The planet of fire (ENG)

Not to the war! No to wars! This is a story that emerged in the summer of 2004 in Arbúcies, a Caalán town, with the passage of the March for the Culture of Peace. In this town the tree of Liberty is in the middle of the square, and there, under the tree, many people gathered, a large part of which were children from all over the place, who were not quiet. As in each town I had to explain something about that March, I invented and told that story. In Reus, where the March had also passed, they were interested in the story and the City Council published it. Not to the war! No to wars! It was also the title of the presentation of the first edition, unfortunately current title, now, 2022!. At this dramatic moment in which we have become aware that the thirty wars in the world, such as the one in Ukraine, cause atrocious and avoidable suffering in millions of people, a friend wanted to rescue and distribute this story to remind us young and old , that the inhabitants of the blue planet either organize to stop the wars or they will make us disappear as a species. If you want to thank the gift of this story, you can help strengthen initiatives of nonviolent civil peacekeeping, resistance and defense forces. You will find how to do it in:

<a href="http://www.elplanetadelfoc.cat">www.elplanetadelfoc.cat</a>

You will also see the organizations that are contributing to the distribution of the story and how to request more copies.

MARTÍ OLIVELLA I SOLÉ Catalonia, april 2022

And that is how what they called “the firefighters” was born. The first job they had was to think. And they had to think hard to find something that would put out the fire very quickly. They did tests and more tests until they realized that, like a miracle, the water put out the fire! Then, when smoke began to rise from somewhere, everyone would gather with buckets, hoses and ladders to pour water and more water... it's that easy. They no longer did as before that if you put fire in my house, I put it in your house, and we would all get burned. Now, the fire party was to put it out together and with the firefighters. What progress! What rest!

But the years passed and there were still fires, due to carelessness, due to bad luck...

Someday the inhabitants of the Blue Planet we will know how to prevent and extinguish the fire of violence.

For this, people who act as nonviolent pacifiers, experts in preventing and putting out the flames of violence, have been forming for a long time. They work with PREVENTION, does it ring a bell? All over the world, “nonviolent firefighters” are being trained to be able to go where there is conflict and help people to prevent the flames of violence from starting or to stop them, if they have already started. They can even stop the war and start building peace.

imatge d'un planeta blau i la silueta d'un arbre

image d'habitants del poble amb màscares de fum, corrent per un bosc en flames

This version in virtual free format has been created by

imatge del logo de Sistema thead: una papallona blava turquesa i la frase Alfabetització digital per canviar el món

Imatge d´un habitant del poble amb mascara de fum i pancartes en protesta contra el foc

imatge de tres habitants del poble vestits de bombers, amb un vestit vermell i màscares de fum

imatge d'habitants del poble amb màscares de fum al mig d'un incendi

A la imatge s'observa un cel blau amb la lluna i les estrelles. Un nen de cara trist i pensatiu recolza el seu cap sobre els braços plegats. Sembla observar petites imatges de persones barallant-se entre si

But it happened that, with this general pyromania, they were left without forests, without houses, without towns. Everything was charred and full of ashes. Intelligent life on that planet was impossible.

Fortunately, one morning Cendrolina, very cheerful and vivacious, woke up everyone with a proclamation that said: - Good morning to all, Pirícolas friends. As you can see, we cannot continue like this. Our passion for fire has led us to a great catastrophe, but we have to get ahead. We should invent something so that with the fires we don't run out of a place to live or without forests. For the moment I propose that we start over, that we rebuild the houses and plant trees and more trees. Everyone agreed, Cendrolina was right, they were intelligent life in the middle of the universe! When they had the villages and the forests redone, they agreed that if someone set fire to a house, the punishment he would receive would be that they would burn his own house, alone. What rest!

Many people still believe that we should slap problems to the face and haven't figured out that we could play “firefighters” and quell the violence. Perhaps it is time for us to put our heads around the fact that we are intelligent life in the middle of the universe and that, just as Cendrolina, Pirineos or Blanca Fumata did, we must try to prevent the Blue Planet from getting more damaged.

We also live on a planet that from the universe looks colored, blue. On the Blue Planet we already know how to control fire, houses are lit very rarely and when there is a fire we quickly put it out. However, the forests still catch fire too often and we must be more careful to avoid it... But on the Blue Planet we have another problem that we have not been able to solve as well as that of fire. It's such a serious problem that the entire universe calls us the Planet of War.

This is a story that emerged in the summer of 2004 in Arbúcies, a Catalan town, on the occasion of the March for the Culture of Peace. In this town they have the tree of Liberty in the middle of the square, and there, under the tree, many people gathered, a large part of which were children from all over the place, who did not stop still. As in each town I had to explain something about that March, I invented and told that story. At this dramatic moment in which we have become aware that the thirty wars in the world, such as the one in Ukraine, cause atrocious and avoidable suffering in millions of people, a friend wanted to rescue and distribute this story to remind us young and old , that the inhabitants of the Blue Planet either organize to stop the wars or they will make us disappear as a species. If you want to thank the gift of this story, you can help strengthen initiatives of nonviolent civil peacekeeping, resistance and defense forces. You will find how to do it in:

<a href="http://www.elplanetadelfoc.cat">www.elplanetadelfoc.cat</a>

Imatge d'una família del poble feliç, el pare somrient amb un extintor d'incendis a la mà esquerra, la mare somrient amb un beu als braços i un nen amb les mans a la cintura somrient

Its inhabitants felt such a fascination for fire that when there was a fire in a house or in a forest, people came to watch it and do everything they could to ensure that it never went out and lasted as long as possible. Everything they found was thrown into the fire as if it were a great bonfire of San Juan: come fire and come fuel to the fire! This is why our planet from the universe always looked red hot.

imatge d'habitants del poble amb màscares de fum saltant

A la imatge s'observa un planeta de color blau

It took a lot of time and effort for the people of this planet to master fire. They went from being fascinated by fire, which burned everything, to revenge for fire, which in the long run also burned everything, until they managed to control and prevent it. But it was worth it to them because if one day you travel through the Universe you will see that despite everything, that planet still retains a reddish hue like burning embers, which teaches us a great lesson.

Once upon a time, a long time ago, astronomers, one of those scientists who spend all day observing the stars and planets, which we only see at night, discovered a very strange planet, red hot like fire. It wasn't weird in shape, because it was shaped like a planet. It was not unusual because of its orbit in space, because it had an orbit like all the planets. It was not unusual either because of its atmosphere that had allowed the development of intelligent life, as on other planets. What really made it strange was the people who lived there and their customs. Such strange customs that caused the Planet of Fire to be seen from any point in the universe, this was its name.

imatge d'un incendi a casa del poble. Els ocells volant porten màscares de fum per protegir-se

This time it was the Pyrenees who wrote a letter in the newspaper: "Dear Piricolas, In my opinion, I think we are not doing well. It would be necessary to find another way to treat the fire. My proposal is that some of us have the job of putting out the fires and studying the best way to do it so that as little planet as possible burns.” -Yes, yes, very good! -I'm in -I also! People said, after reading the newspaper.

Imatge d´un home i un nen amb les mans a prop de les orelles i amb cara d´angoixa

On the Planet of War we do with wars and violence the same thing that those people did with fire, remember? We have gotten used to the fact that if someone hits us, we hit them harder. We are dominated by the passion for violence, the attraction for war and we make movies, computer games and poorly resolved conflicts.

Until one day Blanca Fumata sent an email that said: “If you are one of those who think that it is not enough to know how to put out the fire, but that it is best to avoid it, join PREVENCIÓN, the group of people who study what we can do so that there are no fires. Pass that email on to your friends." PREVENTION did a lot of work: they saw that it was necessary to watch how matches, butts, firecrackers were thrown, how meat was grilled in the woods or any bonfire. They invented fire extinguishers, which was the tool that could put out a small fire the fastest... And among all of them, they managed to make the flames disappear.

But the years passed and what seemed to have been a great solution, had not prevented them from living again among the ashes, because today for me and tomorrow for you, every day there were flames in one place or another.

Imatge d'un paisatge: un camp i al fons diversos arbres. un esquirol puja pel tronc d'un arbre i un altre corre per una de les branques. Una mare ocell amb el fill.

A la imatge s'observa un cel blau amb núvols blancs i la imatge d'un home i una dona amb armes a les mans en actitud de lluita

The March for the Culture of Peace was organized by the Nonviolent Peaceforces (www.nonviolentpeaceforce.org) who, eighteen years later, continue to operate throughout the world with the mission of protecting civilians in violent conflicts through unarmed strategies, building the peace side by side with local communities and advocate for the wider adoption of these approaches to safeguard human life and dignity. Nonviolent Peacekeepers contributes to a culture of global peace in which conflicts within and between communities and countries are managed through nonviolent means. We are very far from being able to achieve this mission in all violent conflicts, because the majority of states and citizens continue to believe that arms and armies are the only means to legitimately defend themselves against aggression or to defend their ideals, interests, styles of life... And for this reason, many people continue to pay taxes in the name of peace to strengthen “violent military defense and security”, without devoting resources to building “nonviolent civil defense and security” systems. In fact, these new systems would require far fewer resources than those devoted to military defense, would cause less damage, and would offer more effective human security. It cannot be that in the face of yet another war, for lack of having organized a civil nonviolent defense alternative, the population can only choose between supporting the war (with more weapons, more soldiers, more destruction, more deaths, more budgets) or saying no. to war (with more anti-militarist and disarmament demonstrations, more calls for dialogue, more analysis of the causes of the war...). In the last hundred years, there have been enough experiences, studies and proposals throughout the world to lay the foundations for a civil system of nonviolent defense as an alternative to a military system of violent defense. If we obtain the necessary input and citizen involvement, we want to propose what a Catalan nonviolent civil defense system could be like, both in its current phase and in the case of becoming an independent state.

<a href="http://www.lluitanoviolenta.cat/projecte-defensa-noviolenta">www.lluitanoviolenta.cat/projecte-defensa-noviolenta</a>

El planeta del foc  martí olivella solé  ilustracions Marc serra sardá.  diseny Josep Basora

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