Necessary Illusions

Here are some comments and ideas that came to me while reading the book

"Necessary Illusions - Thought control in democratic societies" by Noam Chomsky

The book is rather old (1989), and full of examples from latin america, . However it stresses the idea that propaganda to democracies is just like violence to dictatorships, and its premises and conclusions could be easily extrapolated to the present time. Accordingly, real democracy is merely an illusion. There is only the reign of the privileged elite which is close association with the corporations and the capitalist money. The media plays the necessary role of being a buffer, or a “medium” to manufacture consent.

Recent examples (which are not mentioned in the book) include the very famous speech of Colin Paul in the UN giving examples of alleged weapons of mass destruction owned by Iraq and connections to Al Qaeda as non-doubtable justifications for the war on Iraq. When it all turned out to be mere non-sense, it was accounted for as a “mistake”.

They have deafened our ears with their blabbering about democracy, however when Hamas was “democratically” elected by an unmanipulated elections process, they refused to accept that, started a mass punishment for the Palestinians for their choice and planed to throw over the elected government.

When an Islamic party was elected in Turkey, and their candidate was close to getting the presidency, the media was so much on the alert because his wife wears a headscarf (!). If she has done this willingly, then isn’t this part of the personal freedom and human rights that they propound night and day? Or it is quite fine to have a prostitute on top of a government but not a veiled woman?

When Iran announces that they want a nuclear plant for energy production (or even nuclear weapons, something that they have continuously denied), the media and politicians are hysterical about this, however when India, Pakistan, Israel and even North Korea have nuclear weapons, they are either allies, or not worth the hassle.

Now let’s come to the more subtle issues of inner politics. Foreign policies are not that important, nobody really cares about it. One cares only about getting a job, how much money he gets at the end of the month, health care, social security … etc. So it’s not easy to manipulate or make such silly and unprofessional lies as one does for foreign policies as seen in the aforementioned examples.

However, one can see how the media is working. For example, in Germany, the media is always speaking about “Der Aufschwung” i.e. the boom in economy, and bring about good numbers for the improvement in economic prognosis, increase in stock market indices (DAX), higher profits of the German companies, reduction in the debts of the German government … etc. However, this is a boom for the corporations only. People do not feel it themselves, on the contrary. If one follows the number of strikes in many fields, either asking for salary increases or to protest the loss of jobs in major German companies, despite of their millions of profits (for example Deutsche Bank, Die Bahn, T-Com and others), then one can see where did the companies and the government get the money from. The increase in VAT and health insurance as well as the decrease in taxes for companies can provide some explanations, and it’s clear who is paying for this. The cuts in money for the civil servants (Christmas bonus), the increase in temporary contracts instead of permanent ones … etc, are all signs of an economic decline for the lay man rather than a boom. However the numbers are not lying, there’s a boom for the companies, but not for the people. What the media does is trying to sell this as follows: when the companies are well off, they will create jobs for you and you’ll then be well off. But that is not completely true (see below).

In the book, Chomsky says: “the United States represents the form towards which capitalist democracy is tending; related tendencies include the progressive elimination of unions and other popular organizations that interfere with private power, an electoral system that is increasingly stage-managed as a public relations exercise, avoidance of welfare measures such as national health insurance that also impinge on the prerogatives of the privileged, and so on."

Today, I don’t consider the States as the tendency, but China. In China, there are no unions or popular organizations to interfere with power, there’s no electoral system, no welfare measures and it thus seems to be ideal for a capitalist. Since the whole world has to compete with China, they have to reach this level, and so China is the new standard. When one has a look at what happens in Germany and the EU in general, you can easily see this tendency. The extension of the EU to include the east European states is a step in this direction, to get cheaper labour with less privileges, and even use this labour to threaten your own labour in the rich western countries, “if you don’t accept less and less benefits, we’ll simply move our plants to those who are willing to accept.”

to be continued ....

Everything I do

Can't really believe I cried many times listening to this song some 15 years ago !!! .... However I still like it.

The Butterfly Effect 2

The “Butterfly Effect,” is a nice thought povoking movie. The title comes from a scientific theory with the same name. The theory is meant to study the predictability, particularly in meteorology. Due to the high complexity of our ecosystem and the large number of inputs (causes), it is nearly impossible to predict the changes in weather (effect) over a long period of time, or at least this is the current state of knowledge. The "Butterfly effect" is the sensitive dependence on initial conditions. It is often ascribed to Lorenz, who mentioned in a paper in 1963 given to the New York Academy of Sciences: “One meteorologist remarked that .... one flap of a seagull’s wings would be enough to alter the course of the weather forever.” The seagull then changed to the more poetic butterfly. (adapted from here)

In the movie, the hero had some problems in his life. He then discovers that he can travel back in time, so he does in order to correct things and mistakes that he has done before. Although he does suceed in correcting some mistakes, things donot turn out the way he wanted. Whenever he does correct one thing, he finds that others have gone wrong. At the end he just confesses to his mother "I really screwed things up mum ... I tried so hard to fix everything ... to just make things right, and everytime I do I make it so much worse." ... She tells him "You cannot control everything ... you just have to let it go."