Mugabe – the lesser of two evils?

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Beware of false choices! People sometimes will offer you a choice which isn’t really a choice but a direction, or a choice based on a faulty premise.

A woman/man of good character or a woman/man who is attractive.
A car with good performance, or one that is economical.
A government that encourages big business or one that listens to the people.
Strong enforcement of law and order or the respect of the rights of citizens and individuals.

What I am getting at is, one can have them both, it doesn’t have to be a choice of one or the other, in many cases it is better to have both.

Robert Mugabe freedom fighter or despot? One can’t help notice the part Robert Mugabe pricing the hands of white rule off of Rhodesia, latterly known as Zimbabwe. However, at the same time on cannot but see the years of oppression, mismanagement, brutality, cronyism that have crushed a country that was once termed the bread-basket of Africa.

Some of Mugabe’s quotes whether they have some element of truth or not, are polarizing and reactionary:

“The only white man you can trust is a dead white man.”
“Our party must continue to strike fear in the heart of the white man, our real enemy!”
“Was it not enough punishment and suffering in history that we were uprooted and made helpless slaves not only in new colonial outposts but also domestically.”

Blaming the white man and being bitter about the past is understandable, but useless in and of itself unless one has a direction to ones anger that can actually improve the situation of yourself and the people around you. Not a strict translation in context, but applicable:

“Where there is no vision, the people perish; but he that keepeth the law, happy is he.” – Proverbs 29:18.

Have you seen children fighting over a toy, one has seen the other playing with it and wants it for himself, so they squabble over it. When the child who didn’t have the toy in the first place gets the toy, he grows bored of it after 5 minutes, or the other child who had the toy originally may soon grow bored with it too. Watch what happens when either of the children lose interest in the toy, and the other child goes to get it, there is squabbling again!

It’s almost the same situation with Zimbabwe, and rulers treating this country of many fine people who deserve a future, like a toy. Mugabe, perhaps rightfully gained possession of it, but he soon grew bored and stopped paying it the interest, care and attention it deserved. He had no vision of what he wanted to do with the country in the future, how he would truly empower the people, but his only vision was of hatred for white people, and the need to take back from them something he believed he should have. Because of this lack of vision his rule deteriorated in to a foul blot on the African continent, and a sorry story of what might have been.

Tyranny, exploitation and white rule often go hand in hand in Africa, but the sad thing is, when black rulers take over – the people often see more of the same. I guess my point is, people don’t want the lesser of two evils, they want no evil at all. They don’t want a black ruler who expresses his misrule simply in a different way to a white ruler. THey want someone who has vision to improve the country they live in. A black ruler, with integrity, with a heart for the people, consistent to the end.

Morgan Tsvangirai said this of Mugabe and I tend to agree – “Do we portray him as the great liberator or do we portray him as someone who betrayed the liberation he fought for? I think the latter will prevail, because I think his ending, does not confirm, the legacy he built in the earlier years of his political life…”

It’s high time in Africa, and across the world that rulers and authorities act with integrity, wisdom and justice. It is in my prayers, and has been for a long time that this will happen. If Africa can not stand with integrity, and stand with some form of togetherness, it will be continually exploited by foreign powers while its people cry our for change. Africa needs to grow and have self-determination and independence in order to free herself from exploitation and the trap of low self-worth.

Racists say the first slave owner in the USA was black!

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I came across the following post on an online bible study group on an internet dating website:

OMG, The First Slave OWNER in the USA was a Black Man

“This is going to be a shocker to many of you, but the first slave OWNER in America was indeed a Black man name Anthony Johnson. He was captured in Angola Africa by North African Muslims (hello), then sold to a Virginia farmer as an indentured servant. His indentured status was to last a maximum of 10 years by law, and upon his freedom, he himself purchase indentured servants. Prior to one of those servant’s expiration of servitude, Anthony Johnson applied to the government for the right to keep him FOR LIFE (actual slavery). This occurred in 1654, and this marked the beginning of slavery in the USA, and it was BEGUN by a BLACK MAN. The slave trade in the USA followed after that and at the beginning of the Civil War of the USA, several of the slave OWNERS were themselves BLACK.

North African Muslims were the biggest slave traders in history and it is estimated that they enslaved about
200 million people over the course of 1400 years.
Europe and America practiced slavery for less than a third of that time.
So this idea that slavery was invented by and/or promoted the biggest by the European WHITE man is pure bunk.”

My Reply was as follows:

Hello to everyone,

I was shocked by the inaccuracy of the Opening Post with race being such a sensitive issue. Firstly the title of the post is factually incorrect and should be:

The first legal slave owner in American history was a black tobacco farmer named Anthony Johnson.

“Possibly true. The wording of the statement is important. Anthony Johnson was not the first slave owner in American history, but he was, according to historians, among the first to have his lifetime ownership of a servant legally sanctioned by a court.

A former indentured servant himself, Anthony Johnson was a “free negro” who owned a 250-acre farm in Virginia during the 1650s, with five indentured servants under contract to him. One of them, a black man named John Casor, claimed that his term of service had expired years earlier and Johnson was holding him illegally. In 1654, a civil court found that Johnson in fact owned Casor’s services for life, an outcome historian R Halliburton Jr. calls “one of the first known legal sanctions of slavery — other than as a punishment for crime.” (Source: Snopes.Com)

One has to remember that legal forms of slavery were practiced all over the world, and indentured servitude and chattel slavery are quite different things. The former often had the agreement of the people involved, was legal at that time and had been practiced in biblical times (Ex 21:2) and even before. The latter however, in its most extreme and heinous form as practiced by Europeans transported an estimated 11 million people from various parts of Africa to America, transported in squalid conditions, often without keeping records of those being transported, throwing people overboard in forms of mass baptism, not really caring whether people lived or died, with conditions improving little for many over the approximately 400 years it lasted. One has to remember churches owned slaves, and the 11 million transported is virtually double the number of people who died in the Jewish Holocaust, and with scant records kept of deaths who knows how many African lives perished because of this inhumanity. Here is some information that at least attempts to assess that:

“The trans-Atlantic slave trade was the largest movement of people in history. Between 10 and 15 million Africans were forcibly transported across the Atlantic between 1500 and 1900. But this figure grossly understates the actual number of Africans enslaved, killed, or displaced as a result of the slave trade. At least 2 million Africans–10 to 15 percent–died during the infamous “Middle Passage” across the Atlantic. Another 15 to 30 percent died during the march to or confinement along the coast. Altogether, for every 100 slaves who reached the New World, another 40 had died in Africa or during the Middle Passage.” (Source: Digital History)

Here is a scripture to consider:

This is what the LORD says: “For three sins of Gaza, even for four, I will not relent. Because she took captive whole communities and sold them to Edom, (Amos 1:6).

I’m not saying Europeans are being spoke of explicitly in this scripture, but their actions are comparable to how Gaza is described, and it clearly seems that God sees this type of action as being wrong. What nations have done what is mentioned in Amos 1:6 above, but not only that – transported chattel slaves thousands of miles across the planet, to help with building up land they stole from another race of people? The overwhelming majority of these actions done by force, even under the banner of religion?

Going back to the premise of the Opening Post, also consider that slavery started in “The New World” in 1620, Anthony Johnson became a indentured slave owner in the 1650’s which is about a generation after the initial influx of people. Are we seriously saying that for that entire 30 year gap, all African slaves bought and sold between European people in within America were done so illegally? Not one of those white slave owners or traders sought legal means to own slaves? If this is true, why did European white slave owners prefer illegal chattel slavery over indentured labour? What of the people who were born into slavery, did they not become legal property of the people who probably illegally owned their mother or father?

The premise I feel that was implied by the Opening Post seems to say, “don’t blame us for slavery, your people practiced it first”. As a black person, that’s what I read – between the lines. It’s a very superficial and inaccurate supposition. We definitely need to understand the different types of slavery that existed, how long those types of slavery existed, and the full context of the case in question – none of which were provided and which I have now clarified. Trans-Atlantic slavery and the societies impacted and borne out of it have created a very marked impact on societies right across the planet, and this led to the indentured labour in America practiced by both black and white people of which author of the Opening Post’s writes. The issue he misses is that as the initial influx of chattel slavery was illegal. Therefore all the indentured labour that followed it stemmed from that initial act, and in every instance was an act of injustice and simply an extension of the initial system of chattel slavery. If the slaves had not been transported half way across the world in the first place none of that would have happened, no “indentured labour” in America, no Jim Crow and Segregation, there would also be no race problem, at least involving the lives of black people in the USA today, although I am sure the Europeans would have found another culture to demonise, like Native American’s or Hispanics – perhaps this shows its ugly face in the shape of Donald Trump, who cannot help but laden his speech and writing with such contemptuousness even now.

There is a deep seated guilt in European culture that wants to distance itself from the acts of their forefathers in the past, for the most blinded this leads to a denial of history and its effects on the present day world. The social and economic impact of slavery is felt to this day. That display of inhumanity is what has led to this polarisation of cultures and colour, and keeps black and white communities in a flux of division and mistrust – with exceptions as people endeavour to live as people with love and respect for one another as God intended.

Europeans assume superiority because they have built huge and prosperous civilisations seeing themselves at the top of the tree, despising and dehumanising those who they used to help them get there, to this day. People of Colour assume inferiority low worth and status, as they try to live in the confines of European culture that by its language, economic structure and even in its interpretation of religion systematically dehumanises and oppresses them. These devices present in European society form a powerful hegemony which takes a concerted and sustained effort on the part of any Person of Colour to overcome.

There are many People of Colour caught up in a cycles of poverty and crime because of a mentality derived from the corrosive effects of this European cultural hegemony on our minds. In my mind this is what the famous Reggae artist Bob Marley talked of as “mental enslavery”. The unfortunate effect of this is that this type of behaviour by People of Colour only serves to perpetuate the European/white notions of superiority, and associating black with bad, white with good… We are at the level now in society where the patterns of thought and practice are so heavily embedded in people, both black and white, that it is probably written in our genes.

What a cursed trap for us all, both black and white! The black people can’t truly escape, the white people can see no reason why we are not free!

The very system or thing that People of Colour are claimed to be set free from, Trans-Atlantic Chattel Slavery, has a sting in its tail – that being the nature of the society created on the back of that system, treats us unfairly and attempts to limit the power for good in our minds. It’s like being freed from manacles only to find you are not fully accepted into society because you are black, in some ways much like the ex-convict who tries to integrate into society after having server their time.

But, what crime have People of Colour committed, other than being black? Is being black really a crime? Why do we suffer from the effects of being black years after this form of slavery ended? Do the children of convicts suffer in the same way? Are children born to a female convict in prison free, or do they also grow up in prison as a convict? What about that child’s children, and their children’s children, etc, at some point the person who was originally a convict and sent to prison will have served their sentence or died. The point I am making is that the children of convicts are not considered to be criminals, in severe cases where the parent is notorious, the child could have issues being accepted by society, but generally that is not the case, and you could only know about the history of the child’s parent if you knew them, or made a link through their family name.

However, in the case of being black, no matter what stratum of society you live in, this acceptance by society is based on the assumed and inferred qualities Europeans perceive about People of Colour, it’s nothing to do with whether your parents committed any type of criminality, whether you aspire to be a crook, a priest, a doctor, a sports star or a president. Being black is perpetually a crime at an implicit level in the European consciousness – it’s something visible, tangible at which they can direct their unease and/or hatred at in its various forms. It was a justification for physical slavery that existed hundreds of years ago, and the same notion exists today and is behind the malevolent devices that put up that invisible glass ceiling on you at work, disenfranchises you, skews the perceptions and tactics of law enforcement, perverts justice against you, perceives you as “the other” and unfortunately, I could go on and on and on…

The flip side is that Europeans consider the fact that Trans-Atlantic Slavery has been abolished to be pretty much the end of the matter, regardless of the fact that a difficult struggle for the rights of black people within European based societies continues to this day, in addition to the effects of colonialism and economic imperialism destabilising and decimating many African countries. When you think a problem is fixed, that something is atoned for, and it isn’t – that creates a problem that festers and morphs over time with the same underlying cause crying out to be remedied.

I don’t think the majority of European/white people want to see People of Colour suffer continual injustice, a small proportion do. The majority don’t see, perceive or adequately understand the effects of the culture they dominate causing harm to others, and a minority of European/white people do.

What could fix, or undo the effects of Trans-Atlantic Slavery? Freeing slaves? Giving black people the vote? Positive discrimination/affirmation? A token black president? I don’t think so! Surely only God knows the answer to that question!

Trip to St George’s A&E

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I’ve suffered from Bell’s Palsy in the past, after the doctor who I saw initially missed it, I got referred to the Ear Nose and Throat clinic at St Georges Hospital in London as an outpatient. I made a good recovery within 6 months, and I was discharged a few years later, but was told to let them know if my symptoms re-occurred.

A few weeks ago symptoms which I associated with Bell’s Palsy started to occur, twitching facial muscles, metallic taste on my tounge, watering eyes, and generally poor control over the facial muscles on one side of my face. Both ENT and my doctors were closed on the Saturday I rang them, I’m a Sabbatarian, so I got over that. On the Monday following I called ENT, and after some time I got through, only to be told that I needed to be referred to that clinic again by my doctor. So I phoned my doctors and again, after repeated attempts to get through I was told they had no appointments that day, but they would arrange for the doctor to give me a call back on Thursday.

On Thursday the doctors receptionist called me at 10am asking if I could attend an appointment at 11am, which unfortunately I couldn’t as I was too far away from the surgery to make it on time. So I was advised to call 111 to book an out of hours appointment, which I did. The doctor seemed very agreeable and sincere, but he had the annoying habit of finishing my sentences with words I wasn’t actually going to say! Anyway, he examined me and agreed he could see a definite problem but said he couldn’t refer me as he wasn’t one of the usual doctors. A wasted trip!

Because of that, and knowing I needed to be seen by a practice doctor rather than a locum, I followed up my out of hours visit to my doctors the following day by calling them, but due to some work being done at home by an electrician I couldn’t make the appointment, as it didn’t seem safe or sensible to leave the electrician working in my flat. I followed up again on Monday morning, and after 82 redial attempts I got through and managed to book an appointment for late that evening.

Work over-ran with a long crisis meeting. After doing battle with the numpties on the road who do things like stop when leaving roundabouts and stay in the left hand lane when really they want to turn right, I arrived at the surgery, with just 5 minutes to spare and I had thought I would be late for the appointment or miss it. The doctor examined me and agreed I had an issue, so he wrote me a letter to hand in to A&E and said I should visit A&E striaght away. I got to A&E around 20:30 at the latest…

I was seen by nurse who took my details and read the letter from the doctor. I relaxed in the waiting area before a Brazilian or Portuguese lady on reception called my name – almost, “Anthony Earnest?”, approaching the counter, I said “Ewers, Anthony Ewers”, to which she replied in the most nonchalant lady slap inspiring “Perhaps…” “It is me” I thought, “I know my own name” – I hope. What is it with “perhaps”, why not “I’m sorry Mr Ewers”?

Anyway despite my slight feeling of unease, and knowing that if I started talking to people who seem like the don’t care, and try to convince them they should care, it’s a losing battle, and with the zero tolerance approach the NHS has toward abusing staff, its difficult to know where to draw the line between trying to correct someone and being a patient that is deliberately trying to be awkward. Given that I need their help I smiled obligingly as she continued… “Do you have any allergies?” – and I really wanted to say it … “Oh, only people who mis-pronounce my surname and don’t seem to care or find it of any particular significance whatsoever…” But I held it in, and was duly processed and sent on my way back to the waiting area.

The highlights of my trip to A&E were an Irish man who initially was sat the opposite side of the waiting area from me, who was continually talking to himself and asking people if they were Nazi’s or vampires, unfortunately – the punchline to “How many Nazi’s does it take to change a lightbulb?” were muffled otherwise I would share it with you. When we moved seats in between being called for bloods twice, CT Scan, and X-Ray I ended up sitting slightly closer to him and got the pronounced smell of urine. He seemed like a kind guy though, the chap two seats away from me was shaking like a man gone cold-turkey, and he asked “are you ok, do you want me to get a nurse”, I was thinking I should ask the same, but dare not ask – and it just shows, as oddball as this guy was – he had genuine concern for someone else.

And now I get to what I actually wanted to write in the first place!

For me going to A&E is always a long and laborious mission, the waiting upon waiting, people in pain, people getting bad news, wailing can altogether combined be frustrating and upsetting. When I arrived I thought I would be home by 11pm, but at around 3.45am as my iPhone battery died I found myself sitting on A&E bed waiting to be seen by the Stroke Specialist. The A&E ward was absolutely FREEZING!, everyone commented on how cold it was, even the nurses and doctors. I was wearing a vest, shirt, waistcoat, coat, hat and scarf while I was sitting on the bed waiting, and I was cold, so how the 60 or 70-year-old lady in the bed nearby wearing a hospital gown was coping I do not know.

What I would say is that when the Stroke Specialist came to see me, I was a bit worried that the results of my tests were going to show I had a problem, but she talked with me about my circumstances, gave me a really thorough examination and explained her plan of action to get me the information I needed. It turns out I have Synkinises, and although this bout of it is much later than you would expect in the recovery cycle for a Bell’s Palsy sufferer – 4 years approximately, as opposed to a few weeks to a few months, what I was experiencing, although disconcerting was evidence that my nerves were healing – which was relieving news.

I left the hospital feeling that although the treatment was bloody slow because of all the waiting, in reality, I know those nurses and doctors see people in far greater need than I was, and they do well to prioritise and consider and act on things ranging from those which could be a matter of life and death for some people, through to suffering, and mild discomfort for others. We can’t do without the NHS, and I really think Austerity and these tax dodging bastards are utterly selfish, and they need to be made to play their part in helping society grow in a fair way, instead of just milking it!

Modern Money Mechanics

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It’s really strange when you take a step back and think about money, it seems so important to many people, but in fact it is of no intrinsic value, the paper and coins we view as money, are most of the time worth less than the face value of the money it represents.

Money is a system based on trust, we rely on the fact that we can redeem our money for goods and services worth its face value. But some of the problems we face in this respect are, poor goods and services, and in some circumstances a poor legal framework to remedy such situations. Some examples are:

  1. Buying a house and find out out some of the building work is sub standard after a defect period has ended.
  2. Buying a car and finding out not all the features are as you had been led to believe.
  3. Investing in a pension that falls flat and doesn’t pay out

Before money existed, and even while it existed people traded on the basis of establishing their own views of the worth of their goods and services they wanted to trade by swapping or barter. It’s not a system without risk, but the trust relationship is between you and generally one individual, without “markets”, cartels, minimum prices, recommended prices etc. It seems there are many more variables present in today’s style of trading, which introduce risk and lessen trust.

The strange thing is that the people who run the system and the big players in it are anything but trustworthy, and that is at the root of the problems for a system that needs you to trust in it. The real wealth in society lies with the people at the bottom of it, not those at the top. It is the workers who put in the hours and labour at the thick end of the goods and services provided into society. Yet the system feeds of their wealth and pushes it further up the chain, investing in pension schemes that crash, a huge tax burden, wars and weapons we may have no interest in supporting, charging us more interest than the people at the top of society, and thus perpetuating inequality in wealth. For a system that relies on trust, there is a lot to be distrustful about.

Modern Money Mechanics details this with some rigour and is well worth a read to discover some fascinating truths about the money system that affects us all.

UPDATE: A few hours after I published this post, I came across an article which shows even The Queen’s money is held off-shore to avoid paying tax! So the HMRC who will prosecute in certain circumstances for non payment of tax and tax evasion, and the general public which is concerned about multinational companies schemes relating to taxtax avoidance, may find that The Monarch herself is involved, to some degree, in activity which dodges the declaration of funds due to the public purse.

So it seems the rich who have plenty of money, avoid paying tax and have lawyers who can dispute their liability, but the regular worker, who has to carefully manage their money will never get away with avoiding paying a single penny of tax! Again, this shows how the money system breeds inequality, and is a system based on exploitation and a value system that is detached from reality, and further distorted by an inherent lack of trustworthiness often displayed by those who benefit most from it.

Jimmy Carter vs Donald Trump

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I think Donald Trump should take some advice from one of his learned predecessors. Here are some quotes from Jimmy Carter:

“We become not a melting pot but a beautiful mosaic. Different people, different beliefs, different yearnings, different hopes, different dreams.”

“We will not learn how to live together in peace by killing each other’s children.”

“We must adjust to changing times and still hold to unchanging principles.”

With specific reference to The Panama Canal, but with implications for any situation where two countries have competing interests: “the commitment of the United States to the belief that fairness, not force, should lie at the heart of our dealings with the nations of the world. If any agreement is to last, it must serve the best interests of both nations.”

Trump hasn’t reached the end of his presidency yet, but most quotes I find made by him are don’t have anywhere near the grace and insight of Jimmy Carter. Trump does generally come across as an insensitive, argumentative, crass, brute.

Oppressors never see their oppression – they just see a status quo

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Some white supremacists sometimes feel that their rights as often indigenous citizens are being impinged on by an influx of people who don’t belong among them.

America see’s that one nation that develops a nuclear weapon, even though it has many times more nuclear weapons, is a threat to regional or even world stability.

Some Islamic countries see Christianity as a threat and try to suppress it, even though in “Christian” countries, Islam is allowed to be practiced freely.

African countries, from of old have had their rulers killed, humiliated emasculated and corrupted – some corrupt themselves, but it seems that whenever Africa want to asset itself as a continent, build itself up, to lose the image of being needy, that other powers in the world, simply don’t want to see that happen.

Insightful as always, Al Jazeera’s Shadow War in Sahara sheds light on the shady tactics and misinformation promoted by “the usual players” to keep African nations separate, in need, while they divide and exploit as has become their usual modus operandi.

Video courtesy Al Jazeera.

Scripturally, this comes to mind:

The Lord’s Answer

5) “Look at the nations and watch—
and be utterly amazed.
For I am going to do something in your days
that you would not believe,
even if you were told.

6) I am raising up the Babylonians,
that ruthless and impetuous people,
who sweep across the whole earth
to seize dwellings not their own.

7) They are a feared and dreaded people;
they are a law to themselves
and promote their own honor.

8) Their horses are swifter than leopards,
fiercer than wolves at dusk.
Their cavalry gallops headlong;
their horsemen come from afar.
They fly like an eagle swooping to devour;
9) they all come intent on violence.
Their hordes advance like a desert wind
and gather prisoners like sand.

10) They mock kings
and scoff at rulers.
They laugh at all fortified cities;
by building earthen ramps they capture them.
11) Then they sweep past like the wind and go on—
guilty people, whose own strength is their god.”

Habukkuk Chapter 1, verses 1-11.

Well this is written in the language that described the terrors of millenia ago, yet it refers to today also, although the means of advance or transport may have changed, although America and the West may not be technically Babylonians in terms of their geographic location, their actions embody the spirit of the Babylonians written about in the scripture above. Which empire was the biggest empire ever to span the earth? Don’t people refer to the current day activities of The West as neo-colonialism? Hasn’t The West mocked, murdered and deposed rulers and taken over their lands, and to this day holds exploitative control over them?

Bob Marley said, who the cap fits, let them wear it.

The trick that The West plays is that it can never admit to the past and its devouring nature that has made it what it is today, and as an entity, it lives in a state of denial, where at the same time it is very aware if the need to deflect, mask, alter, and hide the past to justify its position and status in the present, maintaining a perpetual hegemony.

Computers, binary thought and how our evolution could destroy us!

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Computers work rely on binary, 0 = no, 1 = yes. There are only two options possible. However, with sophisticated programming you can make a computer consider multiple options through to billions of them if the programming is good enough and computing power is available. Even the most advanced programs which alow computers to learn (AI – Artificial Intelligence) still relies on binary concepts and carefully selected routines with the same endpoint, a no or a yes, 0 or 1.

It struck me recently, that we humans are becoming more binary in our thought, and that we are losing the subtlety which we should have as apparently God created us as rulers over all that is on the earth. We should have the capacity to consider more than two options, perhaps to arrive at the half way point between two opposites, or any where between those opposites within a wide ranging spectrum of opinion.

I guess the problem comes in to focus when we consider polarisation. When we consider clashes in ideology, for example, between Western Christianity and Islam (or at least some branches of the same), East and West, North Korea and America, Catalonia and Spain, and even the old chestnuts of Capitalism vs Communism. There is always an area where the two “sides” can meet in the middle and for a dialogue that brings them closer together and helps progress. However, that path is too often neglected, and what we find is that people become defensive, entrenched in their positions, moving further away from each other, stretching like an elastic band, thinning out the “area of consensus” in the middle – making relationships strained so that they stand the risk of breaking.

Well, I’m convinced that if we humans don’t kill ourselves with our own binary thought patterns, that we will accomplish the same thing by integrating ourselves with computers. We’ve seen it in the movies for 50 years or more – the slow technological procession, robots, androids, implants and chips, all heading toward the time when humans perhaps evolve into another species totally. Where we can be controlled, always on the grid, where empathy an emotion are banished and all that is needed from us is ordered subservience.

The future is binary dystopia.

The American Dream, or the American Illusion?

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The American Dream is a construct which many people the world over believe is true. Refugees flee to America in search of a better life, and, given some of the countries where refugees come from, America can offer a vastly improved way of life, but not a dream. The reality is that a lot of American people never find that dream, and end up falling into the dissonance created by the reality of the construction of American society, a society built on exploitation, imperialism, and arguably injustice. People feel short-changed by the society they felt would be a new world for them, and this breeds its own malaise that feeds into the tensions already present in American Society.

Al Jazeera has a great overview of The American Dream in the 20th Century, video excerpt courtesy Al Jazeera.

Hidden under a facade of change

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So the AfD, the far right Alternative for Germany has broken into mainstream politics in Germany taking third place behind the German equivalent of New Labour and Merkel’s CDU. Some people are asserting that Angela Merkel’s policies have created the conditions under which the AfD gain legitimacy. However, what we have to remember, is that people with these far right views have existed all the time. The majority of Germans may have moved on from the brutality and insanity of Nazi Germany, but there is still a significant minority of people who fear the influx of non-German culture and cling to those ideals at least in part.

For me this doesn’t show some kind of mistake in Merkel’s policy, but rather this shows that the dark past in every society is still there, lurking, waiting for the opportunity to break out and expose itself, just like the mould you though you had banished that comes back to blight your possessions.

I don’t think Germany’s links with Nazism can be forgotten, let alone broken. I’ve seen the USA and the UK tripping over themselves to present this image of a new tolerant nation, which is probably largely true, but given time the mask will slip fully, and it is already slipping. Who can cure this sickness? Surely God alone.

Put money where it really matters

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Well, I wonder if this USA example is still true today, and how many other nations follow suit:

Health v Millitary Spending

Health v Millitary Spending

The USA could save many more lives by focusing on the human needs of its polulace, than over-spending on security. The imbalance reflects the paranoia of those that rule the country, perhaps also the need for them to set in motion and keep running a social contract that keeps people enslaved to fear.

UPDATE 23/09/17

Interestingly, I read on BBC News this morning, that Moody’s, one of the credit ratings agencies, those organisations that give a countries currency reputation, has downgraded the British Pound in status to Aa2 from Aa1, Standard and Poor’s and Fitch both did a similar thing in 2016. Moody’s said the UK Government had “yielded to pressure and raised spending in several areas including health and social care.” so the exptra spending would lead to greater debt.

Seems like the world is truly run by those who care about balance sheets more than people for sure.

Straight outta vision…

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Well, it annoyed me, even though I like some of the content Netflix releases, that at such a sensitive time when black people are being shot by police in increasing numbers in the USA, that Netflix should hearken back to the 80’s Hip Hop band NWA.

NWA

NWA

It seems to me, that because for many black American’s, American justice is a failure. Not only that but the voices of intelligent change and rationalisation are not being heard load enough. Unfortunatly, the white controlled media outlets want to hold up a cathartic stereotype for black people to hark back to, but this stereotype is problematic for black people. It re-enforces the very prejudices white culture has about black people and violence, and serves only to validate the police’s destructive treatment of black people.

As black people we should have moved on past NWA and made a new narrative. Really, these guys were on the scene over 30 years ago!  But unfortunately the program in question is trending on Netflix…

Sometimes we’ve got to wake up, and realise we need something new. Let’s not perpetuate the past!