Pelshval

Antropologiske betraktninger om pelshvaldrift

Category: ENGLISH (Page 23 of 28)

There a few posts written in English

Lost causes

22.10.2017 /

There are at least two interesting aspects of Naomi Alderman’s what-if novel The Power. One is that if women, somehow or other, miraculously gain the upper hand and get used to calling the shots, they will be no better, though possibly not much worse, than men are now.

The other is that this novel is generally referred to as a “speculative fiction dystopia”. But, as the author writes in a Guardian article  “Nothing happens to men in the novel – I explain carefully to interviewers – that is not happening to a woman in our world today. So is it dystopian? Well. Only if you’re a man.”

In other words: since it is currently happening to women, we are living in a dystopia.

True, it does not happen to all women, and obviously it does not happen to Stephen Pinker. But it does happen to many more women than we care to think of. Moreover, it happens to children. In fact, it happens to just about everyone who happens to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. If I want a certain tract of land, and you just happen to have been living there since you were born, but I am rich and/or powerful, whereas you are just somebody’s lost cause, you’d better scuttle away as fast as you can.

Lost causes are scattered over the landscape like the innumerable heaps of dead bodies we see on the news. Even if Stephen Pinker appears undeterred in his faith in humanity and progress, the number of displaced persons is the highest ever recorded and rising, according to the UN. Being displaced means, more often than not, living in a squalid desert refugee camp, courtesy of some recalcitrant donor. Mind you: Living there for years. No hope.

Personally, I suspect that Mr Pinker must have been suffering from attacks of temporary insanity when he wrote his feel-good nonsense. His line of thinking has annoyed me immensely over the years and has caused no end of harm, I believe. As a psychologist, he is of course entitled to try to help his clients feel better, but that is no excuse for telling the general public that there is no need to worry. Just sit back, relax, be happy.

Yes, I am very familiar with the statistics of the UNDP, according to which “absolute poverty” has declined dramatically, as has infant mortality. Please note, however, that the UNDP term “absolute poverty” is defined as roughly < 1 USD. I ask you: try to live on 10 USD a day or even 20 USD a day, and see what you think of it.

Back to the bag of lost causes, which Mr Pinker seems to have forgotten: In it, we find most of the population of Yemen, most of the population of Afghanistan, most of the population of Syria, the entire population of Palestine, both Sudans, most of the people still trying to eke out a living in Chad and Mali which are becoming increasingly uninhabitable, … I could go on, of course, interminably. But out of respect for the author of The Power, I wish to specifically mention the countless women in India and elsewhere who are subjected to acid attacks or gang rape.

The thought of such senseless cruelty to defenseless women lights up my very worst visceral instincts and reminds me that if I had power, the kind of power possessed by the women in Naomi Alderman’s novel, I would indeed use and abuse it.

That is what happens when you hand out weapons to a flock of tattered, dejected rebels. They will use and abuse them. Here, there or anywhere, inflamed and outraged by the injustice they and their people have been subjected to, they will suddenly feel, like a rush of adrenalin, like divine intervention, a surge of power in their veins. And they will kill without remorse. As would I, if I were where they are.

But I am not. I am safe and sound, far away from it all. But even people like me or like Stephen Pinker, sometimes cross the line: The leaders of ISIS (now defeated, or so they say) were once wealthy, educated and basically law-abiding men. What hit them was rage against the injustice of it all. With money and financial contacts, they could purchase arms and that, alone, gave them immense power.

In addition to those who abuse power because they have a just, lost cause to pursue, there are a lot of psychopaths, so, Mr Pinker, I see no reason to just relax and be happy.

Football from the sidelines

10.09.2017 /

Almost blinded by the sun and my own perspiration as I drag myself up the steep hill, I find that the cobbled roads are near empty while the normally empty bars are packed. Packed with men, shouting men. Football, I assume, and snarl.

Mind you, I don’t at all mind football. What bothers me is all that seems to be so evident if we objectively look at a football stadium or study the comportment of men around TV screens when certain games are being played. “We’re in this together,” they seem to be saying, “our team!” “fight till death”, “kill the infidel”, or as General Halil of Janjaweed says, “eliminate anything in my way!”

General Halil is fighting for no cause other than himself. And he has earnest supporters, including loyal and good men who think they are fighting for a worthy cause, men who believe in Halil by virtue of his “strength”. A strong general is a good general, they think. Alas, ruthlessness and callousness is often mistaken for strength, as the US is kind enough to remind us at regular intervals.

The US is a deeply religious country, as are Israel and Saudi Arabia, its close allies. The crimes against humanity committed by those three countries are such that more and more people in my country are saying that religion is the root of all evil.

No, I say, religion is not the root cause of war. The root cause is what we see when we watch those who watch professional football. After a match, people sometimes get bashed to death. The spectators’ arousal, almost sexual in nature – indeed, fired by male hormones surging as the battle is played out before their eyes – makes them dangerous. They are one with the players, identifying with them (“our” team, “us”) , admiring them, enjoying a moment in the sun of borrowed fame and glory, and ready to defend them with their lives, if need be.

Now, some people will retort that war is not necessarily bad. Some wars, they will say, are just, wars for freedom, for instance, wars for liberation from oppression. Of course this argument is neither here nor there, since we will never all agree as to what wars are just, will we? Forget WWII, there have been infinitely many wars since, and in all of them there will have been at least one big bad bully against whom resistance is at least justifiable. Sadly, even the oppressed are usually also lead by big bad bullies, since – again – what is mistaken for strength tends to inspire confidence.

Football makes it all so clear: What spectators by the billions see and admire is: brute force, naked muscle, precision and cunning. They will rise to their feet as one, almost levitating, and they will all feel, for a few magic moments, omnipotent. In short, they will loose, not only their voices from screaming, but also their heads. Who needs drugs or religion to go to war prepared to die? Give me a general who can generate the electric current of a football match, and he will be in business, regardless of the cause.

I, too, long to – more than that – I need to admire. I particularly enjoy feeling kinship with those that I admire. I, too, feel elevated when any of my heroes “wins” a battle.  But my heroes are neither callous nor ruthless, and their strength is not muscular.Today, I finished a novel in which one of my favourite protagonists, George Smiley, definitely sealed his long-time opponent’s casket. Characteristically, Smiley did not enjoy his moment of glory, due to ruminations that I shared with him.

I wonder what Smiley would have made of the global mess we’re in now. For one thing, this little Spanish town on the top of its cliff is becoming near uninhabitable due to summer heat and winter cold. What would Smiley have suggested? I imagine him turning off the light to go to sleep. Outside his wide open window, the neighbours have finally come out of their houses, seeking relief in the evening breeze. Fathers, children, grandmothers, gossiping women… the street is full of their laughter, their pleasant chatting. Yet for all their easy pleasure, he cannot help hearing, still, the continued low wailing of a woman he knows is 97. She wails day and night, but as he knows, she has been out of this world for years. She cannot talk, cannot tell her surroundings why she is so unhappy. Her children take turns looking after her, and they all visit her almost daily. Every day she is dressed and cherished.

Smiley plays with ideas of what may be occupying her mind. After all, she is nearly a century old; think of what she has seen and endured!

Finally, Smiley falls asleep, covered only by a sheet. When he wakes up, he knows he was woken by a sound, and he soon hears it again, a thrill sound that ends in a tremulous sigh. He sits up in bed, because there is no mistaking an owl. An owl? This is definitely not owl country! But hark, there is another one. And another. Standing by now, stark naked in the middle of the room, he hears them all – four owls on different roof tops, one of them just above him on his own roof.

After a few moments, he sadly goes back to bed. Even the owls have lost their marbles, he muses.

And that was the best my hero could do, alas. Can you do better?

Beware of GDP and GNI

01.07.2017 /

I’d like to tell you about an article I read in El País this morning, about Luanda. I hadn’t really intended to read it – I mean, who cares about Luanda? But there was an intriguing dislocation in the heading that I could not resist: The most expensive city in the world is in an underdeveloped country. Now why would that be? I wondered, so I read on.

Yes, rich countries are the ones with expensive capitals, so how come Luanda has surpassed them all with regard not only to the price of water? In 2017, I read, the most expensive cities are, in descending order: Luanda, Hong Kong, Tokio, Zurich, Singapore, Seoul, Geneva, Shanghai, New York and Bern. Madrid follows way down the line as no. 111, and Barcelona is only no. 121. Now how about that!

Well you see, the article tells me, Angola is actually a super-rich country, for the rich that is, who enjoy its oil and diamonds. (Just think of it, diamonds!) The country is so rich that its government has been kind enough to pass a minimum salary law, giving employees the right to the equivalent of EUR 88/month (assuming the employment in question is declared, of course). This amount is just enough to pay for 30 litres of water, 10 kg of rice and 10 litres of milk. Now that might not sound all that bad to you, but try surviving on this amount of water, milk and rice for a whole month.

And what about this figure: about 50% of all families living in Luanda have no running water.

I leave El País and look up the CIA “World Factbook” – to make quite sure that I have not misunderstood Angola’s situation: No, Angola is not considered a communist state or even a dictatorship. In 2012, I read in the CIA World Factbook, “the UN assessed that conditions in Angola had been stable for several years and invoked a cessation of refugee status for Angolans.”

To conclude – and I am no longer leaning on either the CIA World Factbook or El País – I note that the famous GDP (whether nominal or forecasted (PPP)) (see Wikipedia as at 1/7/2017) tells us very little about whether or not a country stinks – excuse my French. Personally, I have learned today that Angola, for instance, is a particularly bad country to live in for almost everybody.

I would like to add on a more positive note, however, as there there are other ways of measuring countries. There is something called the HDI – Human Development Index, which is better able to describe a country than the GDP and GDI. You are of course welcome to disagree with me, but since I do not allow comments, I shall never know.

The rat is out of the hole

28.06.2017 /

You may have heard – and then again, you may not have – that Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain and Egypt have issued an ultimatum against Qatar, the 13 so-called “demands” the country must meet within ten days, “or else”.

If Qatar meets the demands, it will have ceased to be a state: It will merely be a vassal of Saudi Arabia, since what is demanded is in reality that the country surrenders its sovereignty.

It all started with an economic and diplomatic blockade launched in the wake of the US emperor’s visit to Saudi Arabia, and since the Saudis evidently feel confident about US support, goodness knows where it will end. For that very same reason – i.e. US support – nobody even mentions this issue around here. In Europe you don’t talk back to the US! Not in this country, not in any European country, least of all in the UK.

Now I was brought up with the BBC. I feel warmth and gratitude to the BBC. I know the names of many of their foreign correspondents. I download BBC podcasts and listen to them. But let us not delude ourselves: BBC is a British broadcasting company, and Britain is very cosy with the USA. As for the USA, well, need I remind you …? No, I won’t remind you, because that would require not a website but many tomes of modern history. However, take a look at Reporters without borders. If you click the map you will see that the USA ranks no higher than 43 out of 180 states as far as freedom of the press is concerned.

My country is also uncomfortably cosy with the USA, if not quite as cosy as the UK, but certainly cosy enough for its national broadcasting company to refrain from ever quoting Al Jazeera. Yet, I suspect that all good foreign correspondents – be they from my country or from the BBC – consult Al Jazeera more than almost any other outlet, at least about Middle East issues. Why? Because Al Jazeera is good, very good! And they are not bound by the US Patriot Act.

One of the 13 “demands” is that Qatar close down Al Jazeera. Now I don’t know whether you watch Al Jazeera, but what I do know is that whether you do or don’t, the news outlet will have considerable impact on what is revealed to you about world affairs. If it were not for Al Jazeera, the US and the UK could tell their side of the story, and nobody would know the difference.

I wish to quote another Guardian article of today (also quoted, by the way, by Al Jazeera):  Asked whether the closure of al-Jazeera was a reasonable demand, the UAE envoy said:

We do not claim to have press freedom. We do not promote the idea of press freedom. What we talk about is responsibility in speech.

I ask you, could any quote be clearer?

Whose dirty socks, mine or yours?

17.06.2017 /

My mission is not to tell you that you-know-who is fabulously ignorant, since I’m sure that whoever reads these pages will be more than aware of that. Nor is it a matter of honour for me to convince you that his ignorance is his most endearing quality.

My mission is, rather, to point out that due to his ignorance, he repeatedly puts his foot in the mouth and exposes the rest of us, for which I am grateful, since we all have an awful lot dirty linen lying around.

Yes, ignorance can create the most embarrassing situations. When the US president went to visit Saudi Arabia, a country notoriously known for human rights abuses (e.g. the war on Yemen, the torturing of political dissidents and the suppression of women and alien workers) he virtually genuflected to his Saudi counterpart, according to Washington Post, without apparently realising that Wahhabi Saudi Arabia is suspected of being the principle financier of Islamic extremism in Europe. I quote Washington Post:

Almost every terrorist attack in the West has had some connection to Saudi Arabia. Virtually none has been linked to Iran.

Wahhabism is named after the eighteenth century activist Muhammad ibn Abd Al-Wahhab, whose teachings inspire the official, state-sponsored form of Sunni Islam in Saudi Arabia, and also – please note – the ideology of ISIL/ISIS.

With the help of funding from Saudi petroleum exports, the movement underwent explosive growth beginning in the 1970s and now has worldwide influence. The US State Department has estimated that over the past four decades the capital Riyadh has invested more than $10bn (£6bn) into charitable foundations in an attempt to replace mainstream Sunni Islam with the harsh intolerance of its Wahhabism. (Source: Wikipedia as at 17/6/17).

What puzzles me is why we all need to be such buddies with Saudi Arabia. For instance, according to the Guardian, the UK recently found, when the laundry was taken out of the washing machine, that every piece was grey. There the press is getting restless about UK-Saudi relations in the wake of the recent massacres of civilians on the streets and in concert halls, the genocidal war on Yemen, and by a strange and apparently irrational boycott of Qatar, a tiny country with an important, global news outlet, Al Jazeera.

Now, Qatar is also a Wahhabi state, just like its neighbour Saudi Arabia. But unlike the Saudis, Qatar is on civilised terms with Iran and the country’s stance on the Moslem Brotherhood and Hamas is nuanced. What’s worse, from a Saudi perspective, is that Qatar is doing extremely well, whereas Saudi Arabia is amassing colossal debts and will soon run out of funds. Is there reason to suspect that Saudi Arabia hopes to annex Qatar?

The US president suffers from a visceral loathing of Iran and played right into the hands of the Saudis. Qatar, they told him, is supporting Iranian terrorism. The president was more than willing to believe them. He signed the largest arms deal in American history on 20/5/2017, claiming that this would create “jobs” for Americans. Amazingly, attempts to block the deal in the Senate failed on 13/6/2017. Just imagine what the Saudis can do, not only with tanks and weaponry but also with the radar, communications and cybersecurity technology they have been promised! Truly, the thought should make your hair stand on end.

While many analysts tend to focus exclusively on Saudi oil and the country’s leading position in OPEC when explaining the West’s shameful relationship with Saudi Arabia, I believe we need to take a closer look at Saudi Arabia’s fascinating consumption of arms. Why is the country so obsessed with weaponry? I find that Newsweek has an interesting take on the matter. Here are a few tidbits:

Additionally, … religious restrictions within Saudi Arabia make it nearly impossible for the kingdom to diversify or grow its non-oil economy. … Thus, as discussed in “Why the Saudis May Be Preparing for a Real War”, due to … a steady decline in the relative importance of oil in the world economy, …. hawks within Saudi Arabia’s political establishment may have decided to grow their economy not internally but externally, through conquest and violent expansion. Accordingly, Saudi Arabia has dedicated 13 percent of its gross domestic product to its military for six years and has become the largest per capita purchaser of weapons in the world.

Meanwhile, back at the ranch, Teresa May is embarrassed in more ways than one. Not only is Saudi Arabia probably grooming potential terrorists among marginalised British citizens (e.g. the victims of the recent ghastly fire and their friends and relatives), but the UK economy depends on that distant medieval country. I quote the Economist:

The war in Yemen has certainly been lucrative. Since the bombardment began in March 2015, Saudi Arabia has spent £2.8 billion on British arms, making it Britain’s largest arms market, according to government figures analysed by Campaign Against Arms Trade. America supplies even more.

Let’s face it, however, the US and the UK are not the only countries who depend on arms sales to Saudi Arabia.

Failed attempt to delimit humanity

02.06.2017 /

You know about the rabbits and the foxes, don’t you, about how there were lots and lots of rabbits in Rabbitland, until along came a couple of foxes, one of each sex, as it happens, and they thought the local rabbits were delicious. They ate and they ate, and they mated too, and their offspring ate and ate and mated too until there were hardly any rabbits left, only a few streetwise, canny ones that nobody wanted to eat, because they were skinny from running and/or lying low. So guess what happened to the foxes. Those that didn’t run away eventually died, undernourished as they were for lack of rabbits.

Imagine the yelps of joy that rang out right across Rabbitland, when the last fox vanished. The surviving skinny rabbits came out of their warrens, gobbled down great big tufts of grass, ran great big circles of delight, and gobbled some more.

So there’s hope for humanity too. By the time we have basically consumed, burnt or poisoned most of the planet’s species, its waters, soil and air, Mr Trump and his imperial court will be ready. He will have collected a pair (hopefully one of each sex) of all the animals he knows of, and Ivanka will expeditiously drive them all into the imperial space Arc – that shouldn’t take too much time. When all the animals are in the Arc, when the emaciated imperial guard has played the imperial march for the last time, and when Mr Trump and his court have duly waved their last goodbyes to the haggard press from the threshold of the spacecraft, the doors to the Arc will shut close. A few moments later, the Arc will zip off into space, bound for Mars.

On a rather more malevolent note, I would just love to be a fly on the wall in the imperial living quarters on Mars, as the family members discover one after the other that the omnipotence of money will only get you so far on a cold, inhospitable and above all uninhabited planet.

Meanwhile, back on Tellus, those of us who are still around will come out from under the ground, bringing the school textbooks, microscopes, gardening tools and encyclopedias we have treasured in secret for years. We will try to locate, nurture or bring back to life, dying species – be they plants, snakes, fishes, birds or mammals – and, not least, one another.

Wouldn’t that be nice? I see you are shaking your head. No? It would be nice, you say, but…

Yes, BUT! It is true that the best of us will act as outlined even against all odds, and it is true that many of us, maybe even a majority, would gladly do so if given half a chance. However, alas, there will always be, not only another Mr Trump, but any number of mini-Trumps who insist on having more, being more than everybody else. I put it to you that ours is a very strange and ethically complex species.

Picking a fight

14.05.2017 /

Some of you are simply itching to get into a red-hot quarrel because you need somebody on whom to take out your matrimonial or economic malaise. So who will it be? The Jews? The Arabs? The blacks? No of course not. That would be politically incorrect.

The nice thing about Trump is that you can blame him for all sorts of things. However, you can’t blame him for US poverty, because it’s been around for ever. The US suffers the second greatest relative income poverty in the OECD, surpassed only by apartheid Israel. And the statistics for child poverty are no better, according to Washington Post.

Now you can’t really blame that on Trump, can you? So if you really are itching to break somebody’s bones, you only have two options: You can root for invasion of some Middle Eastern country or you can blame the Russians. At any rate, you need a new Cold War to keep your blood boiling on rainy days.

Mind you, Russians are poor too, very poor. In fact, poverty is considerably greater there than in the US, even if Russians are much better off than when Putin came to power. No wonder they love him! But the poor are very poor, and the middle class is relatively small and shrinking.

The richest 10% of Russians own 87% of all the country’s wealth, according to a Swiss report (compared with 76% in the US and 66% in China). The rest of the country’s 138 million population have to make do with the remaining 13%. I would say that’s a pretty disgusting figure. Indeed, filthy-rich Russian tourists meet raised eyebrows wherever they go: Surely, people can only grow that rich by crooked means; certainly not by honest work.

Nevertheless, there is absolutely no need to blame the Russians for all the hanky panky going on in the world. Please note, for instance, that the code for the ransomware that recently crippled UK hospitals, Spanish Telecom and for that matter much of Russia had initially been developed by NSA.

What do you think NSA was going to do with the thing, huh?

The little prince

13.05.2017 /

Walking my dog along a track in the woods, I came upon an unexpected couple. Or should I say, they unexpectedly found themselves there, having evidently come down a path from a residential area, without realising they would be engulfed by forest and surrounded by great big, dark and dismal fir trees.

So when I came upon them, they were just standing uncertainly where the paths meet, a little boy and someone who might have been his much older brother. My dog, who believes she owns the area, strode over to inspect them.

Inconsiderate of me, of course, to let her do so, seeing as the two were foreigners, and foreigners tend to be afraid of dogs, even of my cheerful little fox terrier. My thoughts were elsewhere, and by the time I noticed that the elder boy had tensed in a protective position almost surrounding his ward, it was really too late to call back the dog: She was already sniffing at the little one. He, on the other hand, stood his ground, neither stretching out his hand to touch her, as little boys usually do, nor squirming.

By the time I had reached the group, the dog had lost interest and trotted on, but the little boy’s gaze followed her. I stopped in my tracks, struck by what I was seeing: a small boy, maybe five years old, with a yellow knitted cap, a green quilted jacket and a small violin case dangling from a strap around his neck, who had braved, straight and tall (small though he might be), an unknown animal that was as tall as he. “Is that a violin?” I demanded, and the elder boy started to mutter a reply, but the little one needed no-one to speak for him and countered with a question of his own:

– Why did that dog approach me?

– Because it likes children, I replied, adding respectfully, – do you not like dogs?

– I do, but, – followed by a moment’s hesitation, – not bad dogs.

I hastened to assure him that my dog was anything but “bad”, and he breathed a sigh of relief, revealing in spite of himself that he had been afraid.

– Is he very strong? he wanted to know. – He’s much stronger than I, is he not?

I found myself so much in awe of this majestic little child that I actually stuttered when trying to explain that in some ways, perhaps, yes, in others probably not. “And in any case, it’s a she, not a he, a girl dog.”

– Ah, a girl dog. In that case, Mahmoud and I shall have no trouble dealing with her. Mahmoud and I are strong.

I looked questioningly at the elder boy, “Mahmoud?” “No, that’s his best friend,” said the other with a proud and tender smile.

I felt I should not let the little prince’s male chauvinism go ungainsaid: “Maybe strength isn’t what you need most. Maybe wisdom …” but the little prince was pursuing his own mournful train of thought:

– In our house we have neither dogs nor kitties.

– Well, I started to comfort him, – to have a dog, you need lots of time, and you who go to school don’t have that.

I think this was the first time he looked at me. At any rate this was the first time I noticed how brown and dreadfully serious his eyes were.

– I don’t go to school. I attend nursery school.

The whole tone of this conversation struck me as somewhat otherworldly and I tried to make eye contact with the elder boy. He could have been 15. Lanky and pale, with a soft, long, wavy lock falling over his forehead, he had dark-rimmed glasses over a smiling, slightly shy face, and was now speaking on the phone in a foreign language. His voice was unexpectedly deep and soft for such a young man.

The little prince also glanced at him, understanding the foreign language, and informed me proudly: – I have a father, though. And with him I can speak Kurdish.

I respectfully took my leave, almost tempted to wonder whether I had been speaking to a reincarnation of Cyrus the Great.

Palm Sunday

10.04.2017 /

I have three countries. Yes, that’s right, three, and don’t ask me where I was born. In two of them, Easter means that kids are home from school and that shops are mostly closed, so that parents will have to have planned food schedules and child care for an entire week.

In my third country, Easter is a reminder of the battle between Good and Evil, which of course involves no end of diverging not to mention conflicting views.

In my village, a dense and expectant crowd has gathered outside the Southern entrance of the Basilica Mayor de Santa Maria, at 7 PM on Palm Sunday, when one of the great church bells starts booming, the doors open heavily and a rather sinister procession solemnly starts descending the stairs to the accompaniment of a funereal drum beat. Every time without fail, although I am anything but a believer, I am moved to tears by the spectacle.

Indeed, you could almost be forgiven for imagining that evil could be purged from the land, when the emaciated figure of Christ on a great big float weighing nearly two tonnes, is laboriously carried through the town in a procession that will last for many hours.

For a week, the narrow streets will resound on and off with that slow imperious beat of drums, as float after float carrying gorgeously attired Marias, and various versions of her crucified son ceremoniously emerge from one church after the other, to be perilously marched along steep and narrow streets until they re-enter their respective churches as solemnly as they left them.

For lack of hope of better times — ten years, now, after the financial crisis hurled most people here into desolate poverty — and for lack of work, income and proper schooling, the inhabitants of this village must make do with the ray of hope that faith can give them, faith in the final victory of good over evil. Even if they must die waiting, if even their children must die, good will overcome evil in the end, and they will all be reunited in the afterlife.

Oh, how I wish it were so! There are, however, ever more of us, even in this village, who believe that neither good nor evil emanates from forces beyond human control.

To put it differently: If you have a puppy that you treat firmly but kindly, you will probably end up having a well-behaved and kind dog. Likewise, if you have a child that you treat firmly but kindly, your child will probably grow into a well-functioning adult. I can’t imagine there are many who would disagree with me on that score. Discord only arises when we get down to deciding what “kind but firm” treatment means. For dogs, for example, it includes exercise and excludes being tied up for hours outside the house. For children it includes proper nourishment, stimulating education, reliable medical treatment, plenty of parental companionship and an understanding of ethics.

Those are my views, yours may be different. And we haven’t even started to discuss what is “proper nourishment”! Mind you, I insist that we can and must sort out our differences civilly, without prisons or corporal punishment!

But we can probably agree that there is much evil. I maintain it is almost exclusively human. Evil is regularly generated in non-evil humans in many ways. Apart from the obvious (hunger, humiliation, fear, etc.) there are many insidious triggers of evil that we never think about: Not everybody is able to remain impervious to the venom of the Market’s non-stop stream of advertisements through almost all channels. Meanwhile the most entertaining and hence the most popular (and most lucrative!) media outlets are owned and run by the Market, i.e. by forces that adamantly resent any restrictions on entrepreneurial activities, even if the purpose of such restrictions is to protect the planet and its peoples.

I must say I much prefer the Christian legend about the battle between Good and Evil to the poison injected into in all our minds (making us blind to the anarchic self-aggrandizement of the  Market). After all, even a believer of a religious faith can earnestly support efforts to make the world a better place for those who do not currently enjoy proper nourishment, stimulating education, reliable medical treatment, plenty of parental companionship and an understanding of ethics, and he/she can do so civilly, without prisons or corporal punishment!

Palatables and non-palatables

18.03.2017 /

Several European countries are facing national elections, these days. Lately, I have taken to watching the evening news on television, rather than just reading RSS feeds or listening to podcasts, because so many of my lunchtime companions talk about Trump’s and Gert Wilders’ hairdos that I feel a need to be visually informed.

But alas, information comes at a price. Watching the evening news means you can’t skip paragraphs or fast-forward. You have to listen to a lot of – excuse my French – crap, and crap makes me feel slightly ill. Now, I realise I seem to be echoing Mr Trump as far as distrust of the media is concerned, and for that I prostrate myself in abject apology, but there is no denying that the media has no choice but to record what dominant actors say and do, not least what Mr Trump says and twitters, which is quite a mouthful.

Tonight an opposition party in my country trumpeted: “We intend to redistribute wealth!” Why are they saying that? Because they hope to attract low-income voters. Will they succeed? I doubt it. Why? Because people know that what is meant is really “we will raise taxes”, and although they only want to raise taxes on the filthy rich, we all know that when taxes go up, the bottom two thirds of the population pay more, but when taxes go down, the top third of the population pays less. Why this is so? Beats me!

But taxes do have to be be raised. Why? Because the wealth gap between the top 10 percent and the rest of the country is growing exponentially, here as elsewhere in the western world. As you will know if you have read your Piketty, this is not only because the right-wing parties currently in power here have lowered taxes on wealth and capital, though tax reductions in recent years have been considerable and have gone almost unnoticed. (Everybody got a tiny tax reduction, whereas the top of the pyramid got an enormous tax reduction. Since we don’t want to loose our “tiny” tax reduction, we don’t talk about it.)

While making serious adjustments to cater to the companies and billionaires that regularly contribute outrageously large sums of money to its two main parties, the right-wing government has to attract low-income voters to stay in power. It therefore spends an awful lot of money on trifles that will win votes, oblivious to the unpalatable fact that what goes out has to come in.

Meanwhile, the number of poor people in this country has grown considerably in recent years – and the poor are growing poorer – and a growing number of frustrated and angry young poor are lured by whispered rumours of “great leaders” – charismatic right-wing and/or religious misfits with personality disorders.

The poor are the elephant in the room. Here, there and everywhere.

Elections should be regarded as entertainment, no more, no less, the verbal equivalent of a football match. Contenders hand out chocolates on street corners, appear on talk shows, dress to the nines and repeat their carefully chosen mantras until we all turn into sleep walkers.

If you want to win an election, you have to tell people what they want to hear. You certainly don’t tell them that we have to raise taxes. You don’t tell them that unless we do something about it, the wealth gap will continue to widen. You don’t tell them that unless we do something about it, there will be more terrorism. You don’t tell them that unless we do something about it, most of the planet will sooner or later be uninhabitable.

You don’t serve them the unpalatable truths. You serve canapés and a glass of something or other, smile your red-lipped, full-bodied smile and tell them assuaging non-truths. You tell them that we shall lower taxes, thus increasing employment and wealth for all. (Teresa May is one the real pros!) You tell them that terrorists, far from being poor are just simple killers, and will be dealt with accordingly, swiftly and effectively. You tell them that poverty, climate change and other nasty things have nothing to do with us, that the poor must look after themselves and that the climate must look after itself. In short: Tout est pour le mieux dans le meilleur des mondes possibles. That is what you tell them.

Enjoy the elections!

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