As the world's financial elite met in Davos last week that question became obvious.
Why are we still in a severe mess if they were in the slightest bit effective?
Why would people like me, who obviously cannot make a living in translation work (the money isn't there), choose to be unemployed when we would prefer to be working - preferably in IT, where I happily spent most of my life?
And if there is an embargo by private companies upon hiring older people, why does the issue not raise its head there, so that at least the issue gets some recognition?
The problem is, as the Occupy movements have recognised, that the financial elite have had their opportunity, and blown it completely. There was too much emphasis on quick and easy profits, and throwing talented people to the wolves, particularly as they get older!
There have been some strange converts to this thinking. Richard Quest, a London-based CNN business anchor, and a staunch Thatcherite if ever I heard one, wrote a thought-provoking piece on cnn.com this week as to whether capitalism wasn't working.
Well spotted finally! I hope that this is not a momentary whim though. A few years ago another very conservative one-time CNN business anchor, Lou Dobbs, started making some very critical noises about American corporations. Whether he is still that critical, I have currently no idea.
What I do know is that large numbers of people have been sacrificed to a system that is broken. To earn qualifications, young people have to take out ludicrous amounts of debt without the promise of a brighter tomorrow when they can finally pay off what they owe (frankly as a young man I would have refused to go to university on that principle anyway! I always had an aversion to debt). Unqualified young people have meanwhile to queue up to get even the awful poverty-wage jobs at McDonalds these days.
And at the other end of the age range, if you are past 50 and still have a meaningful job that pays adequately, count yourself lucky!
The Davos crowd have had their opportunity. They have failed miserably. It is time, now, finally to tell them to get out of town and replace them with someone who will provide solutions that will work!
Monday, 30 January 2012
Saturday, 28 January 2012
Truth, fact and opinions
As much respect as I have for my American contacts, most of the time I am thankful that I am not myself American.
This is never more the case than when their politicians start skewing the facts for their own benefit, and always promise better times ahead when they are in power.
Repeating facts, when inconvenient, is to be avoided.
Truth is a meddlesome quantity to be avoided where and whenever possible.
And opinion is never, ever, mistaken.
And there will always be better times for everyone, without exception, if they work hard usw. And opportunities will always exist.
And Cinderella and Snow White were real people, and it is a myth to spread their wonderful stories as fairy tales no doubt. One day the prince will come - it is bound to happen.
And never mention anything that you did or got wrong. Or alternatively spin it to make it sound like somebody else's fault.
This is not a problem of one side, both do it, but the Republicans are far worse than the Democrats in this respect. As they are backed by Rupert Murdoch, democracy's answer to Josef Goebbels, this should not be surprising.
Reading (admittedly selective) items from what is coming out of the Primary debates, you learn:
1. That he who must not be mentioned (GWB) is not part of the argument nor of the situation (responsible or not, he is simply not mentioned - which is like having a rotting tooth and ignoring tooth decay).
2. All the events in 2008 involved with the second biggest financial crash in US history never happened or are irrelevant.
3. In line with 2 - Newt Gingrich claims that the unemployed are responsible for their own unemployment (they want to be, you can get food stamps etc, so why would you want to work? The official statistic that there are 5 unemployed for every vacancy, 20 to 1 in parts of Ohio, is an irrelevance). To be fair to Mitt Romney and Ron Paul, this argument does not match their thinking.
4. Vote for them, things are bound to improve (using the same old solutions which failed notably in 2008, and actually cutting taxes to increase revenues, which was responsible for massively increasing the national debt in the first decade of this century). Really? Sadly a substantial number of the voters will believe this nonsense.
The list could be extended by some margin.
Eventually people will be spun by arguments that have no basis in reality, by facts that ignore the circumstances, by history that is made to fit beliefs rather reflect events. And so on and so forth.
For a country where honour was once a meaningful concept, the elements of Soviet Pravdaism or Goebbels-style propaganda seem to become more obvious by the day. Repeat the lie often enough, people will believe it - if they do not have the intelligence to challenge the stories that they are told.
Fortunately that capacity still exists, but the voices of reason seem to have more and more difficulty making themselves heard.
Europe does not have problems?
Plenty, too far many - sadly. But I would still rather be here. But sadly what happens in the US does affect us (see what I have written on this subject before), so we cannot simply ignore them - and the quality of debate suggests that the prospect of Americans leading us all out of the crisis and back to prosperity seems less and less likely by the day.
Eventually if you ignore a problem, it does not go away. The more you distort the truth about a problem, the problem does not go away. The more you want to ignore the painful remedies to a problem, the problem does not go away.
It is time for facing painful truths, admitting to them, and hunkering down to deal with them. Spinning fairy tales was never the answer, nor is it now.
Postscript. Facts are not Conservative or Liberal. Facts are facts!
This is never more the case than when their politicians start skewing the facts for their own benefit, and always promise better times ahead when they are in power.
Repeating facts, when inconvenient, is to be avoided.
Truth is a meddlesome quantity to be avoided where and whenever possible.
And opinion is never, ever, mistaken.
And there will always be better times for everyone, without exception, if they work hard usw. And opportunities will always exist.
And Cinderella and Snow White were real people, and it is a myth to spread their wonderful stories as fairy tales no doubt. One day the prince will come - it is bound to happen.
And never mention anything that you did or got wrong. Or alternatively spin it to make it sound like somebody else's fault.
This is not a problem of one side, both do it, but the Republicans are far worse than the Democrats in this respect. As they are backed by Rupert Murdoch, democracy's answer to Josef Goebbels, this should not be surprising.
Reading (admittedly selective) items from what is coming out of the Primary debates, you learn:
1. That he who must not be mentioned (GWB) is not part of the argument nor of the situation (responsible or not, he is simply not mentioned - which is like having a rotting tooth and ignoring tooth decay).
2. All the events in 2008 involved with the second biggest financial crash in US history never happened or are irrelevant.
3. In line with 2 - Newt Gingrich claims that the unemployed are responsible for their own unemployment (they want to be, you can get food stamps etc, so why would you want to work? The official statistic that there are 5 unemployed for every vacancy, 20 to 1 in parts of Ohio, is an irrelevance). To be fair to Mitt Romney and Ron Paul, this argument does not match their thinking.
4. Vote for them, things are bound to improve (using the same old solutions which failed notably in 2008, and actually cutting taxes to increase revenues, which was responsible for massively increasing the national debt in the first decade of this century). Really? Sadly a substantial number of the voters will believe this nonsense.
The list could be extended by some margin.
Eventually people will be spun by arguments that have no basis in reality, by facts that ignore the circumstances, by history that is made to fit beliefs rather reflect events. And so on and so forth.
For a country where honour was once a meaningful concept, the elements of Soviet Pravdaism or Goebbels-style propaganda seem to become more obvious by the day. Repeat the lie often enough, people will believe it - if they do not have the intelligence to challenge the stories that they are told.
Fortunately that capacity still exists, but the voices of reason seem to have more and more difficulty making themselves heard.
Europe does not have problems?
Plenty, too far many - sadly. But I would still rather be here. But sadly what happens in the US does affect us (see what I have written on this subject before), so we cannot simply ignore them - and the quality of debate suggests that the prospect of Americans leading us all out of the crisis and back to prosperity seems less and less likely by the day.
Eventually if you ignore a problem, it does not go away. The more you distort the truth about a problem, the problem does not go away. The more you want to ignore the painful remedies to a problem, the problem does not go away.
It is time for facing painful truths, admitting to them, and hunkering down to deal with them. Spinning fairy tales was never the answer, nor is it now.
Postscript. Facts are not Conservative or Liberal. Facts are facts!
Wednesday, 25 January 2012
Rock 'n' Roll tributes
As with many young people in Europe, the things that brought me to taking an interest in American culture were its movies and its popular music.
I grew up in the era when rock 'n' roll had changed the direction of popular music entirely, so not merely the music but the history of its emergence from its rhythm and blues and country and western roots has always been a source of interest.
So it was almost a strange coincidence last week when Johnny Otis and Etta James died within days of each other. The media gave Etta James's career a lot of coverage, Johnny Otis perhaps less, but nobody should doubt his importance in the rise of the art form.
A Greek-American, he not merely encouraged and performed with African-American artists, but lived among them. He had undoubtedly an eye for talent (Little Esther Philips was performing with his band at the tender age of 13, though we should add at this point that he protected her like a good father would).
On YouTube there are some interesting snippets from his California based television show in the late 1950s, and while the recordings reflect their era, the quality of the performances is undeniable.
Living among African-Americans he believed in showing them respect, and tried to avoid anything that would lead to them being demeaned. I recently reread the excellent book written by the Londoner, Bill Miller, on the Coasters, their music, and the rise of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller in the American music scene of the 1950s and 60s.
Miller had held an interview with Johnny Otis and while measured in his comments, the latter did indicate that he was concerned that the stereotype of the young African-American male "goofing around" and doing stupid things was often too apparent in the Coasters' material, and it did the community no good. Leiber and Stoller's response - that this merely meant for humour, and could apply to youth of any ethnic background - did not convince him completely.
This element of respect being there and needing to be there, though, is indicative of Johnny Otis the man. He later tried to go into politics. Probably the wrong area for his talents, one would imagine. Honest, decent people with a flair for music ..... That does not sound like the recipe for the successful politician!
Amidst the tributes to Etta James that I read last week, was frequently the comment that she was one of Johnny Otis's protegées. This was news to me at the time, but checking out the story it seems to have been the case.
If there was a female artist on the scene whose life reflected the old adage of "Sex, Drugs and Rock 'n' Roll", Etta James could well fill the category. Her early impact was as a performer who did not mind the insertion of risqué lyrics in her material ("Roll with me, Henry" being an answer to Hank Ballard's "Work with me, Annie", which was banned on most American radio stations for its sexual innuendo).
It is then quite curious that she is now best remembered for her version of "At Last" in which she comes across almost as a torch singer. This, as I have noted before, was actually originally a Tin Pan Alley number performed by the Glenn Miller Orchestra in the 1942 movie "Orchestra Wives" - a mainstream white pop hit turned almost into a black soul ballad!
When I hear the name "Etta James", though, it is another searing soul ballad "I'd Rather Go Blind" which immediately comes to mind, and I think that it epitomises her voice and performing style.
Her battles with heroin addiction are legend. And that she had Alzheimer's Disease at the end of her life is also indicative of the struggles that she had to face. Even the belated fame and respect in which she was held did not save her from the other vicissitudes of life, even if her husband and two sons seemed devoted to her throughout the later years of her life.
She, along with Johnny Otis, though deserves to be remembered for her music. Times have changed, performing styles and music are different now, but the musical significance remains intact.
I grew up in the era when rock 'n' roll had changed the direction of popular music entirely, so not merely the music but the history of its emergence from its rhythm and blues and country and western roots has always been a source of interest.
So it was almost a strange coincidence last week when Johnny Otis and Etta James died within days of each other. The media gave Etta James's career a lot of coverage, Johnny Otis perhaps less, but nobody should doubt his importance in the rise of the art form.
A Greek-American, he not merely encouraged and performed with African-American artists, but lived among them. He had undoubtedly an eye for talent (Little Esther Philips was performing with his band at the tender age of 13, though we should add at this point that he protected her like a good father would).
On YouTube there are some interesting snippets from his California based television show in the late 1950s, and while the recordings reflect their era, the quality of the performances is undeniable.
Living among African-Americans he believed in showing them respect, and tried to avoid anything that would lead to them being demeaned. I recently reread the excellent book written by the Londoner, Bill Miller, on the Coasters, their music, and the rise of Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller in the American music scene of the 1950s and 60s.
Miller had held an interview with Johnny Otis and while measured in his comments, the latter did indicate that he was concerned that the stereotype of the young African-American male "goofing around" and doing stupid things was often too apparent in the Coasters' material, and it did the community no good. Leiber and Stoller's response - that this merely meant for humour, and could apply to youth of any ethnic background - did not convince him completely.
This element of respect being there and needing to be there, though, is indicative of Johnny Otis the man. He later tried to go into politics. Probably the wrong area for his talents, one would imagine. Honest, decent people with a flair for music ..... That does not sound like the recipe for the successful politician!
Amidst the tributes to Etta James that I read last week, was frequently the comment that she was one of Johnny Otis's protegées. This was news to me at the time, but checking out the story it seems to have been the case.
If there was a female artist on the scene whose life reflected the old adage of "Sex, Drugs and Rock 'n' Roll", Etta James could well fill the category. Her early impact was as a performer who did not mind the insertion of risqué lyrics in her material ("Roll with me, Henry" being an answer to Hank Ballard's "Work with me, Annie", which was banned on most American radio stations for its sexual innuendo).
It is then quite curious that she is now best remembered for her version of "At Last" in which she comes across almost as a torch singer. This, as I have noted before, was actually originally a Tin Pan Alley number performed by the Glenn Miller Orchestra in the 1942 movie "Orchestra Wives" - a mainstream white pop hit turned almost into a black soul ballad!
When I hear the name "Etta James", though, it is another searing soul ballad "I'd Rather Go Blind" which immediately comes to mind, and I think that it epitomises her voice and performing style.
Her battles with heroin addiction are legend. And that she had Alzheimer's Disease at the end of her life is also indicative of the struggles that she had to face. Even the belated fame and respect in which she was held did not save her from the other vicissitudes of life, even if her husband and two sons seemed devoted to her throughout the later years of her life.
She, along with Johnny Otis, though deserves to be remembered for her music. Times have changed, performing styles and music are different now, but the musical significance remains intact.
Tuesday, 24 January 2012
38 Questions and Answers About astonysh
dedicated to my Internet friend, Christine, in Cologne who had the answers to this on http://purpleslinky.com/humor/38-questions-and-answers-about-stine1/#ixzz1kNTyz7TB
Maybe I will find that there is some copyright infringement by putting this on my blog, but this was the easiest route to take in the short-term.
I have also converted the US English to UK English, as a matter of course!
So:
In case you want to know a bit more about me (astonysh), you should definitely check out this questionnaire!
1. What year is it? Are you sure?
2012 if you accept AD. As an atheist I do not accept the "D" in that so 2012 is merely a convenient number. In Thailand, my wife's home country, it is 2555.
2. The name you normally give to idiots at the bar:
None. I never go in bars these days!
3. Name as it appears on your primary false ID:
Genius
4. Other alias(es):
superstar, brain_of_the_universe, source of all wisdom, poverty-stricken-nonconformist
5. Would you rather be taller or have a bigger body part? Which part?
Taller, I would need to be 40 years younger though - being tall always impressed women when I was a young man and not tall.
6. What African animal would you like to have as a pet?
No pets, just leave them to do their thing in their natural habitats.
7. How old would you really like your significant other to be?
She will do as she is.
8. Favourite tattoo – on anyone:
None
9. Last alcoholic drink that made you barf:
None
10. If you see a grenade on the ground do you pick it up?
No, I run away like mad and call the police on my mobile from a safe distance.
11. Who in your life would you like to choke?
Nobody directly in my life, though there are a few politicians out there ....
12. Have you ever loved someone as much as your hunting dog?
Everyone. I cannot stand dogs and will not have one. And I don't hunt!
13. Ever crash your four-wheeler into a tree? Did you survive?
Not applicable (no four-wheeler)
14. Do you prefer rhubarb or black-eyed peas?
Rhubarb
15. Day of the week you can spell without cheating:
All of them in English, French, German and Dutch
16. Favourite cuss word or phrase:
A 7-letter-word beginning with a "B" indicating a lack of at least one known parent, and can be applied to most politicians and nearly all lawyers, and every boss who either fired me or would not offer me a job in line with my talents.
17. Favourite strip joint(s):
If you'd asked me this 30 years ago, I might have had an answer.
18. Favourite dancer (and why?):
Gene Kelly, I like old movies, and he always got the girl at the end of the film (which is a nice thought ....).
19. Like auto racing or not? If not – why not?
No, the same boring thing for two hours.
20. Favourite dessert (cake or pie):
Apfelstrudel
21. Favourite nonalcoholic drink (may not apply):
Multivitamin drinks from the local supermarket.
22. Prefer movies from Disney or Bare-Naked Productions?
Neither (Pocohontas does Dallas? Snow White and the seven perverted dwarves? Then you can have both!).
23. Favourite greasy spoon restaurant:
None, can't afford to eat out - even at cheapo diners.
24. Original colour of your bedroom carpet (check under the dog hair):
None, we cannot afford one and we do not have a dog (see above)
25. How many times did you tell your last driver’s test examiner to screw off?
None - never learned to drive!
26. What porn site did you get your last e-mail from?
www.growyoursevenbiggerifpossible.com
Incidentally it would be difficult if not impossible ....
27. Which store would you choose most often to rob?
Any with no security gate at the front and where I would not get caught.
28. What body part do you do most often scratch when you are bored?
My nose
29. Do you buy Playboy™ (or Playgirl™) for the pictures or the articles?
I don't. What would a man of my age do with it?
30. What time of day do you usually pass out?
If my wife was on the early morning shift at the airport, quite early, otherwise tomorrow.
31. Who do you know that would be able to pronounce all the words in this text:
Next to nobody, given the fact that all my friends are Germans or Thais.
32. Who is the person you could send this to that is least likely to be able to read?
Any politician
33. Best friend(s) who are most likely to jerk their hind leg when you scratch their ear:
No friends would let me get that close!
34. Last person(s) who farted in your presence:
My wife (usually in bed)
35. Do you own a late model vehicle (made after 1978)?
No
36. Pickup or car (if not pickup, why not?):
Neither (pick-up, in UK English at least, can mean a girlfriend for a one-night-stand. Even given that it might be fun, being hit on the head with a hammer by my wife is not to be recommended).
37. Favourite bathroom smell:
Disinfectant
38. Last time you read this much without a pee break:
Don't take much notice of toilet breaks, so couldn't tell you. Maybe I need to take note of them for future reference.
Maybe I will find that there is some copyright infringement by putting this on my blog, but this was the easiest route to take in the short-term.
I have also converted the US English to UK English, as a matter of course!
So:
In case you want to know a bit more about me (astonysh), you should definitely check out this questionnaire!
1. What year is it? Are you sure?
2012 if you accept AD. As an atheist I do not accept the "D" in that so 2012 is merely a convenient number. In Thailand, my wife's home country, it is 2555.
2. The name you normally give to idiots at the bar:
None. I never go in bars these days!
3. Name as it appears on your primary false ID:
Genius
4. Other alias(es):
superstar, brain_of_the_universe, source of all wisdom, poverty-stricken-nonconformist
5. Would you rather be taller or have a bigger body part? Which part?
Taller, I would need to be 40 years younger though - being tall always impressed women when I was a young man and not tall.
6. What African animal would you like to have as a pet?
No pets, just leave them to do their thing in their natural habitats.
7. How old would you really like your significant other to be?
She will do as she is.
8. Favourite tattoo – on anyone:
None
9. Last alcoholic drink that made you barf:
None
10. If you see a grenade on the ground do you pick it up?
No, I run away like mad and call the police on my mobile from a safe distance.
11. Who in your life would you like to choke?
Nobody directly in my life, though there are a few politicians out there ....
12. Have you ever loved someone as much as your hunting dog?
Everyone. I cannot stand dogs and will not have one. And I don't hunt!
13. Ever crash your four-wheeler into a tree? Did you survive?
Not applicable (no four-wheeler)
14. Do you prefer rhubarb or black-eyed peas?
Rhubarb
15. Day of the week you can spell without cheating:
All of them in English, French, German and Dutch
16. Favourite cuss word or phrase:
A 7-letter-word beginning with a "B" indicating a lack of at least one known parent, and can be applied to most politicians and nearly all lawyers, and every boss who either fired me or would not offer me a job in line with my talents.
17. Favourite strip joint(s):
If you'd asked me this 30 years ago, I might have had an answer.
18. Favourite dancer (and why?):
Gene Kelly, I like old movies, and he always got the girl at the end of the film (which is a nice thought ....).
19. Like auto racing or not? If not – why not?
No, the same boring thing for two hours.
20. Favourite dessert (cake or pie):
Apfelstrudel
21. Favourite nonalcoholic drink (may not apply):
Multivitamin drinks from the local supermarket.
22. Prefer movies from Disney or Bare-Naked Productions?
Neither (Pocohontas does Dallas? Snow White and the seven perverted dwarves? Then you can have both!).
23. Favourite greasy spoon restaurant:
None, can't afford to eat out - even at cheapo diners.
24. Original colour of your bedroom carpet (check under the dog hair):
None, we cannot afford one and we do not have a dog (see above)
25. How many times did you tell your last driver’s test examiner to screw off?
None - never learned to drive!
26. What porn site did you get your last e-mail from?
www.growyoursevenbiggerifpossible.com
Incidentally it would be difficult if not impossible ....
27. Which store would you choose most often to rob?
Any with no security gate at the front and where I would not get caught.
28. What body part do you do most often scratch when you are bored?
My nose
29. Do you buy Playboy™ (or Playgirl™) for the pictures or the articles?
I don't. What would a man of my age do with it?
30. What time of day do you usually pass out?
If my wife was on the early morning shift at the airport, quite early, otherwise tomorrow.
31. Who do you know that would be able to pronounce all the words in this text:
Next to nobody, given the fact that all my friends are Germans or Thais.
32. Who is the person you could send this to that is least likely to be able to read?
Any politician
33. Best friend(s) who are most likely to jerk their hind leg when you scratch their ear:
No friends would let me get that close!
34. Last person(s) who farted in your presence:
My wife (usually in bed)
35. Do you own a late model vehicle (made after 1978)?
No
36. Pickup or car (if not pickup, why not?):
Neither (pick-up, in UK English at least, can mean a girlfriend for a one-night-stand. Even given that it might be fun, being hit on the head with a hammer by my wife is not to be recommended).
37. Favourite bathroom smell:
Disinfectant
38. Last time you read this much without a pee break:
Don't take much notice of toilet breaks, so couldn't tell you. Maybe I need to take note of them for future reference.
Appropriate links?
I am not sure how YouTube comes up with its recommended connecting links, but it has come up with some weird stuff lately. I often go on there prepared to hear the other side of the argument, but I am never convinced that the opposing view even comes close to the truth, and often is simply based upon flawed, if not totally fallacious, logic.
Anyway, the three particular individuals whom I seem to keep getting recommended to me, and whom YouTube would be advised to keep away from my vision, are as follows:
1. Adolf Hitler. Enough said, really, but it is amazing how many people still seem to regard the biggest political thug of the 20th century as a heroic figure and it leaves you almost speechless. People are THAT STUPID?
2. Margaret Thatcher. The worst British Prime Minister of the 20th century, the creator of mass unemployment on a scale equalling anything in the 1930s (with all the associated poverty, degradation and hopelessness), and the creator of an economy based upon unsustainably ludicrous amounts of private debt, and, of course, usury.
3. Milton Friedman, an economic guru whose philosophy was put into practice by his political followers - a philosophy which brought the world economy crashing down under a huge pile of debt in 2008. His beliefs are firmly based upon the trickle-down nonsense of which some politicians were so fond in the 1980s, and still has its adherents. The fact remains that the amount that trickles down is so minimal that even the majority of people in the middle have seen their livelihoods squeezed.
I think that it gives me the Friedman links as I have spent some time listening to the excellent Joseph Stiglitz and his analysis of what is wrong firstly with American, and by extension the global, economy.
But the two are poles apart. Stiglitz is firmly in the camp of economic sense, Friedman in the camp of economic elitism.
Anyway, the three particular individuals whom I seem to keep getting recommended to me, and whom YouTube would be advised to keep away from my vision, are as follows:
1. Adolf Hitler. Enough said, really, but it is amazing how many people still seem to regard the biggest political thug of the 20th century as a heroic figure and it leaves you almost speechless. People are THAT STUPID?
2. Margaret Thatcher. The worst British Prime Minister of the 20th century, the creator of mass unemployment on a scale equalling anything in the 1930s (with all the associated poverty, degradation and hopelessness), and the creator of an economy based upon unsustainably ludicrous amounts of private debt, and, of course, usury.
3. Milton Friedman, an economic guru whose philosophy was put into practice by his political followers - a philosophy which brought the world economy crashing down under a huge pile of debt in 2008. His beliefs are firmly based upon the trickle-down nonsense of which some politicians were so fond in the 1980s, and still has its adherents. The fact remains that the amount that trickles down is so minimal that even the majority of people in the middle have seen their livelihoods squeezed.
I think that it gives me the Friedman links as I have spent some time listening to the excellent Joseph Stiglitz and his analysis of what is wrong firstly with American, and by extension the global, economy.
But the two are poles apart. Stiglitz is firmly in the camp of economic sense, Friedman in the camp of economic elitism.
Sunday, 22 January 2012
Leader of the free world?
"Our party cannot be led to victory by someone who also has never run a business, and never run a state,".
This is from possible future President Mitt Romney after his defeat in the South Carolina Republican Party Primary. Given that the winner of that Primary, Newt Gingrich, is about the least inspiring choice available to his party since Richard Nixon, it does not make Romney look good. Frankly I have time for neither Romney nor Gingrich, but to return to the quote:
If a successful businessman is needed to run a country's economy, doesn't it follow that it needs someone who has served in a war to lead a war campaign, at least one that he has started or is going to start? Romney managed to duck the Vietnam War (as did Gingrich). None of his offspring will be sent to fight in any war with Iran, none of them is anywhere near the military as far as I am aware.
As ever, Ron Paul looks like the only GOP candidate who can be trusted in this respect.
Romney and Gingrich could (and probably would) both turn out to be GWB Mark II if they get elected. During the time of the Cold War the President of the USA was regarded as the "Leader of the Free World". Amidst all the acrimony among the populations of the allied countries resulting from the USA's cavalier attitude towards the rest of the world when Bush chose to invade Iraq, that title became almost meaningless.
If the new American President (given that the re-election of Obama is extremely unlikely) adopts a similar attitude to invading Iran, the "Free World" may well acquire a new definition. Rather than comprising all the allied nations, it may well comprise, the USA and maybe the Marshall Islands (oh, I forgot Israel - you cannot discuss a puppet show without mentioning the puppeteer). That is where I would expect the likes of Romney (and Gingrich) to take the USA though - sad comment that it is.
Postscript. If the choice is between Romney and Gingrich, it could be reduced to one between someone who changes his opinions to suit the situation on the one hand, and one who changes his wife to suit his own needs on the other. Consistency and reliability are definitely not qualities that you would associate with either of them.
This is from possible future President Mitt Romney after his defeat in the South Carolina Republican Party Primary. Given that the winner of that Primary, Newt Gingrich, is about the least inspiring choice available to his party since Richard Nixon, it does not make Romney look good. Frankly I have time for neither Romney nor Gingrich, but to return to the quote:
If a successful businessman is needed to run a country's economy, doesn't it follow that it needs someone who has served in a war to lead a war campaign, at least one that he has started or is going to start? Romney managed to duck the Vietnam War (as did Gingrich). None of his offspring will be sent to fight in any war with Iran, none of them is anywhere near the military as far as I am aware.
As ever, Ron Paul looks like the only GOP candidate who can be trusted in this respect.
Romney and Gingrich could (and probably would) both turn out to be GWB Mark II if they get elected. During the time of the Cold War the President of the USA was regarded as the "Leader of the Free World". Amidst all the acrimony among the populations of the allied countries resulting from the USA's cavalier attitude towards the rest of the world when Bush chose to invade Iraq, that title became almost meaningless.
If the new American President (given that the re-election of Obama is extremely unlikely) adopts a similar attitude to invading Iran, the "Free World" may well acquire a new definition. Rather than comprising all the allied nations, it may well comprise, the USA and maybe the Marshall Islands (oh, I forgot Israel - you cannot discuss a puppet show without mentioning the puppeteer). That is where I would expect the likes of Romney (and Gingrich) to take the USA though - sad comment that it is.
Postscript. If the choice is between Romney and Gingrich, it could be reduced to one between someone who changes his opinions to suit the situation on the one hand, and one who changes his wife to suit his own needs on the other. Consistency and reliability are definitely not qualities that you would associate with either of them.
A strange line of work
N.B. - ADULT CONTENT, anyone under 18 please go away and do not read it.
This starts with the fairly innocent world of quiz shows on television.
The other evening on "Wer wird Millionär?" there was a fireman from the Hamburg area answering the questions. While the urbane Günther Jauch was asking him about his experiences as a fireman in Hamburg arose the story how he had once had to enter the studio of a dominatrix who was dealing with one of her clients.
It has struck me, for as long as I can remember, as a weird desire that anyone would enjoy being humiliated and made to suffer pain.
Further investigation into this strange desire though revealed another strange world - the world of the employed masochist.
Apparently there are in a number of countries in the world (the UK, the USA, the Czech Republic, Russia, Japan, and to an extent, Germany - this list may not be comprehensive) young women who volunteer their services as actresses to appear in movies where they are tied up and beaten, often fiercely and cruelly.
Quite why baffles me. Even given my current financial difficulties I would not accept a million Euro to be humiliated and hurt like that. So why would anyone do it?
There seems to be a recidivist element to it as well - some of the women involved make a pretty successful career from it - it is not a question of just doing it once for the money. But why? The question reverberates. It seems to fly in the face of everything in our nature, you would imagine.
I know from my teaching days that there were young people who liked to prove how tough they were and how much they could take before they finally gave way, but the masochism involved here crosses that line by some way.
And then comes the question as to how far you would allow this to be permitted legally. Do people need to be protected from themselves occasionally? Before they allow themselves to go too far - finally - with all the risks involved?
I will not pretend to know the answer. There are aspects of human nature that will always be beyond my comprehension, and this is definitely one of them.
This starts with the fairly innocent world of quiz shows on television.
The other evening on "Wer wird Millionär?" there was a fireman from the Hamburg area answering the questions. While the urbane Günther Jauch was asking him about his experiences as a fireman in Hamburg arose the story how he had once had to enter the studio of a dominatrix who was dealing with one of her clients.
It has struck me, for as long as I can remember, as a weird desire that anyone would enjoy being humiliated and made to suffer pain.
Further investigation into this strange desire though revealed another strange world - the world of the employed masochist.
Apparently there are in a number of countries in the world (the UK, the USA, the Czech Republic, Russia, Japan, and to an extent, Germany - this list may not be comprehensive) young women who volunteer their services as actresses to appear in movies where they are tied up and beaten, often fiercely and cruelly.
Quite why baffles me. Even given my current financial difficulties I would not accept a million Euro to be humiliated and hurt like that. So why would anyone do it?
There seems to be a recidivist element to it as well - some of the women involved make a pretty successful career from it - it is not a question of just doing it once for the money. But why? The question reverberates. It seems to fly in the face of everything in our nature, you would imagine.
I know from my teaching days that there were young people who liked to prove how tough they were and how much they could take before they finally gave way, but the masochism involved here crosses that line by some way.
And then comes the question as to how far you would allow this to be permitted legally. Do people need to be protected from themselves occasionally? Before they allow themselves to go too far - finally - with all the risks involved?
I will not pretend to know the answer. There are aspects of human nature that will always be beyond my comprehension, and this is definitely one of them.
Friday, 20 January 2012
Question on democracy
What happens when you have a fully democratic election when 80% of the voters are unsophisticated and have difficulty understanding the issues, and 20% are involved and committed?
And are you then surprised by the results, and the fact that life never seems to get any better?
And are you then surprised by the results, and the fact that life never seems to get any better?
Tuesday, 17 January 2012
So when is the bomb due to go off?
Politicians should be held first & foremost to account for one thing - the economy.
Any government which cannot deliver conditions in which full employment without under-employment (i.e. nobody trained as a top-grade scientist being forced to flip burgers as nothing else is available) exists, has failed in its mission and should be replaced by one that can deliver this.
Wealth has to be created if it is to be shared, so there is no point in taxing the wealthy out of existence, but the concept of sharing the wealth - at least through the creation of worthwhile jobs for everyone of whatever age who wants to work - is also vital.
Meanwhile the scare stories about terrorists usw need putting on the back burner. Vigilance is needed, but the difference between unemployment (a daily deteriorative process which causes poverty) and a bomb going off (a one-off occurrence which usually can have an exact date and place to it, given the rarity of the event) is obvious.
Dealing with the here and now and resolving the issues should be the priority. Being vigilant against morons wanting to spread a cause by violent means is important, but needs putting into perspective. And to remember - the chance of being blown up by a bomb is miniscule even compared with the chance of being killed in a road accident, and as nobody seems to want to stop people using cars ....
Any government which cannot deliver conditions in which full employment without under-employment (i.e. nobody trained as a top-grade scientist being forced to flip burgers as nothing else is available) exists, has failed in its mission and should be replaced by one that can deliver this.
Wealth has to be created if it is to be shared, so there is no point in taxing the wealthy out of existence, but the concept of sharing the wealth - at least through the creation of worthwhile jobs for everyone of whatever age who wants to work - is also vital.
Meanwhile the scare stories about terrorists usw need putting on the back burner. Vigilance is needed, but the difference between unemployment (a daily deteriorative process which causes poverty) and a bomb going off (a one-off occurrence which usually can have an exact date and place to it, given the rarity of the event) is obvious.
Dealing with the here and now and resolving the issues should be the priority. Being vigilant against morons wanting to spread a cause by violent means is important, but needs putting into perspective. And to remember - the chance of being blown up by a bomb is miniscule even compared with the chance of being killed in a road accident, and as nobody seems to want to stop people using cars ....
PS. Rereading this today (13/8/2025), I would also include that apart from scare stories about terrorists, all the xenophobic stories about foreigners and immigration (often omitting the significant word "illegal" in fornt of the word "immigrant) should also be put into perspective.
Yes illegal immigrants should be sent home (to their country of origin, not to some obscure country which will take them!). And there should no claims for asylum which prevent that from happening.
Apply to come legally as an asylum seeker and wait your turn in the queue!
The fact remains though that the far right extremists have no economic solution which will benefit working people, in many ways they are simply manipulating the population with xenophobia to ignore the economic facts of life and will eventually produce a society where wealth is concentrated in even fewer hands while the number of people living in poverty will increase. There is no way the economic agenda which they are promulgating will work in any other way.
Sunday, 15 January 2012
Smug statistics do not resolve problems
nor pay the bills.
I received a rather smug document today telling us that unemployment is at its lowest point in Germany since 1991. Good!
But nowhere near good enough! The figure is still close to 3 million! If the figure had fallen below 2 million I would have described it as moving in the right direction, but it is still far, far too high. Recall during the Adenauer/Erhard years of the economic miracle, the figure was 300,000! There is a very long way to go.
There was also a record in the last month of the number of people working, some 41 million, the highest ever. Good - so what is stop us getting to 44 million and wiping out the scourge of unemployment entirely?
One less smug statistic was the information that I picked up off the Web the other week that the number of people living here in poverty is also at a post-war record high in percentage terms.
Which sounds like more people are taking badly paying jobs (McDonalds and Burger King must be on a hiring binge - obviously people cannot afford to eat elsewhere!), while the cost of living (see the rise in energy prices in the last two years) soars rapidly upwards.
What is needed is adequately paying jobs for all people working and realistic solutions to meeting people's living needs. We cannot subsidise energy costs (gosh, what would the oil companies think?), but we need far more imaginative solutions to make them affordable. As things stand - and with the serious prospect of a conflict with Iran - things look likely to get even worse in this respect.
And no smug statistics will hide the reality of that situation!
I received a rather smug document today telling us that unemployment is at its lowest point in Germany since 1991. Good!
But nowhere near good enough! The figure is still close to 3 million! If the figure had fallen below 2 million I would have described it as moving in the right direction, but it is still far, far too high. Recall during the Adenauer/Erhard years of the economic miracle, the figure was 300,000! There is a very long way to go.
There was also a record in the last month of the number of people working, some 41 million, the highest ever. Good - so what is stop us getting to 44 million and wiping out the scourge of unemployment entirely?
One less smug statistic was the information that I picked up off the Web the other week that the number of people living here in poverty is also at a post-war record high in percentage terms.
Which sounds like more people are taking badly paying jobs (McDonalds and Burger King must be on a hiring binge - obviously people cannot afford to eat elsewhere!), while the cost of living (see the rise in energy prices in the last two years) soars rapidly upwards.
What is needed is adequately paying jobs for all people working and realistic solutions to meeting people's living needs. We cannot subsidise energy costs (gosh, what would the oil companies think?), but we need far more imaginative solutions to make them affordable. As things stand - and with the serious prospect of a conflict with Iran - things look likely to get even worse in this respect.
And no smug statistics will hide the reality of that situation!
Friday, 13 January 2012
William F. Buckley on death
One of those people with whom I have hardly ever agreed, but his views on life and death are interesting.
With the American anchor, Charlie Rose:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZK67jeBJRm0&feature=g-vrec&context=G2edc93bRVAAAAAAAABw
With the American anchor, Charlie Rose:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZK67jeBJRm0&feature=g-vrec&context=G2edc93bRVAAAAAAAABw
Wednesday, 11 January 2012
Sorry, not our problem
Occasionally I become incredibly depressed with the quality of political debate here. I have, anyway, reached a point of thinking that there is no way the political class can resolve the important issues (poverty, unemployment, debt etc.), and in any case are not unduly concerned about doing so.
Public attention being what it is they can get away with it most of the time - particularly in straight choice situations when if you don't like how bad the policies of one side are, so you pick the other side who are probably even worse (try the US as an example, the Democrats are next to useless, the Republicans a sight worse!).
And when you get tired of a difficult situation, you give up on it and just let it go.
It is perhaps a curiosity given my tendency to pacifism and my opposition to the war in Iraq and any future conflict with Iran, that I remain in the minority in thinking that the war in Afghanistan must be seen through to a successful conclusion, if only for one issue above all others - the rights of women.
During the last general election campaign the German political party, Die Linke - a party whose economic platform I could on my most pessimistic days be drawn to support - had two placards on either side of the same lamp-post.
On one side was the slogan "equal pay for equal work" (meaning the situation where women are paid on average 86% of what men get for doing the same job) must end. Agreed! 100%, especially given the margin by which girls are outscoring boys in schools these days.
On the other side read "German troops out of Afghanistan". OK in many ways it is a lost cause bringing that country even into the 20th, never mind the 21st, century. But consider for the moment - what chance do women there even now have the chance of equal pay for equal work? In fact what chance would they have of working if the Taliban came back? Zero, zilch, none whatsoever!
And if foreign troops leave, does anyone not seriously believe that the Taliban (with their large number of religious mercenaries from neighbouring Pakistan) would not be back in power in no time?
Women in Afghanistan have remarkably few rights compared with their German counterparts, even with the current relatively moderate (if highly corrupt) government in power. There should be no question of the international community leaving until the rights that they have now are guaranteed, and the promise of further improvement in the future is also guaranteed.
For that poor backward country the importance of this should not be underestimated. As a result of constant wars over a 30 year period, the population balance has altered so that women make up a disproportionately high percentage of the population. The women of Afghanistan need to be enabled and empowered if the intense poverty under which many live is to be combatted.
Abandoning them to their fate on the "it is not our business" principle is simply not an option - and we know all too well what that fate would be if the Taliban are allowed to return!
Public attention being what it is they can get away with it most of the time - particularly in straight choice situations when if you don't like how bad the policies of one side are, so you pick the other side who are probably even worse (try the US as an example, the Democrats are next to useless, the Republicans a sight worse!).
And when you get tired of a difficult situation, you give up on it and just let it go.
It is perhaps a curiosity given my tendency to pacifism and my opposition to the war in Iraq and any future conflict with Iran, that I remain in the minority in thinking that the war in Afghanistan must be seen through to a successful conclusion, if only for one issue above all others - the rights of women.
During the last general election campaign the German political party, Die Linke - a party whose economic platform I could on my most pessimistic days be drawn to support - had two placards on either side of the same lamp-post.
On one side was the slogan "equal pay for equal work" (meaning the situation where women are paid on average 86% of what men get for doing the same job) must end. Agreed! 100%, especially given the margin by which girls are outscoring boys in schools these days.
On the other side read "German troops out of Afghanistan". OK in many ways it is a lost cause bringing that country even into the 20th, never mind the 21st, century. But consider for the moment - what chance do women there even now have the chance of equal pay for equal work? In fact what chance would they have of working if the Taliban came back? Zero, zilch, none whatsoever!
And if foreign troops leave, does anyone not seriously believe that the Taliban (with their large number of religious mercenaries from neighbouring Pakistan) would not be back in power in no time?
Women in Afghanistan have remarkably few rights compared with their German counterparts, even with the current relatively moderate (if highly corrupt) government in power. There should be no question of the international community leaving until the rights that they have now are guaranteed, and the promise of further improvement in the future is also guaranteed.
For that poor backward country the importance of this should not be underestimated. As a result of constant wars over a 30 year period, the population balance has altered so that women make up a disproportionately high percentage of the population. The women of Afghanistan need to be enabled and empowered if the intense poverty under which many live is to be combatted.
Abandoning them to their fate on the "it is not our business" principle is simply not an option - and we know all too well what that fate would be if the Taliban are allowed to return!
Tuesday, 10 January 2012
So declare a fatwa on me
I discovered this morning (fascinating that quite old men like me are still capable of learning new facts - the perpetual student in me still lives) that a fatwa does not equal a death sentence.
It is only a specific type of fatwa, the sort of thing that was imposed upon Salman Rushdie and Taslima Nasrin. Still an extraordinarily evil device to use in such circumstance IMHO though - using an antiquated religious belief to encourage cold blooded murder essentially.
If Wikipedia is to be believed (always a major point, but it was the quickest source of reference available), a fatwa is only binding in Shia Islam and not in Sunni Islam (translation for Christians out there - like the Inquisition was only used by the Catholic church, not the Protestant churches, in the 17th and 18th centuries).
Even so ....
There is nothing like fear to keep the sheep in the pen.
I watched a number of highly impressive recordings of Sam Harris speaking yesterday. His acknowledgement that Islam is far more dangerous than any other religion seems very accurate. I read also a number of his pieces and he constantly hit the nail on the head. The dangers of liberal tolerance facing the intolerance of this antiquated beast of a belief system are not to be underestimated.
It is like patting on the head a hungry animal that has not eaten for three days and expecting it not to bite.
Toleration can only work in these circumstances with a belief system that embraces similar expectations. As Harris has pointed out, there is no allowance in Islam for disobedience, and to ignore the concepts of jihad and the like and talk of "moderate Muslims" and the "religion of peace" misses the point very clearly and very dangerously.
That there are moderate Muslims results from the people concerned not embracing their religion in full - rejection of the concept of jihad is not to take the system as a whole and to leave out one of its significant parts.
For brief snippets of Harris's works, I would check out the series on Wikiquotes under his name headed simply "Islam". He doesn't lack humour, but he is very perceptive and accurate.
And for further reach on the subject, read the quotes of Taslima Nasrin and Ayaan Hirsi Ali on their respective pages. Both will give you a female perspective on this brute of a belief system.
So much eventually is based on this disguised political agenda where Muslims will simply breed the rest of humanity off the face of the planet and enforce a near universal caliphate on the planet as a whole. This is admittedly a very long way off, but one thing to remember is this law on apostasy which is so rigorously enforced in the Islamic world - namely a death sentence for non-believers.
One of the YouTube pieces where Richard Dawkins is being interviewed about apostasy brings up this point. Dawkins pointed out that he knows of atheists living in the Muslim world, who dare not admit to their scepticism due to this inane antiquated rule.
It is hardly surprising. Advance requires scientific knowledge, scientific knowledge flies in the face of outmoded belief systems, and if the scientist is to help his/her country move forward with the technology that will improve the life of his/her people, (s)he better keep his/her scepticism quiet.
Ridiculous? Of course it is ridiculous. It does not need a fatwa though, it is simply the law.
And, dear Muslim reader, you do not like my views on your belief system? Then go and see your local imam and have him put a fatwa upon me - a specific one like that placed on Salman Rushdie and Taslima Nasrin. I am an old man with a very limited income (I know as much about poverty as you ever will) and no children, and very little of a worthwhile future left, but it might nonetheless satisfy your blood lust and your ignorance.
It is only a specific type of fatwa, the sort of thing that was imposed upon Salman Rushdie and Taslima Nasrin. Still an extraordinarily evil device to use in such circumstance IMHO though - using an antiquated religious belief to encourage cold blooded murder essentially.
If Wikipedia is to be believed (always a major point, but it was the quickest source of reference available), a fatwa is only binding in Shia Islam and not in Sunni Islam (translation for Christians out there - like the Inquisition was only used by the Catholic church, not the Protestant churches, in the 17th and 18th centuries).
Even so ....
There is nothing like fear to keep the sheep in the pen.
I watched a number of highly impressive recordings of Sam Harris speaking yesterday. His acknowledgement that Islam is far more dangerous than any other religion seems very accurate. I read also a number of his pieces and he constantly hit the nail on the head. The dangers of liberal tolerance facing the intolerance of this antiquated beast of a belief system are not to be underestimated.
It is like patting on the head a hungry animal that has not eaten for three days and expecting it not to bite.
Toleration can only work in these circumstances with a belief system that embraces similar expectations. As Harris has pointed out, there is no allowance in Islam for disobedience, and to ignore the concepts of jihad and the like and talk of "moderate Muslims" and the "religion of peace" misses the point very clearly and very dangerously.
That there are moderate Muslims results from the people concerned not embracing their religion in full - rejection of the concept of jihad is not to take the system as a whole and to leave out one of its significant parts.
For brief snippets of Harris's works, I would check out the series on Wikiquotes under his name headed simply "Islam". He doesn't lack humour, but he is very perceptive and accurate.
And for further reach on the subject, read the quotes of Taslima Nasrin and Ayaan Hirsi Ali on their respective pages. Both will give you a female perspective on this brute of a belief system.
So much eventually is based on this disguised political agenda where Muslims will simply breed the rest of humanity off the face of the planet and enforce a near universal caliphate on the planet as a whole. This is admittedly a very long way off, but one thing to remember is this law on apostasy which is so rigorously enforced in the Islamic world - namely a death sentence for non-believers.
One of the YouTube pieces where Richard Dawkins is being interviewed about apostasy brings up this point. Dawkins pointed out that he knows of atheists living in the Muslim world, who dare not admit to their scepticism due to this inane antiquated rule.
It is hardly surprising. Advance requires scientific knowledge, scientific knowledge flies in the face of outmoded belief systems, and if the scientist is to help his/her country move forward with the technology that will improve the life of his/her people, (s)he better keep his/her scepticism quiet.
Ridiculous? Of course it is ridiculous. It does not need a fatwa though, it is simply the law.
And, dear Muslim reader, you do not like my views on your belief system? Then go and see your local imam and have him put a fatwa upon me - a specific one like that placed on Salman Rushdie and Taslima Nasrin. I am an old man with a very limited income (I know as much about poverty as you ever will) and no children, and very little of a worthwhile future left, but it might nonetheless satisfy your blood lust and your ignorance.
Sunday, 8 January 2012
When the revolution comes - more historical revisionism
The week's unfortunate YouTube moment came when I was offered a link to a picture of Hitler getting out of a Mercedes.
Given my opinions of Hitler and Fascism, I am concerned as to why I might be considered interested in this, but with an open mind and more than a degree of contempt I played the clip.
It was extremely uninteresting. One historical thug and a number of long-dead people cheering ....
What was more disturbing was the commentary from the YouTube contributors underneath. Historical revision, Nazi sympathies, you name it, were running amok.
Not much consistency or accuracy or true historical fact in the arguments, as you might expect. If one or more of the individuals writing this series of electronic faeces was/were German I could not really tell, but it read mainly like American English. The tone though was the Jews ran the German economy (85% of the banking system was a number quoted), they had run it into the ground and enriched only themselves in the process, and essentially they had to be cleaned out.
At the same time Communism (which would have, incidentally, closed down this "corrupt Jewish system" and was attracting wide support in Germany in the early 1930s) was a violent philosophy which had to be curtailed (given that the USSR was then led by Stalin, the thinking behind that can be understood) and was at the same time a part of the "Jewish conspiracy"!
Huh?
Consistent reasoning this is not. The corrupt bankers were Jewish, the Communist revolutionaries who wanted to overthrow the banking system were Jewish - so Hitler was needed to stand up against both????
Hitler was needed like the proverbial hole in the head, and check out how much he cost Germany in the twelve years that he was in power! And there is no way that the 6,000,000 people assassinated in his name in that time were all controlling the banking system! A small fraction at best, even if the fact of that control is accurate, which I doubt but cannot prove.
OK, on to Communism. Imagine being in Germany in 1930. The memories of the mass inflation and economic meltdown of 1923 were still quite recent, even if between 1924 and 1929 there had been a recovery to some extent. Come October 1929. On the 3rd of that month, the man who had rescued the German economy in the middle of the decade (Gustav Stresemann - a Berlin Protestant pragmatic conservative, not a Jew) died. On the 29th of that month came the Wall Street Crash. The German economy, which was heavily dependant on the US economy at this stage, went South.
Unemployment went through the roof again, the spectre of poverty was suddenly everywhere again, the orthodox politicians had no solutions, the one who might have understood what to do had just died ....
It is easy to be wise after the event, history teaches us many lessons, but ask yourself what Communism offered. If you were a banker or an industrialist, you would find yourself paying a heavy price, and if you were a member of the military elite, it sounded like subservience to a foreign power (the Soviet Union).
But for the working person, the individual who had a badly paid job or now faced the extreme poverty of the unemployment line? Communism had foreseen this collapse. It had come. Communism offered in place of this disaster housing, secure worthwhile jobs, food, an end to debt, and all the related self-respect that had been lost.
And as the capitalists had been responsible for the collapse while you had turned up to work every day assiduously to do your job, and you had paid the ultimate price for THEIR MISTAKE! Trust us, don't trust THEM!
That this philosophy and thinking could in these dire circumstances attract some 17% of the vote, is it really so surprising?
Of course the promises were bogus, it could never have worked, but what were the alternatives? The current batch of orthodox politicians who seemed totally in disarray and lacked any clue as to how to resolve the situation? Hitler and the Nazis?
There are times when there are no satisfactory answers (ask people in Greece at the moment). This was one of them. Often idealistic solutions, which sound good at the moment when the everything is collapsing around you, will appeal despite the reality of what could be practically achieved.
In 1933, the appeal of Communism was such that in the city of Berlin the KPD outvoted Hitler's surging Nazi party in the last democratic elections of the Weimar Republic.
Hope springs eternal. So unfortunately do delusions! See the DDR between 1949 and 1989 if you want those delusions to be shattered.
But again think of the prospects - a secure roof over your head, a job in line with your abilities for which you were adequately rewarded and was always available to you, enough to eat without making a pig of yourself, a life in which you could always make ends meet and you never needed to put yourself into debt ....
Laudable objectives. Sad in its way that Communism could never deliver on such promises.
Given my opinions of Hitler and Fascism, I am concerned as to why I might be considered interested in this, but with an open mind and more than a degree of contempt I played the clip.
It was extremely uninteresting. One historical thug and a number of long-dead people cheering ....
What was more disturbing was the commentary from the YouTube contributors underneath. Historical revision, Nazi sympathies, you name it, were running amok.
Not much consistency or accuracy or true historical fact in the arguments, as you might expect. If one or more of the individuals writing this series of electronic faeces was/were German I could not really tell, but it read mainly like American English. The tone though was the Jews ran the German economy (85% of the banking system was a number quoted), they had run it into the ground and enriched only themselves in the process, and essentially they had to be cleaned out.
At the same time Communism (which would have, incidentally, closed down this "corrupt Jewish system" and was attracting wide support in Germany in the early 1930s) was a violent philosophy which had to be curtailed (given that the USSR was then led by Stalin, the thinking behind that can be understood) and was at the same time a part of the "Jewish conspiracy"!
Huh?
Consistent reasoning this is not. The corrupt bankers were Jewish, the Communist revolutionaries who wanted to overthrow the banking system were Jewish - so Hitler was needed to stand up against both????
Hitler was needed like the proverbial hole in the head, and check out how much he cost Germany in the twelve years that he was in power! And there is no way that the 6,000,000 people assassinated in his name in that time were all controlling the banking system! A small fraction at best, even if the fact of that control is accurate, which I doubt but cannot prove.
OK, on to Communism. Imagine being in Germany in 1930. The memories of the mass inflation and economic meltdown of 1923 were still quite recent, even if between 1924 and 1929 there had been a recovery to some extent. Come October 1929. On the 3rd of that month, the man who had rescued the German economy in the middle of the decade (Gustav Stresemann - a Berlin Protestant pragmatic conservative, not a Jew) died. On the 29th of that month came the Wall Street Crash. The German economy, which was heavily dependant on the US economy at this stage, went South.
Unemployment went through the roof again, the spectre of poverty was suddenly everywhere again, the orthodox politicians had no solutions, the one who might have understood what to do had just died ....
It is easy to be wise after the event, history teaches us many lessons, but ask yourself what Communism offered. If you were a banker or an industrialist, you would find yourself paying a heavy price, and if you were a member of the military elite, it sounded like subservience to a foreign power (the Soviet Union).
But for the working person, the individual who had a badly paid job or now faced the extreme poverty of the unemployment line? Communism had foreseen this collapse. It had come. Communism offered in place of this disaster housing, secure worthwhile jobs, food, an end to debt, and all the related self-respect that had been lost.
And as the capitalists had been responsible for the collapse while you had turned up to work every day assiduously to do your job, and you had paid the ultimate price for THEIR MISTAKE! Trust us, don't trust THEM!
That this philosophy and thinking could in these dire circumstances attract some 17% of the vote, is it really so surprising?
Of course the promises were bogus, it could never have worked, but what were the alternatives? The current batch of orthodox politicians who seemed totally in disarray and lacked any clue as to how to resolve the situation? Hitler and the Nazis?
There are times when there are no satisfactory answers (ask people in Greece at the moment). This was one of them. Often idealistic solutions, which sound good at the moment when the everything is collapsing around you, will appeal despite the reality of what could be practically achieved.
In 1933, the appeal of Communism was such that in the city of Berlin the KPD outvoted Hitler's surging Nazi party in the last democratic elections of the Weimar Republic.
Hope springs eternal. So unfortunately do delusions! See the DDR between 1949 and 1989 if you want those delusions to be shattered.
But again think of the prospects - a secure roof over your head, a job in line with your abilities for which you were adequately rewarded and was always available to you, enough to eat without making a pig of yourself, a life in which you could always make ends meet and you never needed to put yourself into debt ....
Laudable objectives. Sad in its way that Communism could never deliver on such promises.
Saturday, 7 January 2012
From talents shows to political revisionism - a tour
This will ramble, do not expect any consistent thread running through it.
German television these days seems to be awash with talent shows. IMHO more show than talent. If you have a favourite song that has been around in your head for a generation, and you want to hear some nondescript performance of it by someone whose name you do not know, and probably will want to forget in a hurry, then this is the place to go.
In English, of course, nobody here seems capable of singing in German these days. Quite why .... For more on this, see later.
These programmes are actually more a source of domestic upheaval in the house than anything else. My wife, for a reason that is beyond my personal credibility, loves them. My view is that if I want to hear "Let's Stay Together", I will dig out the Tina Turner original, I do not need some obscure male singer trying to perform it and only being capable of hitting the higher notes (Tina Turner could hit the lower notes better than a male singer? Says everything about the cover version!).
Age is no limitation to the material. The other week, I heard the Ben E. King classic "Stand By Me" being ritually murdered by some performer (followed by praise from the professional judges, who should have known better). That song is 50 years old.
Anyway on Thursday this week, I was compiling soccer statistics on the computer that is not attached to the Internet, and found myself being tortured by the noise in the background coming from one of these emissions. After four lamentable efforts (and the only German that I heard in that time was the usual shallow rudimentary comments from the judges, who obviously do not know the words "schrecklich", "furchtbar" or Sch*iße"), enough was enough.
Back to the laptop, on with the headphones, off to YouTube.
OK, if we want to hear some 50-year-old material, type in the letters B, R, E & L. Where YouTube is wonderful for people of my generation is the way that some classic television recordings have re-emerged from obscurity. Watching Jacques Brel on television in various countries in the 1960s is amazing. And hearing the genius of the man, and the brilliance of the performances .... The ability to mix the French and Flemish of his native Belgium was one of his charms, and there is an agelessness about many of the lyrics.
One of his more interesting songs is IMHO "De Nuttelozen van de Nacht" - a Flemish version version of one of his French songs that I think actually works better in Flemish. The song is about the lost souls who hang round sleazy night clubs in the early hours of the morning looking for "pick-ups". It recalls some rather sad memories for me personally, I would add in passing. The song definitely has a compelling, realistic atmosphere, if you have ever found yourself in that situation.
I often wonder to myself whether one of these talent shows could throw up a Brel, a genius, a talent that has not been spotted through the orthodox channels. Following a link to Brel's version of the song (one of YouTube's more interesting facilities), you come to a cabaret style performance of the song by a wonderful, almost unknown, Flemish lady called Saskia van Rafelghem.
It is almost heresy IMHO to expect anyone to cover any of Brel's material, but this definitely works. Far better than any of the performers that I have heard on any television talent shows recently! It is in Flemish rather than English (or French)? Maybe the fact that I understand Dutch most of the time helps, but I do not see that that distracts from the performance.
It is a personal view, but this obsession with imitating the Anglo-American entertainment industry is damaging the amazing diversity that can heard internationally. I would also personally claim that Spanish and Italian are far more tuneful languages to hear than English ever could be (and my command of both those languages is negligible).
My tour round YouTube has in the past few weeks introduced me to Wende Snijders (a Dutch lady who performs a lot of material in French), Rowwen Hèze (a group who perform in Limburg dialect Dutch music with a Mexican bias, often with Spanish lyrics added), and some classic Italian stuff from Albano and Romina Power, and Gigliola Cinquetti (whose 1964 Eurovision winner "Non ho l'età" is still a personal favourite). Among others.
The obsession with the Anglo-American music industry being what it is, of course, means that unfortunately that we are going to be stuck with more of these awful cover versions on talent shows, while a great deal of potentially fascinating music in other languages is ignored. Sadly!
So back to YouTube, and back to Brel. This morning I picked out a recording of one of my favourite Brel numbers "Marieke". The reference to "le ciel flamand entre les tours de Bruges et Gand" recalls train journeys between Brussels and Zeebrugge when I was working in Brussels in 1990 and 1991 - not that I get particularly nostalgic for those days. The intermingling of French and Flemish in that song creates a wonderful atmosphere.
Follow a YouTube link on there to the item on the exhibition that Brel's daughter held in Brussels around the time of the 30th anniversary of his death - a news item that was interesting but should have been longer.
And on a link to that, for reasons that only YouTube can explain, is the wretched Jean-Marie Le Pen explaining that the Nazi concentration camps were insignificant .... Poetry to political revisionism in one stride! What Brel would have made of that, I hate to think.
German television these days seems to be awash with talent shows. IMHO more show than talent. If you have a favourite song that has been around in your head for a generation, and you want to hear some nondescript performance of it by someone whose name you do not know, and probably will want to forget in a hurry, then this is the place to go.
In English, of course, nobody here seems capable of singing in German these days. Quite why .... For more on this, see later.
These programmes are actually more a source of domestic upheaval in the house than anything else. My wife, for a reason that is beyond my personal credibility, loves them. My view is that if I want to hear "Let's Stay Together", I will dig out the Tina Turner original, I do not need some obscure male singer trying to perform it and only being capable of hitting the higher notes (Tina Turner could hit the lower notes better than a male singer? Says everything about the cover version!).
Age is no limitation to the material. The other week, I heard the Ben E. King classic "Stand By Me" being ritually murdered by some performer (followed by praise from the professional judges, who should have known better). That song is 50 years old.
Anyway on Thursday this week, I was compiling soccer statistics on the computer that is not attached to the Internet, and found myself being tortured by the noise in the background coming from one of these emissions. After four lamentable efforts (and the only German that I heard in that time was the usual shallow rudimentary comments from the judges, who obviously do not know the words "schrecklich", "furchtbar" or Sch*iße"), enough was enough.
Back to the laptop, on with the headphones, off to YouTube.
OK, if we want to hear some 50-year-old material, type in the letters B, R, E & L. Where YouTube is wonderful for people of my generation is the way that some classic television recordings have re-emerged from obscurity. Watching Jacques Brel on television in various countries in the 1960s is amazing. And hearing the genius of the man, and the brilliance of the performances .... The ability to mix the French and Flemish of his native Belgium was one of his charms, and there is an agelessness about many of the lyrics.
One of his more interesting songs is IMHO "De Nuttelozen van de Nacht" - a Flemish version version of one of his French songs that I think actually works better in Flemish. The song is about the lost souls who hang round sleazy night clubs in the early hours of the morning looking for "pick-ups". It recalls some rather sad memories for me personally, I would add in passing. The song definitely has a compelling, realistic atmosphere, if you have ever found yourself in that situation.
I often wonder to myself whether one of these talent shows could throw up a Brel, a genius, a talent that has not been spotted through the orthodox channels. Following a link to Brel's version of the song (one of YouTube's more interesting facilities), you come to a cabaret style performance of the song by a wonderful, almost unknown, Flemish lady called Saskia van Rafelghem.
It is almost heresy IMHO to expect anyone to cover any of Brel's material, but this definitely works. Far better than any of the performers that I have heard on any television talent shows recently! It is in Flemish rather than English (or French)? Maybe the fact that I understand Dutch most of the time helps, but I do not see that that distracts from the performance.
It is a personal view, but this obsession with imitating the Anglo-American entertainment industry is damaging the amazing diversity that can heard internationally. I would also personally claim that Spanish and Italian are far more tuneful languages to hear than English ever could be (and my command of both those languages is negligible).
My tour round YouTube has in the past few weeks introduced me to Wende Snijders (a Dutch lady who performs a lot of material in French), Rowwen Hèze (a group who perform in Limburg dialect Dutch music with a Mexican bias, often with Spanish lyrics added), and some classic Italian stuff from Albano and Romina Power, and Gigliola Cinquetti (whose 1964 Eurovision winner "Non ho l'età" is still a personal favourite). Among others.
The obsession with the Anglo-American music industry being what it is, of course, means that unfortunately that we are going to be stuck with more of these awful cover versions on talent shows, while a great deal of potentially fascinating music in other languages is ignored. Sadly!
So back to YouTube, and back to Brel. This morning I picked out a recording of one of my favourite Brel numbers "Marieke". The reference to "le ciel flamand entre les tours de Bruges et Gand" recalls train journeys between Brussels and Zeebrugge when I was working in Brussels in 1990 and 1991 - not that I get particularly nostalgic for those days. The intermingling of French and Flemish in that song creates a wonderful atmosphere.
Follow a YouTube link on there to the item on the exhibition that Brel's daughter held in Brussels around the time of the 30th anniversary of his death - a news item that was interesting but should have been longer.
And on a link to that, for reasons that only YouTube can explain, is the wretched Jean-Marie Le Pen explaining that the Nazi concentration camps were insignificant .... Poetry to political revisionism in one stride! What Brel would have made of that, I hate to think.
Thursday, 5 January 2012
The cult of negative celebrity
This morning I revisited an interview on YouTube that the BBC had with Richard Dawkins about atheism.
Erudite, intelligent, clearly thought-out reasoning - what you would expect from Dawkins.
He has though become the public face of atheism following the success of his (allegedly) controversial book "The God Delusion". I have read the book, agreed with much what was in there, and nodded at times when he confirmed what I have come to accept was the case in the light of 40 years worth of non-belief and investigations into the subject.
Not that I agreed with everything, I hasten to add.
Years ago I read Bertrand Russell on the subject, and was awe-struck at the clarity and profundity of his arguments. I also as a student read writers from the French enlightenment like Diderot and D'Holbach, who spoke eloquently on the subject. And before I even became an atheist I read part of the work Roman writer, Lucretius ("De Rerum Natura"), where in an early scientific analysis of the nonsense of belief and the facts of how things really work, the writer set out one of the early works of genius on the subject.
This is 2000 years ago, and you can go back another 500 years to ancient Greece to find atheists, people with a clear scientific mind-set, who embraced atheistic concepts.
It is not simply a fad of the age. It is not simply the product of Darwinism (many people in the USA, in particular, automatically associate Darwin with atheism as if the theory did not exist before him - it did, it had for over 2,000 years, and Darwin was simply another important influence upon the thinking involved - bringing forth a whole new set of scientific principles to consider).
But in the age where the media has become at once potent and poisonous, there seems to be a need to identify a cause or a belief system or support of a series of principles by giving it a human face - an Aunt Sally to be knocked over if you like. I was not "converted" to atheism by reading Dawkins's book, it merely reinforced some of the views that I already held.
If other people are convinced by the work and become atheists, all well and good. It would be particularly valuable if that happened in the "Muslim world" for example, where the capacity to even challenge the status quo is prohibited.
On the subject of which, I come to the case of Anjem Choudary. If Richard Dawkins has become the public face of atheism, Choudary has become, in the UK at least, the public face of unreasoned militant Islam. Given some of his beliefs and the incendiary statements that he has issued, it remains a source of surprise to me that he has not been charged with incitement to terrorism in the UK, and that the USA has not sought his extradition for the same.
Obviously he manages to walk the necessary legal tightrope (as a qualified lawyer he would know the traps to avoid), where the organisations that he supports are banned, but as an individual he is not prosecuted.
He is, and should be, entitled IMHO to practise his belief system in as far as that it affects himself, and himself alone. Once you start spreading it into the public domain though and affecting other individuals, then you have crossed a significant line where you are infringing upon the rights of others to decide for themselves.
And there is no doubt in my mind that much about Choudary is as political as it is religious.
The fact though that he has become this public face has led to exposés, like the one in the UK tabloid, the Daily Mail, two years ago indicating that in his student days he was an alcohol abuser, a person who experimented with drugs, and a notorious womaniser.
All well and good - but the item (typical of the conservative tabloids in the UK) did not produce one shred of evidence, and merely came across as a standard piece of character assassination.
He may well deserve to have his character assassinated, but that is another matter. If he did behave like this in the past and renounced his conduct (many converts to all faiths do this on a regular basis), that does not invalidate his current beliefs. That he wrote off the article as a complete fabrication does not alter anything either.
Eventually his public face can well disappear (I would not be surprised to see this Islamofascist murdered by someone from the standard Euro-Fascist fringe like the EDL at some point). The dangerous belief system that he propagates, and which needs to be excoriated for the brutal sham that it is, will continue with different leadership and different public faces.
There is a battle of minds to be won, modern logic versus 1600 year old barbarous myth. There is also a need to look at the economic problems faced by the portion of society that is drawn into this antiquated belief system as it can see no other way out of its despair.
That, though, given the failure of the various economic systems of whatever type, across Europe as a whole, is wishing for the proverbial moon.
Erudite, intelligent, clearly thought-out reasoning - what you would expect from Dawkins.
He has though become the public face of atheism following the success of his (allegedly) controversial book "The God Delusion". I have read the book, agreed with much what was in there, and nodded at times when he confirmed what I have come to accept was the case in the light of 40 years worth of non-belief and investigations into the subject.
Not that I agreed with everything, I hasten to add.
Years ago I read Bertrand Russell on the subject, and was awe-struck at the clarity and profundity of his arguments. I also as a student read writers from the French enlightenment like Diderot and D'Holbach, who spoke eloquently on the subject. And before I even became an atheist I read part of the work Roman writer, Lucretius ("De Rerum Natura"), where in an early scientific analysis of the nonsense of belief and the facts of how things really work, the writer set out one of the early works of genius on the subject.
This is 2000 years ago, and you can go back another 500 years to ancient Greece to find atheists, people with a clear scientific mind-set, who embraced atheistic concepts.
It is not simply a fad of the age. It is not simply the product of Darwinism (many people in the USA, in particular, automatically associate Darwin with atheism as if the theory did not exist before him - it did, it had for over 2,000 years, and Darwin was simply another important influence upon the thinking involved - bringing forth a whole new set of scientific principles to consider).
But in the age where the media has become at once potent and poisonous, there seems to be a need to identify a cause or a belief system or support of a series of principles by giving it a human face - an Aunt Sally to be knocked over if you like. I was not "converted" to atheism by reading Dawkins's book, it merely reinforced some of the views that I already held.
If other people are convinced by the work and become atheists, all well and good. It would be particularly valuable if that happened in the "Muslim world" for example, where the capacity to even challenge the status quo is prohibited.
On the subject of which, I come to the case of Anjem Choudary. If Richard Dawkins has become the public face of atheism, Choudary has become, in the UK at least, the public face of unreasoned militant Islam. Given some of his beliefs and the incendiary statements that he has issued, it remains a source of surprise to me that he has not been charged with incitement to terrorism in the UK, and that the USA has not sought his extradition for the same.
Obviously he manages to walk the necessary legal tightrope (as a qualified lawyer he would know the traps to avoid), where the organisations that he supports are banned, but as an individual he is not prosecuted.
He is, and should be, entitled IMHO to practise his belief system in as far as that it affects himself, and himself alone. Once you start spreading it into the public domain though and affecting other individuals, then you have crossed a significant line where you are infringing upon the rights of others to decide for themselves.
And there is no doubt in my mind that much about Choudary is as political as it is religious.
The fact though that he has become this public face has led to exposés, like the one in the UK tabloid, the Daily Mail, two years ago indicating that in his student days he was an alcohol abuser, a person who experimented with drugs, and a notorious womaniser.
All well and good - but the item (typical of the conservative tabloids in the UK) did not produce one shred of evidence, and merely came across as a standard piece of character assassination.
He may well deserve to have his character assassinated, but that is another matter. If he did behave like this in the past and renounced his conduct (many converts to all faiths do this on a regular basis), that does not invalidate his current beliefs. That he wrote off the article as a complete fabrication does not alter anything either.
Eventually his public face can well disappear (I would not be surprised to see this Islamofascist murdered by someone from the standard Euro-Fascist fringe like the EDL at some point). The dangerous belief system that he propagates, and which needs to be excoriated for the brutal sham that it is, will continue with different leadership and different public faces.
There is a battle of minds to be won, modern logic versus 1600 year old barbarous myth. There is also a need to look at the economic problems faced by the portion of society that is drawn into this antiquated belief system as it can see no other way out of its despair.
That, though, given the failure of the various economic systems of whatever type, across Europe as a whole, is wishing for the proverbial moon.
Monday, 2 January 2012
The Arab Spring, democracy and yet more Western media confusion
Last year, people across the "Arab world" were up in arms about the regimes in power in their part of the world, and decided that it was time to change.
It did not matter whether the leaders were like the extremely corrupt, but staunch Western ally, Hosni Mubarak, in Egypt, or the eternal Nemesis of the West, Mouammar Gaddhafi, in Libya.
They had to go. Period!
Well, as I have said many times before, getting rid of bad leaders is far easier than replacing them with good ones. Bad governance is more often than not replaced by equally bad governance. And democracy is absolutely no guarantee that things will get better, ask anyone in Greece if you want confirmation.
Anyway I do not know how many times that I have read articles in past few months which read that it was not Islam that was out on the street protesting, but activists for democracy. More liberal, less conservative religious thinkers would be the voice of the area after the Arab Spring!
Ho-hum. Anyone want to check the results of the last elections held in similar circumstances? See the first elections held in Bush's post-Saddam Iraq for example. The clear winners were the Shia religious parties. Check out the Palestinian elections won by Hamas.
Scepticism meets wishful thinking. Eventually, sadly, we have to come down on the side of scepticism.
So examine Egypt and the elections that followed the uprising last year. What did we get? No clear majority, but the biggest share went to the "Party for Freedom and Justice". This a fine sounding name (I would be interested to know if the translation from the original Arabic is correct, but anyway). Realise that they were founded by the less impressively named "Muslim Brotherhood" (also, incidentally, the parent of Hamas).
Freedom? That includes the right to dissent upon religious belief, and declare Islam to be just another load of superstitious junk that people can decry? And the freedom to eat a bacon sandwich and drink a glass of wine, maybe? I would hardly expect so.
Justice? Sharia Law maybe? Perhaps not for the moment as Egypt badly needs the large handouts that it gets from the West, so that probably that has to be put on hold - for the moment at least, it is hardly a selling-point that would go down well in Washington or Paris, or Berlin for that matter.
It looks like (for the moment, nudge, nudge, wink, wink), getting power is more important than absolutism for the Party of Freedom and Justice.
Which is more can be said for the party which came second in the poll (still no "liberal pro-western" thinking, and you have now used up 61% in total of the vote!). Al-Nour, an extremely fundamentalist Salafi Islamic fundamentalist party, finds the Party of Freedom and Justice too moderate (excuse me while I roll about on the floor laughing at the thought).
Until you get down to the "Egyptian Block" who got 13.4% of the vote, you really do not get out of this Islamist thinking at all. Not that the "Egyptian Block" would go down all that well in the USA - they are described on Wikipedia as "Social Democrats", and as "Socialism" is almost as dirty a word in the USA as "Islam" ....
Eventually reality might set in, and people in Egypt may realise that their well-being, as poor and mediocre as it is for many of the population, will only improve if the West continues to be as generous as it has been for some time. So the politicians may scrap their fundamentalism for a more "modernist" approach. Of course they could also follow the lead of Saudi Arabia and stick the proverbial one or two fingers (one for Germany, two for the UK) up at the West and continue down the road of religious pre-medievalism. The problem being that Egypt is not awash in oil and has three times the population. And has poverty on a vast scale.
Meanwhile, I wonder whether the Western media have woken up to the fact yet? When a full democracy votes, it often does not go down the road of enlightment, in fact the more entrenched superstition and fear are embedded in the thinking of the people, the more that superstition and fear get an entrenched political voice.
The Arab Spring may have demonstrated the right for people to wake up and shout down the gruesome dictators in their midst. Whether it has opened the door to a better future and better lives for the people, free from oppression and with a decent standard of living to match, is another matter entirely.
It did not matter whether the leaders were like the extremely corrupt, but staunch Western ally, Hosni Mubarak, in Egypt, or the eternal Nemesis of the West, Mouammar Gaddhafi, in Libya.
They had to go. Period!
Well, as I have said many times before, getting rid of bad leaders is far easier than replacing them with good ones. Bad governance is more often than not replaced by equally bad governance. And democracy is absolutely no guarantee that things will get better, ask anyone in Greece if you want confirmation.
Anyway I do not know how many times that I have read articles in past few months which read that it was not Islam that was out on the street protesting, but activists for democracy. More liberal, less conservative religious thinkers would be the voice of the area after the Arab Spring!
Ho-hum. Anyone want to check the results of the last elections held in similar circumstances? See the first elections held in Bush's post-Saddam Iraq for example. The clear winners were the Shia religious parties. Check out the Palestinian elections won by Hamas.
Scepticism meets wishful thinking. Eventually, sadly, we have to come down on the side of scepticism.
So examine Egypt and the elections that followed the uprising last year. What did we get? No clear majority, but the biggest share went to the "Party for Freedom and Justice". This a fine sounding name (I would be interested to know if the translation from the original Arabic is correct, but anyway). Realise that they were founded by the less impressively named "Muslim Brotherhood" (also, incidentally, the parent of Hamas).
Freedom? That includes the right to dissent upon religious belief, and declare Islam to be just another load of superstitious junk that people can decry? And the freedom to eat a bacon sandwich and drink a glass of wine, maybe? I would hardly expect so.
Justice? Sharia Law maybe? Perhaps not for the moment as Egypt badly needs the large handouts that it gets from the West, so that probably that has to be put on hold - for the moment at least, it is hardly a selling-point that would go down well in Washington or Paris, or Berlin for that matter.
It looks like (for the moment, nudge, nudge, wink, wink), getting power is more important than absolutism for the Party of Freedom and Justice.
Which is more can be said for the party which came second in the poll (still no "liberal pro-western" thinking, and you have now used up 61% in total of the vote!). Al-Nour, an extremely fundamentalist Salafi Islamic fundamentalist party, finds the Party of Freedom and Justice too moderate (excuse me while I roll about on the floor laughing at the thought).
Until you get down to the "Egyptian Block" who got 13.4% of the vote, you really do not get out of this Islamist thinking at all. Not that the "Egyptian Block" would go down all that well in the USA - they are described on Wikipedia as "Social Democrats", and as "Socialism" is almost as dirty a word in the USA as "Islam" ....
Eventually reality might set in, and people in Egypt may realise that their well-being, as poor and mediocre as it is for many of the population, will only improve if the West continues to be as generous as it has been for some time. So the politicians may scrap their fundamentalism for a more "modernist" approach. Of course they could also follow the lead of Saudi Arabia and stick the proverbial one or two fingers (one for Germany, two for the UK) up at the West and continue down the road of religious pre-medievalism. The problem being that Egypt is not awash in oil and has three times the population. And has poverty on a vast scale.
Meanwhile, I wonder whether the Western media have woken up to the fact yet? When a full democracy votes, it often does not go down the road of enlightment, in fact the more entrenched superstition and fear are embedded in the thinking of the people, the more that superstition and fear get an entrenched political voice.
The Arab Spring may have demonstrated the right for people to wake up and shout down the gruesome dictators in their midst. Whether it has opened the door to a better future and better lives for the people, free from oppression and with a decent standard of living to match, is another matter entirely.
Sunday, 1 January 2012
Words of wisdom from the late Vaclav Havel
who of course died in 2011:
Truth and love must prevail over lies and hatred
I hope a few politicians in various parts of the world will observe that expression in 2012 (though I do not expect it to happen - truth is a quantity of which it is far too easy to dispose these days).
Truth and love must prevail over lies and hatred
I hope a few politicians in various parts of the world will observe that expression in 2012 (though I do not expect it to happen - truth is a quantity of which it is far too easy to dispose these days).
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