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Reflections
induced by the Photograph of the
SPD's Publicity Poster:
'Effects of Information Society on Labour Market' (in 'Der
Spiegel' of 13th March 00, pp.142-143)
Political
Parties Finished
-
What comes Next?
By
Wolfgang Fischer
download
pdf.file
(
german
) ( spanish
)
First
Landing of Columbus (Guanahani, October, 12, 1492) -
copperplate-engraving by Theodor de Bry (1528-1598),
Photo:
AKG
Berlin
The
presentation on the SPD's (Social Democrate Party, Germany)
publicity poster of indigenous tribes-men trustingly
approaching their future rulers and murderers may be ever so
colourful. Yet the message it conveys can only be called
thoughtless and in poor taste, linked as it is to the
publicity text in which the SPD compares the start of the
Internet Age with the discovery of the New World by
Columbus, thus reminding of an event that marked the
beginning of 500 years of suffering for the indigenous
people of all continents.
History
- not merely that of the last 5 centuries - has been founded
upon torture, rape, racism - on open or subtly disguised
force; and this has had a different and harsher effect
esspecially upon women. For one main objective of colonial
terrorism was, inducing women to identify with motherhood
forced upon them through rape.
Against
the background of an admission of historical misdemeanours
in the course of human history slowly gaining acceptance -
with even the Pope joining in - such a picture ought not to
be serving as a symbolical advertising poster for the
entering into a new era. What is required here is a great
deal more sensitivity as well as more awareness in dealing
with historical facts.
In
the face of the topicality of recently published details
exposing the colonial
cruelty in Africa of the Belgian
Crown
- which used to be praised as being exceptionally "humane"
-, we Europeans in particular ought to be able to develop an
awareness of the universal historical blunder and its fatal
effect upon the subdued peoples.
The
large industrialised nations should gradually come to
acknowledge that a large part of their development towards
industrial wealth and technological advance was enabled
solely on the basis of stolen gold treasures, exploited
people and plundered resources. Only such recognition would
facilitate an actual, sensitive understanding of the guilt
accrued in the course of history.
Today
still the tradition of this development - also called
civilisation - is being maintained mainly at the expense of
the women and their children from the lower classes of
peripheral countries. This is shown more clearly than ever
before by the feminisation of poverty or, respectively, of
social responsibility throughout the world.
If
this kind of picture today is meant to serve as an
enticement for entering a new age, we may indeed expect
nothing positive to come from this. As long as such a
picture is not perceived as symbolising the beginning of
cruelties and mistaken historical developments, there is
obviously a lack of responsible preparedness or ability to
admit guilt and make amends.
This
means that the path towards developing a comprehensive
justice system remains blocked while areas of potential
conflict continue to exist. In Germany they are even being
reinforced by the fact that the SPD, in its attempt to
ingratiate itself with Capital, has jumped upon the
band-wagon of Neo-Liberalism.
Blinded
by imagined successes of his British counter-part, the
German Chancellor Schroeder has so far failed to notice that
for the majority of people this is a train that's moving
backwards. For day by day on this journey certain social
achievements gained in the last 100 years by difficult
struggle are being ignored, sold or quite simply thrown
overboard - achievements which for the most part were meant
and gained for the benefit of wage-earners. Whenever females
gained the benefit of such achievements, it was mostly as
dependants of liberal citizens or socialist
proletarians.
For
the sake of political expediency social and ecological
intactness is being sacrificed upon the altar of Capital's
profit maximisation. This involves blatant genocide as the
majority of the global population through hunger and
deprivation is drifting towards slow but certain
death.
Such
a perverse development, - in which, to top it all,
social-democratic governments are playing a vital part -
proofs the political lies of those who pretend to lead
people into a better future.
No
less reprehensible seems the betrayal of their own programme
by the German Green Alliance. Being solely motivated by a
desire to retain perks and positions, it is downright
outrageous.
Recent
history, involving moreover the scandal about party
contributions, seems to be clearly teaching us the one
lesson that political parties may no longer be regarded as
the torch-bearers of progressive policies.
Their
overriding interest is an increase of their own power at the
expense of a democratic system which is dying as the
autonomy of the individual, be they liberal citizens or
social-democrat wage-earners, is being eroded. This shows
them to have failed to fulfil their historic mission. The
people affected by this, in particular the women, will thus
have no choice but to develop their own alternative forms of
political organisation and articulation.
That
is why we need new ideas for organising civil society.
Governments of all kinds hardly take an interest any longer
in protecting the people, but on the contrary are these days
specialising in how to remove, for the benefit of Capital,
those hindrances which were meant to protect mostly the male
citizenry as well as the public interest - how ever defined
- from the insatiability of mammon.
Thanks
to the mass media, wars are nowadays enacted like theater
plays. Moreover, they are called "humanitarian" and said to
be contributing to the saving of civilisation. Truth is
twisted in the service of private property. Lying,
manipulation and deception is carried out quite openly:
every day of the war vast sums are readily sent up in smoke.
The huge industrial arms complex is beside itself with
happiness. The so-called reconstruction fits in with the
logic of profit maximisation; it appears to be an integral
part of the strategy of private property.
Our
task today is, to develop a philosophy of life against these
politics of death and destruction! Every aware and
life-affirming individual is called upon to offer resistance
to a political system which, as is quite evident and very
easy to verify, is placing the interest of Capital above the
necessities of peaceful social co-existence.
In
view of this fact the attitude advocated by the feminist
political scientist Claudia von Werlhof e.g. seems of
paramount importance. It is a dissentient attitude within an
active political system which, in rejecting any kind of
patriarchate, knows no rulers. It will overcome the
divisions maintained by traditional politics ('divide et
impera!': divide and rule!), as well as by religion and
tradition, in favour of a wholistic system that is truly
humane.
In
this context the internet may be seen as a rather positive
development, in that it facilitates the speedy and
wide-spread dissemination of information beyond the
mainstream that is ruled by financial
considerations.
This
kind of information, normally withheld by the daily media
machines, can in the long run support the emergence of a
state of mind that rejects government by the few; and in
this way it will foster a comprehensive awareness of
responsibility for our fellow-humans, the environmant and
the future.
Through
a horizontal network of information the civilisation of the
future will be able to create a social climate in which
alternative solutions, alternatives to the presently rather
desolate future prospects, will begin to blossom.
On
the basis of such a network an attitude of togetherness and
mutual support spanning all continents will emerge which,
merely through conscious refusal of supportive
participation, will put an end to the globally destructive
gamble "Turn yourself into Money".
Nature's
gifts will be utilised by us (who are after all, Nature's
children) in a way which will also consider the well-being
of future generations.
Just
as Nature is using her own laws, for example when pumping
water from the depth of the subsoil right up into the tops
of huge trees, so in the same way human global society can
use its technological potential and achievements for the
benefit of all.
This
will be possible once this society is liberated from its
present potential of destruction through being ruled no
longer by a compulsive urge for profit maximisation but by a
spirit of mutual assistance and universal
cooperation.
(german
version)
"He
travelled many years to discover the world. On the Internet
it takes our students just half a day"
The
British-created famine holocaust in Bengal in 1942-3 -
by
Sutapas Bhattacharya
In
fact, such famines were the norm throughout British Rule as
I later discovered. There were major holocausts throughout
the Raj. In 2001 the Oxford historian Niall Ferguson (a
Thatcherite now in the USA where the free marketeers love
him) repeated in the Daily Mail under the heading "White
Man's Burden" Kipling's myths about heroic Britishers
saving starving Indians. I wrote to the newspaper saying
this was the opposite of the truth and they published my
letter in 2001. I also put up this info. on a BBC World War
II website (Peoples War) in 2002 and just recently I put it
up on Channel 4's Empire's Children website. I think that
everybody ought to know about how the British whitewash the
true story of their own racist imperialism which created
these holocausts. American historian Mike Davis has noted
that when finally forced to act to help prevent starvation
in 19th Century Inida, the Brits instituted hard labour
camps for the starving with with touch entrance criteria.
Those who got in were given less calories than the Nazis
gave to death camp inmates!
My
father Surendra Nath Bhattacharya came to Britain in 1966
from Indian following an invitation from the British Legion
as he was a qualified teacher. Towards the end of the war,
my father had joined the Royal Indian navy, not because he
supported Britain but because he needed a job. Indeed, most
Bengalis had supported Subhas Chandra Bose (uncle of BBC
sports reporter Mihir Bose), Nehru's rival for leadership of
the Congress, who led the Indian National Army which fought
with the Japanese against the British. Even non-violent
Gandhi became captivated by Bose's exploits.
My
mother Shima brought myself and my two brothers over to
London the following year, forty years ago. The memory of
the British Empire that was indelibly imprinted in the
memory of my father and other relatives of his generation in
Bengal was that of the starving refugees who flooded into
Calcutta during the British-inflicted artificial Famine
Holocaust during 1942-43 which killed 3 million
Bengalis. My father often spoke with horror of the fact
that these starving people did not beg for rice, they were
so desperate they begged for "fanna" the wastewater from the
ricepan.
Only
once in 1997 when Channel 4 screened a programme on this
famine has British Television covered the story of this
artificial famine holocaust which was in fact not unique but
typical of the British rule in India. There was no shortage
of foodgrains but the British exported Bengal's grain and
this resulted in the starvation of 3 million of the poorest
in Bengal as prices rocketed. As the 1997 C4 programme
showed, the British rulers tried to cover up the famine by
deliberately reducing the actual death tolls. No effort was
made to alleviate the crisis until the British owned
Statesman newspaper eventually broke the true story. Even
then when surplus grain was shipped in from other parts of
India, it was not distributed to the needy until after
Indian protestors piled up dead bodies of famine victims
outside the Botanical Gardens in Calcutta. Amartya Sen lived
through the famine as a boy and it was the memory of the
famine that led him to take up economics where he is famous
for showing how government policies, rather than natural
disasters, create famine. He has confirmed the figure of 3
million excess mortalities.
This
artificial famine, witnessed by my family, at the close of
British Rule was in fact typical of the entire period of
British Rule in India. Maria Mishra showed in her TV series
on the Raj a few years ago that the Mughals and Marathas
punished anyone found guilty of profiteering during famine
periods and thus, under Indian rulers, few people starved.
The British dismantled these indigenous systems to prevent
famines. In 1770, just 13 years after the British takeover
in Bengal their policies resulted in the Great Bengal
Famine. In parts of Bengal one third of the population died
whilst the British rulers hoarded grain and other food for
export (as also occurred in Ireland during the Potato
Famine). Historian Mike Davis has shown in Late Victorian
Holocausts how British Social Darwinian and "Free Market"
ideology resulted in massive famine holocausts during the
Victorian era. Whilst millions were starving to death in the
Deccan and the South, the British held the biggest feast in
human history to celebrate Victoria becoming Empress of
India. The Delhi Durbar feasted 60,000 plus Britishers and
their Indian princeling collaborators for an entire week. In
1901, medical journal The Lancet estimated conservatively
that 19 million Indians had starved to death in Western
India during the 1890s due to the British, let them starve,
policies, exporting Indian grain to the USA and Europe
whilst the natives starved.
Even
during the 1939-45 war the British rulers rejected American
urgings to build aircraft factories in India with which to
fight the Japanese rather than ship planes across U-boat
infested oceans. But the British refused on the basis that
an independent India might then possess some industries with
which to compete with Britain after the war. After all the
entire strategy of British rule had been one of
deindustrialising India's thriving textile industry etc. and
keeping India poor as a plantation and a captive market for
inferior quality British products (as compared to western
rivals).
source:
http://channel4.empireschildren.co.uk/category/chapters/index.php?chapter=928&cat=2
see
also http://countercurrents.org
United
States and NATO: The
Axis of Genocide
By
Francis A. Boyle, Jan 26, 2009
From:
Z Net - The Spirit Of Resistance Lives -
http://www.zmag.org/zspace/commentaries/3755
What
is the world to do about major human rights atrocities and
catastrophes that undeniably do occur today? Certainly, the
world must not accord the great military powers such as the
United States, the NATO states, Russia, and China some
fictive right of "humanitarian intervention" that these
powerful states will only abuse and manipulate in order to
justify military aggressions against less powerful states
and peoples for their own selfish interests. There is no
need to alter or update presently existing international law
in order to expand the possibilities for a military
"responsibility to protect" in response to purportedly new
exigencies of the day-there are more than enough
international laws and international organizations to deal
with major human rights atrocities and catastrophes going on
around the world today. The demand to do so reflects a
political agenda seeking legal legitimacy, not a deficit in
the existing law.
Indeed,
behind most of the major human rights atrocities and
catastrophes in the world today humankind has seen in
operation the Machiavellian machinations of the great
military powers. So it should have come as no surprise that
the world witnessed outright genocide inflicted by Serbia
and its Milosevic government against the Kosovar Albanians
immediately after the United States and the NATO states
launched their illegal war against Serbia in March of 1999,
a genocide which NATO admittedly anticipated but which in
actuality transpired as the direct result of its aggression.
Of course the nominally Christian United States and NATO
states could not care less about the basic human rights of
Kosovar Albanians, most of whom are Muslims. Soon
thereafter, the world witnessed once again outright genocide
inflicted by Indonesia against the people of East Timor
after decades of military and economic support had been
provided to the genocidal military dictatorship ruling
Indonesia by the United States and Britain-"our kind of
guy," as the Clinton administration publicly referred to the
genocidaire Suharto when he came to visit the United
States.
Also
in this regard, the world must never forget that the
indigenous peoples of Canada, the United States, and Latin
America have been subjected to continuing acts of genocide
for over the past 500 years, all in the guise of bringing
civilization. How can the United States and its NATO ally
Canada talk about a "humanitarian mission" in Afghanistan
when both states have a long history of practicing
"humanitarian extinction" at home? Despite the slogan and
the rhetoric of "Never again!" that was used with respect to
the Nazi Holocaust against the Jews, toward the start of the
twentieth-first century, genocide has become an increasingly
familiar and acceptable tool for powerful states to wield
against weaker states and peoples.
No
state has the right or standing under international law to
launch an illegal military attack upon another U.N. member
state in the name of "humanitarian intervention." This
principle applies to both the United States and Canada,
which are today continuing to extinguish the indigenous
peoples who live within their imperial domains under
concepts similar to humanitarianism, if not so-labeled. It
applies to Britain's prolonged colonial occupation of
Ireland as well as its deportation of the people of Diego
Garcia. It applies to the outright genocides Italy inflicted
against the peoples of Libya and Ethiopia; those perpetrated
by Spain and Portugal against the indigenous peoples of
Latin America; the monstrous genocide committed by Belgium
in the Congo; and the genocides committed by France in
Algeria and Vietnam, all of whom averred their colonized
peoples had been the better for it.
How
could NATO member Turkey ever credibly claim some fictive
right of "humanitarian intervention" anywhere given its
longstanding campaign to submerge the Kurds as well as its
previous extermination of the Armenians, a genocide which it
still denies today. Only the Nazi-German genocide against
the Jews in Germany and elsewhere has been recognized for
what it was. Yet today a generation later the gullible world
is supposed to believe the NATO fairy-tale that the German
Wehrmacht is now on some type of "humanitarian" mission in
Afghanistan. The wanton aggression by the U.S.-U.K. and
their "Coalition of the Willing" against Iraq in the name of
bringing human rights and democracy has resulted in four
million refugees, over a million Iraqi deaths, and the
wholesale destruction of the country's infrastructure -
outright genocide.
The
United States and its NATO Alliance constitute the greatest
collection of genocidal states ever assembled in the entire
history of the world. If anything the United Nations
Organization and its member states bear a "responsibility to
protect" the U.S. and NATO's intended victims from their
repeated aggressions as they should have done for Haiti,
Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, and now Palestine. The
United States and the NATO Alliance together with their de
facto allies such as Israel constitute the real Axis of
Genocide in the modern world. Humanity bears a
"responsibility to protect" the very future existence of the
world from the United States and NATO.
(from
"Tackling America's Toughest Questions", now at Amazon.com)
here
is more: http://emanzipationhumanum.de/english/titels.html#1
King
Leopold's Ghost, A Story of Greed, Terror and Heroism in
Colonial Africa, by Adam Hochschild, Houghton Mifflin Co
(Trd) 1999; ISBN: 0618001905 - Editorial
Reviews
-
Waiting
for a post-conflict Sudan
by Mandisi Majavu (May 02, 2004)
Torture
and Abuse
by Doug Dowd (May 24, 2004)
Lessons
of Iraq War Start With US
History
by Howard Zinn, 03. 2006
Emanzipation
Humanum,
version 6.2000, translation form german to english by
Rainer
Taëni.
Criticism, suggestions as to form and content, dialogue,
translation into other languages are all
desired
http://emanzipationhumanum.de/english/politparties.html
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