"Donald Trump doesn't like to read" [but some of the rest of us do...]

In a period of weeks where blind ignorance and Islamaphobia have been tragically demonstrated around the globe, it's apparent that the act of reading (and here I don't mean skimming racist Tweets) is more important than ever but some of the most powerful people are against it...

"The Trump statement [in the blogpost title] was used in an ad campaign ("World, stay awake") by the German bookstore chain "Thalia" to attract attention; according to former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson, it is true (cf. The Washington Post, Dec. 7, 2018).

The publisher Jordi Nadal used the same slogan for the title of an op-ed piece published in La Vanguardia newspaper in which he gave good reasons for reading, of which some excerpts read as follows:

[...] reading is growing, is feeding curiosity, is giving our minds and emotions more circuits and ressources. The biggest difference between the mind of a child educated in a rich family and that of poor one lies in the words he/she knows. A poor mind doesn't have words. A rich mind has got a universe of words that, in turn, combined and made their own, turn into the master key that will open a good part of the doors and situations present along life.

Juan José Millás reminded us that reality is made of words, which means who dominates words dominates reality. Thus, we consider it an absolute gift to have discovered books and reading. For very many reasons: we can read, because we want to feed our curiosity, because we want to grow, because we want to evade ourselves [?], because we want to understand other things and other people and cultures, because we want to listen to other lives.

[...] Without reading there is no depth of field, nor contrast, nor nuances. Without reading we easily fall into fanatism. You know, a fanatic is the one who doesn't want to change neither the topic nor the opinion. Fanatics read little or badly. Without reading, there triumph naturally the tweet and hate.

What is more, reading is healing and healthy. Reading --every day there are more scientific studies that avail it-- is good for your health. Readers on average live two years more.

Reading is a clean way of enjoying life. Enjoying it as a superior form of research to learn to govern a little better, with humility and gratitude, a life that's one's own in freedom. A PISA study revealed that, beyond the indicators of place, country, etc. and levels of reading competence, a home with less than 20 books is a reliable indicator of a more than nearly assured school failure, and, on the other hand, a home with more than 200 books is a near guarantee for academic success.

[...] Every reader has got the unique and non-transferable opportunity to be the master of a world when he/she dives into the intimacy of reading, and, as was said masterfully by the great author C.S. Lewis [at least in William Nicholson's Shadowlands]: "We read to know we are not alone."

Another statement [from] the Thalia campaign: "The world has got more secrets than those known by Siri."

SOURCE: La Vanguardia, Feb. 2, 2019, p. 26 [printed edition]; horizont.net [images]

Found at Literary Rambles here.

New German government calls for European ban on biometric mass surveillance

"The newly-agreed German government coalition has called for a Europe-wide ban on public facial recognition and other biometric surveillance.  This echoes the core demands of the Reclaim Your Face campaign which EDRi has co-led since 2020, through which over 65 civil society groups ask the EU and their national governments to outlaw biometric data mass surveillance. Today, 24 November 2021, the new German government announced their highly-anticipated coalition deal, including the strongest commitments seen so far in Europe to “rule … out” “biometric recognition in public”.  They further called to “reject comprehensive video surveillance and the use of biometric recording for surveillance purposes”. The center-left Social Democrats (SPD), the environmentalist Greens and the business-focused Free Democrats (FDP) jointly emphasised the vital importance of anonymity in public as well as online.  Their statement echoes the demands of over 65 groups in the Reclaim Your Face campaign, co-led by EDRi."

"Berliners To Vote On Expropriating Housing From Powerful Landlords"

 "Berlin’s efforts to lower the fast-rising rents in Germany’s capital city have led to a referendum which could expropriate and socialize almost a quarter of a million apartments primarily from Deutsche Wohnen, the largest real estate company in Europe and one of the largest companies in Germany."

Read more here.

"Before the fall of the Berlin Wall -- Vintage home movies show another side of life in East Germany"

[Photo Credit: Open Memory Box]

In our current era of right-wing populism dividing people against each other for no good reason, it's worth remembering that the Berlin Wall was built to separate those who had everything in common...

"After the Berlin Wall came down [or was more accurately pulled-down] on Nov. 9, 1989, the 40-year-old socialist German Democratic Republic dissolved along with one-party rule, the Stasi secret police and the all-encompassing, five-year economic plans. With reunification, a culture disappeared. And while East Germans adjusted to life under a united and capitalistic Germany, many found it was hard to talk about their past lives with West Germans who felt they already knew their story, and framed it usually in victimhood. 

But now, a unique, online archive of home films shot in the GDR is casting a new light on the extinct country and the lives of its citizens..."

"Legal certainty for all UK nationals in Germany"

[© Monika Skolimowska/dpa-Zentralbild/dpa]

"All British citizens and their family members who have been entitled to free movement in Germany will be eligible to a residence permit in the event of a no-deal Brexit. Today, the German Government has adopted a draft law to be submitted to the Bundestag."

(Axel Dittmann, Director for EU Institutional Affairs, Brexit and EU Coordination at Federal Foreign Office.)

Read from original source here.

Video: "The politically abandoned"

 

As well as the above short film (with English subtitles) there is this fascinating and insightful study on right-wing strongholds in deprived populations across France and Germany that recently found...

"There is a considerable discrepancy between the issues that people view as the ‘biggest problems’ facing their country (which are immigration and the economy) and the challenges that they face in their everyday lives (precarious working conditions, worries about money and declining social infrastructure). 

Media and politics at the national level are criticised for not having properly adopted this ‘citizens’ agenda’. This problem also results in a sense of unfairness and disadvantage.

As such, when people in these regions devalue others, especially migrants, they do so as a reaction to their own experiences of devaluation (this follows the ‘logic of comparative devaluation’). Importantly, the interviews demonstrated no intrinsic patterns of xenophobia.

The central narratives employed by the populists are far less prevalent in their strongholds than is generally assumed. 

When people are asked to describe political contexts in their own words, issues such as Islamisation, Euroscepticism, sweeping criticism of the media and the emphasis on national identity hardly ever crop up. Instead, more often than not the European Union, for example, tends to be viewed as part of the solution, not the problem.

Nationalist clamouring or demands that include a ‘Germany first!’ approach, are ultimately based on the view that politics sets the wrong priorities and focuses on issues that do not reflect the realities of people’s everyday lives. 

However, the interviewees did not necessarily view measures aimed at tackling the refugee crisis, or foreign policy commitments, as fundamentally wrong. 

Nevertheless, the interviewees often believed that a focus on immigration and foreign policy tended to result in less investment and fewer policy measures at the local level that would help tackle the tangible challenges that these people face in their everyday lives. 

This includes increased economic pressure faced by people on low incomes and the gaps in public services. Finally, many interviewees believe that politics has withdrawn from certain social and geographical areas. Importantly, this feeling has led to a strong sense of abandonment.

Conclusions...

Areas now exist which are marked by ‘political abandonment’. 

To regain the trust of the people who live in these areas, it will be necessary to establish a local presence, provide recognition and resolve the problems that they face. 

This study outlines five relevant fields of action as a means of contributing towards this aim:

• solidarity with the resident population is essential if solidarity is to be expressed with newcomers;
• infrastructure as a means of promoting equal opportunities;
• strengthening structures through the presence of political parties at the local level;
• make structural change compatible with society;
• and confidence and assertiveness in the face of right-wing populist narratives."

To download the full study from Zentrum click here.

"How we fight Fascism" [Lessons from history]

As Europe (including Spain's government) piles on the right-wing repression, Chris Hedges sees clear comparisons with another earlier era...

"In 1923 the radical socialist and feminist Clara Zetkin gave a report at the Communist International about the emergence of a political movement called fascism. 

Fascism, then in its infancy, was written off by many liberals, socialists and communists as little more than mob rule, terror and street violence. 

But Zetkin, a German revolutionary, understood its virulence, its seduction and its danger. 

She warned that the longer the stagnation and rot of a dysfunctional democracy went unaddressed, the more attractive fascism would become. And as 21st-century America’s own capitalist democracy disintegrates, replaced by a naked kleptocracy that disdains the rule of law, the struggle of past anti-fascists mirrors our own. 

History has amply illustrated where political paralysis, economic decline, hypermilitarism and widespread corruption lead.

Zetkin’s analysis, eerily prophetic and reprinted in the book “Fighting Fascism: How to Struggle and How to Win,” edited by John Riddell and Mike Taber, highlights the principal features of emerging fascist movements. 

Fascism, Zetkin warned, arises when capitalism enters a period of crisis and breakdown of the democratic institutions that once offered the possibility of reform and protection from an uninhibited assault by the capitalist class. 

The unchecked capitalist assault pushes the middle class, the bulwark of a capitalist democracy, into the working class and often poverty. It strips workers of all protection and depresses wages. 

The longer the economic and social stagnation persists, the more attractive fascism becomes. Zetkin would have warned us that Donald Trump is not the danger; the danger is the growing social and economic inequality that concentrates wealth in the hands of an oligarchic elite and degrades the lives of citizens.

The collapse of a capitalist democracy, she wrote, leaves those in the working class disempowered. Their pleas go unheard. Reforms to address their suffering are cosmetic and useless. Their anger is written off as irrational or racist. 

A bankrupt liberal class, which formerly made incremental and piecemeal reform possible, ameliorating the worst excesses of capitalism, mouths empty slogans about social justice and the rights of workers while selling them out to capitalist elites. 

The hypocrisy of the liberal class evokes not only a disdain for it but a hatred for the liberal, democratic values it supposedly espouses. The “virtues” of democracy become distasteful. 

The crude taunts, threats and insults hurled by fascists at the liberal establishment express a legitimate anger among a betrayed working class. Trump’s coarseness, for this reason, resonates with many pushed to the margins of society. 

Demoralized workers, who also find no defense of their interests by establishment intellectuals, the press and academics, lose faith in the political process. 

Realizing the liberal elites have lied to them, they are open to bizarre and fantastic conspiracy theories. Fascists direct this rage and yearning for revenge against an array of phantom enemies, most of them scapegoated minorities."

Read more from source at Truthdig here.

Catalans vote (while Schäuble-ism lives on)

Despite a heavy police presence and some shocking violence from the Spanish forces Catalonia's citizens voted today to at least try to express their wishes on the question of independence.

Meanwhile, over in Germany, as DiEM25 leader Yanis Varoufakis points out, the same bunch of economic masters (who have roundly ignored the growing acts of repression in Catalonia) are still in charge...even though their main man Wolfgang Schäuble has left the finance post.

Will there now be a clear response to the the Spanish government's anti-democratic tactics from Europe's high and mighty?

Images from the Stasi secret police files (of then East Germany)

Simon Menner

While conducting research on surveillance, I realized that the public has very limited access to images   showing the act of surveillance from the perspective of the surveillant. What actually is it that the Orwellian “Big Brother” gets to see when he is watching us?

For over two and a half years, I applied this question to materials from the former East Germany’s Ministry for State Security, commonly known as the Stasi, which had become publicly available after the fall of the Berlin Wall. The Stasi was one of the most effective surveillance apparatuses ever. The quantity and breadth of the images I was able to unearth was surprising: images documenting Stasi agents being trained in hand signals, or perfecting the art of disguise; Polaroids taken during clandestine searches of people’s homes, to ensure everything could be put back where it belonged; photographs made by Stasi spies photographing other spies.

Many of the images shown here might appear absurd or even funny to us. But it is important not to lose sight of the original intentions behind these pictures—photographic records of the repression exerted by the state to subdue its own citizens. The banality of some of these pictures makes them even more repulsive. Many of the images are open to wide interpretation and could feed or confirm the suspicions of the Stasi agents viewing them. For example, the photograph of a Siemens coffeemaker: Is this West German consumer product evidence of contacts with Western agents? Or merely a present from relatives? The difference can mean years in prison, demonstrating one of the fundamental problems and limitations inherent to any and all forms of surveillance.

Presenting most of these pictures can be a double-edged sword. Many represent an undue intrusion into people’s private lives. Does reproducing them repeat the intrusion and renew injustices committed years ago? I grappled with this difficult issue and concluded that the pictures should be presented because they make an important contribution to discussions about state-sanctioned surveillance systems.

—Simon Menner, November 2014

For fascinating and disturbing photo exhibition click here.






[Source and creator: Open Society Foundations. (Creative Commons license rules.)]

"A Children's Book Introduces German Kids to the True Story of Syrian Refugees"

[Credit: Jan Birck]

"There are now more than 65 million people displaced by conflict in the world, the highest level ever recorded. Half of these refugees are children.

Germany has received more than 1 million refugees, mostly from Syria and Iraq. Despite supporters initially celebrating Chancellor Angela Merkel's actions, many Germans have begun voicing concerns about when this acceptance of migrants will come to an end.

But while the adults in Germany have expressed mixed reactions to the refugees, German author Kirsten Boie wants children at least to realize that a refugee child is just like any other kid in the world.

In her latest children’s book, “Everything Will Be Alright,” she writes the true story of Rahaf and her family, who flee Homs, Syria due to bombings by war planes. The family crosses the Mediterranean Sea on a small boat, ultimately choosing a small town near Hamburg, Germany to start their new lives.

The book is published in German and Arabic and is meant to be read at school to both German-born children and their new immigrant neighbors. (An English translation is available online here.)"

Listen to this story on PRI.org »

"Germany puts refugees to work ... for one euro [an hour]"

"With a spoon and spatula in hand, Zaid, a 23-year-old Iraqi refugee, lifts the lid on a large pot filled with goulash and potatoes as he begins his shift.

From 6:30 to 8 pm, he is employed by the city of Berlin to dish out dinner to 152 other Syrian, Iraqi, Afghan and Moldovan refugees in a sports hall, which had been turned into an emergency shelter for the newcomers.

Zaid is one of thousands of refugees who have taken on tasks ranging from repairing bicycles to pruning plants to cleaning sidewalks for pay of just over one euro ($1.1) an hour.

The so-called "one-euro jobs" have been touted as a springboard for the newcomers into Germany's job market, but experts remain skeptical about their effectiveness.

At the sports gym, Zaid tries to explain to the sceptical faces crowded in front of him what went into the beef stew that he described as "so German."

For the work that includes setting the table, cutting bread, serving food and then cleaning up, he is paid 1.05 euros an hour.

Restricted to working no more than 20 hours a week, Zaid gets a monthly income of 84 euros at best, a small extra on top of the 143 euros he receives as pocket money while he waits for the official decision on his asylum application."

Read more from source at GlobalPost here.

"Refugees in a strange land" - My latest opinion column for Catalonia Today magazine

Now even the Daily Mail's editors have finally accepted that British Prime Minister David Cameron's "swarms" of refugees need to be helped. 

The next question has become one of where Europe's newest asylum seekers and victims of war will be settled.


Conservative governments (including Spain's) have agreed to take a 'fair share' of refugees but this language is vague - exactly as they want it to be. 

In fact, Spain is taking less than half the EU request. The truth is that ninety five percent of Syrian refugees are in just five main host countries: Turkey, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq and Egypt, which Amnesty International says are "struggling to cope."


Even just this kind of discussion about numbers of people to a certain extent makes the crisis more remote from reality. Public debate on this issue has been marked by language that is not only intentionally vague. 

Much of it uses terms that suck out the humanity of the desperate lives of many people who are living through hours and days that most of us can barely imagine. 

Cold, clinical terms like 'dislocation' and 'displacement' are used along with the insulting tag of 'boat people' - popular in Australia for a long time.


A country like Australia was built from migrants and plenty of them were refugees. Israel was also built by migrants and Britain is still being built by people from across the globe. European countries (and just as importantly Asian countries) will have to embrace migrants as an important part of their future. 

Apart from the clear humanitarian reasons, it is actually in the interests of ageing populaces in these parts of the world to take in and welcome the kind of younger, fit men, women and children who have been able to survive long sea journeys, for example.


More importantly, I care about the lives that wait for Europe’s latest arrivals. It is heartening to see Germans welcoming some of them at train stations. That is a much better alternative than attacking refugees in the camps where they were put, as German neo-Nazi’s recently did. 

But while we are considering what is good for different societies across Europe it is vital to think about the refugees themselves. 

Many will not be able to speak the language of their new locations. Many will feel alienated by the surroundings, wishing they could still be at home, despite the individual and collective tragedies unfolding there. It’s probable that the violence in their homelands has meant they have lost loved ones: survivor guilt can be a result.

But to feel that you are accepted as an equal - even in a land where you may not really want to live - that may be a source of solace and consolation. 

After your world has been turned upside down it is the least that anyone deserves.

[A version of this article was first published in Catalonia Today magazine, October 2015.]

"If Greece falls..."

[Special meeting of the European Council on 23 April 2015. From left to right: Martin Schulz, President of the European Parliament; Alexis Tsipras, Prime Minister of Greece; Jean-Claude Juncker, President of the European Commission. Photo: European Council. Source: Flickr]

"As the Greek crisis continues, Steffen Vogel reports that a majority of German business leaders look upon a Grexit as a favourable option, according to a survey published last month in the German business daily Handelsblatt.

At the same time, Vogel draws attention to the political price of a Grexit, summed up best he says in the words of Reuters European affairs editor Paul Taylor: "If Greece falls, no one wants their prints on the murder weapon".

"That applies to the German government too", Vogel continues, "long held up on the international stage as an example of a party that is blocking a lasting solution to the crisis.

Some weeks ago, The Economist mocked Wolfgang Schäuble as an 'ayatollah of austerity', thus reversing the rationale upon which Berlin claims to be acting pragmatically." "

[Source: Eurozine.]

 

"Peaceful, but menacing: German xenophobia"

"Calling themselves Pegida, or “patriotic Europeans against the Islamisation of the Occident”, since October they have marched through Dresden every Monday. Their numbers are growing: on December 15th 15,000 protested. Their slogans of xenophobic paranoia (“No sharia in Europe!”) seem bizarre in Saxony, where only 2% of the population is foreign and fewer than 1% are Muslim.

The marchers make no attempt to explain their demands. Convinced of a conspiracy of political correctness, they do not speak to the press. Few bear any signs of neo-Nazism. They have eschewed violence. What they share is broad anxiety about asylum-seekers (200,000 in 2014) and immigrants."

Read more from source here.

UPDATE - 23/12/14: 17,000 people attend rally against Islam and immigration in Germany