarce to President Trump, who requested an increase very quickly. And the European countries, including Spain, all of them unsupportive with the immigrants and refugees -more than 6,000 dead in the Mediterranean in 2016- rushed to increase their defense investments. And all have been silent when Trump has announced that he would not implement the Paris Agreements on Climate Change, which constitutes an intolerable threat to the quality of the Earth habitability and, therefore, to the intergenerational legacy.

I regret they leave UNESCO because millions of American children and young people will receive a biased education -in some Republican States it is obligatory to explain creationism!- typical of an educational scheme that confuses education ("being free and responsible") with training, knowledge with information and information with news. And I especially regret for Higher Education, as it is well known that the US has 2 dozen top universities... but with hundreds of universities that leave much to be desired because, among other things, education is confused with professional learning.

It is necessary that world citizens react quickly -tomorrow may be too late- demanding compliance by the United States with the Paris Agreements on Climate Change and the Sustainable Development Goals. Otherwise, it must be a great popular outcry -now that we have no excuse to keep an accomplice silence- which, aware that otherwise all humanity would suffer the consequences, requires President Trump to redress.The convinced supremacist, does not conceive that all human beings are equal in dignity and that no one can irreversibly tarnish their future. It is obvious that what worries me is not that the United States withdraws UNESCO again, but that the world as a whole, without the assistance of a strong and effective United Nations, abandons itself to its fate... especially when we know most certainly that points of no return can be reached.

What does the European Union refrain of telling clearly to President Trump that their trade relations could be affected very severely if he does not comply with the Paris Agreements? What do the most concerned citizens to wait, looking to the eyes of their children and descendants, to say that they will not admit that their intergenerational legacy deteriorates?

Now we can express ourselves: crime of silence.

What nonsense, Mr. Bishop!

“The Bishop of Cordoba has warned of a plan to increase the gay population”, is the title of an article published in “El País” on January 3, 2011. “UNESCO has a plan to make half of the world’s population homosexual”: this surprising statement, according to the article, was made by the Bishop of Cordova, Demetrio Fernández during a homily delivered during the Festival of the Holy Family on December 26.

In his sermon the Bishop affirmed that Cardinal Ennio Antonelli, President of the Pontifical Council for the Family had provided him with this information several days earlier in Zaragoza. He added that UNESCO would achieve this foul objective in 20 years through “various programs”…

And instead of correcting this nonsense –actually uttered by the Bishop of Cordoba and possibly by the Cardinal- the Bishops Communications Service for Southern Spain posted it on their website!

Not only Catholics, but all citizens should protest declarations of this type, which can be extremely damaging to people of good faith.

I personally want to present my strongest protest for the silence (and they have kept silent on so many questions that shouldn’t have been silenced) of the ecclesiastical hierarchy, the Spanish Bishops Conference and the Papal Nuncio in Spain, demanding that they immediately offer the apologies that are due.

It is intolerable that the Spanish Catholic hierarchy addresses topics that not only conflict with the good sense required in a democracy where there is no official religion, but which also outrage many of us believers.

We are likewise outraged by these costly mass demonstrations in which the Gospel is conspicuously absent. And abandoning the national framework, which perhaps due to inertia has for many years tolerated acts and expressions characterized more by their arbitrariness and partisan nature than by religiosity, they are now invading the international scene with this implausible slander of the intellectual organization of the United Nations system, UNESCO, whose mission is precisely to build peace –certainly a Christian and Catholic objective- through education, science and culture, and whose Constitution proclaims equal dignity and the “democratic principles” that mankind must follow to achieve it.

When so seriously and so flippantly offending this Institution, they are also offending all teachers who in a world of all colors, sensibilities and identities give their lives to educating “free and responsible people”. “Free and responsible”, in the words of the Article I of the UNESCO Constitution. You, Mr. Bishop, Mr. Cardinal, with your criteria and falsehoods would educate people to be irresponsible, subjugated and confused.

Free, responsible and equal in dignity, without discrimination of any kind based on gender, ethnic origin, ideology, beliefs, cultural identity, sensibilities... This is the education that will enable each unique human being, endowed with the capacity for creation, to “conscientiously manage his own life”, as the incomparable definition of Francisco Giner de los Ríos described it. People who don’t act upon the dictates of others, who are not indoctrinated nor do they live in fear, since as the renowned first paragraph of the Preamble to the Universal Declaration proclaims, the exercise of human rights "frees humanity from fear".

Is this why certain members of the ecclesiastical hierarchy oppose education for citizenship? It’s time to rectify this error. This would serve to correct not only the present absurdity, but might also prompt them in the future to think twice before saying such outrageous things, and there have already been so many.

The academic, scientific, cultural, in summary, the intellectual community will not remain passive and silent much longer.

Rectify!