Mao and a Belgian priest

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2,500 years ago someone said that ignorance is the root of all evil. The problem is that the ignorant are the ones who have ruled the destinies of the planet. There is clear the cause of our much suffering, and also that of other animals.

One who paid for our ignorance was the cat. In the fourteenth century, a Belgian priest said that the felines, with stealthy movements and bright eyes in the dark, were Satan's workmanship. In addition, the cats, with their erotic meows on the roofs, took away their sleep and induced them to break chastity. So the priest, enraged, preached the order to annihilate all cats. And the faithful obeyed. Result: the rats proliferated and with them the fleas and with them a bacterium that, in two years, killed one of every three Europeans.

The Belgian priest knew a lot about theology and sin, but nothing about ecology. And his dreams of chastity cost millions of deaths in the old continent.

The demonization of the cat lasted until the nineteenth century when in France, Germany, Belgium and other European countries, the day of some saints was celebrated throwing live cats from the towers of the churches, so that they fell in bonfires that awaited them in the atrium, in the midst of popular rejoicing.

And in the twentieth century, Mao Tse Tung, The Great Helmsman of the Chinese Revolution, ordered the extermination of sparrows. It was estimated that if one million of these birds were killed, more than 50,000 people could be fed. Therefore, Mao said: "Sparrows are enemies of the revolution. Kill them No warrior will retreat until they are eradicated, we have to persevere with the tenacity of the revolutionary. "And they persevered until they were almost exterminated. The method was to hit pots and cans in the fields, until the birds died of hunger. Another solution was the poison, and the chicks died abandoned in the nests due to the lack of adults to feed them.

But the sparrows ate more insects than grain, the locusts that plagued the fields proliferated, and they caused a terrible famine. Result: thirty million dead. Scientists had warned the government about the disaster that would originate, but Mao responded that those were maneuvers of the enemy. The years passed and, discovered the error, the government decreed that the sparrow was "protected species". But the population is still declining, and it is a species in danger because the farmers are still killing it, and the pesticides do the rest.

Undoubtedly, ignorance is the root of all evil. Although we continue to ignore it. In chess, he does not forgive himself either.

1: ... Nf3+ 2: g2-f3; Rg6+ 3: Kh1: Nf2 checkmate

This story was originally written by my friend Ramiro Díez in Diario EL TELÉGRAFO under the following address: https://www.eltelegrafo.com.ec/noticias/columnistas/1/mao-y-un-cura-belga If you are going to use it, please quote our source and place a link to the original note. www.eltelegrafo.com.ec