Pelshval

Antropologiske betraktninger om pelshvaldrift

Page 17 of 42

Race

14.05.2021 /

A friend from a country far hotter than my own, sometimes asks me: “How can you consort with other species?”

— I don’t consort with…
— You live with a dog.
— But I never let her into my bed!
— Dogs carry parasites, diseases. They pick up all sorts of nasties from the ground and…

He’s right about that, of course, but my dog regularly gets de-wormed and vaccinated against a plethora of diseases and there is plenty of literature attesting to the beneficial effects dogs can have on humans’ mental as well as physical health. In fact, ever since I was a child I knew I had much less to fear from dogs than from humans. So, yes, I can live with other species (cats, dogs) but can I live with humans?

Today, all humans are members of the human race, of which there is only one, as opposed to in the very distant past, when there were Denisovars and Neanderthals and goodness knows what else. Though scientists are still uncertain as to why all the others vanished, I’m convinced that our race, the homo sapiens sapiens, exterminated them. After all, “we”, the sapiens sapiens have demonstrated certain sinister proclivities throughout history. To this very day we continue to exterminate opponents, contestants, protesters and heretics, not to mention species..

So “The Human Race” it is. To quote a Harvard University website, which in turn quotes the Scientific American, “two people of European descent may be more genetically similar to an Asian person than they are to each other”. In short, it would appear that the concept “race” (with regard to humans) is claptrap, a social construct, more often than not used for convenience, or out of old habit, or to excuse a rabid aversion to people perceived to be trespassing. To make matters very much worse, politicians are often quite happy to let us blame immigrants (“Blacks”, “Arabs”, “Latinos”…) for our misfortunes.

No, I’m not being politically correct! I’m merely being reasonably informed. So if you loathe your neighbour, do not, please, be a hypocrite and do not cower behind an ignorance for which you have no justification. Have a conversation with yourself in the mirror. Do you dislike your neighbour’s political views, and/or the way he/she dresses, and/or his/her ignorance, and/or his/her arrogance, and/or the fumes that emanate from his/her kitchen, and/or his/her car, and/or his/her dog? Fine, so do I. But have, at least, the decency to admit that is why you dislike him/her.

Do you dislike his religion? Ask yourself, then, why his religion should concern you. Do you not expect others to accept that your religion (or non-religion) is your business and yours only?

Does it annoy you that he insists on continuing to live in your neighbourhood although you have made it clear that you want him to leave because you know he hates you because your people drove his people off their farm? I put to you, then, that the problem is that his family was driven off their farm. You’ll solve no problem until you admit that injustice was done. The disadvantage of such an admission is the price of making amends. Yet, the cost is far less than perpetual mutual hatred and perpetual external condemnation.

Do you ostracise him because he is an underdog while you have the upper hand? Ah, well then I admit you can play the “race” card, because you are after all only a homo sapiens sapiens, and being rather despicable is unfortunately a widespread trait of your race… ours, that is.

Fortunately, there are other people in your neighbourhood, and mine, that are not despicable even though they belong to the same race. And for that we must be grateful.

Please see B’Tselem

… and the information war continues

08.05.2021 /

The lesson should have been learnt a long time ago, back in 2013, when Edward Snowden revealed that the United States helps itself to just about any information it wants, about anybody. I won’t go into details about his assertions, as they are very beautifully explained and substantiated in his book Permanent Record.

US surveillance programmes also cover European and goodness knows what other countries, including mine, the purpose allegedly being national security, just as the invasion of Iraq was for national security reasons. In practical terms that means that if somebody reveals anything that embarrasses the powers that be, that person must be hunted to the ground and destroyed, to wit, the shameful case vs Julian Assange (see Deutsche Welle), and that vs Snowden himself who has had to apply for citizenship in Russia, of all places, so as not to suffer Assange’s deplorable fate. I’m sure Putin must be laughing.

Now the US is definitely not the only country that destroys those who would cast aspersions on its greatness and best-ness and Democratic-ness. On the Press Freedom Index, the US now ranks as no. 44, which isn’t so bad, really, only marginally behind South Korea, though considerably worse than the UK which ranks at no. 33.

Nonetheless, I guess no whistle-blower in his sane mind would turn to US American bona fide media outlets — not that I’m suggesting that Snowden was insane. As a matter of fact, he didn’t turn to the US American press but to Glenn Greenwald; speaking of whom, I urge you to read his latest article on substack.

At any rate, today, the New York Times has a very dry article, way below the main headings on its website, the sub-heading of which is directly misleading: “Federal prosecutors sought phone records for three Washington Post journalists as part of an investigation into the publication of classified information in 2017.” The main heading which, I repeat, was way below the rest of the news, is actually more accurate: “Justice Dept. Seized Washington Post’s Phone Records“. The key word here is seized. I don’t know about you, but I almost overlooked the heading. Justice departments are always seizing something or other, it’s their job. (The highlights are mine.)

The point is: The authorities not only sought but obtained all they wanted in order to uncover certain journalists’ whistle-blowing source. This was, admittedly, onTrump’s watch, but is the US Justice Dept. the President’s lapdog? The NYT fleetingly mentions, en passant, “a case where prosecutors secretly seized years’ worth of a New York Times reporter’s phone and email records. That case signaled a continuation of the aggressive prosecutions of leaks under the Obama administration.” The NY Times refrains from going into details here; after all, the present incumbent of the presidency is on Obama’s side, as it were. The NY Times knows who butters its bread, let’s face it.

Nevertheless, the USA’s position 44 on the Press Feeedom Index is vastly better than that of the United Arab Emirates, at 131. You don’t get much worse than that, do you?

Or what? Well, yes, you do: India at no. 142 – repeat – one hundred and forty two – is the world’s largest so-called Democracy. The country’s president, Narendra Modi, is a pretty nasty piece of work, if you ask me. I leave you to a few sources in chronological order (all regarding India).

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) claims to be a-political. Already in 2018, the organisation noted red lights for the Indian press: Troll armies in PM Modi’s “pay”

In February this year RSF reports: Raids on critic al outlets in India.

In April the New York Times started looking at the matter.: NYT: India’s press not so free and NYT: Covid – Critical posts taken down

Al Jazeera’s The Listening Post, which discusses how the media discusses big topics, has been following India for a while, for instance here: Al Jazeera: Navigating bad Covid stats

Finally, a wonderful Indian author writes about Covid in India: Arundathi Roy: Covid in India

And the lesson? The one I referred in my first paragraph? It is very simple: Encrypt, encrypt, encrypt.

Etterspill

06.05.2021 /

Hva sitter igjen etter “Me Too”? Det var jo IKKE en debatt om hva som er eller ikke er akseptabel adferd i samkvem mellom kjønnene i det 21. århundret. Det var en illustrasjon på hvordan sosiale medier lever sitt eget liv, samler “clicks” (d.vs. tjener seg fete); brått fikk en uskyldig melding uforutsette og ukontrollerbare konsekvenser. “Me Too” utviklet seg til en klappjakt på navngitte menn, uten lov og dom og uten at reglene for hva menn har lov til å gjøre var blitt drøftet på forhånd av fellesskapet (som også omfatter menn). Reglene ble opplest av noen mektige “influencers”, og vedtatt som uskreven lov der og da av et lite mindretall, et hylekor. OG loven hadde tilbakevirkende kraft.

Jeg er, vel og merke, enig med hylekoret om mange av reglene, men jeg aksepterer ikke hvordan den uskrevne loven ble implementert. Jeg er også svært kritisk til at påbud og forbud bare gjaldt menn. Jeg har videre en mistanke om at “loven” har bidratt til å styrke ytre høyre, noe som skader oss alle. Det gjelder nok i mindre grad Norge, men i desto større grad USA.

Det er noe slikt som er Glenn Greenwald’s anliggende i en ny bredside mot “the liberal left”, som han nok en gang anklager for å skade sin egen sak. Greenwald bor i Brasil, og ser derfor ikke verden bare fra sin egen rene, hvite navle.

Vold mot kvinner er et dramatisk problem i Brasil og i hele Latinamerika, hvor det rett og slett er farlig å være kvinne. Selv i vårt nærområde, Spania, står frontene steilt mellom feminister og kvinnehatere. Jeg kjenner for eksempel godt til retorikken til Spanias Vox-parti, og jeg er ganske sikker på at jo mer kvinner ruster seg mot gubbevold, jo mer oppslutning får Vox. Og kvinner MÅ ruste seg. De blir jo faktisk drept rett som det er.

Til tross for at myndighetene i Spania går svært langt i å bekjempe vold mot kvinner, medfører Vox-partiets legitimering av rasende anti-feminisme flere, ikke færre, drap av kvinner. En egen lov om vold i nære relasjoner høyner strafferammen dersom volden utføres av en mann mot en kvinne. Hensikten var jo å slå hardt ned på slik vold, men Vox kjører beinhardt på at menn blir forskjellsbehandlet av domstolene, og Vox blir hørt. Her følger Wikipedia’s første avsnitt om ideologien til Vox.

Vox has been described as a far-right party within the subset of the radical-right family. Unlike other European radical right parties, its discourse relies relatively less on populism and more on nationalism. It mixes nationalism and nativism with an authoritarian vision of society, opposing what the party terms as “radical left-wing feminism” favouring “traditional” gender norms instead. Its economic agenda has been described as “neoliberal”.

Vox dveler altså ikke ved økonomisk ulikhet, men nører opp under Franco-inspirert nasjonalsjåvinisme (ingen “dialog” med katalanere, takk!) og våte drømmer om 50-tallets kjønnsroller.

I 2020 ble 43 kvinner drept av nåværende eller tidligere partner i Spania. Blant de autonome regionene som har ekspedert kvinner, står Andalucia aller øverst på listen. Interessant nok er dette en region som så lenge menn kan huske, har stemt inn sosialistiske regions-regjeringer, men som i 2019 fordoblet antall Vox-velgere (til 10%) og som dermed fikk en høyre-regjering.

Samtidig var det samlede antall drepte kvinner i 2020 faktisk 83 i Spania, og mange tar til orde for at det må opprettes et eget straffebud mot “feminicidio”, noe som setter Vox i harnisk. (Med “feminicidio” menes drap motivert av kvinnehat.)

Jeg tror ikke den vanlige mann i Spania ville ha brydd seg om juridiske finesser ved straffeutmålingen når en kvinne blir drept eller banket helseløs, hvis han ikke opplevde feminisme generelt som truende. De aller fleste vil nok enes om at vold er utillatelig uansett hvem overgriperen er, og at den bør være straffbar. Vold vil jo for de fleste være et uttrykk for desperasjon og avmakt.

I samfunn vi ønsker å sammenligne oss med, iberegnet det spanske, så er hensikten med en pådømt straff, ikke hevn, men allmennprevensjon. Lovgiverne der har ønsket å markere at vold mot kvinner overhode ikke aksepteres og at det er noe hele samfunnet ønsker å sette en stopper for. (I Norge aller vi dette for tiden “null-toleranse”.)

Til gjengjeld kan drømmen om en dydig kvinne ved kjøkkenbenken lett vinne gehør blant menn som utsettes for dårlig lønn og uverdige eller bortfalte arbeidsforhold, menn som er på god vei til å miste selvrespekten. Dissonansen mellom denne drømmen, som Vox hevder de akter å virkeliggjøre, og mannens ofte ydmyke status kan være vond å håndtere for den enkelte. Jeg tror ikke Me Too strategien er den best egnede til å roe gemytter.

Pandemically speaking

22.04.2021 /

Now that spring has reached the northern hemisphere, now that we northerners can raise our faces to the sun, pull our hands out of our coat pockets or, even, take off our coats, we tell ourselves once again that the task of living is indeed worth the effort. After all, birds are a-courting, yellow flowers humbly brighten road-sides, and nothing but nothing can dim the optimism of swelling and bursting buds on tree tops.

Sitting in a nearly empty subway carriage today, I longed for the pre-pandemic afternoon throng, the tired faces, the weary postures of people of all social classes on their way home from work. (Where I live, even the fairly rich use public transportation, if only because there is hardly any parking in the city. The extremely rich are probably driven to work by chauffeurs. ) Today, we were few and far apart, most of us dressed neither for work nor play, our expressions literally veiled by masks.

I wondered: Who are they? Have they been laid off?

What about you: Have you by any chance lost your job or been evicted from your house? Or are you working from home? Maybe you are what is called “a critical employee”, so that you have to brave Covid on a day-to-day basis. Whether you belong to the first, the second or the third category, I should stress that I do not belong to any of them. What I’m trying to say is that regardless of how life is hitting you, I am unable to imagine what it is like.

True, I am not without imagination, so I have a fair theoretical idea of what it means to inhabit categories 1 and 3, both of which involve professional activity coupled with social paralysis. Category 2, however, …

I was once poor, many years ago and for many years. Really poor. But then I got lucky, and the pandemic has left me high and dry. The strange thing is, however, that I am now unable to remember what it was like to be “really poor”. At least I know and will never forget that anybody, absolutely anybody, could be born into poverty, struck down by poverty, or slide into poverty through an amalgam of unfortunate circumstances. And I shall never ever forget that being poor is very expensive. To put it differently: Getting out of poverty requires money.

In Utopia for Realists (2016), Rutger Bregman cogently stressed that part of the problem “poverty” is the sadly prevailing fallacy that poverty is due to laziness or other kinds of good-for-nothingness. If you are, say, a Central American illegal alien working till your hands, lungs or feet bleed, you will be socially branded as lazy or at least delinquent, alcoholic or otherwise undesirable. Let me tell you, in case Rutger Bregman has not yet hit your bookshelf, that poverty is due to anything but laziness.

If the pandemic has struck you where it hurts, you will know what I mean. Maybe you have contacts that can lend you a hand. Maybe, on the other hand, you find yourself on your own. If that is the case, all I can say is, to quote Bob Dylan, “the times are a-changin”. True, wealth inequality has augmented during the past 15 months, BUT so has awareness of wealth inequality.

I did not take much note of the news of the conviction of George Floyd’s murderer – after all, we’ve all seen the video. What moved me to tears, however, were the images on the evening news of people sobbing in the streets. Sobbing for joy! I had not fully taken in, until then, that blacks actually feared Chauvin would be acquitted. Gosh! I mean, really: Wow. Can I even imagine what it must feel like to be a 24/7 walking and talking bullet target for so-called law enforcement? No I cannot.

Imagination is a strange thing: Under certain conditions, most of us are able to imagine unlikely situations and events. Some of us honestly fear that the air plane they are in might fall down, or that a sinister creature could be lurking in a corner or under the bed. Some fondly fantasise about the sweet scent of wood burning in a fire place. Oddly, however, few of us are able to imagine spending a cold night in a refugee camp, or even on the pavement, home to the homeless, in any one of our big cities.

The pandemic has left each and every one of us more or less imprisoned, alone or with household members, hence also far more emotionally vulnerable, perhaps also more sensitive. We are vulnerable not only to what surfaces from our own interiors, but also to what the few voices we hear tell us. From an anthropological viewpoint the past 15 months have been a tremendously exciting global experiment. Have our baseline attitudes changed?

The contemptible little man

27.03.2021 /

Here he is, General Min. It’s tempting to call him a monster, but we don’t really know, do we. Nobody seems to know much about him. Maybe he is his wife’s or his mother’s puppet; women can be as vile as men, you know, as greedy and as manipulative. Maybe he is the puppet of his fabulously rich children. Or of some other general. All we can say with absolute certainty is that he is contemptible; the kind of creature you would want to crush under your boot, if you had a boot, that is, and if you lacked self-restraint. What a civilised person does, however, is to hand him over to an international criminal court, where he will undoubtedly be convicted. He will then spend the rest of his life in a clean prison cell, with a TV screen showing, again and again, year after year and in colour, the atrocities his troops commited against the population of Myanmar. Even in prison, he will be lucky to evade the fate of Libya’s handsome erstwhile President Muammar Gaddafi.

They say he was a retiring sort of fellow. Some sources use the word “taciturn. According to Reuters, he made annual applications to join the country’s military university, the Defence Services Academy (DSA), succeeding only at his third attempt in 1974. Reuters adds that according to a member of his DSA class, he was “not an outstanding student. Not a driven person, (but) not a lazy person…. He was promoted regularly and slowly”. The classmate said he had been surprised he had risen beyond the officer corps’ middle ranks.

Nikkei Asia quotes Nicholas Coppel, Australia’s former ambassador to Myanmar: “The senior general is not a listener – he talks and others listen.” Mr Coppel holds that the general’s “big-man management style” is due to “ignorance and arrogance…. the isolation that comes from being at the top.”

So how come this mediocre character reached the top? Who paved the way for him and why? You will not find the answer in this post, because I don’t know. Let me be quite frank: I know little about Myanmar. Never been there. Never intended to go there. You don’t visit countries that are committing genocide. So I must rely heavily on what I find on the net, not least on the insight of Mr David Scott Mathieson, a Senior Researcher in the Asia Division of Human Rights Watch.

What I do know is that the general and his family are filthy rich, cf. Justice for Myanmar and Amnesty International.

Below is a long quote from Japan Times which explains the wealth in less legalese terms:

Through two highly secretive military-controlled behemoths — Myanmar Economic Holdings Limited (MEHL) and the Myanmar Economic Corporation (MEC) — at least 133 companies in the country are wholly or partially overseen by generals, according to a report by Justice For Myanmar (JFM).

The opaque groups have their tentacles in industries as diverse as beer, tobacco, transportation, textiles, tourism and banking.

Much of the lucrative — and largely unregulated — jade and ruby trade is controlled by military-owned businesses.

Although Myanmar is the world’s largest producer of jade, and the trade is estimated to be worth billions of dollars a year, only a very small part of the financial windfall ends up in state coffers — with most high-quality stones believed to be smuggled over the border into China.

Since 2011, the disaster-prone jade industry has remained “controlled by a network of military elites, drug lords and their cronies”, according to NGO Global Witness.

An MEHL subsidiary reportedly holds the largest number of jade mining licenses.

The company, Myanmar Imperial Jade Co. Ltd., was among the three gems entities slapped with U.S. sanctions Thursday.

MEHL has partnerships with companies in China, Japan, South Korea and Singapore, among others.

It has enriched its shareholders in Myanmar, who — according to the conglomerate’s government filings — are all current or retired military officials.

I recommend reading the entire above-linked article from Japan Times. You might also want to take a look at the Asia Times expose of the assets belonging the general’s family members.

There is nothing like a Count Dracula to attract attention to a small corner of the earth. While Myanmar’s ethnic majority have not seemed very preoccupied by the fate of the Rohingyan minority, you cannot but admire the pluck of protesters’ peacefully going out to defy the soldiers that shoot them in the head by the tens every day.

And what about the soldiers, sons and brothers of the very protesters they are shooting. Wow! That country is really fucked up. So General Min has at least earned his country a lot of attention. When General Min and and his fellow generals, at some point in the inevitable future, sit in their prison cells or languish underground in their coffins, we, tourists of the world, will flock to Myanmar to honour the thousands and thousands of demonstrators and Rohingyans who lost their lives to the “ignorance and arrogance” and, allow me to add, the barbarity of the generals who have governed Myanmar ever since it gained its so-called independence in 1962.

Meanwhile I put it to you that what triggered the recent coup, was not electoral irregularities, not even, perhaps, that General Min resented the little lady with flowers in her hair. I suspect that when she won 83 – eighty-three – per cent of the vote, he and his ilk panicked. What happens now? they asked themselves. According to CNN, Mr David Scott Matieson suggests they thought “she has a mandate now to dilute our economic power and our constitutional power, and our immunity from prosecution. There is no way that we’re going to allow ourselves to be that vulnerable.”

Royals

09.03.2021 /

At a time when news outlets are preoccupied by the fate of imprisoned princesses and fleeing princes and duchesses, I feel called upon to bring to your attention another piece of news about royalty.

In light of the fact that US authorities seem reluctant to take punitive action against the Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (usually referred to as MBS), the non-governmental organisation Reporters Without Borders (RSF) has taken a somewhat unusual step.

RSF is trying to take MBS to court, no less, and to have him convicted of crimes that are routinely referred to as “heinous”, i.e. crimes against humanity.

The official phrasing of RSF’s actions so far is that they have:

filed a criminal complaint with the German Public Prosecutor General against Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and [4] other high-ranking Saudi officials for crimes against humanity. The complaint concerns the widespread and systematic persecution of journalists in Saudi Arabia, more specifically the imprisonment of 34 journalists and the assassination of Jamal Kashoggi.

The principle of universal jurisdiction with respect to crimes against humanity is enshrined in German Law. RSF may have chosen to request prosecution in Germany because a German court recently convicted a former Syrian secret police officer for his role in the torture of protesters. Anybody who has ever heard or read detailed accounts of protesters’ prison life in Syria will have wept for joy to hear the verdict. RSF has heard and read many, many such accounts.

The problem is, of course, that in most countries, even the judiciary is subject to political pressure. What would be the fallout for Germany of challenging MBS? Does the German prosecuting authority have the guts to go through with this?

There is every reason to cross our fingers here. These days, deluded “generals” are stampeding all over the place in Myanmar like rabid bulls, killing left, right and centre. The idea that some court might one day convict and sentence the generals may not comfort the victims, but it could discourage megalomaniacs from choosing killing sprees as a strategy. Even MBS has generally used more sophisticated means of repression.

(While you’re here, you might take a look at RSF’s country ranking index.)

This is Apartheid

12.02.2021 /

There isn’t much good news going around, but when a prominent Israeli humanitarian organisation uses the word, maybe people will finally listen.

No need to expound. BTSELEM explains it all very clearly here:
https://www.btselem.org/publications/fulltext/202101_this_is_apartheid

Please do read the entire report. It’s important to understand on what grounds the word is found to be applicable.

Here is a shorter, animated version.

For the record: In case BTSELEM is ordered to take down the report, I have downloaded a copy of it and will upload it here.

What is Democracy?

08.02.2021 /

For various reasons, a growing number of people are beginning to wonder whether Democracy is just a fading daydream. The long-predicted effects of climate change are one by one starting to unfold and are shaking our faith in the future. Meanwhile, the spectacular cognitive contortions of many politicians and their followers have seemed beyond belief and have generated distrust in our governments. Finally, people like Bolsonaro, el-Sisi, Duterte, Trump, MBS, Netanyahu (Apartheid politician), Erdogan, Putin, and Burmese generals … to mention just a few, do not inspire hope for the human race, far less for Democracy.

But I put to you that in spite of all this, Democracy is not an illusion, not make-belief, not a silly fantasy!

There is nothing wrong with the concept of Democracy as outlined, however roughly
by the Encyclopedia Britannica:

Democracy is a system of government in which laws, policies, leadership, and major undertakings of a state or other polity are directly or indirectly decided by the “people,” a group historically constituted by only a minority of the population (e.g., all free adult males in ancient Athens or all sufficiently propertied adult males in 19th-century Britain) but generally understood since the mid-20th century to include all (or nearly all) adult citizens.

and recommended by the United Nations:

When the founders of the United Nations drafted the United Nations Charter, they did not mention the word democracy. In 1945, many of the UN Member States did not endorse democracy as a system, or didn’t practice it. Yet, the opening words of the Charter, “We the Peoples”, reflect the fundamental principle of democracy – that the will of the people is the source of legitimacy of sovereign states and, therefore, of the United Nations as a whole.

The problem we are facing these days is not that the concept Democracy is any more fantastical than it ever was, but that the word Democracy has been high-jacked by the United States – where it has been married to an economic (and governmental) system, commonly referred to by detractors as Neoliberalism – and where it has failed ignominiously to curb ubiquitous economic and racial injustice.

Since time immemorial there have been, here and there, patches of what could be called Democratic societies: A model example is that of the San [quote from Wikipedia]:

Traditionally, the San were an egalitarian society. Although they had hereditary chiefs, their authority was limited. The San made decisions among themselves by consensus, with women treated as relative equals. San economy was a gift economy, based on giving each other gifts regularly rather than on trading or purchasing goods and services.

True the San may not have exercised “separation of powers” (legislative, executive and judiciary) and a transparent system of checks and balances, without which I cannot conceive of a modern Democratic society. On the other hand, they managed something no “modern” society would: to survive in the Kalahari Desert.

With or without separation of powers, one thing is certain in the Kalahari Desert as in a post-modern society: Democracy is contingent on informed choices, and that is what has been missing in so many so-called democracies all over the world. The San People will not have known about quantum physics, but what knowledge they had, they shared and without shared knowledge, there is no Democracy.

Again I quote Encyclopedia Britannica:

The hallmark of democracy is that it permits citizens to participate in making laws and public policies by regularly choosing their leaders and by voting in assemblies or referenda. If their participation is to be meaningful and effective—if the democracy is to be real and not a sham—citizens must understand their own interests, know the relevant facts, and have the ability to critically evaluate political arguments. Each of those things presupposes education.

Education, then, is key!

But who gets to decide what goes onto the curriculum? A bellowing bull in Ankara (who is at this very moment clamping down on his countries’ universities)? Or a Christian fundamentalist? Well, that’s where the free press comes into the picture, isn’t it, because if either one or the other fiddles with the curriculum, the press pounces on them, unless…

Unless what? Well, the press isn’t entirely free, is it. The press has powerful owners and/or backers; military dictators, autocrats, Savonarolas, billionaires, cranks, Qanonites and nut cases who will apply every trick in the book to gain and retain control, including the tricks of editing curriculum and controlling the press.

So Democracy is not something that just falls into our laps and stays there. We have to work for it, and we have to defend it. Mind you, this is not new. Since time immemorial, the world has been hectored by power freaks, and has survived. But one thing has changed: change itself, or rather, the speed of change.

Like it or not, change happens and will continue to happen at a breath-taking speed.

Change brings us pandemics, but also improved vaccination technology. Change brings us affordable audio-visual communication across continents, but also the means to whip up insurrections through social media.

More than ever before, education – good education – is needed so that we all can contribute, each in our different ways and to the extent of our capacity – by asking questions, answering questions, squabbling about the answers; by conducting research and questioning results. Like the San, we must share available knowledge about what lies ahead so that we all can take part in deciding how to deal with it.

Outside the garden

31.01.2021 /

Somebody with an Algerian IP address has been trying to hack his way into this site. That’s a novelty. Ukrainian, US American, Russian and Indian IPs, sure – I’m used to them, but never Algerian. Is he trying to tell me something?

So what’s with Algeria? Well, for one thing, the country has had an excruciatingly bloody recent history. There are people out there, less well-informed than yourselves, who would echo a typically colonialist (frankly: racist) statement: “That just goes to show that Algerians are…” something-or-other. But you and I know that colonialism comes at a terrible price, for the colonised. Just how that price is paid, however, is less known to us; there seems to be a reticence to go into detail in our school textbooks.

So let me just start by urging you – imploring you – to watch the remarkable documentary Blood and Tears: French Decolonisation.

Like so many other former colonies, Algeria has not completely managed to turn a page. To quote one of the interviewees in the said documentary: “How can you turn a page that has yet to be written?”

For instance, the journalist Khaled Drareni was jailed last year and subsequently sentenced to two years’ imprisonment simply for covering protests in Algeria. This is yet another instance of attempts to throttle the press and hide information from us. Please sign Amnesty’s call to Free Khaled Drareni.

One of Algeria’s problems is that around here, we’re too Eurocentric to notice much outside our own garden. We simply don’t know enough. There are valuable sources, though, and I recommend two:

In “The Art of Losing”, the French novelist Alice Zeniter explores the fate of an Algerian “Harki” and his family after liberation in 1962. The novel earned her the prestigious Prix Goncourt.

Aljazeera’s in-depth analysis of current issues: Critics say the new constitution does not meet popular demands for an independent judiciary and empowered parliament.

Expose!

31.01.2021 /

The word “transparency” is very much in vogue these days, particularly in the EU, which attempts to monitor financial transactions and disclose hidden accounts, for instance in tax havens. Personally, I would gladly see lightning strike all shell companies whose beneficial owners are filthy rich. We use the expression “filthy rich” when someone’s inordinate wealth may have been built on the backs of underpaid labour or thanks to otherwise unethical acts or un-exposed crimes, be they financial, environmental or political, crimes against humanity or disrespect of civil rights.

People like that tend to fiercely resist being exposed, and may go to extremes to silence whistleblowers.

Yes, the keyword here is “exposed”. Just by reading Wikipedia, we have no way of knowing whether for instance Elon Musk (the now richest man in the world) has played straight throughout his career. He is obviously very smart. Personally, I believe that Mozart – to pick a politically neutral example – should have been blessed with a beautiful palace and life-long comfort, although his remarkable brain was just a fluke of nature, presumably a mutation of some sort. In view of his extraordinary output, I would not have begrudged him wealth, which would have been deserved. Instead, he was destitute at his death.

Elon Musk, who has contributed significantly to innovation and technological development may, for all I know, be some kind of wizard, a techno-equivalent of Mozart. In Wikipedia, I see that he has been sued a number of times for his views and/or statements. He is certainly entitled to having and expressing views, even if I don’t like them. But has he played straight? Wikipedia does not tell.

So to my knowledge, no serious ethical wrongdoing has been exposed on the part of Elon Musk. Yes, again: exposed is the keyword. Is there any Navalnyj in the USA?

True, the USA had Edward Snowden. He exposed – revealed – that in his country (and many others, including mine) “big brother [NSA] is watching you [us]” (cf. “1984” by George Orwell).

No matter what country we inhabit, our futures depend on those who expose serious wrongs which may or may not be punishable by law. Laws are created by humans, who are not infallible. Legislators are informed by clerics, public opinion, pressure groups, powerful lobbies, etc. Legislators are only men, after all, and sometimes women.

I don’t know about you, but I definitely lack the skills to analyse anyone’s financial empire. Even if I had them, I would never be able to devote years of unpaid labour to such a pursuit. I have not personally witnessed the war crimes and crimes against humanity perpetrated in the Middle East and elsewhere. Even if I had, my indignant voice would not have been heard.

We, the general public, need – here, there and everywhere – to be informed of such wrongdoings so that we can demand whatever measures are necessary to put things right. That is what Democracy is all about, informed decision-making.

We need – here, there and everywhere – to protect those who expose serious wrongdoings and inform us of them. Some of them have risked everything to do so, for instance in Italy, where the Mafia still has vastly more financial muscle than the State, and in Russia, where the State and the mafia appear to be one.

We need – in my country and in yours – people
like Navalnyj,
like Julian Assange and
like Edward Snowden
to expose what you and me cannot see,
what media that depend on wealthy sponsors are unwilling to see.

We need them; we desperately need them. We need, in fact, more like them, not as presidents, not to govern our countries, but to expose and continue to expose what is terribly wrong.

And we need to defend them when they need us.

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