Ethnic Cleansing

Complicated question.

Is it right to ethnically cleanse people whose "ethnic" leadership are ethnically cleansing other people elsewhere?

Confused?

OK, back to the Balkans War in the 1990s. The Serbian leadership were regarded in the Balkans War as the "bad guys" and indulged in ethnic cleansing - their acolytes in Bosnia were responsible for atrocities such as that at Srebrenica etc. Was it also right for Croatia (under Franjo Tuđman, who was almost as extreme a nationalist as Slobodan Milošević in my estimation) to drive out the Serb population of Krajina, despite the fact that their families may have been there for generations?

Dreadful things happen in wars, the innocent often suffer with the guilty, do we simply shrug our shoulders and move on?

I will offer no answer.

The original name of this piece was going to be "Whatever happened to the Sudeten Germans?". As my last piece was dedicated to the Danzig Corridor (since informed it is also known as the Polish Corridor, but I will stick with the title that I learned as a child), it also serves us to ask about the previous step in Hitler's war planning and the equally nauseous propaganda based on lies issued by Goebbels & Co.

You may guess from the title to this piece that they were ethnically cleansed. Not a phrase actually used at the time, and apparently not 100% the case, although it is a subject that is still bathed more in mud than in clarity.

Research into the subject suggests that at the end of the war many Sudeten Germans were rounded up and executed, some women were raped, and a large number of them were driven out ("ethnically cleansed") by the Czechs. Most of them ended up in Bavaria. Dig round the Internet, you will find groups still representing them or their descendants, many claiming that their treatment was brutal and unacceptable, and still expecting compensation. The right to return as well? That does not seem practical.

Some points from the Czech side.

Firstly when the Sudeten Germans start talking about these matters, the Czechs bring up the butchery of the people of Lidice by the Gestapo. Innocent people suffered on both sides and the Sudeten Germans were more prone to support the Nazis than most.

This has a bit of the sound of the innocent suffering with the guilty, but atrocities like that at Lidice cannot simply be ignored.

Secondly, the Czechs did attempt to weed out the Nazi supporters from the rest. In the chaotic conditions prevailing at the time, it did not prove easy to do. Those would commit themselves to supporting the Czech state could stay. This is indicated by the fact there are pockets of primarily German speakers even now - apparently the small town of Kravaře in the Hlučín region of Silesia has an "ethnic" German (and German speaking) mayor.

In other words, the Czechs will claim, there was not full "ethnic cleansing", merely the driving out of the extreme German nationalist element who would not commit themselves to the Czech state. Of course the process was not perfect, of course some innocent people did suffer.

That this is still an issue at all would surprise many (74 years since the Munich Agreement, 67 years after the end of the war). People move on and adapt, don't they?

And German leaders from both major parties have over the years apologised as best they can for the atrocities committed by the Nazis. Gerhard Schröder notably went out of his way to attempt reconciliation on all the issues involved.

History though is not easily forgotten, even if its lessons are. The murder committed at Srebenica by the Serbs under Radko Mladić was an eerie reminder of what happened at Lidice (and at Oradour in France for that matter).

In wars there are often no truly just solutions, the innocent must suffer with the guilty. The best hope that we can have is something that most continental Europeans have been very good at doing over the past 65 years - preventing the start of another major war.

Rick Santorum and the Danzig Corridor

I wonder how many people know these days what the Danzig Corridor was.

How many kids in school in Germany actually learn about it usw.

The fact remains though that its place in the history of the 20th century is extremely significant. The city of Danzig (now Gdansk, a completely Polish city) was left by the Treaty of Versailles as part of Germany, while it was surrounded by Polish territory. The Poles apparently wanted to end the anomaly by taking the city over by peaceful means. Hitler's Nazis refused to hear of it, and eventually it led to the invasion of Poland and the start of the Second World War.

What led up to this invasion though was the full purpose usage of Goebbels and the Nazi propaganda machine. There is propaganda based upon truth and fact. There is propaganda based on hearsay. And then there is propaganda based upon blatant lying.

In the case of the Danzig corridor, the last of these was definitely the case. The American historian, William Manchester, gathered together the following series of fabrications from the Goebbels propaganda machine (I quote from the website ww2db.com without permission, I hope that that is not a problem):

"In Karlsruhe the daily paper carried the headline 'WARSAW THREATENS BOMBARDMENT OF DANZIG - UNBELIEVABLE AGITATION ON THE POLISH ARCHMADNESS!' 'POLEN, GIB ACHT!' ('POLAND, LOOK OUT!') warned the Berliner Arbeiterzeitung; 'ANSWER TO POLAND, THE RUNNER-AMOK (AMOKLÄUFER) AGAINST PEACE AND RIGHT IN EUROPE!' On Saturday, August 26, the Zwölf-Uhr Blatt reported: 'THIS PLAYING WITH FIRE GOING TOO FAR - THREE GERMAN PASSENGER PLANES SHOT AT BY POLES - IN CORRIDOR MANY GERMAN FARMHOUSES IN FLAMES!' The banner headline in the Berliner Arbeiterzeitung that day read, 'COMPLETE CHAOS IN POLAND - GERMAN FAMILIES FLEE - POLISH SOLDIERS PUSH TO EDGE OF GERMAN BORDER!' Goebbels saved his masterpiece for the Sunday Völkischer Beobachter: 'ALL OF POLAND IN A WAR FEVER! 1.5 MILLION MEN MOBILIZED! UNINTERRUPTED TROOP TRANSPORT TOWARD FRONTIER! CHAOS IN UPPER SILESIA!'"

Blatant mistruths, rousing the fear and animosity of the people, and justifying an unjustifiable invasion. The stronger party pretending to be the weaker party, the offender appearing to be the offended usw.

Now check out the latest Rick Santorum video on the Internet about what will happen if Obama is re-elected. Iran becomes Poland, the weak quivering USA has to face the almighty Iranians, and everyone is afraid. Except for the fact that the video is based at best upon hearsay, and at worst blatant mistruths. The most overriding piece of nonsense concerns Iran's missile capability. As things stand the furthest their longest term missile can fly is just about to the edge of Eastern Europe. The capacity to build one that will fly over Europe and the Atlantic Ocean simply does not exist!

Fear-mongering for the sake of it. Fear-mongering to justify an unnecessary invasion by the stronger power against the weaker power. And to appeal to the ignorant to cast votes for his completely absurd agenda.

Not that I like the Iranian regime, as anyone who reads this blog knows! But an unjustifiable war (see Iraq) morally damages the perpetrator. If you want to hold the moral high ground, you do not indulge yourself with unnecessary invasions.

And I doubt whether Mr Santorum's supporters will understand this, but the damage to the reputation of the US caused by the Iraq war took some time to mend. In 2003, people in 41 countries were asked who was a greater danger to world peace, Saddam Hussein or George W. Bush. In 37 of those countries the clear answer was Bush, and 2 of the others had a near dead-heat.

It is curious that anyone could show sympathy to Saddam, any more than they could to the mullahs in Teheran. But Santorum's approach to this situation is exactly the right one to attract the sort of sympathy that Iran does not deserve!

I would suggest (when he ends up losing his campaign), he goes back and looks at the lessons of history, the use of dubious propaganda, and events like those involving the Danzig Corridor.

Pirates

There were state elections in the Saarland this weekend.

The news from that ought to be on who won. The thing that you pick up though is that the Pirate party won 7% of the vote and have seats in the state assembly as a result.

OK. So what exactly do they stand for? Anyone who followed the Wikileaks (interesting to a point and a matter of concern - to a point) and the rather dubious Julian Assange saga will get an idea.

Governments are bad. They hide things. More transparency is needed.

Period.

This is worth 7% of the vote in the Saarland.

This is worth 7% of the vote in the Saarland?

So where do they stand on other things, like the economy, defence, education, health, debt usw usw?

In 2010 they sounded nothing more than a clone of the awful FDP on economic policy. The government takes too much by way of taxation, so cut it. Where they differed from the FDP is only on the reason. Government being bad, it is not worth giving them the money usw.

On the subject of transparency, there is nowhere which is more transparent than the government budget. It is published and open to analysis in dozens of places on the Internet if you care to check it out. My view on simply cutting taxes would be that services would be cut (if unnecessary OK, but ....) and government debt would rise (invariably happens - see the USA as a great example).

Back to my issues. How do you create full meaningful employment - real jobs for people who have worked hard to gain qualifications? Or real jobs for people who have been stupidly thrown on the scrap heap because they are "too old"? How do you end poverty (which is affecting 1 in 6 children in Germany now apparently)?

While walking round the supermarket with my wife yesterday I wandered over to the news stand and picked up a copy of the German weekly magazine "Focus", which had an item on the Pirate party. Given the time my wife takes to check out everything in the store, I managed to read three pages of this article.

I spent most of my time on this checking out the "It's the economy, stupid" bit of this article. Have the Pirates moved away from their 2010 position on the economy? Well, yes, well, no, well, mmmmmm.

There was some vague references to the need for everyone having a job (Good!), a worthwhile job (Even better!) .... but they hadn't exactly worked out how they were going to do this. They hadn't exactly worked out how they were going to do this?

They hadn't exactly worked out how they were going to do this????!!

You are putting candidates up for important offices, and yet on the most important issue affecting people's lives you have no clear policy on what to do or how to do it????

And this is worth 7% of the votes cast in the Saarland this weekend?

This is not even worth 7 seconds worth of my time! Although it is worth the 17 or so minutes required to write this item to expose this nonsense!

Apparently 85% of the votes cast for them (I don't know where that stat came from, but it was quoted on Yahoo Deutschland yesterday) were simply protest votes. Oh good! I don't like something, so I will protest.

As I have said enough times, it is easy to vote against something, it is another thing entirely to vote for something positive. Positive solutions are needed - to improve people's lives, to break the cycle of debt, to keep people from going under at an alarming rate, to ensure that the next generation have the prospects of a decent life, while the current one watches their problems start to recede.

Transparently!

Dedicated to all religious fanatics

including people who supported the young murderous thug in Toulouse, the likes of Rick Santorum, and anyone else with a closed mind on this subject of religion.

Words of wisdom from Salman Rushdie:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNYYb8HbnzA&feature=g-hist&context=G2025ee4AHT23RMAAAAA

So why Frankfurt?

I am asked occasionally by people from the UK (usually the strange people who think that George Osborne is an economic genius) why I chose to live in Frankfurt.

The answer is simple enough - because the work (or at least the work offer) was there.

It was the same thing that took me to Toulouse in 1990, Brussels in 1991, Munich / München in 1994, Cologne / Köln in 2003.

I always wanted to keep working and live in a place that I could afford (which immediately rules out London). The reasons for some other locations on my itinerary (Paris in 1993 and Amsterdam in 1996) had also other sources of motivation, but work was always a significant option.

That we stayed in Frankfurt does not say so much about the place even when the work ran out. You cannot keep moving forever. I would rather have not left Amsterdam in the first place, nor Köln in the second. And I would have loved the chance to live in Hamburg.

But you have to keep working - or so I always believed. Which is why forced unemployment is something that I have always hated, but has become seemingly a necessary part of modern capitalist culture. Sadly. Particularly if you are past a certain age, and you want to earn more than the standard wage in China.

What sort of hero

Goes to a school with a gun, and shoots and kills defenceless children?

What sort of hero claims that it is his right to do this in the name of his religion as these children were of another faith?

And what sort of religion could motivate or justify such actions?

If I did not have a better grasp of logic I could simply argue from the recent events in Toulouse that Islam justifies murder!

And someone very significant in the Islamic community had better come out and refute that in a coherent logical fashion. And condemn the actions of this murderer as wanton and utterly criminal (and nothing to do with religion)!

I can sit and watch the grass grow high before that happens though.

God is a humanoid of sorts?

I refer again to yesterday's blog item and my comment that to allow for the existence of God is "to allow for the existence of an undetectable, untraceable, unlocatable, invisible, untouchable, unhearable (unless you're a politician), unsmellable (if the word exists) being".

One of the problems dealing with Christians in particular on this is that God is forever seen in terms of being a human of sorts, with human features, human emotions (love, anger, occasionally an irrational need for revenge usw), and yet cannot be identified in this humanoid form.

Some of the nonsense emerging from some Christian believers is the idiotic notion that Christ (the humanoid son) will return to earth one day. Oh good! And no doubt if he did, going round performing magic tricks (sorry "miracles"), telling wacky stories ("parables") and healing the sick for free (what would Rupert Murdoch's disciples think of that?), he could well be locked away as a threat to society, a charlatan, a meddler, a revolutionary socialist etc. Or exposed in the conservative tabloid press as a danger to us all!

Or maybe he would not be recognised at all, and end up with a nothing job where he could impress a few workmates and that would be about the size of it.

The greater likelihood is that someone did exist in Palestine teaching these things some 2000 years ago, but the stories have been exaggerated for affect to appeal to an audience that was prepared or to be prepared for something fantastic and beyond belief. And while we are here can any of the believers actually PROVE THAT THE VIRGIN BIRTH OCCURRED? And may I ask, also, how you can prove it?

Where Buddhism has it over Christianity is that the addiction to the belief that humanity is a superior species does not necessarily apply. All creatures according to Buddhism have this impossible to find thing called a "soul". Swat a fly, kill a sheep in a slaughterhouse, run over a cat even by accident, you are according to Buddhism playing with Karma. And losing!

Merge Buddhism with Christianity for the moment and ask yourself why Christ has to come back as a human at all - it was bad enough last time (assuming it happened, which is open to question). Why not come back as an ostrich? Or a tortoise? Or a mosquito - for a very short time, of course. Or as a bull in India - now that last one sounds like fun!

In fact it might already have happened. That bacon sandwich you were eating last night? You know what the pig was before it was slaughtered? At this point at least the follows of Judaism and Islam suddenly have a view that they can share - they would never have committed such a "cardinal sin"!

On my own terms in my own back yard

There seems to be by the day an attempt on YouTube to silence any atheist voices - particularly noticeable is the abject cowardice of the people who administer what is allowed on the site in the face of the usual ignorant believers in the Muslim world.

One criticism of all the Islamic nonsense, or any of it for that matter, and zap! Your video is removed from the site. Well as all religions are founded upon ignorance, fear and superstition, and there is no religion that is more into ignorance, fear and superstition than Islam - particularly the fear factor, so maybe YouTube Admin can hear the stealthy feet of a suicide bomber hustling along the corridor outside, accompanied by some whispering of "Allah Akbar".

Meanwhile on the concept of the use of fear in the Islamic world, check out the recent case of the journalist, Hamza Kashgari, who faces possible execution in his home country of Saudi Arabia for making unacceptable (but pretty harmless if you actually read them!) comments on Twitter about the prophet Mahomet. No denying the existence of the non-existent Allah or anything else even. How do you spell "police state"? And how do you spell "Islamofascist"????

And then back in the Christian heartlands, there is one Dr. William Lane Craig who is a professed Christian philosopher and critic of atheists generally (in his favour, he is not advocating beheading them all yet, at least I think so).

One of his condescending comments on YouTube runs as follows:

Dr. William Lane Craig says it as it is when it comes to the Youtube world of atheists. Typical atheists on YouTube love to portray themselves as great intellectuals, but haven't studied philosophy, New Testament history, or theology.

Maybe then I am not a typical atheist. I am an intellectual. Not a "great" intellectual, just an intellectual. I am not a latter-day Bertrand Russell or Einstein or .... Well, you get the idea.

I have though studied philosophy (and I can tell the difference between thought and reasoning on the one hand, and dogma on the other, and religion, particularly organised religion, is more to do with the latter than the former!). I often talk to Buddhist monks about the world and how they see it. The philosophy of the Buddha is well worth considering, though its practical use depends upon others following the same path. Unfortunately it would not go down well in Saudi Arabia - see above!

I haven't studied New Testament history? I was a committed Christian until my scientific enlightenment at the age of 17, can quote large chunks of Saint Matthew's Gospel to this day, and I am well aware of how Christianity spread across Europe. Eventually the decision to abandon Norse mythology for Jewish revisionist mythology was a political decision rather than anything much to do with whether the latter was correct in its teachings.

And while we are on this topic, there are plenty of excellent YouTube videos explaining how the Bible was put together, what was included, what was not, and why there are so many inconsistencies running through it. Doctor Craig might be advised to check some of that material before condescending to condemn all atheistic YouTube input.

I haven't studied theology? See above. What I have seen and heard of Islam, it is probably as well I have not found out more about it. To be repeated though is what I have said on this blog enough times - all religions are stuck in their period. All were produced when much of what we now know was unknown, and most of the developments that we have experienced over 1500 to 3000 years would seem miraculous to the people who produced these myths for common consumption.

Perhaps the most telling point though is what I wrote in my last piece on this blog - namely to accept the existence of "God" would be "to allow for the existence of an undetectable, untraceable, unlocatable, invisible, untouchable, unhearable (unless you're a politician), unsmellable (if the word exists) being".

You can study all the history, all the "holy books", all the works on philosophy you like, you cannot get past this fact. Frankly until you, Doctor Craig, or whoever can make a realistic argument proving the existence of such an impossibility, all other research on the subject is meaningless.

Oh - and the title of this piece? To comment upon Doctor Craig's YouTube criticism you cannot do it on YouTube, you have to do it on his site on his turf (a forum). Sorry but I will not try to condense my reasoning into short pithy sentences on a forum - the arguments need far more space. I will at the risk of being a lone voice in the wilderness make my rational, intellectually-based arguments here - where I have the proverbial room to breathe.

Why I am not an agnostic, never mind a believer

Between 1995 and 2007, following discussions with a close friend who is a devout Catholic, I did not describe myself rather as an atheist but as an atheistically inclined agnostic. On the grounds that I could not absolutely prove the lack of an existence of a God (for all the difference it makes).

In 2008, I reverted to atheism.

To do anything else would be to allow for the existence of an undetectable, untraceable, unlocatable, invisible, untouchable, unhearable (unless you're a politician), unsmellable (if the word exists) being.

It is difficult given the lack of evidence to accept that this "being" exists anywhere, or even allow for it existing, never mind the humanoid attributes and emotions attached to it (an undetectable being with its own human son???? Why not a son who was a gorilla or a moth?).

And then when we die, something called a soul (an undetectable, untraceable, unlocatable, invisible, untouchable usw part of us that cannot be found on an X-Ray, and I had plenty of those, including a brain scan, while in hospital in 2008), goes to some undetectable, untraceable, unlocatable spot called Heaven, or some other undetectable, untraceable, unlocatable place of torture called Hell???? Why not Valhalla or Hades while we are here. They have already been written off, as they are undetectable, untraceable and unlocatable?

I doubt whether any of the folk tales produced by the Grimm Brothers would be more fantastic or unreal than this!

And let us remember that the works of the Grimm Brothers are more up-to-date by over a thousand years than the collection of Jewish, Jewish revisionist or Arabian myths that we are supposed to accept as true about this undetectable, untraceable usw usw being!

Postscript: when you ask believers as to where you can find this "being", they have the habit of answering something along the lines of "look into your heart". Following my heart attack I have every year been for check-ups upon my heart and seen scans that they have taken of it. I have seen no signs of this being on those scans either!!!!

Quote of the day

Old but worth knowing.

In French - translation available - from the brilliant French cartoonist Georges Wolinski:

"La question est de savoir si nous préférons être opprimés par le communisme ou exploités par le capitalisme"