It’s not Miss Liberty who awaits you in the United States of America - it’s someone from Homeland Security waiting to take your prints and a nice snapshot of your terrorist face.
Welcome to America!
It’s not Miss Liberty who awaits you in the United States of America - it’s someone from Homeland Security waiting to take your prints and a nice snapshot of your terrorist face.
Welcome to America!
BBC 4 / documentary / 3 episodes each ca. 1 hour
This is what I would consider basic knowledge or better say insight what happened in recent history.
I can recommend watching all parts - but number 2 is especially important, because it shows that Racism was one of the driving forces in America that swapped over to Europe (again) in a scientific disguise and supported the old idea of the Masterrace, which suited the Nazis perfectly.
Beginning by assessing the implications of the relationship between Europe, Africa and the Americas in the 15th century, it considers how racist ideas and practices developed in key religious and secular institutions, and how they showed up in writings by European philosophers Aristotle and Immanuel Kant.
Looking at Scientific Racism, invented during the 19th century, an ideology that drew on now discredited practices such as phrenology and provided an ideological justification for racism and slavery. These theories ultimately led to eugenics and Nazi racial policies of the master race. Some upsetting scenes.
The third and final episode of Racism: A History examines the impact of racism in the 20th Century. By 1900, European colonial expansion had reached deep into the heart of Africa. Under the rule of King Leopold II, The Belgian Congo was turned into a vast rubber plantation.
Men, women and children who failed to gather their latex quotas would have their limbs dismembered. The country became the scene of one of the century’s greatest racial genocides, as an estimated 10 million Africans perished under colonial rule.
On one side big media companies have greatly reduced their international reporter network and therefore lost ‘local competence’. On the other side a huge army of freelance photographers, reporters and cameraman has developed in the least two decades.
But the media mercenaries focus mostly on popular stuff that brings in the money. Unpopular topics are left to a few brave reporters and photo journalists. So commercial news is today mostly about ’sellable’ news. If you can’t sell a picture or a story you won’t report about it again, because you need to pay your bills.
This is why we need support alternative media outlets for journalists and a willing audience to pay these people.
We also need more institutions like the BBC and other democratic and state funded media organizations, who can afford to report unpopular causes and criticize the powerful.
Free markets for news organization is a disaster. To provide a balanced public service will always collide with the quest for higher profits. Let big media create the entertainment, let publicly funded news organizations make the news.
And screw Rupert Murdoch and all the big media tycoons.
I am making here a little fun of the historical concept of Absolutism.
One of the major underlying difference between so called left/liberal and right/conservative (plus fundamentalist) dogmas is the conflict between ‘relativism’ and ‘absolutism’.
In a dogma of absolutism you have ‘true’ and solid values and ‘points’ in your world view that are not negotiable. (Wikipedia on political and moral absolutism.) Some of it’s heads are: Thomas Hobbes, Immanuel Kant and Aristotle.
With a relativistic world one thing leads to another, you hardly find solid positions to navigate, but a mere set of ideas that keep a network of borders that constantly shift. (Wikipedia on moral relativism.) Some of it’s heads are: Karl Marx, Jean-Paul Sartre and Martin Heidegger.
Absolute concepts and values are of course easier to understand and present, since their set of rules is less wobbly - hence the word absolute.
Karl Marx - bloody relativist communist scummmmm …
Here are some statements about Absolutism by Mr. Richard Hooker (taken again from here):
Political philosophers attempted to extricate themselves from these matters through two different, contradictory approaches: “natural law” or “the Divine Right of Kings.” According to natural law political thinkers, there were immutable natural laws which should govern states and their relations to their citizens and to other states. According to the doctrine of the Divine Right of Kings, a system of thought derived ultimately from medieval theories of kingship, certain kings ruled because they were specifically chosen by God to be kings. Surprisingly, both of these approaches could yield the same result: the idea that the best form of government is an autocracy, or rule by a single person. This person was not to be questioned or disobeyed; this became known as “absolutism,” since the monarch ruled with “absolute” power, that is, unshared power.
Natural law yielded absolutism in the work of Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679), who believed all things, including human society, could be understood using principles of geometry. Hobbes’ central argument was that all humans are driven by two and only two impulses: fear of death and desire for power. If left unchecked, human beings would act on these impulses and live violent, brutish, inhumane, and solitary lives. In order to keep these impulses in check, human beings, according to Hobbes, drew up a social contract, which ceded authority to a single person in exchange for a level of security. The single ruler would control the violent and selfish impulses of individual members in a society through brute force; individuals would lose their liberty, but they would gain security and community. Hobbes didn’t care what form this single rule might take, whether a monarch or a dictator, only that absolute power was required to keep society together.
Relative guilty? Absolute Guilty? Relative dead? Absolute dead?
This is of course a nasty rhetoric trick from my side, to mix modern conservative thinking with an 17th century ideology. But I can’t help the feeling that the overall attitude is very similar?!
But it is about time that we leave dogmas behind us as political tools and aspire to use whatever is the best idea for the problem. But that would again imply that that solutions are relative to the problem and it’s circumstances. So is life in the end relative and not absolute? Can one defend absolute ideas in the end? Read this christian refutation of Relativism.
“The American Christian fundamentalists are nothing like the Taliban.”
The Taliban used football fields to execute people. They enforced stoning and other cruel laws of the Sharia. They suppressed women, they disliked music, drugs and movies - all that fun stuff. A terrible regime of orthodox believers. Agreed the Taliban were terrible.
American Christian fundamentalists so far haven’t killed anyone - their actions are within the law of the land. Physical violence isn’t anywhere near the Talibans bloody actions. So the American fundamentalists are ‘better’ then their afghan counterparts?
Measuring a society or group just by their usage of physical violence is a bad and not very precise tool.
The basic concept of fundamentalism is that their version of ‘reality’ is the only truth that is acceptable. Anything else can (maybe) tolerated, but never accepted.
Visit www.americanfundamentalists.com to view the image in a larger size - and learn some other stuff as well.
But acceptance of plurality is the most important cornerstone of our modern democracies. This very acceptance is shown in the rule of law that everyone is the ’same’: we all have the same rights, the same obligations - although we are different individuals and by no means the same.
Religions fundamentalists and modern states both have laws and rules, which more or less make sense. But the very difference is who made the law: either they are eternal, because they were made by some God or they are in constant development, because they are made by man and still adapted, expanded and changed.
This also shows a very basic psychological element of the fundamentalist: with a rule set given by your eternal Overlord you have a ‘perfect’ and static system to live by. Not much surprise there. Very different to a pluralists society that continuously changes itself. Although your life might be difficult at times you at least know with a fundamentalist mindset what is right or wrong.
We are right! We are right! We are right!
Here we encounter another problem with fundamentalists: anything that is ‘wrong’ according to his/her believe basic system has to be changed. These people are on a holy mission. Now this is very contrary to ‘in the name of the people’ when you want to change society ‘in the name of the Lord’.
In a Democracy you need the consent of the majority, you need to agree. In a fundamentalist system there is nothing to agree on, no need for debate or even change. Anything that comes from the Lord is not open for discussion. This is especially explosive when a Priest or any other Leader ‘claims’ to speak the Lord’s words. How do you ask God if that person is really his Prophet? You can challenge any law, policeman and politician in court, but again there is no discussion with the word of God.
Lets come back to our American Christian fundamentalists. They are much smarter then the Taliban. They won’t use physical violence to change society - they simply change the laws so society has to adapt. Instead of accepting plurality they use lobbyism, votes and money to enforce only their fundamentalist views.
This is one of the greatest weaknesses of Democracy, that it’s very openness to change and populism allows it’s own destruction. Once again it is important to mention the Hitler lesson (Newsflash: Orangeguru says Christians are Nazis). He was voted into power and slowly abolished democratic laws one by one with popular consent until there was only ‘ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer’ (one people, one country, one Führer).
How the erosion of American pluralist consent is progressing can best be documented by the fierce fight about ‘intelligent design’ and abortion. Slowly the fundamentalists ideas are introduced and cemented into popular opinion as the only truth in small steps. I especially admire the propaganda and rhetoric’s to actually use pluralism to enforce fundamentalism: hey, why don’t you teach ‘intelligent design’ - it’s just another form of science?!
Abortion is wrong / terrible for other reasons - not because your God said so.
But the war on abortion speaks even louder: here pressure groups have been working for decades to enforce their mostly religious point of view onto American society. On PBS.org is an excellent documentation ‘The last abortion Clinic’ that show you how fundamentalist lobbyism can work wonders against pluralism.
So, is there such a thing as an American Taliban? Yes, there is! The methods might be different, but their attitude is very much the same. Most of all over the recent years we can see the ‘just anger’ and aggression against anything liberal and pluralistic getting fiercer and fiercer.
And it’s that religious righteousness I am most afraid of.
Crooks & Liars has made this great comment about 1984 and the right wing blogosphere:
A Party member…is supposed to live in a continuous frenzy of hatred of foreign enemies and internal traitors, triumph over victories, and self-abasement before the power and wisdom of the Party. The discontents produced by his bare, unsatisfying life are deliberately turned outwards and dissipated by such devices as the Two Minutes Hate, and the speculations which might possibly induce a sceptical or rebellious attitude are killed in advance by his early acquired inner discipline…called, in Newspeak, crimestop. Crimestop means the faculty of stopping short, as though by instinct, at the threshold of any dangerous thought. It includes the power of not grasping analogies, of failing to perceive logical errors, of misunderstanding the simplest arguments if they are inimical to Ingsoc, and of being bored or repelled by any train of thought which is capable of leading in a heretical direction. Crimestop, in short, means protective stupidity.
I love the expression protective stupidity - it’s much better than the usual label of ‘ignorance’. It’s not ignorance to stop thinking - it really is protective stupidity.
I find it highly strange and fascinating that some of the darkest visions about the future come from Britain: 1984, V for Vendetta and Brave New World. We consider British society as one of the most liberal and ‘free’ societies on earth - still nightmares of total state control and suppression seem to haunt the British mind. It is also true that Britain has more camera watching it’s citizen then any other country on this planet.
I suspect it’s all connected with the good old class system, the terrible human conditions of the industrial revolution and elitist games. As much we may think of Britain as in Jane Austin terms, witty games of the upper class, there was always a dark and big underbelly in British society. Achievements like the Magna Carta and many modern democratic rights were only granted to the upper class (very much like in the rest of Europe).
We can’t lower our standards.
But since British society was also the first to experience the industrial revolution - it was also the first to encounter the horrors of this new era in human history. Terrible slums with unbelievable conditions, smog everywhere and extreme poverty. Certainly this has happened in big cities before - like in good old Rome. But never to such an extend.
And it was set in contrast to the Age of Enlightenment - new ideas about human rights and social equality. No surprise that Karl Marx (who lived for some time in London) and many other socialist thinkers were deeply influenced by the conditions of the new working class in Britain.
The British Empire of course had an ugly history of colonialism and brutal suppression. Almost any uprising was bitterly crushed. Only a few countries like America escaped the Empire by use of revolutionary force.
George Orwell started his writing career as an investigative reporter. He lived among the poorest of the poor and exposed the social dark side of this new industrial world in his great book Down and Out in Paris and London. But also his book ‘The Road to Wigan Pier‘ digs deeper into the dirt. Both books shocked Britain.
Victorian society slowly woke up to these truths and started to change. But only after social unrest and several waves of infectious diseases threatened their lifestyle too. But also revolutions first in France and later Russia ‘helped’ the upper class to see the need for change.
Oh look Charles, this is really shocking! Those poor people …
Without such minds like Karl Marx and George Orwell Britain might have never developed to such free society (yes, socialism was a big influence in the UK - although Maggie Thatcher cleared most of it out). So every country needs smart system critics as well as pressure from the street and money willing to make changes. Social development doesn’t come for free and doesn’t ‘just’ happen.
The evil image of an totalitarian society as the twin of a great society might be a good way to keep people and politicians on their toes.
Yeah, kick those criminal foreigners out of our beloved country!
Swiss society is very conformist, conservative and very xenophobic. Although Switzerland is very rich it’s people are not big on sharing or international entanglement. Neutrality is obviously a national obsession - or rather a fanatical obsession not to get involved with anyone or anything.
So it’s no surprise that Switzerland is not part of the EU and loves it’s banking lifestyle so much that ripped of Jewish money has been held back for decades. Don’t get involved with those bloody foreigners.
I already have a bloody nose!
In a few days there is a general election in the land of Honey and Toblerone - and the rightwing SVP party seems to get at least 25% of the votes. That’s a huge in the political landscape, but shows the old Swiss conservative attitude.
Swiss cheese only for Swiss people!!!
Sure there is lots of protest - but it shows that in our complex times not only Americans are susceptible to hate and fear mongering a la Neocons. It works in any country.
Several hundred years of neutrality, too much Calvinism and isolation are a bad thing. Especially in our modern, fast moving and international world. Wake up Switzerland: xenophobia won’t get you anywhere and you are a part of this planet if you like or not. Neither the Alps nor Swiss armyknife or stupid election promises won’t protect you from that …
Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz in power since 1959. Has led his country into isolation and missed the chance to open his society after the fall of communism in the late 1980’s. Although the US is also to blame for the decades of useless embargo it’s mostly Mr Castro’s fault that Cuba is such a miserable place.
Robert Gabriel Mugabe running or better ruining his country since 1980. Great work! It has fallen from being Africa’s high ranking food producer to a starving and terribly poor country. He hunted down gays, disowned white farmers and wasted huge amounts of foreign aid with his cronies.
Kim Jong-il is since 1994 continuing his fathers work of starving and killing his own people. While neighboring South Korea and China have made huge progress his country spiraled downwards. But at least he became a world famous atomic bomb salesman and movie collector. Well done little man.
Muammar al-Qaddafi - self proclaimed leader of Libya since 1969. Sponsored terror on his people and the west for decades. Although he finally succumbed to American pressure and military power his country is still in ruins. Economic reforms are badly needed although it is rich in oil. His family and cronies have a total grip on the country. The rule of his laws is harsh, there is no political culture nor any official working opposition.
Abdullah bin Abdulaziz al-Saud current King of the House of Saud, which is running the richest and most depressive country in the world since 1744. The House of Saud teamed up with Wahhabism - an especially conservative brand of Islam to sanctify it’s hold on power. The country riches are mostly given to the huge royal family - according to Wikipedia around 25.000 people. The Saud tyranny and grip on power is supported by the US since 1945. Most islamic terrorism is funded with Saudi money as well as manpower. Osama bin Laden is the most prominent example. Saudi clerics are among the fiercest in the region and they can rely on the official religious police to see their rules empowered.
Did I miss anyone? I am not sure to include Iran, since it’s people to continue so much to oppress themselves. So I consider it more like a fascist state with changing players at the top. Suggestions welcomed! 
BBC News: Burma junta faces monks’ challenge
Hopefully this will start a peaceful transition in Burma. One of this little corners on our planet that have been suppressed by nasty politics and ignored by western media.
On a side note: peaceful (street) protest is still a strong political weapon and can change dreadful conditions. Maybe the Muslim World should take a hint from Gandhi and these Buddhist Monks? And lazy blogger like me should also take to the streets once in a while …
[Warning: long rant ahead ... skip if you are bored by politics ...]
For years now political blogs have branded the Bush regime as a fascist elite - transforming the US of A into a Brown State.
If you search Hitler+Bush on Google you get a gazillion articles and images - plus reports like that (father of a fallen soldier beaten up by pro war citizens) and this (student gets tasered by the police asking annoying questions) seem to support the argument. The US is slowly turning into a new Nazi Germany.
I think it’s fundamentally wrong to compare modern forms of Fascism always with old ones from the Hitler era. Like Democracy all forms of government change and adapt - even the bad ones.
For example: today society ‘exists’ more in a virtual form instead of ‘the street’. So you no longer need many thugs or brown shirts to push your agenda. Mental control and groupthink work today much better then 1933 - especially in a ever more complex and diverse media world. There is much more entertainment, hobbies and consumerism out there to distract you from ‘real’ life and politics then 1933.
Most people are afraid of real freedom and complexity. They love almost anything that ‘makes nasty stuff and thoughts’ go away. It doesn’t matter if it’s a pill against restless leg syndrome or immigrants - something easy to swallow is preferred over anything complicated or personal involvement.
Dude, this Democracy stuff is hard work …
Typical right wingers or conservative have this symptom ("We are the good ones, all others are bad.") as well as those who are so called green and progressive types ("Back to nature, modern science and/or corporations are destroying us!").
The Taser seems to be the weapon of choice to enforce social conformity. This is not the first video about unnecessary tasering during a public event or public place.
This no way to deal with social protest or even a simple question. It just shows how much American and slowly British culture enforce conformity and group think onto others.
And why is such a massive use of force and police personal necessary to deal with someone who is simply annoying or inconvenient?
"They hate us for our freedoms!" - yeah right.
Just to show that stupidity knows no limits [BBC News]: israeli police arrests israeli neo-nazis who had planned attacks on other israelis.
These young men were all from Russia, before they immigrated to Israel and become naturalized citizens, but still the irony …
This conflict has been ranging since 2003 longer then WWII - and it won’t go away any day soon. Hardly anyone supports this war in the US of A. Finally all american magazines, TV stations and almost all political pundits have turned from being pro-war to anti-war … or at least do some more serious reporting.
Europe has been much more critical from the beginning - since we cheese eating surrender monkeys had our fair share of it.
This is the first blogged war: soldiers, voters, journalists and civilians tell their stories in a gazillion postings. YouTube has tons of war pr0n and charming calls for peace …
I dare to ask: made it ANY difference?
The Bloggers have lost this war. No matter how well these arm chair activists have debunked every talking point of President Shrub and his cronies - the war is still raging. The political fallout was minimal, because the US Democrats are spineless and the american public mostly ignorant for what is done in their name.
Overall it is almost amusing how the political american left and right blogosphere has used the war to establish itself - celebrating it’s self proclaimed importance. This is satire at best when I read the continuing phoney rage against the war and the political opponents.
Muuuu … there is cash for you!
Discussing the war is now a business and therefore contributes to the economy of the industrial military complex. Daily Kos profited as much from it as Michelle Malkin.
Although politicians read blogs and have their own it is still money that makes the political system go round. Grass roots poltical funding has made the Howard Dean a phenomenon in the 2004 US elections, but it has turned just into another cash cow. And the biggest and baddest money fountains are still in the hands of companies and lobby groups.
So blogs are just political opinions and unless you can translate that into serious money and votes it won’t change ANYTHING.