“I am prepared to die. Of course.
“The hate is so real, so great that it raises you [above] consciousness, and you see, for the first time ever, clearly. You see what is there, not what you hope for. You see them for what they are....for them, I can hope for nothing less than death.
“I pray it is agonising.”
Lastri currently languishes in Sukun Women’s Prison on the Indonesian island of Java. She was arrested after a failed attempt to blow herself up inside the island’s largest court in January 2000. She is neither a member of a terrorist cell nor a seasoned fundamentalist in pursuit of legendary martyrdom.
She is a grieving mother, to whom no apology will bring satisfaction or comfort. Only blood and fire will do.
Following the downfall of President Suharto in 1998, tensions between Christian and Muslim communities dramatically rose and in February of that year, 14 people were killed in clashes between youths of the rival faiths. One of them was Lastri’s son.
“No one came to the funeral. They were terrified there would be more killing. So I buried my only child alone, not even my pastor would stay to help push dirt over the coffin...It’s up to me, alone, to find the animals who did this to my son and execute them.”
When asked by prison officials whether she considered the potential innocent lives she would have taken had her bomb detonated, she repeatedly replied,
“No one is innocent.”
Whether it is a car bomb exploding on a bustling city street, a politician shot dead on the steps of a presidential palace or a man erupting into flames before the eyes of his oppressors, our reaction is instinctive: disgust, dismissal as lunacy or perhaps even nonchalance.
Across the spectrum of media, it is deemed simpler to judge the actions of mad men rather their motives. In the Indonesian press, Lastri was characterised as a ‘the disgrace of her family, who would be right to desert her’ and ‘the weeping witch’ and even speculated on links to Al Qaida. Even the BBC, who briefly mentioned the incident on the World Service, described her as ‘ruthless’ and ‘unstable’. Not a single media outlet reported that her son was killed in violence a year previously or that, by its very nature, had an impact on her subsequent actions.
The US government defines extremists, somewhat unsympathetically, as those who operate on the peripheries of society, seeking unobtainable goals with uncompromising determination.
In this definition we find the vaguest reflection of the psychology behind an ‘extremist’. Someone who ‘operates on the peripheries of society’ can also be interpreted as someone who feels they have been actively, or passively, deprived of understanding, either of who they are or what they believe. Whether it’s political fundamentalists, Stonewall rioters, Suffragettes finding martyrdom beneath the hooves of a horse or a grieving mother, those in history who have resorted to violence and self-mutilation, those we often characterise as ‘villains’, are usually born of the injustices an insensitive majority wreaks upon them – especially when that injustice appears unfounded.
“There is never an excuse for violence,” says Michael Billig, a professor of social sciences at Loughborough University who specialises in the psycho-analysis of terrorism, “but for those groups who feel, rightly or wrongly, that they are isolated from mainstream culture...or that their views and cultures are deliberated neglected, their passion for equality, for a shared investment in society, often manifests itself as violence and contempt.
“The issue, then, is that governments and, ergo people, draw a line, creating an ‘us and them’ scenario, which only pushes the injured parties further from central society...and exacerbates the problem because they’re then left with no alternative but to commit to a policy of radicalism.”
If we take away someone’s voice, surely all they have remaining are their fists? Annabelle Sawyer is a senior researcher at the Harvard Institute of Psychology and has spent the last nine years studying the pathology of extremism.
“The term extremism was coined by the political media...for the purposes of alienating people whose interests conflict with those of the established authority...This is demonstrable in the Catholic church who attempt to label homosexuals as perversions of mankind...or Islamic governments, fearful of female empowerment, cultivating women as merely objects of temptation – certainly not equals.
“Unless they are suffering from mental retardation [sic], you can trace the violence of an individual or a group to the policies of the establishment...who wish to maintain their vested interest in crystallising the current order.”
A striking feature of attempting to research the psychology of extremists is just how little material exists. Type in any number of keys words in Google that include psychology, terrorist, human, extremist, define and certainly you’ll find government measures to tackle radical behaviour or profiles of wanted men and women, but almost nothing critiquing their motivations or why they feel it necessary to abandon their humanity – or, indeed, why they feel it has been stolen from them.
“An interesting study was conducted in 1988, which, startlingly, was later disregarded, in a military prison in Miami that housed Cuban terrorists, many of whom had attempted to kill large numbers of people in Florida,” says Billig, “These were men who felt their nation was being crippled unfairly by the United States – something many young Cubans can’t understand the reasons for.
“The study found that by sitting these men down and having a high-ranking figure apologise to them, it numbed much of their frustration...which is incredible. Further psychological tests found that many – but not all – were beginning to actively revise their attitudes to the United States.”
It is almost impossible to justify extremism. Whereas it may be tempting for gay people to violently attack the Muslim and Christian cults (something it would be difficult to argue they didn’t almost entirely deserve), surely they would be no better than those who seek to demonise them? When we allow hatred to become our hosts and collect arms with hope of bloody revenge, we become no better those who inflicted the original injustice.
That is why, if we, as a global society, wish to defuse many of the adverse effects of extremism, we must first combat the cruel realities that bear them. If the universal media were to see the human behind the atrocity, perhaps a bereft mother in downtown Washington could identify with Lastri. If someone from the Indonesian government had apologised to Lastri, had reminded her that it isn’t impossible to maintain humanity in tragedy, then she may not have decided that justice could only be found in death.
Instead, Lastri is facing a life sentence in Sukun, where, instead of being comforted by memories of her lost son, she will hungrily wonder where his faceless killers hide and how she might find them.
Tuesday, 27 April 2010
Thursday, 25 March 2010
Phantasms and Fantasy
‘Religion is the opium of the people’. So said Karl Marx, author of the Communist Manifesto, observing religion to be a parasitical influence, one that feeds on human ignorance and imagination. In millennia past, no feasible means existed to explain gravity and so the world was deemed flat and without atmosphere; the rising sun was a chariot-led fireball and the earth was the centre of the universe. So why is it, in a world where every instrument to logically explore our surrounding environment exists, do we still cling to fable? Surely, in the 21st Century, religion is a redundant and irrelevant force?
Religion, specifically the ‘creation’ story, has been a feature, indeed, an obsession, of every functioning human society throughout our known history. We have always sought to ‘understand’ as a species but what makes us unique is that in absence of fact, we are quite content to fabricate.
In the last 300 years, there has been a steady development of uninhibited science. Until the 18th century, the Church in Europe and North America was the dominant entity, politically and socially, and was free to suppress any and all who disputed or contradicted religious doctrine.
The Age of Enlightenment, however, changed everything.
This was a period when the absolution of reason was not just respected but fundamentally acknowledged by western philosophers and academics – when only reason could be said to legitimise authority.
The resulting achievement of the movement was the separation of church and state and the filtering of superstition from politics. The reduction of the Church as a meddlesome entity allowed scientists and philosophers unparalleled freedom to pursue previously untapped avenues outwith scripture. This led to an explosion of discoveries, particularly in pathology (previously reviled, but not criminally punishable, as necromancy), physics and mathematics. The single most important development of the 19th century, the theory of evolution, was a direct result of the Enlightenment.
The removal of ecclesiastical criticism and interfering allowed in society growth without fear and truth without taint.
But even after the 18th century, when the Enlightenment had reached its zenith, religion persisted in being an active, and very considerable, factor in general life.
Perhaps this was because of, until recently, endemic poverty and lack of accessibility to education in the western world. In Britain alone, education of all children up to the age of 12 was not made compulsory until 1870 and what little educational establishments existed were largely under control of religious authorities.
In Britain today, a third of all educational establishments are under control of religious institutions. Whilst this is comparatively less than, say, 50 years ago, it’s an alarming statistic nonetheless. Youthful minds are magnificent and impressionable and if young people are having doctrine force-fed to them at an early age, one would imagine it to be very hard for them to consider other possibilities or philosophies in the world.
The sheer fact, however, that mass schooling is now a feature of every western democracy and that we are free as individuals not only to question theology but to analyse our obsession with it, contributes to the peripheral nature of religion as a credible social entity.
Religion, for the most part, relies on shroud and mystery to maintain its authority; the favourite line of its propagators being ‘God works in mysterious ways’. The reason behind the power of religion, and the Church specifically, in history was the unquestionable nature it propagandised and its ready will to persecute those it considered heretics, those who dared to entertain ideas outwith scripture. The perfect example for this was the Spanish Inquisition – the paranoid movement of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella in the 15th Century, on authority of Pope Sixtus IV, which inspired the remorseless and chaotic orgy of witch-hunts, live cremating, hanging, castrating and general torture and execution of non-Catholics, homosexuals, academics and other minorities.
Religion is rarely assimilated into an individual’s life by personal discovery. Its continued existence depends wholly on perceived figures of authority – parents, religious clerics or even, in exceptional cases, the media – drilling doctrine into the next generation. Where there exists a lack of secular education or alternative thinking to the conventional, there tends to be extreme poverty and it is the coalescence of these two factors that breeds unfounded superstition. Africa is the only continent in the world where religion continues to experience growth but, fundamentally, it is the only continent in the world that has gone backwards, its development receding rather than progressing. Is this mere coincidence?
Probably not.
Where the is a formidable religious presence, it could be argued that it is because it thrives on the inherent poverty of the region. Poor people, generally speaking, have limited access to education and in place of that education, we often find myth and mistruth.
Two years ago, BBC Worldwide conducted a poll to research the religiosity levels of each nation – those that it was practical to do so in, at least – and the results were telling. Those nations with the lowest religiosity levels (eg Sweden, 80 percent of whose population claim to be atheist) enjoyed the lowest poverty, the best access to education and, most importantly, the greatest respect for human rights. Their religious counterparts (eg Saudi Arabia, almost all of whom claim to be religious), however, tended to be impoverished and often war-torn, disregarding human rights for gays and woman and advocating capital punishment. These results, above all others, surely provide the most profound indicator to the redundancy of religion as an ethical concept.
And yet leaders of all faiths continue, often unchallenged, to maintain the idea that it is religion that views the world always from the moral high ground.
Morality, of course, is what most faiths claim their doctrine to be based on. The guiding principal that permeates almost every religion is ‘there is only one truth – and that is our truth’. For there to be morality, however, and therefore a credible basis for religion, the idea of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ would have to be solid fundamentals – something questioned by modern philosophy.
Right and wrong, and, to an extent, veracity and falsity, are an illusion, yet another presumption of the human imagination. If God tells you one thing is wrong but the law of the land says it’s fine, which do you obey? Both are manmade. In Britain, murder is a criminal act and yet on the other side of the world in, say, the Brazilian slums, it may be a necessity of life, to survive.
It was said by Blaise Pascal, a French mathematician and philosopher, that ‘men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it with religious conviction.’ It was under the influence of religious conviction that nineteen Muslims ploughed two planes into the Twin Towers in New York, killing 2,993 people and injuring over 6,000 more. It was with religious conviction that Adolph Hitler committed genocide against six million Jews, gays, Communists, ethnic and disabled people, claiming that ‘my conduct is in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator.’
How can the religious reconcile their apparent ‘morals’ with the fact that millions of gay people around the world are persecuted, murdered or sentenced to lives of silent misery? Or that so many women are subjugated and convinced they are talentless, second-rate pieces of furniture?
The simple fact is they can’t.
I agree with many aspects of several of the largest religions - not murdering, not stealing, but too often their manipulated by the devices of the unscrupulous. If the Bible were the word of some omnipotent creator, why then is it so flimsily malleable?
For the first time in human history, albeit largely in the western world, we are at liberty not only to question what Stephen Fry called the ‘cruel, hypocritical and loveless hand’ of religion, but are able to actively oppose its negative influences and choose whether we accept it or not. 80 percent of people in Britain refute creationism in favour of evolution as the probable explanation for the diversity of life.
What is a God without absolutism? In the 21st Century, we know that our origins stretch back further than 2,000 years and that women evolved from the same bacterium as men, rather than a rib. We know the Earth is a globe rather than a disc and that it was created, our most evidence-based theories suggest, by the catalyst of gases reacting to one another and developed over billions of years rather than a week-long binge. We’re more compassionate and understanding than what the Bible or the Qu’ran would have us be; we’re educated and willing to consult our own senses before the often heartless and disconnected opinions of archaic scripture.
Perhaps religion is a cruel necessity to allow us, as a species, to understand better the fragile magnificence of tolerance and reason – or maybe it is just testament to a world still plagued by ignorance and fear of the unknown.
Sir Richard Francis Burton, a Victorian explorer, once said that ‘the more I study religions, the more I am convinced man never worshipped anything but himself.’
Religion, specifically the ‘creation’ story, has been a feature, indeed, an obsession, of every functioning human society throughout our known history. We have always sought to ‘understand’ as a species but what makes us unique is that in absence of fact, we are quite content to fabricate.
In the last 300 years, there has been a steady development of uninhibited science. Until the 18th century, the Church in Europe and North America was the dominant entity, politically and socially, and was free to suppress any and all who disputed or contradicted religious doctrine.
The Age of Enlightenment, however, changed everything.
This was a period when the absolution of reason was not just respected but fundamentally acknowledged by western philosophers and academics – when only reason could be said to legitimise authority.
The resulting achievement of the movement was the separation of church and state and the filtering of superstition from politics. The reduction of the Church as a meddlesome entity allowed scientists and philosophers unparalleled freedom to pursue previously untapped avenues outwith scripture. This led to an explosion of discoveries, particularly in pathology (previously reviled, but not criminally punishable, as necromancy), physics and mathematics. The single most important development of the 19th century, the theory of evolution, was a direct result of the Enlightenment.
The removal of ecclesiastical criticism and interfering allowed in society growth without fear and truth without taint.
But even after the 18th century, when the Enlightenment had reached its zenith, religion persisted in being an active, and very considerable, factor in general life.
Perhaps this was because of, until recently, endemic poverty and lack of accessibility to education in the western world. In Britain alone, education of all children up to the age of 12 was not made compulsory until 1870 and what little educational establishments existed were largely under control of religious authorities.
In Britain today, a third of all educational establishments are under control of religious institutions. Whilst this is comparatively less than, say, 50 years ago, it’s an alarming statistic nonetheless. Youthful minds are magnificent and impressionable and if young people are having doctrine force-fed to them at an early age, one would imagine it to be very hard for them to consider other possibilities or philosophies in the world.
The sheer fact, however, that mass schooling is now a feature of every western democracy and that we are free as individuals not only to question theology but to analyse our obsession with it, contributes to the peripheral nature of religion as a credible social entity.
Religion, for the most part, relies on shroud and mystery to maintain its authority; the favourite line of its propagators being ‘God works in mysterious ways’. The reason behind the power of religion, and the Church specifically, in history was the unquestionable nature it propagandised and its ready will to persecute those it considered heretics, those who dared to entertain ideas outwith scripture. The perfect example for this was the Spanish Inquisition – the paranoid movement of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella in the 15th Century, on authority of Pope Sixtus IV, which inspired the remorseless and chaotic orgy of witch-hunts, live cremating, hanging, castrating and general torture and execution of non-Catholics, homosexuals, academics and other minorities.
Religion is rarely assimilated into an individual’s life by personal discovery. Its continued existence depends wholly on perceived figures of authority – parents, religious clerics or even, in exceptional cases, the media – drilling doctrine into the next generation. Where there exists a lack of secular education or alternative thinking to the conventional, there tends to be extreme poverty and it is the coalescence of these two factors that breeds unfounded superstition. Africa is the only continent in the world where religion continues to experience growth but, fundamentally, it is the only continent in the world that has gone backwards, its development receding rather than progressing. Is this mere coincidence?
Probably not.
Where the is a formidable religious presence, it could be argued that it is because it thrives on the inherent poverty of the region. Poor people, generally speaking, have limited access to education and in place of that education, we often find myth and mistruth.
Two years ago, BBC Worldwide conducted a poll to research the religiosity levels of each nation – those that it was practical to do so in, at least – and the results were telling. Those nations with the lowest religiosity levels (eg Sweden, 80 percent of whose population claim to be atheist) enjoyed the lowest poverty, the best access to education and, most importantly, the greatest respect for human rights. Their religious counterparts (eg Saudi Arabia, almost all of whom claim to be religious), however, tended to be impoverished and often war-torn, disregarding human rights for gays and woman and advocating capital punishment. These results, above all others, surely provide the most profound indicator to the redundancy of religion as an ethical concept.
And yet leaders of all faiths continue, often unchallenged, to maintain the idea that it is religion that views the world always from the moral high ground.
Morality, of course, is what most faiths claim their doctrine to be based on. The guiding principal that permeates almost every religion is ‘there is only one truth – and that is our truth’. For there to be morality, however, and therefore a credible basis for religion, the idea of ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ would have to be solid fundamentals – something questioned by modern philosophy.
Right and wrong, and, to an extent, veracity and falsity, are an illusion, yet another presumption of the human imagination. If God tells you one thing is wrong but the law of the land says it’s fine, which do you obey? Both are manmade. In Britain, murder is a criminal act and yet on the other side of the world in, say, the Brazilian slums, it may be a necessity of life, to survive.
It was said by Blaise Pascal, a French mathematician and philosopher, that ‘men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it with religious conviction.’ It was under the influence of religious conviction that nineteen Muslims ploughed two planes into the Twin Towers in New York, killing 2,993 people and injuring over 6,000 more. It was with religious conviction that Adolph Hitler committed genocide against six million Jews, gays, Communists, ethnic and disabled people, claiming that ‘my conduct is in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator.’
How can the religious reconcile their apparent ‘morals’ with the fact that millions of gay people around the world are persecuted, murdered or sentenced to lives of silent misery? Or that so many women are subjugated and convinced they are talentless, second-rate pieces of furniture?
The simple fact is they can’t.
I agree with many aspects of several of the largest religions - not murdering, not stealing, but too often their manipulated by the devices of the unscrupulous. If the Bible were the word of some omnipotent creator, why then is it so flimsily malleable?
For the first time in human history, albeit largely in the western world, we are at liberty not only to question what Stephen Fry called the ‘cruel, hypocritical and loveless hand’ of religion, but are able to actively oppose its negative influences and choose whether we accept it or not. 80 percent of people in Britain refute creationism in favour of evolution as the probable explanation for the diversity of life.
What is a God without absolutism? In the 21st Century, we know that our origins stretch back further than 2,000 years and that women evolved from the same bacterium as men, rather than a rib. We know the Earth is a globe rather than a disc and that it was created, our most evidence-based theories suggest, by the catalyst of gases reacting to one another and developed over billions of years rather than a week-long binge. We’re more compassionate and understanding than what the Bible or the Qu’ran would have us be; we’re educated and willing to consult our own senses before the often heartless and disconnected opinions of archaic scripture.
Perhaps religion is a cruel necessity to allow us, as a species, to understand better the fragile magnificence of tolerance and reason – or maybe it is just testament to a world still plagued by ignorance and fear of the unknown.
Sir Richard Francis Burton, a Victorian explorer, once said that ‘the more I study religions, the more I am convinced man never worshipped anything but himself.’
A life less loathed
As a confident 17-year-old living in Eastern Europe, Elena dismissed the idea of trafficking as something that happened to other people, to those who belonged to the street, those without shelter to punctuate the days spent alone and without family. It was a terrible fortune courted by prostitutes and street children and something that the middle-classes only witnessed through a kaleidoscopic media.
But three years ago, whilst attending a cousin’s party, Elena was approached by a man who shouted and punched her and told her he would take her away. Threatening to kill her family if she did not comply, he forced her down to the police station, forging her mother’s signature so that she could get an identity card. Those under 18 could not travel without a parent’s consent.
Carrying only the clothes she wore, Elena was bundled into a van and driven away, deprived of even the smallest comfort of a goodbye to her family. As far her mother knew, she had just disappeared – mundanely and quite suddenly.
Every year, an estimated 12.3 million people are trafficked, affecting every continent, country and economy. Of that incredible number, the majority are between 18 and 24-years old and 43 per cent of them are trafficked for the sole purpose of commercialised sexual exploitation. Perhaps the most disturbing tragedy of this whole affair is that in 46 per cent of all trafficking cases, the kidnapper is known to the victim: a friend, a brother, a father.
A total of 957 children, including more than 400 from Afghanistan and 200 from Africa, were picked up by local authorities in the eight months between April 2009 and the end of the year in Britain alone and the problem is worsening.
Overall trafficking has increasing by 90 per cent in Britain over the past three years and that has lead to heart breaking results for parents of stolen children like Indira Sawatra.
Indira came to Britain from Bangladesh after her seven-year-old daughter disappeared, having subsequently followed a shadowy trail of laundered accounts, government moles and information from the Metropolitan police.
“I have sacrificed everything to follow Kareyla [her daughter] to this place,” she said, “I have left two children and a husband behind me and there is little money for me to live off now. It is running out but that stop me...Nothing will stop me until I find her.”
Kareyla was kidnapped two years ago and the Metropolitan police admit that they have accomplished little. Like so many before her, Kareyla has vanished into statistics and left behind a mother who cannot bring herself to grieve for a number on a list or a memory that she fears will one day become a ghost.
Chris Beddoe, chief executive of ECPAT UK, which campaigns against child prostitution, pornography and trafficking across Britain, however, has claimed in the past that the UK government’s approach to trafficking is not comprehensive enough.
“These figures bear out what we see happening across the UK where reports of child trafficking are increasing significantly. Given so many of these child victims go missing so quickly after they are taken into local authority care, it seems clear that we are witnessing a pattern of criminal activity among traffickers. Yet no one goes out looking for these children when they disappear. If the government is really committed to keeping them safe they would implement a system of guardianship so someone would be responsible for each and every child...Instead, we have a system that values pursuit over prevention...one that focuses on catching the traffickers once they’ve cropped up on the radar...Not enough is being done to prevent people falling victim to trafficking.”
The European Commission has ranked the UK government’s success rate in apprehending traffickers as amongst the lowest in Western Europe – just above France. Why is it then, in one of the world’s foremost industrialised nations, are we failing to take a firm grip on the issue of trafficking?
Dr Tanya Coleer, a serving member of the European Human Rights Commission, said,
“Great Britain has a long and distinguished history of opposing slavery, not just in her own borders but across the globe...Admittedly, whilst free access across European borders is a valuable right of every EU citizen, it does come with its own problems. Free passage means traffickers can often move undetected or with little surveillance.”
On the international stage, human trafficking has been brought to the forefront by the devastating earthquake in Haiti. As the bodies of the dead began to congest the labyrinthine ruins of Port-au-Prince and the uncertainty of the survivors mutated into incredulity and frustration, it was clearly only a matter of time before the vultures descended.
Unicef, the UN body that works to protect and improve the lives of children the world over, has warned people over adopting Haitian orphans for fear that they may be encouraging child trafficking in light of a number of disappearances from hospitals.
Jean Luc Legrand, a spokesman for Unicef told reporters that approximately 15 children had gone missing from hospitals, presumably trafficked.
“Unicef has been working in Haiti for many years and we knew the problem with the trade of children in Haiti which existed before, and unfortunately many of these trade networks have links with the international adoption ‘market’...We cannot confirm the figures but have referred the reports to the Haitian government, who are investigating. We have stepped up our efforts to ensure all children under five are in a safe place and properly fed.”
In a perverse sense of logic, it would seem that the cruellest choice, to leave these children in their shattered homeland, is the safest one.
Hannah Reinhardt, the deputy head of the EU mission in Haiti, said, “This is why child protection is utmost in our concerns at the moment, particularly because we know that child trafficking was already a problem in Haiti before the quake.” She stated that tracing immediate families was the “primary important thing that we do” at this phase in a disaster, alongside aid distribution. The EU mission is largely ¬co¬-coordinating all family tracing work in Haiti at the request of the UN, in conjunction with other organisations like Save the Children.
The Haitian earthquake has highlighted that trafficking is a multifaceted corrosive force, one that readily preys on the naive altruism of the self-righteous.
Human trafficking in the 21st century is the universal shame of our global society and an unwelcome anchor to a social corruption practised by past, and socially inferior, generations. If it is truly to be tackled with sincerity, then governments across the world must engender respect for the dignity and rights of our fellow human in every citizen.
Elena was fortunate. She escaped her captors and is now living as a British citizen with a partner and long-term career prospects. But her success is not a reflection of the truth – over 12 million people still languish under the illicit, and tyrannical, control of traffickers and it won’t stop until people accept, particularly in the developed world, that a semi-detached house in suburbia is no guarantee of protection.
In the age of mass consumption, we are all commodities.
But three years ago, whilst attending a cousin’s party, Elena was approached by a man who shouted and punched her and told her he would take her away. Threatening to kill her family if she did not comply, he forced her down to the police station, forging her mother’s signature so that she could get an identity card. Those under 18 could not travel without a parent’s consent.
Carrying only the clothes she wore, Elena was bundled into a van and driven away, deprived of even the smallest comfort of a goodbye to her family. As far her mother knew, she had just disappeared – mundanely and quite suddenly.
Every year, an estimated 12.3 million people are trafficked, affecting every continent, country and economy. Of that incredible number, the majority are between 18 and 24-years old and 43 per cent of them are trafficked for the sole purpose of commercialised sexual exploitation. Perhaps the most disturbing tragedy of this whole affair is that in 46 per cent of all trafficking cases, the kidnapper is known to the victim: a friend, a brother, a father.
A total of 957 children, including more than 400 from Afghanistan and 200 from Africa, were picked up by local authorities in the eight months between April 2009 and the end of the year in Britain alone and the problem is worsening.
Overall trafficking has increasing by 90 per cent in Britain over the past three years and that has lead to heart breaking results for parents of stolen children like Indira Sawatra.
Indira came to Britain from Bangladesh after her seven-year-old daughter disappeared, having subsequently followed a shadowy trail of laundered accounts, government moles and information from the Metropolitan police.
“I have sacrificed everything to follow Kareyla [her daughter] to this place,” she said, “I have left two children and a husband behind me and there is little money for me to live off now. It is running out but that stop me...Nothing will stop me until I find her.”
Kareyla was kidnapped two years ago and the Metropolitan police admit that they have accomplished little. Like so many before her, Kareyla has vanished into statistics and left behind a mother who cannot bring herself to grieve for a number on a list or a memory that she fears will one day become a ghost.
Chris Beddoe, chief executive of ECPAT UK, which campaigns against child prostitution, pornography and trafficking across Britain, however, has claimed in the past that the UK government’s approach to trafficking is not comprehensive enough.
“These figures bear out what we see happening across the UK where reports of child trafficking are increasing significantly. Given so many of these child victims go missing so quickly after they are taken into local authority care, it seems clear that we are witnessing a pattern of criminal activity among traffickers. Yet no one goes out looking for these children when they disappear. If the government is really committed to keeping them safe they would implement a system of guardianship so someone would be responsible for each and every child...Instead, we have a system that values pursuit over prevention...one that focuses on catching the traffickers once they’ve cropped up on the radar...Not enough is being done to prevent people falling victim to trafficking.”
The European Commission has ranked the UK government’s success rate in apprehending traffickers as amongst the lowest in Western Europe – just above France. Why is it then, in one of the world’s foremost industrialised nations, are we failing to take a firm grip on the issue of trafficking?
Dr Tanya Coleer, a serving member of the European Human Rights Commission, said,
“Great Britain has a long and distinguished history of opposing slavery, not just in her own borders but across the globe...Admittedly, whilst free access across European borders is a valuable right of every EU citizen, it does come with its own problems. Free passage means traffickers can often move undetected or with little surveillance.”
On the international stage, human trafficking has been brought to the forefront by the devastating earthquake in Haiti. As the bodies of the dead began to congest the labyrinthine ruins of Port-au-Prince and the uncertainty of the survivors mutated into incredulity and frustration, it was clearly only a matter of time before the vultures descended.
Unicef, the UN body that works to protect and improve the lives of children the world over, has warned people over adopting Haitian orphans for fear that they may be encouraging child trafficking in light of a number of disappearances from hospitals.
Jean Luc Legrand, a spokesman for Unicef told reporters that approximately 15 children had gone missing from hospitals, presumably trafficked.
“Unicef has been working in Haiti for many years and we knew the problem with the trade of children in Haiti which existed before, and unfortunately many of these trade networks have links with the international adoption ‘market’...We cannot confirm the figures but have referred the reports to the Haitian government, who are investigating. We have stepped up our efforts to ensure all children under five are in a safe place and properly fed.”
In a perverse sense of logic, it would seem that the cruellest choice, to leave these children in their shattered homeland, is the safest one.
Hannah Reinhardt, the deputy head of the EU mission in Haiti, said, “This is why child protection is utmost in our concerns at the moment, particularly because we know that child trafficking was already a problem in Haiti before the quake.” She stated that tracing immediate families was the “primary important thing that we do” at this phase in a disaster, alongside aid distribution. The EU mission is largely ¬co¬-coordinating all family tracing work in Haiti at the request of the UN, in conjunction with other organisations like Save the Children.
The Haitian earthquake has highlighted that trafficking is a multifaceted corrosive force, one that readily preys on the naive altruism of the self-righteous.
Human trafficking in the 21st century is the universal shame of our global society and an unwelcome anchor to a social corruption practised by past, and socially inferior, generations. If it is truly to be tackled with sincerity, then governments across the world must engender respect for the dignity and rights of our fellow human in every citizen.
Elena was fortunate. She escaped her captors and is now living as a British citizen with a partner and long-term career prospects. But her success is not a reflection of the truth – over 12 million people still languish under the illicit, and tyrannical, control of traffickers and it won’t stop until people accept, particularly in the developed world, that a semi-detached house in suburbia is no guarantee of protection.
In the age of mass consumption, we are all commodities.
Wednesday, 24 March 2010
Being Sappho and a Poet Unwilling: A Brief Intrusion into the Life of Yvette Reeman
“I remember wanting to be loved.
“My earliest memories of life are confusion and longing, feelings compounded by a despotic mother and ineffectual father. Mother was a woman who measured the world by two categories: weight (“Did you see Mrs Renfrew? She’s piled it on, the great heffer. A very cruel woman as I recall.”) and the presence of a respectable (eg wealthy) man at your side. To her great despair, I struggled with both and to my great shame, I cared.
“I don’t think she ever heard my silence, the utter apathy I held for her attempts to mould me. Each morning that I descended the stairs, I would be greeted with a cry of “stampede!” swiftly followed by her hysterical laughter. A smile was all I could barely muster. “Go up and weigh yourself and once you’re a better sight we’ll find you a man.” I was 14, and, unbeknownst to mother, hadn’t the slightest interest in being hosed by anyone’s Fireman Sam. I assumed it was the result of my ugliness; my twisted logic that ugly people couldn’t love and so would never be rejected.
“Years passed but nothing happened. No posters of Schwarzenegger or Stallone adorned my bedroom. I had heard mother describe her sister, Joan – the spinster – as ‘one of those people who just don’t love’. And I thought, that’s me. I’m Joan. The Spinster. By now I was 21.
“Mother, however, revelled in the challenge and after years of dismay at my lack of progress, she played her ace, unexpected and dazzling: Derek Lakeman .
“Handsome, with dark, impenetrable eyes and a brooding expression, he seemed quite taken with me and I think it was that feeling, the surprise that someone was attracted to me, which veiled the underlying revulsion.
“Derek knew how to flatter and it was his talent as a wordsmith that allowed flowers and chocolates to become stolen kisses and, before long, a proposal was made.
“Mother was thrilled and so was I. I was no longer a disappointment. I was a woman with a man who had the blessing of her mother. She was fulfilled – everything had happened just as the countless stories and films had said it would.
“My wedding night was one of only two sexual encounters with men. I recall the sweat and internal pain and the persistent wish it would end. It was suddenly as if I had been hurled back to the starting line. His body in mine had felt wrong, the invasion of an alien presence. I had whispered into his ear, “You make me sick,” but I know he never heard.
“Life with Derek was always going to be fragile because it was built upon lies and suppression and our marriage never recovered.
“At first it was awkward but, as everything does with time, the excuses became easier until they flowed naturally and each morning I awoke with the relief I had emerged through another night untouched.
“Untouched by his hand but also by happiness. Day by day, I withered and soon resembled a forgotten porcelain doll. Nothing remained to empower or impassion me, save for the one, quiet uncertainty inside that frightened and at the same time intrigued. It was that secret which, ultimately, protected me from the consequences of what was to come.
“I was working in the kitchen, wearing rubber gloves and a floral apron – a picture of housewife splendour – when he arrived home. Normally he would retire to the living room to watch television but instead he entered the kitchen, his frame filling the door and without the slightest hint of emotion he said,
“There’s talk I’ve married a fucking dyke.”
“I didn’t reply. I wasn’t shocked but somehow could no longer lie.
“It was at this point his fist collided with my face and on the floor of his kitchen I had my last sexual encounter with a man. After he had finished, I was abandoned, soiled by my own urine and blood; too frightened to scream, too weak to stand. I don’t know how many hours I laid there but I do remember the silent tears.
“At night, I slipped out, still in the same clothes, and retreated to my mother’s house. Upon explaining the event that had transpired, all she could say was, “Why didn’t you satisfy him? What’s wrong with you?”
“I at last found the strength to say, “Why didn’t you protect me?” and those were the last words I ever shared with my mother. She died two months later from an overdose. I didn’t attend the funeral.
“Even now, decades later, the bitterness remains. I can’t forgive any of the betrayals – mother, Derek – but I can draw strength from them. No one has the right to demand you be something other than who are and if I can teach that to even one person in my life, then I will have my justice.”
Sadly, Yvette died in 2009, following heart failure. She spent much of her life as, what she called, a ‘professional lodger’ and wanted it to be known that she met lots of kind and, most importantly of all, understanding people.
“My earliest memories of life are confusion and longing, feelings compounded by a despotic mother and ineffectual father. Mother was a woman who measured the world by two categories: weight (“Did you see Mrs Renfrew? She’s piled it on, the great heffer. A very cruel woman as I recall.”) and the presence of a respectable (eg wealthy) man at your side. To her great despair, I struggled with both and to my great shame, I cared.
“I don’t think she ever heard my silence, the utter apathy I held for her attempts to mould me. Each morning that I descended the stairs, I would be greeted with a cry of “stampede!” swiftly followed by her hysterical laughter. A smile was all I could barely muster. “Go up and weigh yourself and once you’re a better sight we’ll find you a man.” I was 14, and, unbeknownst to mother, hadn’t the slightest interest in being hosed by anyone’s Fireman Sam. I assumed it was the result of my ugliness; my twisted logic that ugly people couldn’t love and so would never be rejected.
“Years passed but nothing happened. No posters of Schwarzenegger or Stallone adorned my bedroom. I had heard mother describe her sister, Joan – the spinster – as ‘one of those people who just don’t love’. And I thought, that’s me. I’m Joan. The Spinster. By now I was 21.
“Mother, however, revelled in the challenge and after years of dismay at my lack of progress, she played her ace, unexpected and dazzling: Derek Lakeman .
“Handsome, with dark, impenetrable eyes and a brooding expression, he seemed quite taken with me and I think it was that feeling, the surprise that someone was attracted to me, which veiled the underlying revulsion.
“Derek knew how to flatter and it was his talent as a wordsmith that allowed flowers and chocolates to become stolen kisses and, before long, a proposal was made.
“Mother was thrilled and so was I. I was no longer a disappointment. I was a woman with a man who had the blessing of her mother. She was fulfilled – everything had happened just as the countless stories and films had said it would.
“My wedding night was one of only two sexual encounters with men. I recall the sweat and internal pain and the persistent wish it would end. It was suddenly as if I had been hurled back to the starting line. His body in mine had felt wrong, the invasion of an alien presence. I had whispered into his ear, “You make me sick,” but I know he never heard.
“Life with Derek was always going to be fragile because it was built upon lies and suppression and our marriage never recovered.
“At first it was awkward but, as everything does with time, the excuses became easier until they flowed naturally and each morning I awoke with the relief I had emerged through another night untouched.
“Untouched by his hand but also by happiness. Day by day, I withered and soon resembled a forgotten porcelain doll. Nothing remained to empower or impassion me, save for the one, quiet uncertainty inside that frightened and at the same time intrigued. It was that secret which, ultimately, protected me from the consequences of what was to come.
“I was working in the kitchen, wearing rubber gloves and a floral apron – a picture of housewife splendour – when he arrived home. Normally he would retire to the living room to watch television but instead he entered the kitchen, his frame filling the door and without the slightest hint of emotion he said,
“There’s talk I’ve married a fucking dyke.”
“I didn’t reply. I wasn’t shocked but somehow could no longer lie.
“It was at this point his fist collided with my face and on the floor of his kitchen I had my last sexual encounter with a man. After he had finished, I was abandoned, soiled by my own urine and blood; too frightened to scream, too weak to stand. I don’t know how many hours I laid there but I do remember the silent tears.
“At night, I slipped out, still in the same clothes, and retreated to my mother’s house. Upon explaining the event that had transpired, all she could say was, “Why didn’t you satisfy him? What’s wrong with you?”
“I at last found the strength to say, “Why didn’t you protect me?” and those were the last words I ever shared with my mother. She died two months later from an overdose. I didn’t attend the funeral.
“Even now, decades later, the bitterness remains. I can’t forgive any of the betrayals – mother, Derek – but I can draw strength from them. No one has the right to demand you be something other than who are and if I can teach that to even one person in my life, then I will have my justice.”
Sadly, Yvette died in 2009, following heart failure. She spent much of her life as, what she called, a ‘professional lodger’ and wanted it to be known that she met lots of kind and, most importantly of all, understanding people.
Villain or victim...?
He is no monster. He is a man.
When the crimes of Joseph Fritzl were revealed, the world understandably reacted with a noxious and uncomfortable blend of shock, revulsion and a collective ‘Oh, dear.’ He had imprisoned and enslaved his daughter, Elisabeth, for 24 years and in that time raped and fathered with her seven children, one of whom, Michael, died at birth from respiratory problems.
Being the moral compass of the nation that it is, the television network ‘Sky’ produced a predatory, pseudo-documentary sensitively named, ‘Joseph Fritzl: Story of a Monster’, whose noble intention was to ‘uncover what drove Fritzl to commit such terrible crimes’. Vox popping mindless plebeians, however, who have arrogantly assumed unearned grief and indignation, uncovers only one thing: how startlingly self-destructive our society’s self-righteous attitudes really are.
Undoubtedly, Fritzl’s crimes are indefensible but can the same certainty be applied to his motives? In the storm of stupefacient rhetoric, characterised by an abrupt Sturm und Drang renaissance, where is the voice, regardless of how quiet, that asks: why?
Would the rest of the world even want to listen?
If we dehumanise our ‘enemies’, if we style them as monsters, does this make it easier to detach ourselves from attacking a fellow human being? Indeed, it is easy to apply such a theory to Fritzl, given he raped his daughter reportedly over 3000 times and internally damaged her from the alleged ‘instruments’ he used. But are we, perhaps, merely trying to protect ourselves from the corrupting fallout and intense reality of diminishing the existence of another?
The forensic psychiatrist who interviewed Fritzl, Dr Heidi Kastner, says, “Evil is a fascination for us. It helps focus all the evil outside on a specific person. That’s the one that’s bad; we’re the good ones…This is probably why executions were – and in some cases still are – public.”
We are too readily prepared to assume our children are born ‘normal’ – to assume they will be a conventionally healthy, heterosexual, mentally-organised collection of hormones, emotions and altruistic thoughts that will grow and develop into a positively-contributing human being and that should they do wrong, they were nipple-twisted by Satan into doing so.
The infinite quandary is that being ‘normal’ is the most inhuman outcome possible.
During the whole affair, Austria itself was criticised for being too clandestine and for its inhabitants too unwilling to casually enquire into one another’s lives, a relic perhaps of being a nation once straddled by the iron curtain. This apparent unwillingness to tap your neighbour on the shoulder, sit down over a cup of herbal tea and discuss your ‘issues’, however, is not limited to Austria but in fact permeates the majority of human societies. In essence, we’re content to ignore our neighbour’s burning house but as soon as the flames spread to ours, only then do we decide it would be prudent to contact the emergency services.
During his trial, when asked if he fantasised about his mother, Fritzl replied, “Yes, probably, but I was strong, almost as strong as my mother, and I have therefore managed to suppress my urges.”
Even in today’s western, liberalised, Keith Chegwin-tolerating society, to express a romantic and/or sexual interest in one’s mother would likely result in a prompt fist to the face swiftly followed by endless ridicule and condemnation. Were Fritzl’s crimes the result of this unhealthy suppression and the sudden collapse of his will to endure it?
Kastner said, “He told me that for someone who was ‘born to rape’, he controlled himself for a long time. He said he could have done worse.”
Arguably, Joseph Fritzl’s suppressed urges did not have to manifest themselves in such an explicit and unfortunate outcome. Had society developed a more open attitude to such ‘taboos’ where people could freely discuss their feelings, could this tragedy have been averted? Had Fritzl been given a lifeline to express and explore these deep sexual and psychosomatic desires through rhetoric in a safe, controlled environment, the reality is probably. Can it then be said that Joseph Fritzl was the victim, or at least an unwitting martyr, of a closed society?
The strongest indicator of this is society’s reaction to paedophilia.
One thing humans cannot help – until the inevitable rise of eugenics – is the way in which we are born, be it our cerebral or physical development. Regardless from which angle you analyse, it’s inexcusable and rightfully criminal to force sex on a child. But is it fair that sanctimonious, feral mothers, assuming their child will be abducted at any given moment by an anorak-clad, toffee-wielding grinch, be allowed access to data regarding the whereabouts of people convicted of paedophilia? The results of what could be state-sponsored vigilantism are depressingly predictable given a man was lately terrorised for being a known ‘paediatrician’.
Surely a preferable, more constructive, alternative would be to offer these fellow human beings psychological aid to identify these urges and instil in them the necessary discipline to ignore and control them? Or at least express them in an alternative avenue? In fairness, that is perhaps easier said than done.
When interviewed by the BBC, Kastner provided firm evidence for the idea of help before hostility, “He is not mad…he is as sane as you and I…There’s a big difference between being mad and being disturbed.”
The Fritzl case had shoved a mirror before society and demanded it take a long, hard look at itself. Alas, that’s an unlikely outcome. In the communal mindset of our culture, we’ll forget Fritzl and when history repeats itself, we’ll whip ourselves up into the same senseless frenzy, we’ll point the collective finger of judgment before brushing the whole, sorry affair under an already bulging carpet.
Were society to one day even glance at its reflection in that mirror, one must wonder what it would see: a man? Or a monster?
When the crimes of Joseph Fritzl were revealed, the world understandably reacted with a noxious and uncomfortable blend of shock, revulsion and a collective ‘Oh, dear.’ He had imprisoned and enslaved his daughter, Elisabeth, for 24 years and in that time raped and fathered with her seven children, one of whom, Michael, died at birth from respiratory problems.
Being the moral compass of the nation that it is, the television network ‘Sky’ produced a predatory, pseudo-documentary sensitively named, ‘Joseph Fritzl: Story of a Monster’, whose noble intention was to ‘uncover what drove Fritzl to commit such terrible crimes’. Vox popping mindless plebeians, however, who have arrogantly assumed unearned grief and indignation, uncovers only one thing: how startlingly self-destructive our society’s self-righteous attitudes really are.
Undoubtedly, Fritzl’s crimes are indefensible but can the same certainty be applied to his motives? In the storm of stupefacient rhetoric, characterised by an abrupt Sturm und Drang renaissance, where is the voice, regardless of how quiet, that asks: why?
Would the rest of the world even want to listen?
If we dehumanise our ‘enemies’, if we style them as monsters, does this make it easier to detach ourselves from attacking a fellow human being? Indeed, it is easy to apply such a theory to Fritzl, given he raped his daughter reportedly over 3000 times and internally damaged her from the alleged ‘instruments’ he used. But are we, perhaps, merely trying to protect ourselves from the corrupting fallout and intense reality of diminishing the existence of another?
The forensic psychiatrist who interviewed Fritzl, Dr Heidi Kastner, says, “Evil is a fascination for us. It helps focus all the evil outside on a specific person. That’s the one that’s bad; we’re the good ones…This is probably why executions were – and in some cases still are – public.”
We are too readily prepared to assume our children are born ‘normal’ – to assume they will be a conventionally healthy, heterosexual, mentally-organised collection of hormones, emotions and altruistic thoughts that will grow and develop into a positively-contributing human being and that should they do wrong, they were nipple-twisted by Satan into doing so.
The infinite quandary is that being ‘normal’ is the most inhuman outcome possible.
During the whole affair, Austria itself was criticised for being too clandestine and for its inhabitants too unwilling to casually enquire into one another’s lives, a relic perhaps of being a nation once straddled by the iron curtain. This apparent unwillingness to tap your neighbour on the shoulder, sit down over a cup of herbal tea and discuss your ‘issues’, however, is not limited to Austria but in fact permeates the majority of human societies. In essence, we’re content to ignore our neighbour’s burning house but as soon as the flames spread to ours, only then do we decide it would be prudent to contact the emergency services.
During his trial, when asked if he fantasised about his mother, Fritzl replied, “Yes, probably, but I was strong, almost as strong as my mother, and I have therefore managed to suppress my urges.”
Even in today’s western, liberalised, Keith Chegwin-tolerating society, to express a romantic and/or sexual interest in one’s mother would likely result in a prompt fist to the face swiftly followed by endless ridicule and condemnation. Were Fritzl’s crimes the result of this unhealthy suppression and the sudden collapse of his will to endure it?
Kastner said, “He told me that for someone who was ‘born to rape’, he controlled himself for a long time. He said he could have done worse.”
Arguably, Joseph Fritzl’s suppressed urges did not have to manifest themselves in such an explicit and unfortunate outcome. Had society developed a more open attitude to such ‘taboos’ where people could freely discuss their feelings, could this tragedy have been averted? Had Fritzl been given a lifeline to express and explore these deep sexual and psychosomatic desires through rhetoric in a safe, controlled environment, the reality is probably. Can it then be said that Joseph Fritzl was the victim, or at least an unwitting martyr, of a closed society?
The strongest indicator of this is society’s reaction to paedophilia.
One thing humans cannot help – until the inevitable rise of eugenics – is the way in which we are born, be it our cerebral or physical development. Regardless from which angle you analyse, it’s inexcusable and rightfully criminal to force sex on a child. But is it fair that sanctimonious, feral mothers, assuming their child will be abducted at any given moment by an anorak-clad, toffee-wielding grinch, be allowed access to data regarding the whereabouts of people convicted of paedophilia? The results of what could be state-sponsored vigilantism are depressingly predictable given a man was lately terrorised for being a known ‘paediatrician’.
Surely a preferable, more constructive, alternative would be to offer these fellow human beings psychological aid to identify these urges and instil in them the necessary discipline to ignore and control them? Or at least express them in an alternative avenue? In fairness, that is perhaps easier said than done.
When interviewed by the BBC, Kastner provided firm evidence for the idea of help before hostility, “He is not mad…he is as sane as you and I…There’s a big difference between being mad and being disturbed.”
The Fritzl case had shoved a mirror before society and demanded it take a long, hard look at itself. Alas, that’s an unlikely outcome. In the communal mindset of our culture, we’ll forget Fritzl and when history repeats itself, we’ll whip ourselves up into the same senseless frenzy, we’ll point the collective finger of judgment before brushing the whole, sorry affair under an already bulging carpet.
Were society to one day even glance at its reflection in that mirror, one must wonder what it would see: a man? Or a monster?
Sunday, 21 March 2010
Mr Marx goes to Washington...
Whilst the Communist Manifesto is not the most engrossing book ever written - well, it's more of a glorified pamphlet really - it is one of the most dynamic. In its pages are encased every rebellious emotion of the disenfranchised majority, every image of the future for the procrastinating idealist and every hope and doubt of the common citizen who wonders if there is more to this life.
In a nutshell, the Communist Manifesto is the wank mag for every moden day revolutionary.
The trouble with such grand ideas is, by their very nature, they are not elitist or particular; they are a cheap whore with herpes that can be picked up by any Hooray Henry with an agenda to pursue.
Now, i love the idea of Communism - i love the idea that an individual's worth is not measured by their wealth or status, that a man or woman in a suit is regarded no better than one is overalls, that our future is not written on a piece of paper from an institution.
Unfortunately, that sort of world is a long way away. Contrary to popular belief (or at least the belief of every redneck hick with a gun and tiny dick), there has never been a 'Communist State'. The USSR was a one-party dictatorship masquerading as a communist regime; China is a joke and every other self-proclaimed regime of the people are nothing more than conceited small-timers.
The otherwise good name of Marxism has been ruined by simpletons who have hijacked it to pursue their own lust for power; who, rather ingeniously it has to be said, have prospected the huge opportuntiy for propaganda Communism offers and subjugated their own populations, much to the despair of the international community.
And a good deal of it is, in my thinly-educated opinion, Marx's fault. Prick.
He made a crucial error in his manifesto. He claimed that 'revolution' was the yellow brick road to instituting Communism, that workers of the world must 'unite' and rise up. That sort of language is despairing for those of us who find Marxism appealing - it makes one wonder whether Communism was a fantastic ideal, or a knee-jerk reaction to a system of governance unsympathetic to the woes of the masses. Or, possibly, Marx was a man born before his time.
Communism, i think, is still on the table - obviously, it'll need a bit of repackaging. Swap 'proletariat' for 'face book fans' and 'manifesto' to 'tweet' etc.
I wonder if, rather than revolution, Communism will become a reality through 'evolution'. We live in a time of homogenising culture, improving human rights (albeit slowly), when a swelling population can't be supported by our limited production capacity and the word 'conservation' is ever more relevant in our species' discourse.
The Russian Empire was never ready for Commism; its infrastructure was too weak, its people too ill-educated and the regime implemented by Lenin and later perveted by Stalin was a corrupt form of Marx's ideals - it stifled personal ambition and restricted people rather than freeing them. It was, very possibly, the greatest political - and social? - failure in the history of humanity.
The irony is that if anywhere is to make the long march to Communism, it's Western Europe - or North America. *Quickly ducks to avoid shotgun bullets and hurtled pitchforks*.
Communism, as it was meant to be and as it has never been seen as, is a purer form of democracy. It repsects every individual's right to freedom of expression, of speech and to be who they want to be. It's democracy without Paris Hilton's muff or Donald Trump's ridiculous wig (WTF!?). It's democracy that doesn't turn political life into a popularity contest or allow Editors and CEOs to dominate lives through subversion of bureacracy. It's a footballer being paid no better than a teacher or a nurse. It's women being the absolute equals of men; gay, bi and transgendered people being the absolute equals of straights and people respected for their personalities rather than their colour. It's the Pople being told that unless he has something nice to say, he really ought to shut the fuck up.
It's idealistic, certainly, but, in the words of Cheryl 'Ah'll fookin' stab yeh if yeh betray me again likes' Cole, it's something worth fighting for.
In a nutshell, the Communist Manifesto is the wank mag for every moden day revolutionary.
The trouble with such grand ideas is, by their very nature, they are not elitist or particular; they are a cheap whore with herpes that can be picked up by any Hooray Henry with an agenda to pursue.
Now, i love the idea of Communism - i love the idea that an individual's worth is not measured by their wealth or status, that a man or woman in a suit is regarded no better than one is overalls, that our future is not written on a piece of paper from an institution.
Unfortunately, that sort of world is a long way away. Contrary to popular belief (or at least the belief of every redneck hick with a gun and tiny dick), there has never been a 'Communist State'. The USSR was a one-party dictatorship masquerading as a communist regime; China is a joke and every other self-proclaimed regime of the people are nothing more than conceited small-timers.
The otherwise good name of Marxism has been ruined by simpletons who have hijacked it to pursue their own lust for power; who, rather ingeniously it has to be said, have prospected the huge opportuntiy for propaganda Communism offers and subjugated their own populations, much to the despair of the international community.
And a good deal of it is, in my thinly-educated opinion, Marx's fault. Prick.
He made a crucial error in his manifesto. He claimed that 'revolution' was the yellow brick road to instituting Communism, that workers of the world must 'unite' and rise up. That sort of language is despairing for those of us who find Marxism appealing - it makes one wonder whether Communism was a fantastic ideal, or a knee-jerk reaction to a system of governance unsympathetic to the woes of the masses. Or, possibly, Marx was a man born before his time.
Communism, i think, is still on the table - obviously, it'll need a bit of repackaging. Swap 'proletariat' for 'face book fans' and 'manifesto' to 'tweet' etc.
I wonder if, rather than revolution, Communism will become a reality through 'evolution'. We live in a time of homogenising culture, improving human rights (albeit slowly), when a swelling population can't be supported by our limited production capacity and the word 'conservation' is ever more relevant in our species' discourse.
The Russian Empire was never ready for Commism; its infrastructure was too weak, its people too ill-educated and the regime implemented by Lenin and later perveted by Stalin was a corrupt form of Marx's ideals - it stifled personal ambition and restricted people rather than freeing them. It was, very possibly, the greatest political - and social? - failure in the history of humanity.
The irony is that if anywhere is to make the long march to Communism, it's Western Europe - or North America. *Quickly ducks to avoid shotgun bullets and hurtled pitchforks*.
Communism, as it was meant to be and as it has never been seen as, is a purer form of democracy. It repsects every individual's right to freedom of expression, of speech and to be who they want to be. It's democracy without Paris Hilton's muff or Donald Trump's ridiculous wig (WTF!?). It's democracy that doesn't turn political life into a popularity contest or allow Editors and CEOs to dominate lives through subversion of bureacracy. It's a footballer being paid no better than a teacher or a nurse. It's women being the absolute equals of men; gay, bi and transgendered people being the absolute equals of straights and people respected for their personalities rather than their colour. It's the Pople being told that unless he has something nice to say, he really ought to shut the fuck up.
It's idealistic, certainly, but, in the words of Cheryl 'Ah'll fookin' stab yeh if yeh betray me again likes' Cole, it's something worth fighting for.
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