Pelshval

Antropologiske betraktninger om pelshvaldrift

Tag: democracy

Is it or isn’t it?

07.06.2024 /

What is “democracy”? I’ve been asking the question ever since I was a kid. Just as I asked what is “good art”?

Is it at all possible to arrive at a universally acceptable definition of “art”? Let alone “good” art? Art historians and critics maintain it is. I suspect that in any case, there is a lot of humbug involved, but not only humbug. There is an ingot of the sublime in there somewhere, in art, that is, but I have long since ceased to even try to grasp it.

Likewise, most of us in so-called democratic countries fervently believe in “democracy” without necessarily knowing just what we are so passionate about or why?

What we do know is that we don’t want to live in certain other countries. The thing is, most people living in most countries – except in those that have been rendered uninhabitable, and even in some of those – want to continue living there. I very much doubt that our rationale for living where we live has anything to do with democracy, even in the USA, which considers itself the mother and the father, of democracy.

Why do I doubt that? Well, for one thing, because I don’t consider the USA a democracy. And whereas life has been, until very recently, easier for most people in Europe than for most people in the USA, democracy in Europe, too, is slithering down a slippery slope.

Democratic features in so-called democratic countries

1) Elections

It is true that every few years we are allowed to vote for a person or a political party to represent our district. It’s called “parliamentary system”, and it worked well enough – although it wasn’t infallible – when we were few, when we knew the contesting parties and could assess the results of their labours. We knew whether A. was a “man of honour”, whether or not B.’s financial enterprises tended to be solid and beneficial to the community.

Nowadays, we cannot possibly know all the individuals who run for office. The contestants, be they individuals or political parties, all formulate their programmes as ambiguously as possible so as to attract people who might have very different, often opposing, needs and wishes. We no longer have even an inkling of the real aspirations* of the contestants. We therefore depend on political analysts. In short, we depend on the media.

*Explanatory digression about aspirations:

A school of economic thought associated with Friedrich Hayek quietly started with a whisper in the 1930s in the almost secretive Mont Pelerin Society. But it rapidly gained in popularity among the “filthy rich”. “Neoliberalism” – as we now refer to it, or “market fundamentalism” – has seeped into our pores and infiltrated all economic activity, not only in “democratic” countries, but also, and not least, in dictatorships.

The economist Maynard Keynes tried to stop the neoliberal avalanche, but he died shortly after the Bretton Woods Conference (1944), where he was a key player but lost to the USA which has dominated most of the world ever since. Neoliberalism was violently imposed on the global south and has reluctantly been embraced even by European “labour parties” (which explains their dwindling popularity).

For a long time after Keynes’ death, market fundamentalism had few heavy-weight opponents. No corporations were going to protest, obviously. Intellectuals in frayed shirts were unable to move the electoral “masses”. Thus it has been until fairly recently. Even now, though there are several brilliant economists opposed to neoliberalism, they are basically ignored by the top dogs.

What I am trying to say is that a politician may say that he intends to improve care of the elderly. However, he may not tell you whether or not his approach to care of the elderly is “neoliberal”. Believe me, it matters!

End of digression

Voters know nothing of the ulterior motives of the man or woman they vote for. He/she may be sincere, but is more likely to be an inveterate liar. Voters are kept in the dark about the machinations of the political party they vote for. So we, voters, have no choice other than to vote for “the nice guy” or check our favourite sources in the media.

Candidates that cannot entirely conceal that their aspirations are neoliberal (i.e. that they prioritise capital (the haves rather than the have-nots) are assisted by the media (the “respectable” press, TV-channels, news networks, social media, etc. etc.) The mainstream media serves the important function of dressing up capital because it is owned by capital. For example: If capital is in favour of a war, the mainstream media will sugar the war.

So: Regardless of who wins an election, nothing much ever changes, except for the worse – for most of us, that is. Yet, they have the gall to complain about low voter turnouts.

I’m pretty sure people in so-called democratic countries do not know how the people of Palestine have been mistreated for decades and how the entire population of Gaza is being tortured to death. I have to believe that most people in so-called democratic countries are not deeply immoral, not evil, and that, had they known what is going on, they would never ever, ever have allowed it. I have to believe that they allow it only because they are being kept in the dark. I have to believe that, because if this were not so, we would have to welcome the impending demise of the human species.

Anyway, I know that the mainstream media does not inform us, because I, too, read the mainstream media.

The mainstream media tells us that the US economy is doing brilliantly, so US citizens should vote for Biden and EU citizens should continue to bank on the USA. Indeed, the US economy is doing brilliantly, but the gems are not trickling down to the average US citizen. In October 2023, US debt was 33 trillion USD, probably more like 35 trillion now – yes, that’s trillion!

A US default on the national debt:

… would trigger the domestic economic equivalent of a nuclear carpet bombing. —

In the U.S., a staggering 7% of federal spending goes to servicing debt. Those taxpayer dollars are no longer doing anything to strengthen the economy or improve the lives of its citizens. And every time we run an annual budget deficit, that spending on debt service goes up.

Source

I put to you that this is not what the average US citizen voted for.

I put to you that the average citizen of so-called democratic countries is not raring to go off to the upcoming Olympic war games, which are being prepared and sponsored by Biden and his ilk, together with Stoltenberg, Cameron, Macron, Baerbock and St. Ursula, etc. Top dogs in so-called democratic countries will, of course only see the “action” they hanker for on their screens, they hope. Alas, or should I say fortunately, once the really heavy punches are delivered, even they might not be spared.

The Russian deputy foreign minister has allegedly suggested that these people should devote less time to video games and somewhat more time to reality, over which they seem to have a slim grasp.

2) Freedom

Those who can afford it, can do almost anything they want to do, short of murder (or even murder if they can afford to conceal it).

But: Such freedom is also enjoyed by the privileged few in fascist states.

It is true that there are countries where religious mores or prevailing values and attitudes impose limitations on what you can wear and how you can behave in public. Even in democratic countries, there are many such communities. More often than not, the restrictions are supported by a majority, but a minority will feel heavily suppressed.

No matter where you live in the world, there will be minorities. Some minorities will have a tougher time than others, it is true.

3) Freedom of expression and of information

This is the most important and possibly the only, real asset of a democracy. This is the truly invaluable ingot!

Those who express seriously dissident views will not be prosecuted or imprisoned or tortured in a democracy. Those who want to know what the powers-that-be are up to can access that information in the mainstream press of a democracy.

But that most invaluable of rights, one which is absent in many of the countries we “don’t want to live in” is no longer guaranteed in the the so-called democratic countries either. True, small-fry dissidents will only be ridiculed, ignored, maybe even spat upon. They will be jeered at in social media, eventually blocked from all forums and isolated, but they will not be imprisoned.

However, we have now learnt that if a dissident really manages to unmask the powers-that-be and reveal their crimes, as did Julian Assange, he will be prosecuted, tortured and slow-motion-killed.

We have seen that the mainstream – i.e. “respectable” – press is no longer available to heavy-weight dissidents who truly challenge the establishment. There are intelligent and very well-informed people who question the wisdom of US forever-wars, into which European allies are dragged, and many more who question the wisdom of US and EU support for the ongoing genocide. Those who speak out are paying a price. They are labelled “conspiracy theorists” and are blocked from all platforms, including not least the “respectable” press. Many are expelled from universities or lose their jobs. Many will undoubtedly have to get heavily into debt to cover legal defence fees.

Those who seek knowledge about the forever-wars search in vain in the mainstream media, where views preferred by capital, and by extension any ruling party, will dominate.

I put to you that most people in the USA/EU would be furious if they knew that their taxes were contributing to the death by starvation of Gazan children, to the stunting of those who do not die.

I put to you that voters in so-called democratic countries are not free to make “informed decisions”.

I put to you that we are nearly as brainwashed as the citizens of Oceania in 1984 by Orwell.

Admittedly, those who doubt the magnificence of whatever party is the ruling Party are not killed. They are just not heard or seen. They are “vaporised”.

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.

Where do we get our facts?

19.05.2019 /

You might be wondering how come a person who pretends to care passionately about human rights (in every which interpretation) hardly ever refers to the ethnic cleansing of Rohingya from Myanmar.

Very simple: I have no first-hand knowledge of the past and ongoing crimes apparently committed not only by the army and government but even by the majority population in Myanmar. I only know about it through the media.

Now the US emperor appears to hold a grudge against “the media”. However there are others, too, who distrust the media, and with good reason, if I may say so. Many of us also distrust the pharmaceutical industry, politicians, doctors, wolves, etc., again with good reason. The media and the pharmaceutical industry will engage in pretty shady practices to boost profits and satisfy share holders, and more often than not, their ruses will not be exposed. Of course, if a pharmaceutical company fails to alleviate or cure medical ills, as evidenced by statistical breakdowns, it will loose its share holders anyway. Doctors are not always as conscientious or skilled as they should be and, finally, wolves occasionally manage to kill a dog or four or even a human every few hundred years. I’ll get back to the politicians later.

But first, I would like to make a few points:

  • Without the media, we would not only have been confused, but blind kittens awash in a sea of conflicting events.
  • The pharmaceutical industry and doctors have contributed to a dramatic lengthening of our life expectancy.
  • Wolves keep the deer population within reasonable limits (just as foxes limit the rabbit population) and deer, whereas pretty to look at, nourish the ticks that infect thousands and thousands of people every year with Lyme and other serious diseases.

Yes, we are often misinformed. Yes, some media are so self-serving that they can destabilise nations, not least if their audiences lack certain necessary tools – the kind of tools delivered by decent educational systems – to assess information. There are, moreover, tens of thousands of hard-working journalists dedicated to learning and presenting what is truthful and exact. Many of them are up against serious obstacles, even oppression. Some even risk or even lose their lives. We need them! We need to defend them!

Normally, what little I write here, is about matters of which I have first-hand knowledge. First-hand knowledge may stem from various sources. Once in my youth, when I was to go on in-house duty for three consecutive weeks, I first went to the library and borrowed a large stack of books about Armenian history. I read them all, taking meticulous notes. The other day, I found the old notes and was touched by my devotion to the topic. This I did, not for school nor for work, but because I was truly interested. I cannot remember why. What I remember is only my keen interest in the topic. There are countless other people out there who want to understand and who desperately want to learn.

I do have first-hand knowledge about Palestine, for reasons I will not go into. Likewise I have first-hand knowledge about dictatorships in Latin America and in Spain. I have lived in several countries and have seen more than has been good for me. But I have not lived in Asia or Oceaniea, and I need the media. I desperately need the media. I often check what I read against other outlets, and of course, like others, I distrust some more than others, depending, of course on the issue.

One source I have been particularly fond of is “The Listening Post” on Al Jazeera . It discusses various news outlets’ take on hot topics. Take Narendra Modi’s BJP in the recent Indian elections:

Now that is a text-book example of a successful marriage between self-serving media and dishonest politicians. I know very little about India, but listening to the podcast from the Listening Post, I get the impression that in the so-called Western countries, we would do well to study the nuts and bolts of what is often referred to as the world’s largest democracy. We might learn something about ourselves.

By the way, Merriam Webster’s definition of “democracy” does not mention the role of the market, of media outlets owned by oligarchs, of powerful investor interests, of phenomena such as Breitbart and Fox News. What is Democracy, I ask you?

Democratic deficit

29.03.2018 /

After two world wars, Europeans had had enough of wars, and so we saw the slow but inexorable development of the EC, which has evolved into the EU.

Now, it is true that many considered this multinational organisation a bureaucratic and undemocratic mastodon, and for many years the Scandinavian countries, for instance, refused to join, with good reason, you might say. There are certainly grounds for maintaining that joining the EU weakens national sovereignty, and there is undoubtedly the matter of the “democratic deficit”.

On the other hand, where is there no “democratic deficit”? Personally, I’m not really sure what “democracy” means, in spite of all we can read about the topic in various sources. Forget about the ancient Greeks, for a moment, though the concept is said to stem from them; in Athens only a small proportion of males, i.e. landowners, were “eligible” to vote, as it were. So Athens doesn’t really count as a model.

In modern-day western societies, we see more or less fascist movements gaining ground through fair elections. We also see elections that are not blatantly unfair but dubious. I won’t detail what I mean by dubious – each country has its own turgid electoral issues with or without the involvement of the Russians, fake-news factories, abused Facebook data etc. Be all that as it may, we are left with a lot of question marks regarding even so called “fair elections”.

Regardless of our doubts, however, most of us in the west still agree that we value certain standards of law. We need to trust that our courts and law enforcement are politically, financially and personally impartial and just. Most of us also firmly adhere to the importance of civil liberties.

So where does that leave us?

I knew a man who used to say, “nowhere in the Bible have I found any statement to the effect that parents must love their children”. I believe him. He had actually read the Bible many times. The Bible only commands us to love and obey our parents, and that’s it.

I find a parallel in our faith in “democracy”: We believe in it as though it were the Bible, but nobody requires us to vote for what is best for the country, for society or for humankind. All a voter needs to do is to vote for whoever will best serve his or her personal interests. Now.

Right. And now we have a situation of impeding serious climate change. Left to choose between a policy that will impose inter alia serious restrictions on personal travel and make a dent on our personal finances, or, on the other hand, business as usual, what do you and I choose?

And we have a situation in which parts of the world population are destitute, desperate and/or even angry. Do we choose to leave them to their own devices, put them into concentration camps, or even exterminate them? Or do we consider a different order?

Finally, we have a situation in most western countries where a growing proportion are growing poorer by the year, where the welfare state is crumbling and where young women are increasingly reluctant to bear children for fear of what the future may bring. It is very tempting to blame “the others”, i.e. China, Russia, the immigrants, and all the oddballs that make a society colourful. Are there any other sources of concern?

The EU may be a bureaucratic mastodon, but from my perspective, the EU is a relatively civilising force in Europe at the moment. Not that I trust the EU. The EU was from its inception, and still is, a fundamentally capitalist animal. But so far, no successful alternative to capitalism has been devised. (Russia and China are, after all, as capitalist as the rest of us.) The EU aims, at least, to resist individual countries’ and companies’ attempts to undermine the rule of law, and to defend civil liberties. The EU even defends, to a certain extent, its members’ welfare state. And the EU realises, unlike most of us, that in the end, we will all be the losers of climate change.

There is no punch line here, except that if you are itching for a new war, you may not be disappointed. I only hope that the majority of Europeans take to their senses. Soon.

 

Everybody does it

05.07.2013 /

Of course I cannot be silent about an issue that seems to have jolted the planet. I will not be silent even though the matter has had its fair share of press coverage – and thank goodness for that! I want to join the chorus of angrily clamouring voices from all over the globe, although I must add that Snowden’s revelations came as no surprise to me. Not that I accept what Obama would have us believe: that everybody does it.

If you lived right across the street from a couple who make heady love every night without drawing their curtains, would you watch? Maybe you would, maybe you wouldn’t. I am prepared to concede that many people would indeed watch, but they would not like others to know they were doing so. They would draw their own curtains, so that nobody could see them peeping. On the other hand, if you happened to know that the couple across the street were making heady love behind thick, drawn curtains, and you happened to know that they had a laptop in that same room, would you use a computer program you knew about that could turn on the webcam of that laptop?

There are applications that can do that, and there are people who use them. We call such programs malware, and we call the people who use them criminals. Most of us are not criminals.

I was not surprised because in my mind, USA has had an inglorious history since WWII, a history that would have been impossible unless the powers that be were prepared to break every rule in the book. I won’t go into that, since it would require the writing of a very long text, and such texts already exist, many of them admittedly published in the United States, which means that opposition has not yet altogether been silenced even in that country. Thank goodness for that, too. There is still a long way from USA to North Korea! But a lot of legislation has been put in place since 9/11 that demands considerable courage from citizens who want to speak up.

Fear appears to be woven into the fabric of the US constitution, if the firearms debate is anything to go by.

Many commentators maintain that fear is what has persuaded the nation’s population to allow its democratically elected governments to systematically commit crimes against humanity, to disregard international treaties, and to dismantle transparency.

They must have been afraid from the very outset. Afraid of the “reds”, of course, whose human rights the entire “white” world was not at the time ready to embrace. The US had every reason to be afraid of the colonial power that continued to bully them even after the country had won its independence (War of 1812). Many of the settlers were Calvinists fleeing from religious persecution and thus doubly afraid: born and bred to be afraid of God and the powers that be. There were and there are, still, a lot of preachers. To this day, politicians speak like preachers, oratorically.

They were afraid not so much of Sin as of God’s wrath that punishes not only he/she who sins but the entire community that allows Sin to persist (Sodom and Gomorrah). In this fear, Calvinists were joined by Catholics and Jews. Needless to say, everybody dreaded poverty even more than the Black Death. Nowadays, they are terrified of crime, of hurricanes, of genetically modified foodstuffs, of serial killers, insanity, communists, immigrants, terrorists, Sin and the State, and this is just the top of the list.

Fear is not encoded in their genetic make-up, but the rhetoric of fear has been adroitly nurtured decade after decade, war after war, crisis after crisis, by the people they elected.

Today, the embattled country has every reason to be afraid. Having alienated their allies by supporting ruthless dictators, by refusing to endorse (referring to their right to defend their interests) inter alia the International Criminal Court and the Kyoto Protocol, by demanding support for wars most of their allies found nearly impossible to justify to their own populations, they now face a far more formidable foe than they have ever known. “Terrorism” is the elastic term they have coined for this foe. Their definition of the word seems to encompass quite a range of activities, depending on the stakes, just as their definition of “communist”, a word that was used to justify so much injustice a few decades back, was adroitly adapted to fit every context. To this day, many frightened US nationals refer to my peaceful and eminently democratic country as “communist”.

Few of the articles I have read about Edward Snowden vs USA dispute that USA has a case against Snowden. However, most grant Snowden the moral high ground, to say the very least. To quote El País of 7 July  (my translation):

The general public and politicians in the UK and USA may never be willing to comprehend fully the magnitude of the torrent of revelations about the intervention of communication all over the world from the fugitive former spy Edward Snowden. For the rest of the world, however, especially for Europe, this is a transcendental moment….Political leaders in Europe will need to ask themselves a whole series of questions. Since when are human rights no longer universal?

Of all the presidents of USA we have known since Kennedy, Obama appears to be the most intelligent. He may yet be able to convince us all that “everybody does it”, not least as it now appears to have been established that the UK is no better. If so, we will all be much the worse off. We will all lose faith in our governments, in “democracy”, in transparency and in everything else that we have believed in and hoped for these past 150 years. I can only hope that the loser of this international moral battle will be USA, and that the rest of us will regain some faith in democracy. In the very long run, this would benefit also USA.

Allow me to add as my purely personal opinion: USA has clearly demonstrated that its agenda is not, repeat not, peace, justice and the welfare of the greatest possible number of its inhabitants. BUT is there any great power that honestly pursues such lofty objectives? I put it to you that we all have a long way to go to attain real democracy.

 

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