Pelshval

Antropologiske betraktninger om pelshvaldrift

Month: January 2019

Within the framework

30.01.2019 /

Since Trump came to power, there has been much talk about the media. Trump says the mainstream news outlets are lying, but what do we say? For my part, I can’t say I have all that much confidence in mainstream news outlets either; yet, there is no doubt that they have offered me wonderful articles and illuminating documentaries. So what will it be?

Thirty years ago, Edward Herman & Noam Chomsky had a book published called Manufacturing Consent. About the media. About how the media is not as free as we like to believe. About how the powers that be control public opinion without censorship.

Much has changed since then. When you stop to consider that personal computers hardly existed when the book was written (on a typewriter, I am told) and that email was an exotic and very technical affair, it really is quite remarkable that the mechanisms described in the book still apply today.

I would like to recommend a piece on the Internet written by a man of whom I know nothing except what he writes himself: that he is a youngish journalist, that he deeply admires the very much older Noam Chomsky and that the latter has agreed to be interviewed by him. What follows the journalist’s introduction is not so much an interview as a very agreeable and interesting conversation between the two about, yes, the media as it splashes all over the place, on the verge of spilling into the next decade.

Why, in spite of so much knowledge out there, in spite of any number of extremely talented and hard-working journalists, are we so ill-informed, so confused, so battered by the elements?

Ladies and gentlemen, allow me to present Matt Taibbi and Noam Chomsky.

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Torture was the driving force

21.01.2019 /

There are those who would disagree with me. In a ZDF documentary series about the history of Europe, Cristopher Clark, “Cambridge historian” (that is how he boldly presents himself), more than implies that what propels change is competition.

I am being a little unfair to Mr Clark, as he does admit that what he values, what he believes was achieved through competition (almost synonymous with greed), has often been won at a terrible price.

There are those who believe that the price has already been paid by past generations and is thus no longer worth grieving about. Again, in all fairness, I do not think that Mr Clark is that foolish. In fact, he makes it clear that he is not.

There are others who believe that the price is insignificant, given what has been achieved. I put it to them that either they have been grievously misinformed, in which case they should consider taking action, together with all their fellow-victims, against whatever news outlet they have relied on, or they have committed auto-lobotomy.

There are reasons for committing suicide (for instance that of being subjected to torture) and even more reasons for committing auto-lobotomy. The world is a cruel place. Admittedly, films shown during the Christmas season tend to present kind people, people with laughing children and adoring spouses. Most of us, however, are neither adoring nor all that kind. Where Dickens found models for his self-effacing heroes in Tale of Two Cities is truly a mystery to me. I don’t believe people like Doctor Manette and his daughter Lucie exist (though I consider Dickens one of the greatest and most effective authors of all time). But we want to believe in them, and we don’t want to know too much about torture, which is being practised more widely than we wish to know.

Torture is a distant concept for most of us, until we for some reason or other have to witness it. I happen to have some knowledge of the matter, although I myself have never been tortured. From time to time I am reminded of what I know and – well, let me put it this way … on second thought, I won’t.

In the event, then, that you refuse to admit to yourself

  1. that torture is not an exception, and
  2. that the price, in hours of torture, having been paid, currently being paid, and yet to be paid is unspeakably grim, or
  3. that you have committed auto-lobotomy;

I suggest you read an excellent book called “Mistakes were made but not by me” by Carol Tavris and Elliot Aronson.

Most torture victims are unable or unwilling to “talk about it”. Simple as that. So we don’t know much about torture, except that at a certain point, which varies from person to person, all tortured persons will admit to anything under the sun, including crimes they never committed, unless they faint or are killed. And the subsequent shame they suffer is indescribable.

The United States of America have perfected scientific torture methods aimed at keeping the victim alive and without visible scars, that have been and are still being used, not only in USA’s backyard – Central and South America – but all over the world. The USA is a world leader in almost all fields, including torture. My reference from the NY Times is old, but valid.

In the US backyard, state-sponsored killings and torture were the rule rather than the exception during the second half of the twentieth century, a period during which the population of the US felt particularly pleased with itself. In Central America, where democracy has been rubbished completely by bog brother USA, human rights activism, for instance, is a fatal occupation to this day. I suspect that if the US wanted the practice of state-condoned torture to end in Central America, it would end. There are those who believe that the US still actively (if unofficially) supports torture in all of Latin America.

But USA did not invent torture in the Middle East. Certainly not. Running a country by means of torture is addictive. I suppose rulers argue that “what worked well for Alexander the Great surely cannot be all that bad. And after all, I don’t torture people – I have officers to do it for me.”

The problem is, however, that torture generates nothing (certainly not truth!) except hate, shame and evil. It is contagious; if others do it, you will probably be induced to do it, too, confer the Milgram experiments. Moreover, it is addictive. Once you start, you find it hard to stop, cf. the Stanford Prison Experiment. You’ve become a monster. Can we really afford to produce monsters? Don’t we have enough murderers and sadists without adding to the number?

Wars tend to mass-produce monsters. Almost all of us react with fury and hate if our loved ones are killed or mauled. I certainly cannot vouch for myself if anybody hurts my children or even my dog. Would I turn into a monster? I really couldn’t say.

Actually, it is all the more surprising and wonderful that there are so many nations that unequivocally prohibit torture both officially and unofficially. Think about that for a moment, please. You may laugh at me, but I actually think that good old Dickens had something to do with our newly-gained abhorrence of torture.

Mr Clark, though very aware of mankind’s capacity for cruelty, probably does not share my gloomy general outlook, and I assume that he and I would disagree on a number of issues. Nonetheless, I warmly recommend his series “The Story of Europe” because he makes an almost impassioned appeal to us Europeans to keep our hats on, to not degenerate into a pack of sectarian, squalling, pre-war howler monkeys. The route from strife to war is short. War is not heroic! It is merely instrumentalised torture on a grand scale. It’s sick.

One way or another

17.01.2019 /

Sometimes I walk my dog with a very kind and very large man with a very kind and very large dog. His is not a frivolous mind, far from it; he does a great deal more thinking than most people I know. And of course, as can be expected of a man who thinks a lot, he has some opinions, a couple of which I disagree with. However, I’ve stopped shouting at him (he has never shouted at me) because he is not motivated by greed, and he is certainly not callous.

One of the issues we disagree about is “climate change”. I was stunned when he quietly said, “actually, I’m not really sure it is all that anthropogenic”. I thought that in this country, at least, there was wide consensus about the devastating impact of greenhouse gases on the planet. After all, the level of education here is generally high, and there are scientists in almost every family.

I still think my friend is an exception in a way, yet, in a way not. Although most of us here agree about the effect on the planet of greenhouse gases, we are doing hardly anything about it. We talk a lot, to be sure, but according to official figures in 2018, emissions of greenhouse gases here have not (!) decreased since 1990, and there is no sign of their doing so in the immediate or less immediate future. Why? Well, for one thing, who is going to pay for the reduction? The tax payer? The rich? You and I by forfeiting air travel and by shivering through the winter months? And what about the other countries? Why should my country pay the price if your country lives as though there were no tomorrow?

And yet, we all see it coming, the dreaded tomorrow, when even my part of the planet, not to mention yours, will no longer be a nice place. Actually, it hardly bears thinking about, and in my country, more and more women are saying to themselves: I cannot bear the thought of bringing children into tomorrow’s world.

Meanwhile, with fewer and fewer babies inhabiting my country, we live just like you do, as though there were no tomorrow, because the thought of tomorrow does not bear thinking about. But since my friend is quite incapable of not thinking, he has taken the alternative approach: he thinks that whatever is happening to the planet is through no fault of ours, so there is really nothing to be done, and the planet will survive as it always has.

When you get down to it, both he and I – in spite of our different viewpoints – are like a terminal patient I once knew: With shining eyes, he would speak about buying a little sailboat and sailing to an island he knew of. He would pitch a tent there, light a campfire and fry the fish he had caught himself. He radiated when he evoked skin-diving in the clear waters around the island, or listening to birds singing as the sun went down, or watching the sunrise from his sleeping bag. Just thinking about him, I long for summer and I’m already planning …

CAPERNAUM

05.01.2019 /

Nothing I can say or write, nothing anybody can say or write, can hold a candle to what the Lebanese film director Nadine Labaki has managed to record in Capernaum, which received a long standing ovation and the Jury Prize when it was shown at Cannes this year.

I am certain that no kid, not even a Lebanese street urchin, is as wise as the film’s tiny protagonist Zain (played by the Syrian refugee Zain Al Rafeea), who eventually, through sheer grief and with nothing whatsoever to lose, beats the system. If there were such a kid, there would also be supremely wise adults, which evidently is not the case. Nobody is beating the system. I suppose Nadine Labaki is about as close to doing so as anyone ever was, because those of us who see that film will never be the same.

As far as I can make out, Ms Labaki has two good reasons for allowing the film’s protagonist to beat the system and for suggesting from the very start of the film that he may be able to do so. One of them is that the public would never otherwise be willing to endure witnessing so much injustice and so much pain, knowing – oh yes, and without a shadow of doubt – that what the restless camera reveals to us is the Lord’s truth.

The film is spiked with humorous incidents, and we laugh, relieved at each break from the sordid documentary reality we don’t really want to know about. Laughing and pleased by our hero’s resourcefulness, we are dragged to the next scene of humiliation and hopelessness, during which we gasp and shiver until somebody’s kind smile, or a charming remark, again alleviates our discomfort.

The three heroes are fabulously alive, though only on the screen; without ID documents, they would none of them be missed if they vanished: a tiny Lebanese street urchin, an “illegal” Ethiopian immigrant, and her lovely toddler.

Thanks to Nadine Labaki, they won’t ever vanish. To really make her point, she has apparently chosen her actors for the film from among the sort of people she is portraying.

The second of the two reasons for allowing the film’s protagonist to beat the system is to try to prod us into doing likewise. “If a street urchin can do it, so can you, ” she seems to be saying.

Nadine Labaki, I take my hat off, I bow to you.

In November 2018, director Nadine Labaki reported Al Rafeea’s situation had changed:
Finally, he has a Norwegian passport. He’s resettled in Norway. He’s been there for the past three, four months. He’s going to school for the first time in his life. He’s learning how to read and write. He’s regained his childhood. He’s playing in a garden; he’s not playing anymore with knives and in garbage.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zain_Al_Rafeea (as per 05.01.2019)

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