Bare Bones

In
the past week we were witnessing an interesting episode in the unrelenting speed
with which our civilized world is declining. And no, I am not even referring to Elton John
parading his non-synthetic child in front of willing and wheeling cameras, nor
about a real or tricked Greek middle finger in a German tv show. In the end, they are only side
struggles, interesting only for the synthesized media community.

Instead
I am talking about the aftermath of the Israeli elections. Indeed, two facts are
highly relevant for understanding how far we have wandered away from essential democracy
and honest-enough politics.

First,
the US government blamed Netanyahu for having stolen the election by stating
that those who would vote for him could rest assured that there would come no
two-state solution. Apparently that simple, non-clouded nor cloaked, easy-to
understand statement drove many more people in Israel to vote for him than
the pollsters had forecast (for weeks on end). Lots of Israelis must have
switched their intended vote in favor of such a policy overbight. How more democratic can
an election be? A majority of people in Israel ostensibly want a prime minister that proposes
a solution for their troubles that does not include a two-state framework.
Moreover, many Israelis must have thought that this particular issue – the shape of the state of Israel – trumps all
others, including economic issues.

Surprise
starts when the US government, on the “morning-after”, did not lose time to
denounce this last minute statement of Netanyahu as a disgraceful “tactic”, and
destructive for the democratic ideal and process! While the United States in general,
and its political scene in particular, is undoubtedly the most advanced nation
in the world in practicing speech fabrication (in the White House with
TelePrompter) and inventing truth-proof spinning, it is difficult for a neutral
observer to arrive at any other conclusion than the fact Netanyahu made a simple, “unspun” statement.
And many people in Israel said “yes”, yes we understand and we want it that way. One might
call this a populist slogan (born out of despair perhaps), but one cannot deny
its democratic merit: not money or defamation of opponents, nor clever redrawing
of electoral boundaries have gotten Netanyahu his majority, but an
easy-to-understand proposition. Democracy in action, even though our European
or American self-anointed standard bearers of “Democracy” do not like it.

Surely,
the second fact brings us back to basics. Indeed, a day (or two) later,
Netanyahu – perhaps not coincidentally on US television – returns to the fold
of politics as usual by constructing a statement that creates and leaves some room
between “yes-two-sates” and “no-two-states”. To stay in the spirit of the
Promised Land, it sounds now like: many settlements are perhaps not in Israel
proper, but, if you look closely and with the right glasses, you will see
nevertheless that they are definitely in Israel. Obviously this is the
democracy that we experience every day, and all over the world. It is the
democracy wherein the “resident democratic powers’ scheme to hang on to power.
And indeed, if all competing factions agree to follow the same strategy, then what choice does the
voter have?

None.

Democracy
is not of this day and age. The political system that we are living today is a
weak, dark shadow of what enlightened minds hundreds of years ago have put
forward as an advanced system of government. Marx may have been wrong on many
things, but he nailed it on corruption! And after a few centuries of democracy,
the power of the democrats has corrupted the democrats, more and more, and still more.

Grimburger,

March
20, 2015

This
week Charlie Hebdo had all news stations on full alert, 24 by 24 (and, luckily
only 3 by 7). With all the street cameras and professional cameras capturing
everything that shivered or trembled, we did not miss anything that was moving
in our global village, for this occasion focusing on Paris streets.

We
all know meanwhile that the messaging of news casters starts and ends with the ideas
and goals of their financiers or paymasters and, if we are lucky, some
objectivity in between. This week, tragic as it was, provided an excellent
example of how subtle the manipulation can be, and how the objectivity suffers.

The
scene concerned the attack of the Charlie Hebdo headquarters. Two hooded man
get out of a car wielding AK-47’s. Street cameras or CCTV’s – presumably the
most objective recorders that we have – show a policeman lying on the curb, wounded.
The terrorists are running towards the Charlie Hebdo HQ. One of them stops pointedly
next to the policeman, who apparently is pleading to spare his life. Yet the
man in black aims his weapon and shoots to kill, twice, at point blank, then moves on
towards his real target.

BBC
World and CNN showed the sequence where the terrorist shot the policeman
repeatedly and singularly to emphasize that the killer was well trained because
he didn’t spray the policeman, but shot him twice with single bullets. That
sequence illustrated perfectly how dangerous, how senseless, how cold-blooded
the killers, obviously well-trained and radical terrorists, were. Indeed,
why kill a wounded policeman, a disabled bystander, with such a conscious and
determined act?

Al
Jazeera (English) disposed of the same reels, yet chose to use them
differently. Indeed, it showed everything except the actual cold-bloodied killing
of the policeman: three seconds, perhaps, were edited away. If I have to guess,
they do not want to show a Muslim purposefully killing an altogether innocent bystander.
It seems as if showing this singular murder would add something unexplainable
to the rest of the attacks. It seems as if Al Jazeera wanted to spare their
viewers this utterly graphic view of the loathsome killing of an innocent
bystander, by a (devout?) Muslim.

While
most often the manipulation of information is much more blatant and obvious,
this episode shows that a few seconds can make a lot of difference in the
messaging: editors, impregnated by their ideological purpose, are constantly on the lookout for “spins” that make information come out in accordance with their missionary purpose.

Therefore, only
to think that our media bring objective information is a blasphemic thought: to
comply with the ideas of the founders and fulfill the goals of the paymasters
(often the same) they all manipulate, grossly and/or succintly. A few
seconds is sometimes all it takes.

Grimburger,

10th
of January 2015