In my first post for this blog in February, I enthusiastically and ardently supported and defended Hillary Rodham Clinton, a leading Democratic candidate for the US Presidency in the 2008 election. "She has the intellect, experience and ability to achieve these goals. 'Calculating' is not necessarily a bad trait, if she is calculating for the sake of the higher good...The U.S. and the world need her integrity and trust and respect." Now, I still support Hillary over all other candidates (probably with an exception of Dennis Kucinich), but my faith in her is dwindling, and for me not a single day passes without having some thoughts and temptations to switch my support to Barack Obama.
Around me, almost all of my left, liberal-minded friends support Barack Obama (or Kucinich, Nader. I haven't met a single Hillary supporter. I am confused and isolated; one day, the moment I pronounced my support for Hillary, my friend with an incredulous look quizzed me "how dare you support that warmonger corporate pupper, a right-winger in Democrat's clothes?". Yes, I was aware of her past ties to Wal-Mart, the Arkansas retail giant corrupted by horrendous sexism, racism and exploitation; also Murdoch's support for her. I read some of compelling leftist pieces of article criticising her for being too "moderate", or conservative, such as "Hillary Inc." and "Who is Hillary Clinton?" by renowned and admired Barbara Ehrenreich. It seems there are far more than enough reasons for me to convert to Obama, but one crucial factor has kept me from abandoning my support for her; feminism and misogyny.
My point is not that I simply support her only because of her gender. Obviously, voting for a female candidate doesn't always mean voting for feminism. I would have vehemently opposed Margaret Thatcher had I lived in the 80's Britain, and I would support almost anyone who's standing against Katherine Harris, the worst thief in history. (In contrast to these right-wing female politicians, Hillary's feminist credential is impeccable; even among left-wing few questions her commitment to feminism, demonstrated by her masterpiece 1995 speech.) But my concern is, why this hostility and anger against her? Aren't all these negative remarks about her partly prompted by hidden, insidious or even subconscious misogyny? Though the Right is much more sexist without a doubt, it is also naive to think that the Left is totally immune from misogyny. Were she male, would she have been criticised and slammed harshly and intensely as this? Doesn't abandoning my support for her, influenced by these criticisms of Hillary that might have been influenced by Patriarchy, mean submitting to, or tacitly cooperating to, the structures of Patriarchy that is the reason why more than 5 in 6 Representatives and Senators "lack ovaries". As this insightful article rightly points out, " Clinton's supporters also argue that women candidates are unfairly subjected to higher standards," and I never, ever wish to contribute to any form of misogyny by ceasing to support her.
I have always been an enthusiastic supporter of Obama; far more strongly than I supported Kerry in 2004 and Gore in 2000. However, I just can't desert her unless it is proven that Hillary isn't subjected to higher standards than other candidates because of her gender (that is, by credible liberal sources that criticise her). Any opinion (especially from Obama supporters) that might change my mind is welcome.
Friday, 13 July 2007
Saturday, 23 June 2007
Eurosceptic Telegraph's bizarre claim of the dominance of Berlin and Paris
I rarely write something positive about any political leader from a right-wing party, but today, I praise and admire Angela Merkel, a German Chancellor from centre-right Christian Democrats, for her efforts and success for the EU "mini-treaty" for which EU leaders reached an agreement today. It is one small step for the EU, but one giant leap stepping close to the just world; the creation of the new Superpower that truly embraces the values of human rights, social democracy, environment and poverty reduction, and that restrains the excess of current, unilateral Superpower, is desperately needed (the EU has larger area, population and GDP than the US).
It was a result of tough compromise, finally realised by Merkel's diplomacy. Britain won the concessions everything it wanted. I think that Britain should be committed to the European Charter on Human Rights, one of the best human rights instruments in the world; but that Blair agreed to the mini-treaty is a positive step. However, considering the concessions Britain was awarded, the claim of the Telegraph article that "the Franco-German alliance" dominates the new EU is bizarre. It seems that the sole purpose of the article is to frighten the British public away from the EU. If not, why does it have to emphasise that "Both leaders (Merkel and Sarkozy) checked into the Amigo Hotel"? Hinting the existence of conspiracy between Berlin and Paris, it claims that "a new division of labour emerged" that Merkel using a carrot and Sarkozy a stick to deal with Poland. The problem here is, according to the Independent, that "Germany, which holds the EU's rotating presidency, threatened to press ahead without Poland". But it offers no evidence of the perceived Continental dominance except friendship between Merkel and Sarkozy (which is a normal relationship for leaders of allied countries).
The Telegraph fears (or or wants to incite fear) that Britain will be left out of the EU decision-making process. It concludes that "Mr Brown, who steps into the prime ministerial shoes next Wednesday, will lack this experience and will not have his EU summit debut until October". Well, a new Prime Minister (by definition!) lacks Prime Ministerial experience, but he has served as Chancellor for a decade. If Brown is unexperienced, who would the Telegraph want for a new Prime Minister? David Cameron, who wasn't even an MP when Brown assumed the Chancellorship? And has the writer forgotten that Sarkozy sworn in as President just a month ago? This paragraph is neither a proper criticism against Brown, nor against the EU; that Brown won't have his EU summit until October has nothing to do with his alienation from the EU; October's just four months away! If the EU held summit every month in Brussels, I'm confident that the Telegraph would surely slam it as waste of money or excessive control of the EU over individual member states.
No matter how much the EU is portrayed by conservative or populist media as a bunch of aloof bureaucrats in Brussels, the EU has created the tolerant, peaceful and prosperous postwar Europe. Probably for the first time in European history, Europe hasn't had a war for more than six decades, and even less likely, almost implausible to have one in future under the EU. The project of the EU, that has led the world in human rights, social justice and environment continues on, and though not being a European myself, I'm excited to follow this grand project of the 21st century.
It was a result of tough compromise, finally realised by Merkel's diplomacy. Britain won the concessions everything it wanted. I think that Britain should be committed to the European Charter on Human Rights, one of the best human rights instruments in the world; but that Blair agreed to the mini-treaty is a positive step. However, considering the concessions Britain was awarded, the claim of the Telegraph article that "the Franco-German alliance" dominates the new EU is bizarre. It seems that the sole purpose of the article is to frighten the British public away from the EU. If not, why does it have to emphasise that "Both leaders (Merkel and Sarkozy) checked into the Amigo Hotel"? Hinting the existence of conspiracy between Berlin and Paris, it claims that "a new division of labour emerged" that Merkel using a carrot and Sarkozy a stick to deal with Poland. The problem here is, according to the Independent, that "Germany, which holds the EU's rotating presidency, threatened to press ahead without Poland". But it offers no evidence of the perceived Continental dominance except friendship between Merkel and Sarkozy (which is a normal relationship for leaders of allied countries).
The Telegraph fears (or or wants to incite fear) that Britain will be left out of the EU decision-making process. It concludes that "Mr Brown, who steps into the prime ministerial shoes next Wednesday, will lack this experience and will not have his EU summit debut until October". Well, a new Prime Minister (by definition!) lacks Prime Ministerial experience, but he has served as Chancellor for a decade. If Brown is unexperienced, who would the Telegraph want for a new Prime Minister? David Cameron, who wasn't even an MP when Brown assumed the Chancellorship? And has the writer forgotten that Sarkozy sworn in as President just a month ago? This paragraph is neither a proper criticism against Brown, nor against the EU; that Brown won't have his EU summit until October has nothing to do with his alienation from the EU; October's just four months away! If the EU held summit every month in Brussels, I'm confident that the Telegraph would surely slam it as waste of money or excessive control of the EU over individual member states.
No matter how much the EU is portrayed by conservative or populist media as a bunch of aloof bureaucrats in Brussels, the EU has created the tolerant, peaceful and prosperous postwar Europe. Probably for the first time in European history, Europe hasn't had a war for more than six decades, and even less likely, almost implausible to have one in future under the EU. The project of the EU, that has led the world in human rights, social justice and environment continues on, and though not being a European myself, I'm excited to follow this grand project of the 21st century.
Friday, 22 June 2007
Feminism Friday; Ali, Okin and Cultural Relativism
"So, you believe in the concept of human rights, right?", my friend asked me a few days ago. She is a dedicated feminist vegetarian activist and I've known her as a fellow activist; so at first I doubted I had heard it correctly. It was the most obvious thing she could ever ask me; the question was so awkward. Then she continued on; "I agree with human rights, but essentially, it's a Western concept, so it is questionable that it should be applied universally without taking diverse cultures into account..."
I was stunned. I had read about some left-wing or postmodern intellectuals advocating cultural relativism to an extent that undermines the principle of universal human rights, in books and magazine articles. However, now, I've found out that such a phenomenon wasn't confined to somewhere distant from my daily life, like a Parisian cafe in the Left Bank or the RESPECT party headquarters. I had taken it for granted that liberal-minded activist friends of mine, while respecting different cultures, are all dedicated to universal human rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and vigorously campaigned by Amnesty International.
Cultural Relativism has come to be the dominant discourse within the liberal left. And Ayaan Hirsi Ali embodies the impact of new ideological current, while valid to a certain extent and certainly worthy of consideration, that can possibly fatally undermine the struggle for the ideals of universal, fundamental human rights that every single human being in the world, regardless of her or his gender, race, ethnicity, religion, nationality, place of birth, social status, sexual orientation or whatever else. From inside, like the Trojan Horse.
Her tale is well-known. She was born and grew up in a sexist society where she was genitally mutilated, and which fundamentalists in the Deep South (likes of Rush Limbaugh, Pat Robertson) would dream of. She fled to the Netherlands, the epitome of the tolerant, free, secular and equal modern West, to escape from forced marriage. "I left the world of faith, of genital cutting and forced marriage for the world of reason and sexual emancipation", she says. Then she decided to become a politician in the Netherlands, after witnessing oppression of female refugees and immigrants, based on traditions of their country of origin, persisting even in the liberal Holland. However, to stand for an election, she had to choose to leave the Labour Party, which she firstly joined; a natural choice for a young, idealistic feminist who is dedicated to ending oppression of women; to the Liberal party, a classical liberal party that combines economic neoliberalism with social liberalism.
Moreover, Ali is now with the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think-tank in Washington DC usually affiliated with the Republicans, a party dominated by the anti-Choice religious fundamentalists. That she has been forced to move to the right is a reflection of the sad reality that the Left, the natural guardians of human rights and feminism, has not been keen supporting her. Multiculturalism and feminism sometimes clash (no matter how much I like to deny this, it is true), and the Left doesn't feel comfortable to defend the latter at the expense of the former. In her words, "the Labor types usually felt uneasy about my critique of their multicultural tolerance of Islamic practices".
Indeed, her advocacy is highly prone to the exploitation by right-wing Islamophobes who care nothing about Islamic women's rights. But it doesn't mean the core of her messages is anti-Islamic or racist; especially if you read her book, you notice that she is not a simple bigot or a hate-monger (For example, she clearly states that FGM pre-dates Islam but Islam is used to justify it). The liberals and feminists should show solidarity with her and oppressed non-Western women, rather than dismissing her experience of misogyny as a mere part of anti-Muslim agenda. We can't rely on conservatives to continue fight against misogyny of non-Western origin, when it is so evident that the main motivation of their criticism is their belief in the Western supremacy not feminism.
Susan Moller Okin, a New Zealand-born liberal feminist whom I greatly admire, articulated a feminist viewpoint that doesn't conform to the dominant discourse of multiculturalism. Though she is little-known to the wider public, she achieved academic fame with her 1989 book Justice, Gender and Family, critical analysis of the family institution from an individualist, Rawlsian perspective. In 1999, she published an essay simply titled "Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women?", in which she concluded that it could be. "Most cultures are suffused with practices and ideologies concerning gender... there are fairly clear disparities of power between the sexes, such that the more powerful, male members are those who are generally in a position to determine and articulate the group's beliefs, practices, and interests. Under such conditions, group rights are potentially, and in many cases actually, antifeminist. They substantially limit the capacities of women and girls of that culture to live with human dignity equal to that of men and boys, and to live as freely chosen lives as they can", she writes. I can't agree with her more. (She defines multiculturalism as "the claim, made in the context of basically liberal democracies, that minority cultures or ways of life are not sufficiently protected by ensuring the individual rights of their members and as a consequence should also be protected with special group rights or privileges"; so multiculturalism is fundamentally different from anti-racism or anti-xenophobia, which focuses on individual rights of people of colour and immigrants.)
Then she provides ample evidences that even in the West, hard-won rights and equality for women are privileges that are not allowed for immigrant women just because she was born in a different culture. "...Much more common, however, is the argument that, in the defendant's cultural group, women are not human beings of equal worth but subordinates whose primary (if not only) functions are to serve men sexually and domestically... wife-murder by immigrants from Asian and Middle Eastern countries whose wives have either committed adultery or treated their husbands in a servile way... In a number of such cases, expert testimony about the accused's or defendant's cultural background has resulted in dropped or reduced charges". "When a woman from a more patriarchal culture comes to the United States (or some other Western, basically liberal, state), why should she be less protected from male violence than other women are?"
I am not arguing that non-Western culture is inherently sexist than Western civilisation. It would amount to bigotry, considering the history of gruesome misogyny in the West before feminism. However, it is also undeniable that now, women are more equal and free in the West than in the most of the non-Western world. There doesn't exist a paradox; as Okin notes, "most cultures have as one of their principal aims the control of women by men", including the West. The difference is that the West has had the Enlightenment and the waves of feminism; Mary Wollstonecraft, John Stuart Mill (the philosopher Ali most admires) Susan Anthony, Kate Sheppard, Emmeline Pankhurst, Simone de Beauvoir, Betty Friedan, Andrea Dworkin, Naomi Wolf, and millions of feminists who dedicated their lives to the emancipation of women. The heritage of feminism is embedded in the modern Western society, and it is what we should strive to preserve, even if at the expense of cultural relativism if necessary. Okin's eloquent academic literature matches with Ali's testimony grounded on her lived experiences and suffering. "Don't deny us the right to have our Voltaire, too. Look at our women, and look at our countries... we are truly living in the Dark Ages." "Why is it antiracist to indulge people's attachment to their old ideas and perpetuate this misery?"
I am an individualist, and believe that any claim for group rights must be accompanied with individual rights within a group. However, when people fight for group rights, the struggle tends to focus on group leader's rights, which usually means patriarch's rights. A right of a patriarch to take back control over "his" people from another white patriarch. I believe in human rights, absolutely, without any reservations. It is universal and applies to everyone; when I say everyone it means every single human being living on this planet. Every single one of us, the humanity. It is important to respect cultures, but even more important to defend human rights against multiculturalism if a culture contradicts to human rights. Because, as Ali says, "All persons are equal. All Cultures are not." And as Herbert Marcuse, a prominent sixties New Left noted, "Tolerance of Intolerance is Intolerance. Intolerance of Intolerance is real Tolerance."
I was stunned. I had read about some left-wing or postmodern intellectuals advocating cultural relativism to an extent that undermines the principle of universal human rights, in books and magazine articles. However, now, I've found out that such a phenomenon wasn't confined to somewhere distant from my daily life, like a Parisian cafe in the Left Bank or the RESPECT party headquarters. I had taken it for granted that liberal-minded activist friends of mine, while respecting different cultures, are all dedicated to universal human rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and vigorously campaigned by Amnesty International.
Cultural Relativism has come to be the dominant discourse within the liberal left. And Ayaan Hirsi Ali embodies the impact of new ideological current, while valid to a certain extent and certainly worthy of consideration, that can possibly fatally undermine the struggle for the ideals of universal, fundamental human rights that every single human being in the world, regardless of her or his gender, race, ethnicity, religion, nationality, place of birth, social status, sexual orientation or whatever else. From inside, like the Trojan Horse.
Her tale is well-known. She was born and grew up in a sexist society where she was genitally mutilated, and which fundamentalists in the Deep South (likes of Rush Limbaugh, Pat Robertson) would dream of. She fled to the Netherlands, the epitome of the tolerant, free, secular and equal modern West, to escape from forced marriage. "I left the world of faith, of genital cutting and forced marriage for the world of reason and sexual emancipation", she says. Then she decided to become a politician in the Netherlands, after witnessing oppression of female refugees and immigrants, based on traditions of their country of origin, persisting even in the liberal Holland. However, to stand for an election, she had to choose to leave the Labour Party, which she firstly joined; a natural choice for a young, idealistic feminist who is dedicated to ending oppression of women; to the Liberal party, a classical liberal party that combines economic neoliberalism with social liberalism.
Moreover, Ali is now with the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think-tank in Washington DC usually affiliated with the Republicans, a party dominated by the anti-Choice religious fundamentalists. That she has been forced to move to the right is a reflection of the sad reality that the Left, the natural guardians of human rights and feminism, has not been keen supporting her. Multiculturalism and feminism sometimes clash (no matter how much I like to deny this, it is true), and the Left doesn't feel comfortable to defend the latter at the expense of the former. In her words, "the Labor types usually felt uneasy about my critique of their multicultural tolerance of Islamic practices".
Indeed, her advocacy is highly prone to the exploitation by right-wing Islamophobes who care nothing about Islamic women's rights. But it doesn't mean the core of her messages is anti-Islamic or racist; especially if you read her book, you notice that she is not a simple bigot or a hate-monger (For example, she clearly states that FGM pre-dates Islam but Islam is used to justify it). The liberals and feminists should show solidarity with her and oppressed non-Western women, rather than dismissing her experience of misogyny as a mere part of anti-Muslim agenda. We can't rely on conservatives to continue fight against misogyny of non-Western origin, when it is so evident that the main motivation of their criticism is their belief in the Western supremacy not feminism.
Susan Moller Okin, a New Zealand-born liberal feminist whom I greatly admire, articulated a feminist viewpoint that doesn't conform to the dominant discourse of multiculturalism. Though she is little-known to the wider public, she achieved academic fame with her 1989 book Justice, Gender and Family, critical analysis of the family institution from an individualist, Rawlsian perspective. In 1999, she published an essay simply titled "Is Multiculturalism Bad for Women?", in which she concluded that it could be. "Most cultures are suffused with practices and ideologies concerning gender... there are fairly clear disparities of power between the sexes, such that the more powerful, male members are those who are generally in a position to determine and articulate the group's beliefs, practices, and interests. Under such conditions, group rights are potentially, and in many cases actually, antifeminist. They substantially limit the capacities of women and girls of that culture to live with human dignity equal to that of men and boys, and to live as freely chosen lives as they can", she writes. I can't agree with her more. (She defines multiculturalism as "the claim, made in the context of basically liberal democracies, that minority cultures or ways of life are not sufficiently protected by ensuring the individual rights of their members and as a consequence should also be protected with special group rights or privileges"; so multiculturalism is fundamentally different from anti-racism or anti-xenophobia, which focuses on individual rights of people of colour and immigrants.)
Then she provides ample evidences that even in the West, hard-won rights and equality for women are privileges that are not allowed for immigrant women just because she was born in a different culture. "...Much more common, however, is the argument that, in the defendant's cultural group, women are not human beings of equal worth but subordinates whose primary (if not only) functions are to serve men sexually and domestically... wife-murder by immigrants from Asian and Middle Eastern countries whose wives have either committed adultery or treated their husbands in a servile way... In a number of such cases, expert testimony about the accused's or defendant's cultural background has resulted in dropped or reduced charges". "When a woman from a more patriarchal culture comes to the United States (or some other Western, basically liberal, state), why should she be less protected from male violence than other women are?"
I am not arguing that non-Western culture is inherently sexist than Western civilisation. It would amount to bigotry, considering the history of gruesome misogyny in the West before feminism. However, it is also undeniable that now, women are more equal and free in the West than in the most of the non-Western world. There doesn't exist a paradox; as Okin notes, "most cultures have as one of their principal aims the control of women by men", including the West. The difference is that the West has had the Enlightenment and the waves of feminism; Mary Wollstonecraft, John Stuart Mill (the philosopher Ali most admires) Susan Anthony, Kate Sheppard, Emmeline Pankhurst, Simone de Beauvoir, Betty Friedan, Andrea Dworkin, Naomi Wolf, and millions of feminists who dedicated their lives to the emancipation of women. The heritage of feminism is embedded in the modern Western society, and it is what we should strive to preserve, even if at the expense of cultural relativism if necessary. Okin's eloquent academic literature matches with Ali's testimony grounded on her lived experiences and suffering. "Don't deny us the right to have our Voltaire, too. Look at our women, and look at our countries... we are truly living in the Dark Ages." "Why is it antiracist to indulge people's attachment to their old ideas and perpetuate this misery?"
I am an individualist, and believe that any claim for group rights must be accompanied with individual rights within a group. However, when people fight for group rights, the struggle tends to focus on group leader's rights, which usually means patriarch's rights. A right of a patriarch to take back control over "his" people from another white patriarch. I believe in human rights, absolutely, without any reservations. It is universal and applies to everyone; when I say everyone it means every single human being living on this planet. Every single one of us, the humanity. It is important to respect cultures, but even more important to defend human rights against multiculturalism if a culture contradicts to human rights. Because, as Ali says, "All persons are equal. All Cultures are not." And as Herbert Marcuse, a prominent sixties New Left noted, "Tolerance of Intolerance is Intolerance. Intolerance of Intolerance is real Tolerance."
Wednesday, 2 May 2007
Animal Rights; "Extremists" or Liberators?
British police arrested 30 animal rights activists; or "extremists"; for their actions to save innocent animals from torture cruelty.
Most articles reporting the raid, such as this one from the Reuters and the Daily Telegraphy article, are inexcusably biased; while widely quoting from the police statement, they don't refer to the comments of animal rights groups at all. Even Reuters article rather looks like a press release from the police, and Telegraph article concludes with the comment "these extremists are threatening dedicated researchers", without ever introducing the animal rights activist's ideas that these "dedicated researchers" can also be abusers of animal rights. The Sun, the most circulated English-language newspaper in the world, went on to describe the activists 'terrorists' in their headline (with the quotation marks).
Even the BBC article is extremely biased against the activists; they give the activists only one paragraph (two lines) in the bottom while devoting ten paragraphs to the police. The Independent coverage was slightly better as they reported that "Freshfields Animal Rescue Centre in Merseyside was among the places raided. The centre, which has been established for more than 25 years, takes in unwanted animals from across the region", but nonetheless isn't any different in a sense that police view (and those who support the police that the animal rights activism is morally indefensible) on animal rights and property rights are "true", "credible" viewpoints that readers need to succumb to.
Where's the principle of "objective" journalism? I know objectivity is an illusion, but can't they even pretend to be objective? It seems that the mainstream media hardly tells the animal rights activists' perspectives and reasons for their activism. Radical animal rights organisations, such as the Animal Liberation Front and Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (whose leader was arrested this time), don't advocate any actions that harm humans; "The ALF's credo states that no harm shall come to any sentient being". They believe that to liberate animals from cages, which is "burglary" when animals are considered "properties" of human owners, is justice. I don't necessarily support all of their actions, but their points that animals shouldn't be abused as properties, their actions are quite reasonable ones for them.
This post is neither to support nor to oppose actions taken by the ALF/any of the arrested activists. I'm a vegetarian and I fully support animal rights, but I'm myself ambivalent about ALF-type radical animal rights activism. However, I can confidently say that the activists' case deserves to be fairly and equally treated, and reported, by the media. When the public is bombarded with animals-as-properties argument and given virtually no opposing arguments, it looks like "common sense"/the natural way of treating animals even though it is just a social construction, just like slavery used to be. Animals-as-holders-of-rights arguments may sound "extreme", only because the mainstream media treats them as extreme views not worth listening to; not because it is ethically wrong.
Most articles reporting the raid, such as this one from the Reuters and the Daily Telegraphy article, are inexcusably biased; while widely quoting from the police statement, they don't refer to the comments of animal rights groups at all. Even Reuters article rather looks like a press release from the police, and Telegraph article concludes with the comment "these extremists are threatening dedicated researchers", without ever introducing the animal rights activist's ideas that these "dedicated researchers" can also be abusers of animal rights. The Sun, the most circulated English-language newspaper in the world, went on to describe the activists 'terrorists' in their headline (with the quotation marks).
Even the BBC article is extremely biased against the activists; they give the activists only one paragraph (two lines) in the bottom while devoting ten paragraphs to the police. The Independent coverage was slightly better as they reported that "Freshfields Animal Rescue Centre in Merseyside was among the places raided. The centre, which has been established for more than 25 years, takes in unwanted animals from across the region", but nonetheless isn't any different in a sense that police view (and those who support the police that the animal rights activism is morally indefensible) on animal rights and property rights are "true", "credible" viewpoints that readers need to succumb to.
Where's the principle of "objective" journalism? I know objectivity is an illusion, but can't they even pretend to be objective? It seems that the mainstream media hardly tells the animal rights activists' perspectives and reasons for their activism. Radical animal rights organisations, such as the Animal Liberation Front and Stop Huntingdon Animal Cruelty (whose leader was arrested this time), don't advocate any actions that harm humans; "The ALF's credo states that no harm shall come to any sentient being". They believe that to liberate animals from cages, which is "burglary" when animals are considered "properties" of human owners, is justice. I don't necessarily support all of their actions, but their points that animals shouldn't be abused as properties, their actions are quite reasonable ones for them.
This post is neither to support nor to oppose actions taken by the ALF/any of the arrested activists. I'm a vegetarian and I fully support animal rights, but I'm myself ambivalent about ALF-type radical animal rights activism. However, I can confidently say that the activists' case deserves to be fairly and equally treated, and reported, by the media. When the public is bombarded with animals-as-properties argument and given virtually no opposing arguments, it looks like "common sense"/the natural way of treating animals even though it is just a social construction, just like slavery used to be. Animals-as-holders-of-rights arguments may sound "extreme", only because the mainstream media treats them as extreme views not worth listening to; not because it is ethically wrong.
Monday, 23 April 2007
The conscience of the staff-owned retailer and the apathy of the shareholder-owned media
What a tragic and gloomy week it was; the unspeakable tragedy that the right-wing hatred of decent control allowed to happen. Then an NASA engineer was shot dead, few days after Nagasaki mayor was shot and killed during an election campaign. A right-wing "effort to chip away at a right declared again and again by this court" (Justice Ginsburg) called "Partial Birth Abortion" Ban Act ended up successful, endangering the Roe in future. On Friday Hitler's birthday was celebrated; in Wellington, of all places.
But in the end, there is also a brighter side in the world; I found a piece of a lovely, inspiring article that I would love to share with you. Britain's staff-owned department store, John Lewis, decided to combat "Beauty Myth" from the retail places, the bastion of commercialism. According to the Observer article, "John Lewis set to revolutionise the way high street stores use models to sell clothes". They are "by pledging to use a diversity of women in all its advertising in a deliberate attempt to convey a 'realistic' image of what British women really look like. While the average British woman is a size 16, most models are a size 8, 10 or even 6."
If you live in Britain or visit Britain, buy everything you need at John Lewis (or grocery store Waitrose, owned by John Lewis) as much as you can. If you have a friend in Britain, recommend him/her to shop at John Lewis to commend and reward the effort with spending money, your vote in the capitalist market. You can find location of your local John Lewis store at here and Waitrose supermarket at here. Write a letter of support to them.
Amid the news that makes me smile, however, one thing concerns me; the Observer is the only media that's reporting John Lewis's progressive spirit and action. I googled "John Lewis"; I could find no other article on this topic. The media's report on company's ethical standards is crucial for the public to be able to choose to shop with socially conscious business. When the public is well-informed about which retailer cares about women's self-esteem, it prompts other retailers to follow them for the sake of profit; after all, this is the strongest motive to do something for most commercial operations. If such a commitment to social justice is ignored by the media, it diminishes the commercial attractiveness for businesses to behave ethically.
I believe that John Lewis's nature as staff-owned company enabled or encouraged it to happen. I had never heard of the trust-owned retailer before, but what a fantastic idea! Then news stories on their efforts are only told by the non-profit media (the Observer and the Guardian are owned by non-profit Scott Trust). Welcome to the world of alternative capitalism.
But in the end, there is also a brighter side in the world; I found a piece of a lovely, inspiring article that I would love to share with you. Britain's staff-owned department store, John Lewis, decided to combat "Beauty Myth" from the retail places, the bastion of commercialism. According to the Observer article, "John Lewis set to revolutionise the way high street stores use models to sell clothes". They are "by pledging to use a diversity of women in all its advertising in a deliberate attempt to convey a 'realistic' image of what British women really look like. While the average British woman is a size 16, most models are a size 8, 10 or even 6."
If you live in Britain or visit Britain, buy everything you need at John Lewis (or grocery store Waitrose, owned by John Lewis) as much as you can. If you have a friend in Britain, recommend him/her to shop at John Lewis to commend and reward the effort with spending money, your vote in the capitalist market. You can find location of your local John Lewis store at here and Waitrose supermarket at here. Write a letter of support to them.
Amid the news that makes me smile, however, one thing concerns me; the Observer is the only media that's reporting John Lewis's progressive spirit and action. I googled "John Lewis"; I could find no other article on this topic. The media's report on company's ethical standards is crucial for the public to be able to choose to shop with socially conscious business. When the public is well-informed about which retailer cares about women's self-esteem, it prompts other retailers to follow them for the sake of profit; after all, this is the strongest motive to do something for most commercial operations. If such a commitment to social justice is ignored by the media, it diminishes the commercial attractiveness for businesses to behave ethically.
I believe that John Lewis's nature as staff-owned company enabled or encouraged it to happen. I had never heard of the trust-owned retailer before, but what a fantastic idea! Then news stories on their efforts are only told by the non-profit media (the Observer and the Guardian are owned by non-profit Scott Trust). Welcome to the world of alternative capitalism.
Monday, 16 April 2007
Vive la Presidente Royal!
What do you think of Segolene Royal? Probably you might think that she is a better alternative than Sarkozy as the centre-left candidate, but she is not competent and able enough, or "lightweight"? I've been getting that kind of impression from most articles on Royal's campaign. I'm sick and tired of reading how incompetent and inexperienced she is, how struggling and desperate her campaign is. Like this new AP article. Where are the opinions of 'experts' who believe Royal can win? I've heard of her comment she allegedly made in China gazllion times; where is the mention of her speech that steadily stood for the human rights, condemning the "war crimes in Chechnya" committed by the "corrupt regime"?
It may be true that in the "polls" conducted by the media show that Royal is trailing Sarkozy, but it's because the media itself report as if her chance of occupying the one of the most powerful jobs in the world at the Elysee Palace were already precluded. They say that French voter's voting behaviour is notoriously hard to detect in the polls, but still regard the opinion polls as the oracle correctly prophesising the future. What's the use of updating the newest poll everyday and analysing the difference of few percents between candidates in the opinion poll (well within the margin of error) when nearly half the French voters haven't decided whom to support? The bandwagon effect, not the shortcomings of Royal herself, is what truly blocks her noble road to the Presidency. The media report on polls actually have a profound influence on the voter behaviour; if Royal supporters believe the poll that says Bayrou has a better chance of beating Sarkozy in the second round, they might not vote accordingly with what their conscience tells them, robbing the deserving victory away from Royal.
(As I can't read French it is just an analysis of the English-language media's report on Segolene Royal and the French election. Obviously on the election itself French newspaper's impact is far stronger than the English-language media, so if you can read French your views on the French newspaper's stance on Royal are much appreciated.)
Paris-based International Herald Tribune (published by the New York Times), for example, called Royal's economic policies "far-left". What sort of freedom-hating communist woman is she? Well, she dares to raise the minimum wage and "to tax capital more than labor". "She also promised free tutoring for students that have difficulties keeping up" and "she would tax companies in relation to what share of their profits is reinvested in equipment and jobs, and what portion is paid to shareholders"; what a despicable Stalinist! "Under her presidency, she said, young women would get free contraception", the article goes, after making the baseless assumption that "she seemed to have something to offer to most groups in society without saying how much the combined measures would cost".
This article appears in the top page (fourth-highest in the ranking) when you Google "Segolene Royal", making this biased article matter more than it deserves.
Sarkozy indeed gets accused of his cold-hearted and ruthless comments and forging a close tie with Le Pen, but his ability to perform the top job is far less frequently questioned compared to Royal. Well, he has a media-created image of 'alpha male' or 'top cop', tough yet capable man to make a change.
Royal's campaign is in a way different from some other high-profile female politicians that she doesn't suppress her femininity. Three women have so far become the head of government in the G8 countries; all of them are from the conservative/right-wing parties (Thatcher, Merkel and Kim Campbell in Canada) who got elected by showing she was more masculine (Thatcher) or at least not "feminine". I don't necessary think emphasising femininity is a better way for female politicians, because it can lead to the old-fashioned embrace of femininity and rejection of non-feminine female politicians (e.g. smear attack on Helen Clark that she doesn't have a child). But it concerns me more when politicians who emphasise femininity are derided as lightweight, implying femininity has no place in politics while the media seems to take the Sarkozian macho attitude to denote capabilities as a drastic reformer.
I don't know if the media's biased coverage on Royal is because of misogyny or the media's capitalist bias, or the bias only existing in the English-language media because of its dislike of the French rejection of Anglo-Saxon free market capitalism. But anyway, no matter what the dubious opinion "polls" tell us, Segolene Royal has a realistic chance of winning the Elysee Palace. Her victory is crucial in transforming France as a viable and attractive alternative to the Anglo-Saxon capitalism. Vive la France, vive la Presidente Royal!
It may be true that in the "polls" conducted by the media show that Royal is trailing Sarkozy, but it's because the media itself report as if her chance of occupying the one of the most powerful jobs in the world at the Elysee Palace were already precluded. They say that French voter's voting behaviour is notoriously hard to detect in the polls, but still regard the opinion polls as the oracle correctly prophesising the future. What's the use of updating the newest poll everyday and analysing the difference of few percents between candidates in the opinion poll (well within the margin of error) when nearly half the French voters haven't decided whom to support? The bandwagon effect, not the shortcomings of Royal herself, is what truly blocks her noble road to the Presidency. The media report on polls actually have a profound influence on the voter behaviour; if Royal supporters believe the poll that says Bayrou has a better chance of beating Sarkozy in the second round, they might not vote accordingly with what their conscience tells them, robbing the deserving victory away from Royal.
(As I can't read French it is just an analysis of the English-language media's report on Segolene Royal and the French election. Obviously on the election itself French newspaper's impact is far stronger than the English-language media, so if you can read French your views on the French newspaper's stance on Royal are much appreciated.)
Paris-based International Herald Tribune (published by the New York Times), for example, called Royal's economic policies "far-left". What sort of freedom-hating communist woman is she? Well, she dares to raise the minimum wage and "to tax capital more than labor". "She also promised free tutoring for students that have difficulties keeping up" and "she would tax companies in relation to what share of their profits is reinvested in equipment and jobs, and what portion is paid to shareholders"; what a despicable Stalinist! "Under her presidency, she said, young women would get free contraception", the article goes, after making the baseless assumption that "she seemed to have something to offer to most groups in society without saying how much the combined measures would cost".
This article appears in the top page (fourth-highest in the ranking) when you Google "Segolene Royal", making this biased article matter more than it deserves.
Sarkozy indeed gets accused of his cold-hearted and ruthless comments and forging a close tie with Le Pen, but his ability to perform the top job is far less frequently questioned compared to Royal. Well, he has a media-created image of 'alpha male' or 'top cop', tough yet capable man to make a change.
Royal's campaign is in a way different from some other high-profile female politicians that she doesn't suppress her femininity. Three women have so far become the head of government in the G8 countries; all of them are from the conservative/right-wing parties (Thatcher, Merkel and Kim Campbell in Canada) who got elected by showing she was more masculine (Thatcher) or at least not "feminine". I don't necessary think emphasising femininity is a better way for female politicians, because it can lead to the old-fashioned embrace of femininity and rejection of non-feminine female politicians (e.g. smear attack on Helen Clark that she doesn't have a child). But it concerns me more when politicians who emphasise femininity are derided as lightweight, implying femininity has no place in politics while the media seems to take the Sarkozian macho attitude to denote capabilities as a drastic reformer.
I don't know if the media's biased coverage on Royal is because of misogyny or the media's capitalist bias, or the bias only existing in the English-language media because of its dislike of the French rejection of Anglo-Saxon free market capitalism. But anyway, no matter what the dubious opinion "polls" tell us, Segolene Royal has a realistic chance of winning the Elysee Palace. Her victory is crucial in transforming France as a viable and attractive alternative to the Anglo-Saxon capitalism. Vive la France, vive la Presidente Royal!
Wednesday, 11 April 2007
When Patriarchy marries to Reality TV in Italy
Italian public broadcaster has purchased and aired the obnoxious Turkish reality TV programme. For details of the programme read the Independent article above; basically the show asserts that the extreme form of partiarchy that dictate women are birth-giving machines or household slaves, as "reality". The producer, intentionally or unconsciously, professes his misogyny; according to him, the programme deals with "relationships that are eternal". Wow, I can see his desire that he wants partiarchy to be an eternal reality like the gravity, (by the way the latter's not really eternal!) but as you know it's a mere social construction that is to be smashed.
The whole story is a perfect example and evidence of the harm commercialism in the media does to the social justice. It proves that the conflict between the values of public service broadcaster and commercialism is inevitable in any country. It seems that the president of RAI perfectly understands the nature of the programme, as he commented it was to "put people into environments that are both unrealistic and coercive, leading inevitably to unreasonable if not degrading behaviour" and the public broadcaster shouldn't be providing such nonsense to the audience. Commercialist reality TV itself is evil enough. But when it marries to patriarchy, the child fathered by patriarchy and borne by a birth-giving machine called the media commercialism is certain to be horrendous and grotesque.
The whole story is a perfect example and evidence of the harm commercialism in the media does to the social justice. It proves that the conflict between the values of public service broadcaster and commercialism is inevitable in any country. It seems that the president of RAI perfectly understands the nature of the programme, as he commented it was to "put people into environments that are both unrealistic and coercive, leading inevitably to unreasonable if not degrading behaviour" and the public broadcaster shouldn't be providing such nonsense to the audience. Commercialist reality TV itself is evil enough. But when it marries to patriarchy, the child fathered by patriarchy and borne by a birth-giving machine called the media commercialism is certain to be horrendous and grotesque.
Monday, 9 April 2007
Ahmadinejad-like Conservative's attack on Faye Turney
Polly Toynbee at Guardian did the brilliant analysis on the British conservative media's report on the Leading Seaman Faye Turney, who was kidnapped by Iran. http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,,2051499,00.html Citing plenty of examples of misogynistic comments about Turney written in the papers, Toynbee concludes that "the Daily Mail believes pretty much the same as President Ahmadinejad".
This fundamentalist misogynist sentiment is not only disseminated by "trashy" tabloid papers; also by Murdoch-owned "quality" broadsheet paper, the Times. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article1596699.ece What a nonsense... Ms. Turney deserves warm support in Britain, not kind of hostilities she was forced to endure in Iran. It is ironic that those who are most vocal in support of the 'War on Terror' and love to condemn the "Islamic fascism" support the backward, bigoted Iranian agendas... Conservatives in the West and the Middle East seem to hate each other but they indeed share values that subjugate women into femininity, domesticity and maternity. We must be united against both of them.
This fundamentalist misogynist sentiment is not only disseminated by "trashy" tabloid papers; also by Murdoch-owned "quality" broadsheet paper, the Times. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/guest_contributors/article1596699.ece What a nonsense... Ms. Turney deserves warm support in Britain, not kind of hostilities she was forced to endure in Iran. It is ironic that those who are most vocal in support of the 'War on Terror' and love to condemn the "Islamic fascism" support the backward, bigoted Iranian agendas... Conservatives in the West and the Middle East seem to hate each other but they indeed share values that subjugate women into femininity, domesticity and maternity. We must be united against both of them.
Friday, 6 April 2007
Concentration of Media Ownership and the "Public Sphere"
I thought I'd introduce an essay I submitted last year for my Media Studies class. It is about the media and society, and I outlined my fundamental views on the media which is the basis of this blog. I thought I could share it with you and I would love to hear your comment on the issue!
The commercially driven media is a part of institutional processes that reinforces and perpetuates the existing capitalist hegemony. Media’s influence on our thinking and society is profound, thorough and deep, because as Jim Morrison said “Whoever controls the media, controls the mind”. This quote accurately describes the media’s primary impact in shaping the mould in which people view and analyse society. It is possible to be critical of explicitly controversial or biased media coverage, but it is hard to defy the superstructure of thought media creates. Media controls the mind by setting up this invisible superstructure.
The existing media structure reinforces the capitalist hegemony mainly in two ways; one is influence of commercialism on journalism (commercialism and journalism are inherently incompatible (Adorno, 1958)) and concentration of media ownership into the hands of few transnational conglomerates (TNCs).
The overwhelming majority of the today’s media is commercially operated in the Western World. For example, in the United States of America, the Superpower of the World that has big impacts on other countries, all of the biggest TV stations (NBC, CBS, ABC, FOX, CNN) are owned by private companies whose sole purpose of existence is to maximise shareholder’s profits; the noncommercial, publicly owned PBS is a minor one. In New Zealand the situation is even worse; even the government-owned TVNZ operates on a commercial basis, as a State-Owned Enterprise (SOE). The sole difference between TVNZ and other private TV stations is that TVNZ’s shareholder is the government. TVNZ attempted to include Reithian ideals as the public broadcaster and the Charter was written but it proved to be impossible for TVNZ to pursue the Charter and its commercial goals at the same time: Ian Fraser, the former head of the TVNZ, called this incompatible goal “rendering unto God and unto Caesar at the same time”.
BBC in Britain and ABC in Australia are examples of few remaining public broadcasters, but they are rather exceptions. The only major non-commercial newspaper in the Western World is the Guardian in the UK; most papers are commercial. Record companies, movie distributors and other media are no different.
The capitalist principles shouldn’t and can’t be applied in the media “market” because simply value of some products can’t be determined solely on a commercial basis. For example, schools are operated on a non-profit basis (it includes private schools). Who wound want to go to a school (or who would want their children to go to a school) whose primary or sole purpose is to maximise profits and children’s education is a secondary concern to them? Media is the same, media has a noble and crucial mission to educate citizens to make wiser decisions in society; media is one of the four essential ‘pillars’ of the modern democratic society.
High quality journalism, just like high-quality education, has an intrinsic value in it. But under the strictly capitalist system, its popularity is the sole determinant of the value of a product. If demand is high, price goes up. If demand is low, it is deemed as not as worthy as highly demanded products. Theodor Adorno, a cultural critic and a prominent Frankfurt School thinker, argued that “the sole determinant of the value of culture is people’s evaluation” in a capitalized market of culture. Capitalism treats people as consumers, while media should treat audience as citizens.
For some consumer products whose only purpose is to provide immediate, sensual pleasure, market capitalism is probably the best way to allocate resources and decide what to produce. For example, if particular ice cream is not popular, probably it is not delicious (which means it doesn’t give much pleasure or satisfaction to consumers), so it is not as valuable as delicious ice cream which fulfills its purpose to provide pleasure. But as I argued before, the main purpose of journalism is to educate citizens and presents a wide range of opinions to citizens. The success of tabloid newspapers illustrates that the high-quality journalism, which is more worthy, is not as popular as tabloid journalism. But the price mechanism of the market capitalism sends wrong signal that tabloid journalism us more worthy because it is popular. Here lie the reasons for fundamental incompatibility of journalism and commercialism.
Because of this, high-quality journalism is under produced in the society if media is motivated by profit maximisation, at the expense of healthy democracy and choice (the phenomenon is nothing new in the Western society, though the process has been intensified since the eighties. ‘Yellow Journalism’ in the early 20th century shows us that media became sensational if they pursue money, at any time). In other words, good journalism that explains the nature of complex truth, presents well-thought opinions and investigates some hidden evils has positive externality of consumption, while tabloid, sensationalistic journalism has negative externality of consumption. Even the free market capitalists agree that these externalities can’t be internalized if it solely relies on the market forces. Media producers are afraid that innovative coverage might not be popular and generate profits, because they have an obligation to the shareholders to maximise profits. So they continue tabloid ‘journalism’ which they know to sell well. Thus, under the ‘free’ market system that is supposed to provide choices to the people, they lose a choice of high-quality journalism and are confined to a narrow range of cheap sensationalism.
The example of TVNZ News illustrates it well. After it became commercially-driven SOE in 1989, Paul Norris, the head of News in TVNZ back then, brought in the American adviser Fred Shook who drastically changed the TVNZ News to a visual, photogenic one. He taught newswriters how to pick a newsitem that can match sensational picture, and how to write news script accordingly with the picture. TVNZ “deliberately changed its news to tabloid journalism”, a media critic Gordon Campbell writes. This example is only a tip of iceberg in a wide, frozen ocean of the Western commercial media.
The consolidation of media ownership is another reason and way to why and how the existing media structure reinforces the status quo. Not only most of the biggest media today are commercially operated, they are mostly owned by the few richest TNCs whose scales are unprecedented in human history, and whose sizes exceed the entire GDP of some countries. Notorious Rupert Murdoch’s NewsCorp owns hundreds of TV stations, newspapers, publishers and other various media companies in many Western countries, constantly disseminating Murdoch’s right-wing propaganda. Not only Murdoch-owned Fox News, “the Big Three” in the US (NBC, CBS, ABC) and CNN, are owned by GE, Viacom, Disney and Time Warner, all the TNCs. Canadian-based CanWest owns TV3 and C4 in NZ, Channel Ten in Australia and various TV stations in Canada. NZ is the only country to allow 100% foreign ownership of media. The Aspers, owner family of CanWest, has a strong link with the Israeli right-wing party Likud, and according to the inside whistleblower, “any news item that goes against Asper’s line goes unreported” (Bill Rosenberg, 2003). German Beltersmann dominate the TV stations in the continental Europe, and Clear Channel Communications own a thousand radio stations in the US (they banned John Lennon’s Imagine after 9/11 because of its peaceful messages). These companies control the media, and our mind.
Obviously the messages that these ultimate winners of the dog-eat-dog capitalism send wouldn’t be the ones that are critical of the existing hierarchy. They control the mind, to benefit their interests. The messages they disseminate include material growth is always desirable, anti-globalisation/environmental/animal rights activists are radical nuts who disrupt the society and order, and capitalism rewards those who deserve wealth (poor people are poor because of their own problems e.g. laziness). Because we are constantly bombarded with these negative messages by TNCs who control the media, to a certain degree our mind is subconsciously controlled by them.
Goebbel’s domination and manipulation of media under Nazis is a classic example of government propaganda. But today’s domination and manipulation of media by TNCs is essentially no different; corporations, instead of fascists, control our mind (probably their messages are not as dangerous as Nazi propaganda, but the essence of the control is the same). Jurgen Habermas, an influential Media theorist in the Frankfurt School, proposed the notion of the “public sphere” as the ideal structure of media. Public sphere is a place (not necessarily the geographical place) where everyone, regardless of their class or wealth, can communicate their opinions, freely from the state or corporate control. Only with the public sphere, citizens are truly free and can make up their own mind. But with the concentration of media ownership, the richest (bourgeois), who own the mode of production, control the mind of proletarians who don’t have the mode of production. Karl Marx argued that bourgeois exploit proletarians physically (sweatshops), but they exploit them psychologically (media control) as well.
There are many examples to prove “Whoever controls the media, controls the mind” principle. Media ownership matters. More than one-third of the American journalists admitted that news items that might harm the owner’s interests often go unreported (Rosenberg, 2003). Before the Iraq War, American media broadcasted 25 times more of pro-war opinions compared to anti-war opinions (Noam Chomsky, 2004). Because of their repeated, combined use of “Saddam Hussein” and “9/11” in a same context, 70% of Americans believed that Hussein was involved in the 9/11, which is totally wrong (Michael Moore, 2003). White, male, middle-aged businessowners or professionals (who usually control the media) are usually depicted as reliable, decent, kind and hardworking citizens while representation of the working-class tends to be “lazy” or “drunken”, negative ones (Richard Bustch, 1996). Despite increasing female role models in influential positions, women (especially young) are often depicted as objects, sexual or not, taking a male point of view (Gloria Steinem, “Sex, Lies and Advertising”, 1991). Simone de Beauvoir, a French feminist, analysed that women are designated the role of “the Other” while men are the Subject, in her masterpiece “the Second Sex”. Media reinforce this structure. Non-white ethnic groups are often depicted as the Other in the Western media, such as the Dangerous (people of Arabic origins after 9/11), the Humorous (for example, Asians for their poor English, in comedies) or the Pitied (Africans who live in poverty) (Heinemann Media Studies Textbook 1, Karen Koch). In this way, our views are shaped within the superstructural mould that these dominant elites build. Jim Morrison is exactly correct in saying “Whoever controls the media, controls the mind”.
Richard Butsch once said “production of the ideologies is a natural outcome of the commercial media operating in the capitalist market”. To examine it more deeply, the Marxist approach is useful (I already used it several times). Marxist concept of commodity fetishism describes today’s society’s obsession with material goods remarkably accurately. “False Consciousness”, which means that proletarians are deceived about the nature of capitalism, the very system that is the cause of their oppression, and support it because of their misguided idea about the capitalism. Corporate, commercial media are the tools for the dominant elites to perpetuate “false consciousness”. He criticized the libertarian notion of freedom, meaning that people are free as long as they are free from the deliberate interference from the government. This ideology is the common justification for the free-market capitalism, and often disseminated by the dominant media. Are we really free, even if we don’t have an access to the wide range of thoughts, and have to choose between cheap, sensationalist gossip of celebrities and capitalist, consumerist propaganda (they are often the same)? Are we really free, if we aren’t empowered enough to form a balanced, own opinion? Are we really free, if we aren’t wealthy enough to communicate the alternative viewpoints? Such freedom is meaningless.
Herbert Marcuse, a Frankfurt School philosopher, eloquently described this condition as “reasonable, democratic unfreedom”. Unfreedom, not oppression. To change this unfreedom to the genuine freedom, freedom of mind, the Habermasian public sphere, public service broadcasters and decent regulations on the consolidation of media ownership are essential. Without these, the dominant elite continues to control the mind by controlling the media, with their extreme capitalism and consumerism, at the expense of people’s welfare, healthy democracy, and the real freedom.
Sunday, 1 April 2007
Conception Day
Pro-life campaigners in the United States are confident and aggressive than ever before with the real prospect of Roe v. Wade being overturned in a near future by a new conservative Supreme Court, and they have extended the target of their fight to protect the right to live of unborn babies, or zygotes. They have started to launch an attack on a birthday party, rejecting it as based on pro-choice ideology.
Kerry Galwell, a founder of the conservative religious group Moral Minority, started the campaign last year; “A birthday party is a vast left-wing liberal conspiracy to brainwash our young and innocent children that life begins at birth not conception. It is a particularly subtle form of anti-life propaganda that the first nine months of life of a man he spends in his mother’s womb is not meaningful or worthy and should be ignored and forgotten”, Galwell said.
Several conservative commentators have expressed their support for Galwell’s crusade against a birthday party. “We have to protect our children from mentally insane liberals and their secret weapon called a birthday party”, Michael Brutal said in OX News’ The Preilly Influence. “Godless faggots who celebrate birthday shall suffer in the Hell eternally”, Annie Doulter wrote in her column. Several movie stars and celebrities received a threatening letter demanding to cancel their birthday party or “we would bomb you under the God’s name, to punish the heresy called a birthday party and to cleanse the modern Gomorrah called Hollywood”.
As a family-friendly leader of the Religious Right, Galwell is not just depriving an important occasion of the nation’s families. Galwell devised a concept of “a conception day” party and has vigorously promoted it in his rallies across the country. Conception day party has already gained certain popularity among evangelist parents; 8% of the parents surveyed already substituted a conception day party for a birthday party, reaching 17% high in South Carolina. “It is a great way to teach our children the proper values based on our Faith. A decade ago today my son was conceived, and that’s what really matters”, says George Wade, 33, (he insists he is 34) who is holding a conception day party for his son George X. “I like the idea of the conception day party because it’s cool and I feel nine months older”, said George X, 9 (he has just turned 10, counted from the conception day). Currently a date 270 days before birthday is used as an estimate, but “we are currently working with faithful doctors and God-fearing scientists to develop technology to evaluate the exact date of conception, the date one’s life has truly begun”, says Galwell. Galwell himself celebrated his ‘conception day party’ last November, just after the Republican’s election defeat.
He expresses his ultimate aim of his campaign as the “total elimination of the concept of ‘birthday’ from our society”. Moral Minority is lobbying the conservative Republicans in the Congress to legislate to calculate the legal age of a person from the date of conception not birth. Senator Sam Brownforward (R-Dorothy’s Homeland) has indicated his support and is planning to submit the Elimination of the Date of Birth from Official Registrations Act 2007 to the Congress. However, this proposal met some opposition by his fellow Republicans and Alcoholics Anonymous, as it would effectively lower the drinking age.
Businesses are not missing the golden opportunities to appeal to the conservative customers. Val-Mart, the biggest retail chain in the country, has started to sell “conception day card” and “conception day present”. “We have started to cater the needs of religious customers, and we are proud of it“, says Benedict Rudolph, a retail manager for Val-Mart. He also stated that Val-Mart was considering stopping the sales of all products with “birthday” references, following intensive lobbying campaign to the company by conservative groups.
The anti-birthday movement has also been spread to conservatives in other countries. In New Zealand, Brian Panmure of the evangelist Fate Church has prohibited a birthday party for his followers, and declared ‘enough is enough, enough of this birthday nonsense”, in his conception day party.
Kerry Galwell, a founder of the conservative religious group Moral Minority, started the campaign last year; “A birthday party is a vast left-wing liberal conspiracy to brainwash our young and innocent children that life begins at birth not conception. It is a particularly subtle form of anti-life propaganda that the first nine months of life of a man he spends in his mother’s womb is not meaningful or worthy and should be ignored and forgotten”, Galwell said.
Several conservative commentators have expressed their support for Galwell’s crusade against a birthday party. “We have to protect our children from mentally insane liberals and their secret weapon called a birthday party”, Michael Brutal said in OX News’ The Preilly Influence. “Godless faggots who celebrate birthday shall suffer in the Hell eternally”, Annie Doulter wrote in her column. Several movie stars and celebrities received a threatening letter demanding to cancel their birthday party or “we would bomb you under the God’s name, to punish the heresy called a birthday party and to cleanse the modern Gomorrah called Hollywood”.
As a family-friendly leader of the Religious Right, Galwell is not just depriving an important occasion of the nation’s families. Galwell devised a concept of “a conception day” party and has vigorously promoted it in his rallies across the country. Conception day party has already gained certain popularity among evangelist parents; 8% of the parents surveyed already substituted a conception day party for a birthday party, reaching 17% high in South Carolina. “It is a great way to teach our children the proper values based on our Faith. A decade ago today my son was conceived, and that’s what really matters”, says George Wade, 33, (he insists he is 34) who is holding a conception day party for his son George X. “I like the idea of the conception day party because it’s cool and I feel nine months older”, said George X, 9 (he has just turned 10, counted from the conception day). Currently a date 270 days before birthday is used as an estimate, but “we are currently working with faithful doctors and God-fearing scientists to develop technology to evaluate the exact date of conception, the date one’s life has truly begun”, says Galwell. Galwell himself celebrated his ‘conception day party’ last November, just after the Republican’s election defeat.
He expresses his ultimate aim of his campaign as the “total elimination of the concept of ‘birthday’ from our society”. Moral Minority is lobbying the conservative Republicans in the Congress to legislate to calculate the legal age of a person from the date of conception not birth. Senator Sam Brownforward (R-Dorothy’s Homeland) has indicated his support and is planning to submit the Elimination of the Date of Birth from Official Registrations Act 2007 to the Congress. However, this proposal met some opposition by his fellow Republicans and Alcoholics Anonymous, as it would effectively lower the drinking age.
Businesses are not missing the golden opportunities to appeal to the conservative customers. Val-Mart, the biggest retail chain in the country, has started to sell “conception day card” and “conception day present”. “We have started to cater the needs of religious customers, and we are proud of it“, says Benedict Rudolph, a retail manager for Val-Mart. He also stated that Val-Mart was considering stopping the sales of all products with “birthday” references, following intensive lobbying campaign to the company by conservative groups.
The anti-birthday movement has also been spread to conservatives in other countries. In New Zealand, Brian Panmure of the evangelist Fate Church has prohibited a birthday party for his followers, and declared ‘enough is enough, enough of this birthday nonsense”, in his conception day party.
Saturday, 31 March 2007
The Media's "the right to smack" crusade
The Section 59 debate continues to divide the country into two camps, the progressive, enlightened one and one who isn't comfortable with making a progress, and the media, in the past few days, seems to be siding with the latter. Look at all the pro-smacking propaganda dominating the country's media sphere, all the overemphasis on the family fanatic's "pro-smacking protests", "the public opinion is against the bill", etc! The small protest is even reported all over the world, from London to Los Angeles, as the AP wrote from the pro-violence point of view. The Sydney Morning Herald went further to suggest that Kiwi kids love to be hit, grossly emphasising the tiny number of kids in the marches who was brought there and brainwashed by their parents, as if they represent the New Zealand children.
For the polls, they don't even disclose the exact question and method of the opinion polls which they use as the basis of all the reference to the public opinion (a poll yields significantly different results, depending on wording of questions and methodology), and even more, it is natural when the media bombards the public with the irrational fear and emotive parental rights claims, just like a right-wing propaganda machine does, the majority is against it. The media is creating the public opinion themselves and is reporting it which they themselves created. The media has the power to make a sensible policy look like "PC-gone-mad" or whatever, for example, imagine if the media were against the nuclear free policy, had disseminated the fear of terrorism day and night with horrific and graphic images, and a security alliance with the US was the only way for us to protect ourselves from terrorism, how many people would support the nuclear free policy.
This article indeed introduces both perspectives, but it ends with the argument of the opponents that it "catch(es) everybody" (implying "good, loving and caring" parents), which sounds convincing in the article because it is not rebutted. And what is this nonsense reader's opinion page in the Herald, most of them angry rants from regressive right-wingers? Titles of article like "Smack debate fails to sway MPs" or more blatantly, "Public opinions say 'no', but Clark and Cullen say 'yes'"? I didn't know that the Herald had become a propaganda newsletter of the Nationals or the Maxim Institute. Where are the opinions of children's organisations who tirelessly work for the children's welfare, know about the children's issues better than anyone else, and support the bill?
History heads for the social progress, and this is inevitable. There are always people who can't accept it, so some of these backward conservatives in the 19th century opposed Kate Sheppard, inciting fear that voting and political discussions would divide and destroy peaceful families. We think, "what a silly and inane argument", more than a century later. The people will look back pro-violence-against-kids arguments in future in the same way as we see the anti-suffragists now. This futile effort to cling to the "rights to use violence against others because they are young", the remnant of patriarchy, is doomed to fail. Sometimes our MPs know better than the media, and parliamentary democracy exists to protect the country from the hysteric public opinion created by the media. Well done the Greens, Labour, the Maori Party, Jim Anderton, Peter Dunne, Doug Woolerton and Brian Donnelly, you are looking forward not backward. It is great to know that we live in a country where the decent and rational Parliament, not some corporate-owned crazed media, is in charge of our children's rights.
For the polls, they don't even disclose the exact question and method of the opinion polls which they use as the basis of all the reference to the public opinion (a poll yields significantly different results, depending on wording of questions and methodology), and even more, it is natural when the media bombards the public with the irrational fear and emotive parental rights claims, just like a right-wing propaganda machine does, the majority is against it. The media is creating the public opinion themselves and is reporting it which they themselves created. The media has the power to make a sensible policy look like "PC-gone-mad" or whatever, for example, imagine if the media were against the nuclear free policy, had disseminated the fear of terrorism day and night with horrific and graphic images, and a security alliance with the US was the only way for us to protect ourselves from terrorism, how many people would support the nuclear free policy.
This article indeed introduces both perspectives, but it ends with the argument of the opponents that it "catch(es) everybody" (implying "good, loving and caring" parents), which sounds convincing in the article because it is not rebutted. And what is this nonsense reader's opinion page in the Herald, most of them angry rants from regressive right-wingers? Titles of article like "Smack debate fails to sway MPs" or more blatantly, "Public opinions say 'no', but Clark and Cullen say 'yes'"? I didn't know that the Herald had become a propaganda newsletter of the Nationals or the Maxim Institute. Where are the opinions of children's organisations who tirelessly work for the children's welfare, know about the children's issues better than anyone else, and support the bill?
History heads for the social progress, and this is inevitable. There are always people who can't accept it, so some of these backward conservatives in the 19th century opposed Kate Sheppard, inciting fear that voting and political discussions would divide and destroy peaceful families. We think, "what a silly and inane argument", more than a century later. The people will look back pro-violence-against-kids arguments in future in the same way as we see the anti-suffragists now. This futile effort to cling to the "rights to use violence against others because they are young", the remnant of patriarchy, is doomed to fail. Sometimes our MPs know better than the media, and parliamentary democracy exists to protect the country from the hysteric public opinion created by the media. Well done the Greens, Labour, the Maori Party, Jim Anderton, Peter Dunne, Doug Woolerton and Brian Donnelly, you are looking forward not backward. It is great to know that we live in a country where the decent and rational Parliament, not some corporate-owned crazed media, is in charge of our children's rights.
Monday, 26 March 2007
Jennifer Brunner; an unsung guardian of Democracy
Have you ever heard of Jennifer Brunner? Probably most people in the world have no idea whatsoever who Jennifer Brunner is, unless you are her friend, you live in Ohio, or you follow the US Politics so closely and know what and who really matter in our world. Ms. Brunner is the woman whose work is crucial and essential in saving the democracy in the country with a democratic tradition and the global influence. Indeed, she is the woman who might save the entire humankind from catastrophic damages.
She is the Secretary of State of Ohio, who is in charge of administering elections in Ohio. Ohio is the most important "purple" state in the US whose vote was decisive in giving Bush four more years to destroy civil liberties, Iraq, America's worldwide reputation and the Right to Choose. It will be crucial in 2008, too. She is working to rescue Ohio from the election process marred and plagued by frauds that changed the course of history, and to enable it to conduct a fair election in 2008.
She asked all of four members of Cuyahoga County election board to resign, to reform the board so the elections are properly conducted in Cuyahoga County. Cuyahoga County, which includes the most populous city of Cleveland, is heavily Democratic, and was the main battleground of the 2004 electoral coup (read below). Three of them followed and resigned (some reluctantly) to restore confidence in the voting system; though one Republican member, Bob Bennett (who is also a chairperson of the Ohio Republican), is obstinately refusing to resign. Brunner has started the procedure to fire heavily partisan Bennett. She is, not only a believer in the genuine democracy, but also determined and capable. Jennifer Brunner deserves more media attention, recognition and praise for her ambitious, noble and Heraculian task to restore the American Democracy. Let us hope that Brunner successfully completes the task to get the US and the world out, after long eight years, of the dark tunnel called the Bush "presidency".
You might reject the election fraud in Ohio in 2004 as a mere left-wing conspiracy theory, but read this article before you jump to the conclusion. It's no wonder if you can't believe what you are reading; your eyes are not deceiving you, it IS real, Cuyahoga election workers were found guilty , in the Court, of rigging the Presidential Election in 2004. They are sentenced to 18 months in prison.
So WHY is this groundbreaking news not widely reported at all? It is an AP article; many Ohio papers, Washington Post, LA Times and a few other American papers reported it, (outside the USA only the Guardian did). While just a tiny handful of papers reported, while the others (supermajority) didn't say a single word on the Court verdict. And I don't know the treatment of the article in printed newspaper for each paper (e.g. how visible it was) or even if they published it or not (sometimes newspapers put AP articles in their website while not publishing that in their printed paper). It is not a mere issue of petty, local fraud case; these criminals stole something invaluable called Democracy. What it means is that THIS VERDICT OFFICIALLY CASTS A DOUBT ON GEORGE W. BUSH'S LEGITIMACY AS THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.
The hardest media bias is to detect, and the worst, is not biased articles; it is the absence of media reports on an issue. When the media doesn't even tell you that such a story exists, how would you be able to even think about the issue, let alone to criticise someone in power? It is, essentially, a thought suppression. And in this case, not only that so few newspapers fulfilled their role as journalists, the AP article doesn't tell any details of the case; the alternative media tells the truth. The mainstream media has the power to shape the political agendas, but we are empowered not to conform to the values disseminated by them and agendas they promote. Our thought need not, and should not be suppressed by the systematic agenda-limiting machines of the commercial, corporate media.
She is the Secretary of State of Ohio, who is in charge of administering elections in Ohio. Ohio is the most important "purple" state in the US whose vote was decisive in giving Bush four more years to destroy civil liberties, Iraq, America's worldwide reputation and the Right to Choose. It will be crucial in 2008, too. She is working to rescue Ohio from the election process marred and plagued by frauds that changed the course of history, and to enable it to conduct a fair election in 2008.
She asked all of four members of Cuyahoga County election board to resign, to reform the board so the elections are properly conducted in Cuyahoga County. Cuyahoga County, which includes the most populous city of Cleveland, is heavily Democratic, and was the main battleground of the 2004 electoral coup (read below). Three of them followed and resigned (some reluctantly) to restore confidence in the voting system; though one Republican member, Bob Bennett (who is also a chairperson of the Ohio Republican), is obstinately refusing to resign. Brunner has started the procedure to fire heavily partisan Bennett. She is, not only a believer in the genuine democracy, but also determined and capable. Jennifer Brunner deserves more media attention, recognition and praise for her ambitious, noble and Heraculian task to restore the American Democracy. Let us hope that Brunner successfully completes the task to get the US and the world out, after long eight years, of the dark tunnel called the Bush "presidency".
You might reject the election fraud in Ohio in 2004 as a mere left-wing conspiracy theory, but read this article before you jump to the conclusion. It's no wonder if you can't believe what you are reading; your eyes are not deceiving you, it IS real, Cuyahoga election workers were found guilty , in the Court, of rigging the Presidential Election in 2004. They are sentenced to 18 months in prison.
So WHY is this groundbreaking news not widely reported at all? It is an AP article; many Ohio papers, Washington Post, LA Times and a few other American papers reported it, (outside the USA only the Guardian did). While just a tiny handful of papers reported, while the others (supermajority) didn't say a single word on the Court verdict. And I don't know the treatment of the article in printed newspaper for each paper (e.g. how visible it was) or even if they published it or not (sometimes newspapers put AP articles in their website while not publishing that in their printed paper). It is not a mere issue of petty, local fraud case; these criminals stole something invaluable called Democracy. What it means is that THIS VERDICT OFFICIALLY CASTS A DOUBT ON GEORGE W. BUSH'S LEGITIMACY AS THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES.
The hardest media bias is to detect, and the worst, is not biased articles; it is the absence of media reports on an issue. When the media doesn't even tell you that such a story exists, how would you be able to even think about the issue, let alone to criticise someone in power? It is, essentially, a thought suppression. And in this case, not only that so few newspapers fulfilled their role as journalists, the AP article doesn't tell any details of the case; the alternative media tells the truth. The mainstream media has the power to shape the political agendas, but we are empowered not to conform to the values disseminated by them and agendas they promote. Our thought need not, and should not be suppressed by the systematic agenda-limiting machines of the commercial, corporate media.
Wednesday, 21 March 2007
Interview Meme (2)
This post is continued from my previous post, Interview Meme (1).
The Rules: Leave me a comment saying, “Interview me.”I respond by asking you five personal questions so I can get to know you better. If I already know you well, expect the questions may be a little more intimate!You WILL update your journal/bloggy thing/whatever with the answers to the questions.You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the post.When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.
My questions come from Thinking Girl.
In my idealist dream, I envisage the worldwide system like EU Human Rights Court that overrides a national court in matters of human rights. It is this system that brought the historic victory for Polish women yesterday; even a ultra-conservative government of Poland has no right to take women's Right to Choose away. It is not realistic in a foreseeable future, when majority of the world's government don't seem to understand or don't want to understand what human rights means; nevertheless, an endeavour to establish a worldwide justice system has borne fruit in a form of the International Criminal Court, so no matter how imperfect it is, the world is heading for the better direction. And also, as a result of 2005 World Summit, international society's 'responsibility to protect' the world population from genocide and crimes against humanity is formally recognised.
I enthusiastically support humanitarian intervention when necessary, especially under circumstances of genocide and massive human rights abuses, for example, in case of Darfur. Intervention to save human lives and rights doesn't really contradict against the principle of non-violence. Realistically I'm not expecting much from the Security Council anyway, as usually one of three selfish veto powers, namely the US, Russia and China, vetoes to exercise responsibility to protect. (The US veto is usually highlighted and criticised, but China has been vetoing to protect the most brutal regimes in the world with which they have economic relations, including Sudan. These resolutions to save people of Darfur aren't even voted as they know China would veto it.)
However, this is not to support intervention by any country to protect human rights and save people from an oppressive regime. War is also a form of human rights abuses, and actually, I don't really think forcibly toppling a violent dictatorship would always improve human rights, except in extraordinary circumstances I mentioned above. It would be easy if killing a single evil dictator turns a country into a human rights paradise, but the reality is not that simple. War is costly too, to promote human rights we can put resources into education instead of into bombs and bullets. Education makes citizens who can create a liberal democracy, who don't allow the government to be oppressive. So, I don't see a serious dilemma between non-violence and human rights that make pursuing both of the incompatible.
I think the key is that Western governments need to put universal human rights ahead of other policy goals, in terms of priority. I don't know what is going on behind the scenes in diplomacy, but the serious pressure from powerful Western countries should surely have some impacts. However, the West is lenient, or even favourable towards a brutal regime that is pro-West (i.e. Saudi Arabia). For most governments, the ideal of human rights doesn't seem to be an end in itself, but just a (still legitimate) excuse to denounce anti-West governments. And now, the United States, which once inspired the world with its ideals in the Declaration of Independence and the Constutition, is showing the model of torture and human rights abuses to the world.
Finally, as an author of the media analysis blog, I can't stress enough the importance of media in promoting human rights. When the TV programmes people are getting from America tell them how to be nasty and torturous to each other, how to invade privacy of others, how to objectify women, and a horrible form of democracy in which voting is based on each one's selfish interests not principles or policies, it is hard to expect human rights to be truly universal...
5. What do you think will be the next phase of human evolution?
It is such a grand question that I'm not really confident to answer. But it is indeed an important thing to think about the world in long-term (though we may all be dead...). I don't really have knowledge to argue it scientifically/genetically, and I don't really feel like drawing the map of doom-and-gloom destruction-of-the-world type of future. So, I propose, somewhat optimistically, that the next phase of human evolution will be the end of industrialisation.
It seems to me that what's happening now is, that we have amazing productive capacity, so firms can produce more than necessary. But we already have what we need, and we don't need more stuff firms have capacity to produce. So businesses create false needs through advertising and manipulation by making people buy extra goods they produce. And as businesses produce more, we have to work more. So now something bizarre seems to be going on... though we can be working less because productive capacity has gone up, but instead we are working even longer to produce goods we don't really need, and we even create false demands by advertising to sell them, leaving carbon and toxic footprints. It seems that only business owners, investors and advertising agencies are benefiting from this massive waste of resources.
Capitalism is brilliant at increasing production, though it doesn't do a very good job in distributing that equally or deciding what to produce. With the Industrial Revolution, capitalism has indeed raised our standard of living dramatically. I think it's great that we have efficient production of resources and increased productive capacity; the issue is how we use it. We can use the increased capacity to be working less and spending extra time to enrich our mind, or increase overseas aid and make the world's income distribution more equitable, but late capitalism just functions to endlessly produce, produce and produce. One major flaw of capitalism is pictured in the concept of GDP which underlines the entire structure of capitalism, which counts military expenditure while not counting domestic activities performed within households, (in some countries it comprises 40% of the entire production, and mostly performed by women) nature and health, as a Kiwi economist Marilyn Waring critiqued in her groundbreaking work 'Counting for Nothing'.
The Rules: Leave me a comment saying, “Interview me.”I respond by asking you five personal questions so I can get to know you better. If I already know you well, expect the questions may be a little more intimate!You WILL update your journal/bloggy thing/whatever with the answers to the questions.You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the post.When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.
My questions come from Thinking Girl.
4. How can we, as a global society, balance the principle of non-violence with a desire to achieve human rights in a violent and corrupt dictatorship/autocracy/theocracy?
In my idealist dream, I envisage the worldwide system like EU Human Rights Court that overrides a national court in matters of human rights. It is this system that brought the historic victory for Polish women yesterday; even a ultra-conservative government of Poland has no right to take women's Right to Choose away. It is not realistic in a foreseeable future, when majority of the world's government don't seem to understand or don't want to understand what human rights means; nevertheless, an endeavour to establish a worldwide justice system has borne fruit in a form of the International Criminal Court, so no matter how imperfect it is, the world is heading for the better direction. And also, as a result of 2005 World Summit, international society's 'responsibility to protect' the world population from genocide and crimes against humanity is formally recognised.
I enthusiastically support humanitarian intervention when necessary, especially under circumstances of genocide and massive human rights abuses, for example, in case of Darfur. Intervention to save human lives and rights doesn't really contradict against the principle of non-violence. Realistically I'm not expecting much from the Security Council anyway, as usually one of three selfish veto powers, namely the US, Russia and China, vetoes to exercise responsibility to protect. (The US veto is usually highlighted and criticised, but China has been vetoing to protect the most brutal regimes in the world with which they have economic relations, including Sudan. These resolutions to save people of Darfur aren't even voted as they know China would veto it.)
However, this is not to support intervention by any country to protect human rights and save people from an oppressive regime. War is also a form of human rights abuses, and actually, I don't really think forcibly toppling a violent dictatorship would always improve human rights, except in extraordinary circumstances I mentioned above. It would be easy if killing a single evil dictator turns a country into a human rights paradise, but the reality is not that simple. War is costly too, to promote human rights we can put resources into education instead of into bombs and bullets. Education makes citizens who can create a liberal democracy, who don't allow the government to be oppressive. So, I don't see a serious dilemma between non-violence and human rights that make pursuing both of the incompatible.
I think the key is that Western governments need to put universal human rights ahead of other policy goals, in terms of priority. I don't know what is going on behind the scenes in diplomacy, but the serious pressure from powerful Western countries should surely have some impacts. However, the West is lenient, or even favourable towards a brutal regime that is pro-West (i.e. Saudi Arabia). For most governments, the ideal of human rights doesn't seem to be an end in itself, but just a (still legitimate) excuse to denounce anti-West governments. And now, the United States, which once inspired the world with its ideals in the Declaration of Independence and the Constutition, is showing the model of torture and human rights abuses to the world.
Finally, as an author of the media analysis blog, I can't stress enough the importance of media in promoting human rights. When the TV programmes people are getting from America tell them how to be nasty and torturous to each other, how to invade privacy of others, how to objectify women, and a horrible form of democracy in which voting is based on each one's selfish interests not principles or policies, it is hard to expect human rights to be truly universal...
5. What do you think will be the next phase of human evolution?
It is such a grand question that I'm not really confident to answer. But it is indeed an important thing to think about the world in long-term (though we may all be dead...). I don't really have knowledge to argue it scientifically/genetically, and I don't really feel like drawing the map of doom-and-gloom destruction-of-the-world type of future. So, I propose, somewhat optimistically, that the next phase of human evolution will be the end of industrialisation.
It seems to me that what's happening now is, that we have amazing productive capacity, so firms can produce more than necessary. But we already have what we need, and we don't need more stuff firms have capacity to produce. So businesses create false needs through advertising and manipulation by making people buy extra goods they produce. And as businesses produce more, we have to work more. So now something bizarre seems to be going on... though we can be working less because productive capacity has gone up, but instead we are working even longer to produce goods we don't really need, and we even create false demands by advertising to sell them, leaving carbon and toxic footprints. It seems that only business owners, investors and advertising agencies are benefiting from this massive waste of resources.
Capitalism is brilliant at increasing production, though it doesn't do a very good job in distributing that equally or deciding what to produce. With the Industrial Revolution, capitalism has indeed raised our standard of living dramatically. I think it's great that we have efficient production of resources and increased productive capacity; the issue is how we use it. We can use the increased capacity to be working less and spending extra time to enrich our mind, or increase overseas aid and make the world's income distribution more equitable, but late capitalism just functions to endlessly produce, produce and produce. One major flaw of capitalism is pictured in the concept of GDP which underlines the entire structure of capitalism, which counts military expenditure while not counting domestic activities performed within households, (in some countries it comprises 40% of the entire production, and mostly performed by women) nature and health, as a Kiwi economist Marilyn Waring critiqued in her groundbreaking work 'Counting for Nothing'.
Though I don't really think that capitalism is going to see a sudden death in a foreseeable future, the nature of it will change and the paradigm will shift. Karl Marx envisioned communism after capitalism; the modern implications of his words are not about the failed attempts of variant kinds of fascism/totalitarianism committed under the stolen name of 'communism' in the past, these are about future. I don't know if communism is the answer. I don't agree with dictatorship of the proletarians, any kind of dictatorship corrupts. But the twentieth century saw some of his ideas realised, in forms of social democracy; though it is facing backlash in recent two decades. And the current global enthusiasm for green lifestyle, increasing support for fair trade and 'slow life', Green change to capitalism seems to be likely. Considering feudalism that once looked almighty is dead now, and the speed of progress that various social movements have achieved, nothing can rule out the possibility of a radical change, though it might seem implausible at the moment.
Monday, 19 March 2007
Interview Meme (1)
The Rules: Leave me a comment saying, “Interview me.”I respond by asking you five personal questions so I can get to know you better. If I already know you well, expect the questions may be a little more intimate!You WILL update your journal/bloggy thing/whatever with the answers to the questions.You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the post.When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.
My questions come from Thinking Girl.
3. Where did you live before moving to New Zealand?
I used to live in Japan. I was born there, and lived there for a long, long time. Not anymore.
Some people still keep attaching me to the 'Japanese' identity. Well, it is true legally or racially, but I don't really identify myself with Japan much. I'm not really interested in Japanese music or food or movies or festivals or whatever. I don't believe in Japanese religion, I'm agnostic. It is my past, but not my future. I don't like being primarily identified as 'Japanese' rather than something else that defines me better, such as an activist, a vegetarian, a progressive, a cafe-lover, etc. I feel that artificially drawn borders are emphasised too much, nationality is given too much importance in this world. When people meet people 'from' another country, we tend to ask first 'where are you from?', categorise them into that nationality, and see the person through the stained glass box of the national identity. But nationality/ethnicity is not always the primary definer of a person's identity.
Ernst Renan argued that the concept of a nation should be based on each individual's choice not characteristics; nationality is 'a daily plebiscite', one needs to give consent and commitment to belong to a nation, because "man [sic] is a slave neither of his race nor his language, nor of his religion, nor of the course of rivers nor of the direction taken by mountain chains" (he also said that a nation was "a group of people united by a mistaken view about the past and a hatred of their neighbours"). Therefore, I like to be identified as a New Zealander, but a citizen of the world is fine for me. I'm generally supportive of multiculturalism, but sometimes I feel that multiculturalism tacitly discourages immigrants from assimilation. People should be given a choice to retain ties with a country of birth, but also a right to be free from the country one is born (which she/he didn't even choose) should be respected.
Though Japan still meets the minimum standard of a liberal democracy, patriarchy and misogyny are rampant, and nasty, xenophobic jingoism is rearing its ugly head. To make matters worse, it is hard to see the hope in the future of the country when the younger generation seems to be more conservative than baby boomers over there. The most important thing I learned from the experience of living in Japan is the greatness of the West. With all the problems and oppressions still remaining in the West, I embrace and praise the deep-rooted liberalism, tolerance, individualism, compassion, and the activist tradition of the West. I don't hesitate to claim that the West is the best. I strongly reject cultural relativism type of argument because I'm so sick to death of hearing defence of patriarchy/racism/illiberal practices as 'our culture' and attack on human rights, feminism and civil liberties that they are 'Westernising forces'. Sometimes I wonder if I were born in the West, I might be more critical of the West...
There are two more questions from Thinking Girl, but as it is getting long I will write the answers for them next time...
My questions come from Thinking Girl.
1. Where is the one place you most want to visit in the whole world? Why?
2. What is your most treasured childhood memory?
3. Where did you live before moving to New Zealand?
I used to live in Japan. I was born there, and lived there for a long, long time. Not anymore.
Some people still keep attaching me to the 'Japanese' identity. Well, it is true legally or racially, but I don't really identify myself with Japan much. I'm not really interested in Japanese music or food or movies or festivals or whatever. I don't believe in Japanese religion, I'm agnostic. It is my past, but not my future. I don't like being primarily identified as 'Japanese' rather than something else that defines me better, such as an activist, a vegetarian, a progressive, a cafe-lover, etc. I feel that artificially drawn borders are emphasised too much, nationality is given too much importance in this world. When people meet people 'from' another country, we tend to ask first 'where are you from?', categorise them into that nationality, and see the person through the stained glass box of the national identity. But nationality/ethnicity is not always the primary definer of a person's identity.
Ernst Renan argued that the concept of a nation should be based on each individual's choice not characteristics; nationality is 'a daily plebiscite', one needs to give consent and commitment to belong to a nation, because "man [sic] is a slave neither of his race nor his language, nor of his religion, nor of the course of rivers nor of the direction taken by mountain chains" (he also said that a nation was "a group of people united by a mistaken view about the past and a hatred of their neighbours"). Therefore, I like to be identified as a New Zealander, but a citizen of the world is fine for me. I'm generally supportive of multiculturalism, but sometimes I feel that multiculturalism tacitly discourages immigrants from assimilation. People should be given a choice to retain ties with a country of birth, but also a right to be free from the country one is born (which she/he didn't even choose) should be respected.
Though Japan still meets the minimum standard of a liberal democracy, patriarchy and misogyny are rampant, and nasty, xenophobic jingoism is rearing its ugly head. To make matters worse, it is hard to see the hope in the future of the country when the younger generation seems to be more conservative than baby boomers over there. The most important thing I learned from the experience of living in Japan is the greatness of the West. With all the problems and oppressions still remaining in the West, I embrace and praise the deep-rooted liberalism, tolerance, individualism, compassion, and the activist tradition of the West. I don't hesitate to claim that the West is the best. I strongly reject cultural relativism type of argument because I'm so sick to death of hearing defence of patriarchy/racism/illiberal practices as 'our culture' and attack on human rights, feminism and civil liberties that they are 'Westernising forces'. Sometimes I wonder if I were born in the West, I might be more critical of the West...
There are two more questions from Thinking Girl, but as it is getting long I will write the answers for them next time...
Sunday, 18 March 2007
Sue Bradford; the conscience of New Zealand
"I wanted to know when I died that I'd done all I could do to help all people to have a full life, not just those born lucky, rich, strong or beautiful." - Sue Bradford
We read her name every day in newspapers. We hear her name every evening in TV News. She is probably the most fervently loved and intensely hated person in New Zealand at the moment. Her name is Sue Bradford.
Bradford's bill to repeal Section 59 of the Crimes Act, so-called "anti-smacking bill", has drawn an incredible amount of attention from the media and the public. The name that media gave the Bradford bill; "anti-smacking bill"; is not necessarily wrong, because the bill makes "smacking" illegal. But it is misleading at the same time, because it gives an impression that the Bill is about inserting a new clause, which explicitly bans smacking, in the Crimes Act. Considering the amount of media report on this bill, and that the media primarily refers to her bill as 'anti-smacking bill', the media creates a false impression that the Bradford bill is aiming to specifically criminalise 'caring parents' who occasionally smack their children (Their over-reporting of right-wing pressure group's point also contributes to make this impression). The fact that the Bradford bill allows parents to use reasonable force to protect children from harm or injury under emergency circumstances, which is a crucial part of her bill, is rarely reported.
This illusion of "loving-ordinary-parents-going-to-jail" is just a tactic by pro-violence groups to control people by fear. I mean, not every "illegal" act is dealt with police and prisons. Is speeding legal? No. Do you fear going to prison every time you over-speed? Probably not. Pressure groups, unable to criticise the notion that violence against children is morally bad, shrewdly change the argument from the action (smacking) to the people (loving parents). They may be loving and caring parents, but the act of smacking is neither loving nor caring.
There is really nothing complicated in this issue. Violence is violence, regardless of the age of people against whom violence is targeted. Violence is undesirable and should be avoided. Especially violence against children is cruel because children often can't speak up against the abuse of human rights because of the imbalance of power. Historically speaking, the circumstances under which violence is accepted has been continuously limited as a civilisation has progressed. In the ancient times a war was not considered as moral evil, and now war is outlawed (at least in theory). Geneva Convention didn't exist till sixty years ago. There were times that violence against certain people; slaves, people of different colour or ethnicity, women; were tolerated. This is a part of the gradual progress towards human rights and non-violence we have been making, slowly but steadily, for decades or centuries.
Some opponents of the bill argue for 'parent's rights', as if children were properties of their parents. This nonsense 'parent's right to hit children' is not a legitimate right, just like 'husband's right to hit his wife' or 'a right to kill' doesn't exist. Children are not properties of parents, just like wives are not properties of husbands, and employees are not properties of employers.
Read an amazing story of her life that has been dedicated to the causes to make the world better. And Paul Holmes's interview of Sue Bradford is brilliant and fair; no matter what Holmes said before in regards to the Greens, he's done a superb job as a journalist.
Personally, I met her in the Green Party Conference. Well, I didn't really 'meet' her; I just talked with her for a few seconds. She shook my hand and smiled; 'welcome to the Greens'. Feeling at a loss what to say, I spoke to her; 'it is my great honour to meet you'. She is probably the least person to expect such a formal reply; But I really felt like I am exceptionally honoured to meet her. 'Her face is beautiful. It shows decency, openness and intelligence', Holmes writes. Besides, she has a charisma, vigour and genuine passion of an activist that only few people have.
She represents fearless activism. She is making the lasting, substantial change in the society; establishing the ethical standard that violence, no matter against whom, is not tolerated. Long live Sue Bradford. The great statesperson of our era. The Conscience of New Zealand.
We read her name every day in newspapers. We hear her name every evening in TV News. She is probably the most fervently loved and intensely hated person in New Zealand at the moment. Her name is Sue Bradford.
Bradford's bill to repeal Section 59 of the Crimes Act, so-called "anti-smacking bill", has drawn an incredible amount of attention from the media and the public. The name that media gave the Bradford bill; "anti-smacking bill"; is not necessarily wrong, because the bill makes "smacking" illegal. But it is misleading at the same time, because it gives an impression that the Bill is about inserting a new clause, which explicitly bans smacking, in the Crimes Act. Considering the amount of media report on this bill, and that the media primarily refers to her bill as 'anti-smacking bill', the media creates a false impression that the Bradford bill is aiming to specifically criminalise 'caring parents' who occasionally smack their children (Their over-reporting of right-wing pressure group's point also contributes to make this impression). The fact that the Bradford bill allows parents to use reasonable force to protect children from harm or injury under emergency circumstances, which is a crucial part of her bill, is rarely reported.
This illusion of "loving-ordinary-parents-going-to-jail" is just a tactic by pro-violence groups to control people by fear. I mean, not every "illegal" act is dealt with police and prisons. Is speeding legal? No. Do you fear going to prison every time you over-speed? Probably not. Pressure groups, unable to criticise the notion that violence against children is morally bad, shrewdly change the argument from the action (smacking) to the people (loving parents). They may be loving and caring parents, but the act of smacking is neither loving nor caring.
There is really nothing complicated in this issue. Violence is violence, regardless of the age of people against whom violence is targeted. Violence is undesirable and should be avoided. Especially violence against children is cruel because children often can't speak up against the abuse of human rights because of the imbalance of power. Historically speaking, the circumstances under which violence is accepted has been continuously limited as a civilisation has progressed. In the ancient times a war was not considered as moral evil, and now war is outlawed (at least in theory). Geneva Convention didn't exist till sixty years ago. There were times that violence against certain people; slaves, people of different colour or ethnicity, women; were tolerated. This is a part of the gradual progress towards human rights and non-violence we have been making, slowly but steadily, for decades or centuries.
Some opponents of the bill argue for 'parent's rights', as if children were properties of their parents. This nonsense 'parent's right to hit children' is not a legitimate right, just like 'husband's right to hit his wife' or 'a right to kill' doesn't exist. Children are not properties of parents, just like wives are not properties of husbands, and employees are not properties of employers.
Read an amazing story of her life that has been dedicated to the causes to make the world better. And Paul Holmes's interview of Sue Bradford is brilliant and fair; no matter what Holmes said before in regards to the Greens, he's done a superb job as a journalist.
Personally, I met her in the Green Party Conference. Well, I didn't really 'meet' her; I just talked with her for a few seconds. She shook my hand and smiled; 'welcome to the Greens'. Feeling at a loss what to say, I spoke to her; 'it is my great honour to meet you'. She is probably the least person to expect such a formal reply; But I really felt like I am exceptionally honoured to meet her. 'Her face is beautiful. It shows decency, openness and intelligence', Holmes writes. Besides, she has a charisma, vigour and genuine passion of an activist that only few people have.
She represents fearless activism. She is making the lasting, substantial change in the society; establishing the ethical standard that violence, no matter against whom, is not tolerated. Long live Sue Bradford. The great statesperson of our era. The Conscience of New Zealand.
Tuesday, 13 March 2007
Is she scientifically beautiful?
There are some researchers who claim that Naomi Campbell is the world's most beautiful woman scientifically. And there is a respected, liberal newspaper that reports the research. I am sure that the Independent has better stories to tell, considering it is owned neither by Rupert Murdoch nor by Larry Flynt.
Beauty is subjective. The researchers would have probably thought of the Platonic 'form' of beauty, the absolute criteria of beauty to which everything can be compared. Well, this 'standard' of beauty is based on winners of a beauty competition (the article doesn't even mention which country, it is possible that it is a Polish one, considering that the research was conducted by the University of Gdansk). It is so obvious that the concept of beauty depends on culture and is shaped by culture; no matter if you agree with postmodernism or not, we all know that Peruvians or Samoans have different standards of beauty from the Polish or Americans. And it goes without saying that every individual has different views on beauty.
If the research were only flawed and useless I could have just ignored it, but this kind of research on beauty promotes ugly ideas, such as that beauty only stems from physical appearance. 'Beauty' is a deep concept, and it is certainly not something that can be measured by number; the beautiful mind, not pretty face, sexy legs or 19.5% calf girth to height percentage, is the real beauty. I don't think anyone is beautiful unless s/he has a beautiful soul. The ideology behind this research reduces real, living human beings to numbers, things, objects.
This research isn't only targeting women, so it may not be explicitly sexist, but the comment of the leading researcher's "Attractiveness of a woman's body is one of the most important factors in mate selection" is outrageous and outright misogynistic. This poisonous view that women's virtue is attractiveness, and 'unattractive' (from men's point of view, only based on physical appearances) women are not as worth as 'attractive' women, sickens me to the core of my heart. Placing utmost values on physical attractiveness is objectification (it is same for men too, objectification of both women and men is hardly better than objectification of women, but objectification of women is more serious because it is entrenched in the society).
I am annoyed, saddened and exasperated to see that this sort of nonsense is coming out from the academia, which ought to be the beacon of society to guide the public to the path of wisdom and justice, not the servant of the beauty industry. The holy grail of the fashion and beauty industries? Measuring a person's (especially a women's) worth and beauty only by BMI or waist-to-chest-ration is holy? It is nothing more than inane, it is ugly, and nothing less than unholy.
Beauty is subjective. The researchers would have probably thought of the Platonic 'form' of beauty, the absolute criteria of beauty to which everything can be compared. Well, this 'standard' of beauty is based on winners of a beauty competition (the article doesn't even mention which country, it is possible that it is a Polish one, considering that the research was conducted by the University of Gdansk). It is so obvious that the concept of beauty depends on culture and is shaped by culture; no matter if you agree with postmodernism or not, we all know that Peruvians or Samoans have different standards of beauty from the Polish or Americans. And it goes without saying that every individual has different views on beauty.
If the research were only flawed and useless I could have just ignored it, but this kind of research on beauty promotes ugly ideas, such as that beauty only stems from physical appearance. 'Beauty' is a deep concept, and it is certainly not something that can be measured by number; the beautiful mind, not pretty face, sexy legs or 19.5% calf girth to height percentage, is the real beauty. I don't think anyone is beautiful unless s/he has a beautiful soul. The ideology behind this research reduces real, living human beings to numbers, things, objects.
This research isn't only targeting women, so it may not be explicitly sexist, but the comment of the leading researcher's "Attractiveness of a woman's body is one of the most important factors in mate selection" is outrageous and outright misogynistic. This poisonous view that women's virtue is attractiveness, and 'unattractive' (from men's point of view, only based on physical appearances) women are not as worth as 'attractive' women, sickens me to the core of my heart. Placing utmost values on physical attractiveness is objectification (it is same for men too, objectification of both women and men is hardly better than objectification of women, but objectification of women is more serious because it is entrenched in the society).
I am annoyed, saddened and exasperated to see that this sort of nonsense is coming out from the academia, which ought to be the beacon of society to guide the public to the path of wisdom and justice, not the servant of the beauty industry. The holy grail of the fashion and beauty industries? Measuring a person's (especially a women's) worth and beauty only by BMI or waist-to-chest-ration is holy? It is nothing more than inane, it is ugly, and nothing less than unholy.
Friday, 9 March 2007
Blog Against Sexism Day: Objectification of Women and Media
In her masterpiece 'the Second Sex', Simone de Beauvoir, a French feminist, analysed women's roles and positions in the society from an existentialist point of view. "She is defined and differentiated with reference to man and not he with reference to her; she is the incidental, the inessential as opposed to the essential. He is the Subject, he is the Absolute – she is the Other", she perceptively wrote. "Now, woman has always been man’s dependant, if not his slave; the two sexes have never shared the world in equality", she wrote in 1949, heralding the age of second-wave feminism. Fifty-eight years later, are the two sexes sharing the world in equality today?
The progress feminism has made in last sixty years, at least in the Western world, has been nothing less than phenomenal; feminist thinkers and activists, such as Betty Friedan and Kate Millet, transformed our thinking and started to shift the very basic paradigm of the society. We had Roe v. Wade. And now, in 2007, I'm writing this from a country where the Prime Minister, the Speaker of the Parliament, and the Chief Justice are all women.
However, we shouldn't get too illuminated and blinded by the brightness of feminism's success; it would be wrong to assert that feminism has achieved its goals, even in the West. The two sexes have never shared the world in equality, and aren't sharing the world in equality, in 2007. Women haven't even achieved the equal political representation (if you doubt it, try to name a country that has 50% representation of women in Parliament, or a female Prime Minister of Sweden, which is undoubtedly one of the most feminist countries in the world), and this fundamental structure of the society which de Beauvoir depicted, designation of women as the Other, is yet to be broken down.
"She appears essentially to the male as a sexual being. For him she is sex – absolute sex, no less", she wrote in 1949. Her account has never been more relevant than in now. As you can see, women are depicted as sex objects, everywhere, in media. Everywhere. Sexualisation of women, and recently young girls, gravely harms their mental health and self-esteem, the crucial factor in their Mind and well-being. (I recommend you to read a full report of the American Psychological Association on this topic, at here.) This dogma that the main source of a woman's worth is her sexual or physical attractiveness. This ideology that the kindness and intelligence are less important for women; Body above Mind. The indoctorination that women should pursue the 'ideal' body image that is digitally enhanced and a total illusion, or otherwise she is not as worthy. This relationship between the One and the Other.
It is ironic that sexual liberation was one of the main themes of the sixties, and one of the main goals of feminism. Feminists fought to break the old, hypocritical sexual chastity imposed only on women, virginity worship, and constraints that deprived women of sexual pleasure. Now, the sexual revolution seems to have been successful; and women are still treated as the Other and the Object. Why has this happened? I think one of the answers is that the sexual revolution ended up far more successful than feminism. When sexual freedom is introduced into a society that hasn't deconstructed the patriarchy, the outcome would be a grim one; from this unholy union of sexual freedom and patriarchy, it is natural that pornography and sexist advertising are born. I am not saying depicting sex or naked bodies is inherently sexist or objectifying; the real problem is how we treat them, how we depict them. Or rather, how the media depict them.
Why was the sexual revolution so successful, then? Because the sex revolution met the needs of the capitalist society; businesses loved it. The commercial media loved it. Sex sells. In a capitalist society, what contributes to the interests of business-owners survives. In a society where the media is privately owned by a company whose sole motive is the profit, anything serves the profit-maximising crusade of the media owners flourishes. Rupert Murdoch must love the sexual revolution because that's why he could make millions or billions of pounds from the Sun, which shamefully has the highest circulation of any English-language paper in the world. Obviously, no matter how just it is, the commercial media isn't interested in shifting the paradigm of the patriarchal system. And how can an agenda be successful when it isn't even reported well by the dominant media (which is mostly dominated by men)?
Tuesday, 6 March 2007
'War on Terror'; there's something to do at home, Mr Howard
John Howard is anything but what the name of his party suggests; liberal. With his uncritical and absolute faith in Bush, and relentless imposition of conservatism, he earned Australia an honourable title of the 51st state of the US. He is a zealous supporter of the Bush's "War on Terror" in the Middle East. However, it seems that he has something to do at his home; I mean, his real home, home electorate of Bennelong, in North Sydney.
Howard has held Bennelong for 33 years, however, due to the demographic and boundary change of the division, it has now become a marginal seat. For this year's election, Maxine McKew, a nation's foremost and eminent journalist from ABC (a public service broadcaster), is standing for Labor in Bennelong to defeat the Prime Minister. With McKew's serious and realistic chance to oust Howard from the Parliament, the Bennelong race is going to embody the change that progressive Australians have long hoped for.
However, terrorism, against which Howard has been passionately fighting, clouded the fair political contest; McKew has been threatened to death. Men were found holding torches underneath her car at home. And it was revealed that a Green candidate who ran against Howard in Bennelong three years ago also received numerous death threats. It is a threat against democracy, and especially when candidates running against the most powerful politician in the country are repeatedly threatened, the matter is even more serious.
So, titles of newspaper articles like 'McKew refuses to back down' aren't really appropriate. Refuses to back down? Does the Herald Sun expect McKew to 'back down', giving in to violence? Would the Herald Sun write 'Bush refuses to introduce Sharia law' or something like that after 9/11? McKew should be praised for her determination and courage, so 'Labor's McKew stands firm' (ABC) is better.
Why the Prime Minister doesn't condemn this violence? It's about democracy, the very thing that Howard claims to be fighting for; it's violence against democracy, the very thing Howard claims to fighting to eliminate, in the War on Terror. Doesn't he care because who is threatened is his opponent, or War on Terror is just an excuse for him to support Bush? And why all the press, except ABC, a public service broadcaster, don't report that the Green leader Bob Brown urged Howard to condemn the death threat? I'm not really a conspiracy theorist, but "When people stand against John Howard there are some people in the community who react in a threatening and unsettling way", I wonder who's behind all the attacks.
Then, the Sydney Morning Herald published a bizarre article that says it was not a politically-motivated attack. SMH starts the article titled 'McKew car theft theory' by stating "Police investigating reports of men shining torches into the car of Maxine McKew... are considering whether they might have been simply trying to steal it". Police are expected to consider every possibility so this fact is meaningless; consideration doesn't mean it is true, or even it is likely. However, SMH twists it and goes on to claim that 'The Herald understands the incident is not believed to be politically motivated'. What? Based on what? I can't see why SMH can get away with it without providing basis for that. Furthermore, later in the article, it refers to the very evidences that indicate the crime was politically motivated; 'The former ABC TV journalist also received two unsigned hate letters last week but their contents have not been revealed. Police are also investigating an anonymous call about Ms McKew to the national security hotline, but have not revealed what the caller said.' How reasonable is it to say that when McKew is continuously receiving hate letters and death threats, suspicious men sneaking under her car were 'simply trying to steal it'? This article doesn't make sense at all, but many people who skimmed through the article would have simply thought 'oh, it wasn't a political violence to disrupt democratic process or anything, it was just a car theft. It must be true because a credible broadsheet like SMH says so'. And then, Wikipedia, one of the most influencial media in the Internet, said 'police believe this was an attempted car theft', based on the SMH article (I deleted it).
War on Terror? Bob Brown seems to be the best leader for the sacred war to defend liberty and democracy.
Howard has held Bennelong for 33 years, however, due to the demographic and boundary change of the division, it has now become a marginal seat. For this year's election, Maxine McKew, a nation's foremost and eminent journalist from ABC (a public service broadcaster), is standing for Labor in Bennelong to defeat the Prime Minister. With McKew's serious and realistic chance to oust Howard from the Parliament, the Bennelong race is going to embody the change that progressive Australians have long hoped for.
However, terrorism, against which Howard has been passionately fighting, clouded the fair political contest; McKew has been threatened to death. Men were found holding torches underneath her car at home. And it was revealed that a Green candidate who ran against Howard in Bennelong three years ago also received numerous death threats. It is a threat against democracy, and especially when candidates running against the most powerful politician in the country are repeatedly threatened, the matter is even more serious.
So, titles of newspaper articles like 'McKew refuses to back down' aren't really appropriate. Refuses to back down? Does the Herald Sun expect McKew to 'back down', giving in to violence? Would the Herald Sun write 'Bush refuses to introduce Sharia law' or something like that after 9/11? McKew should be praised for her determination and courage, so 'Labor's McKew stands firm' (ABC) is better.
Why the Prime Minister doesn't condemn this violence? It's about democracy, the very thing that Howard claims to be fighting for; it's violence against democracy, the very thing Howard claims to fighting to eliminate, in the War on Terror. Doesn't he care because who is threatened is his opponent, or War on Terror is just an excuse for him to support Bush? And why all the press, except ABC, a public service broadcaster, don't report that the Green leader Bob Brown urged Howard to condemn the death threat? I'm not really a conspiracy theorist, but "When people stand against John Howard there are some people in the community who react in a threatening and unsettling way", I wonder who's behind all the attacks.
Then, the Sydney Morning Herald published a bizarre article that says it was not a politically-motivated attack. SMH starts the article titled 'McKew car theft theory' by stating "Police investigating reports of men shining torches into the car of Maxine McKew... are considering whether they might have been simply trying to steal it". Police are expected to consider every possibility so this fact is meaningless; consideration doesn't mean it is true, or even it is likely. However, SMH twists it and goes on to claim that 'The Herald understands the incident is not believed to be politically motivated'. What? Based on what? I can't see why SMH can get away with it without providing basis for that. Furthermore, later in the article, it refers to the very evidences that indicate the crime was politically motivated; 'The former ABC TV journalist also received two unsigned hate letters last week but their contents have not been revealed. Police are also investigating an anonymous call about Ms McKew to the national security hotline, but have not revealed what the caller said.' How reasonable is it to say that when McKew is continuously receiving hate letters and death threats, suspicious men sneaking under her car were 'simply trying to steal it'? This article doesn't make sense at all, but many people who skimmed through the article would have simply thought 'oh, it wasn't a political violence to disrupt democratic process or anything, it was just a car theft. It must be true because a credible broadsheet like SMH says so'. And then, Wikipedia, one of the most influencial media in the Internet, said 'police believe this was an attempted car theft', based on the SMH article (I deleted it).
War on Terror? Bob Brown seems to be the best leader for the sacred war to defend liberty and democracy.
Sunday, 4 March 2007
Commercialism ignores the importance of journalism
According to the NZ Herald report, TVNZ is going to target the investigative journalists in their plan to cut spending.
It's a typical example of the failure of commercial media model. Investigative journalism is the most important part of media organisations which enable them to fulfill their role as one of the society's integral pillars. There are many other things that are far less important than investigative journalism! What's the raison d'etre of the media? To critique and restrain power.
Commercial media model in which media organisation's primary purpose is profit maximisation is fundamentally flawed. Investigative journalism is expensive and may not have the highest rating, but has an intrinsic value in it that can't be taken into account in the capitalist market. That is why we need a non-commercial public broadcaster!
It's a typical example of the failure of commercial media model. Investigative journalism is the most important part of media organisations which enable them to fulfill their role as one of the society's integral pillars. There are many other things that are far less important than investigative journalism! What's the raison d'etre of the media? To critique and restrain power.
Commercial media model in which media organisation's primary purpose is profit maximisation is fundamentally flawed. Investigative journalism is expensive and may not have the highest rating, but has an intrinsic value in it that can't be taken into account in the capitalist market. That is why we need a non-commercial public broadcaster!
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