Tag: what

You are what you own?

The other day I was trying to get my plane to Abidjan. There was a long queue at Barcelona airport and I tried to check in at the automatic counters (only one out of three were working, shame on Air France).

The machine could not recognize me and therefore asked for what other electronic devices ask nowadays to identify you: not the ID card number, the birth date or the name of your parents, but my credit card.

The force of my bank account is greater than the power of my official documents, of my word, of my own image.

The confidence in someone’s personality is based on his belongings more than on his history. How sad.

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What can still change the world (I wonder)


I mean, which factors are still capable to have a real and overall impact in the world of globalisation, consumerism, TV superpower, enduring North-South disparity. Factors that one person may support, to the extent of his possibilities. Training, education. Of course. But this is a long-term and complex process, where an individual contribution risks to get lost. Media, perhaps. Support honest media could make a difference, wherever in the world. And it exists a very simple way of realising it, the subscription. In developing countries as well as in Europe a reliable newspaper represents a robust device to change the situation. Or at least to understand it.