Posts Tagged ‘System’

Let’s play “Direct Democracy”

Monday, February 8th, 2010

On 11 February, Vienna is starting a game called “Direct Democracy”. It is a very cute game. Really! It is designed and promoted for 6-10 year olds. The only confusing thing is that to play, you have to be at least 18 (or did it drop to 16?). The game has been advertised for past weeks in various media including newspapers and TV, with those lovely people smiling in the camera and saying stuff like “We should all have a bicycle”. Yes, and a lollipop! The intention of the game is very nice: It’s an “instant feel good game”. It should give you a feeling that you have the power to determine the circumstances you live in.

Like in Huxley’s Brave New World, where kids get conditioning lessons played directly into their ears while they are sleeping, so we in Vienna listen for past weeks about “direct democracy”. Few weeks ago, we all (that includes Austrian citizens with permanent residence in Vienna) received a bunch of pre-printed envelopes, letters and a ballot. I love my ballot! I am actually considering framing it with a scripture “Direct Democracy” and hanging in on my wall. It has a touch of Warhol with its pastel pink and baby blue and vanilla yellow and those big round JA and NEIN buttons all around it. It looks like something that would come with your new Barbie doll. And then you read the text. And you really feel like 6. The questions are completely suggestive: “Vienna always wanted to be a metropolis and is still suffering because it hasn’t achieved that status. And London and New York have metros operating whole night long (we have night-buses and they work fine but we want what NYC has!!!). So shouldn’t we have the same thing?” Or things that are too generalised to make any decisions: “Should the owners of attack dogs have a licence for the dog?” (Exactly which dog is an attack dog? And how does the licence really help against dogs killing babies?) and questions that are just so clear, they shouldn’t even be asked: “Should Vienna offer the possibility of day-long schools?” (in Vienna, schools finish at 13h so if both parents are working, the kid is…. well…on the street? Home playing World of Warcraft or watching porn on the Internet? No clue.) And questions we really don’t give a damn about: “Should we re-introduce janitors?”

No, don’t get me wrong, the game is really cute! It should be – it costs  €6,7 millions. But it makes me sad. Because I want to play the same game of “Direct Democracy” with questions that really matter – when it is decided if another country should be bombed in my name or not; if my billions should be given to bail out banks who brought the whole global financial system to collapse; if managers should really get millions of bonuses for messing up the world; and if financial transactions should be taxed or not.

But in that case I guess this cute design should be changed a bit. Pink wouldn’t really fit…..

Holidays in a coma (stole this from Beigbeder)

Wednesday, January 13th, 2010

God, this is just as horrible as the Tsunami was five years ago.

Why do catastrophes like this always hit the poorest regions of the world? On the other hand, I guess that this is part of the reason why they are poor.

And the most horrible is – my friends have left to Carribean today in the morning. For holidays. To spend their money on five star hotels (are there any left?) and basking in the sun. That constant clash of rich and poor, catastrophe and extravaganza, emergency and abundance. Out world is far from healthy….

My sympathy goes to people of Haiti.

Altruism for sale

Monday, January 11th, 2010

Have you noticed the new trend: “altruism for sale”? Yes, we are now we are selling out altruism to the corporations! Helping others, making a difference, the most crucial aspect in our feeling of fulfilment is being sold out. Altruism, so precious for our well being, has lately been suffering a crisis just as big, if not bigger, than our economy. We lose altruism, here comes 1984!

Buy a certain Gucci bag and 25% of the retail price will go to UNICEF (for the trick, check out the small letters: only if you buy it between 16 November and 31 December). Kate Spade’s new collection is featuring those cute mittens and hats, all hand-made by women in Bosina. Those women get $7 pro piece, which is, according to Spade, double of what they normal wages. Oh how nice! The small letters say: It is a day’s work to knit such a hat. Its retail price is $85. Is it great help, is it fair, should we really be proud to make people earn $7 a day, only 500km from here? How about teaching them to fish instead of giving them a (small) fish? Roberto Coin, jewellery designer is helping CARE. A percentage of every package of Pampers goes to some charity (sorry, no details, am not into diapers). If you subscribe to The Economist, they will plant a tree for you. And you can even watch your tree online….

The trick is new: they are trying to make us feel better about spending money on unnecessary, overpriced stuff and keep the vicious circle of consumerism alive by promising that our action will benefit someone. Instant clearance of consciousness. Instant great feeling. Of course, the ones that benefit the most are the corporations. Rich getting richer. The effect is sad: we are deep into learning to hand over our responsibilities, decisions, even feelings, to the corporations. We only need to consume and everything else will be taken care of. This distances us even further from the actual problem. We don’t need to understand what is going on, and why. We don’t have to consciously decide to help someone, we don’t have to chose whom and why. Gucci/Economist/Spade will take care of that. And nothing changes. Gucci keeps on making millions, we keep on slaving to afford a Gucci bag and women in Bosnia keep on living in poverty. But hey, now we feel good about it! Thank you Gucci/Economist/Spade/Pampers.

Tuesday, November 10th, 2009

Florida, last Friday. A guy walks in into the company he has been fired from, starts shooting around, kills one and shoots six. He was unemployed and had $90,000 debt.

Info in Telegraph

Paris, last month. Yet another France Telecom employee killed himself. He jumped off a bridge and left a note complaining about the bad atmosphere at work after he has been transferred to Customer Services department. This makes 29 suicides among France Telecom employees in past year and half. Not to forget is a bunch of attempted suicides which were prevented on time.

France Telecom decided to employ 200 psychiatrists and invest €1 billion in preventing Burnout. Can it happen that this will make the people feel sicker than they are? And result in everybody thinking they have a personal problem – while the money keeps pouring from one pocket (FT) to the other (some private firm who employed the psychiatrists). Instead of securing jobs, cutting stress (how about starting with working hours?) and starting to treat employees like human beings?

Info in Financial Times

We have never been this well off – and this desperate. Why?

From (and for) Unibrennt (uni is burning)

Friday, October 30th, 2009

What fascinated me when I visited the demonstration/siege at the Vienna University (Audimax) yesterday was the fact that it was not only about education. I was extremely happy to arrive on time to listen to a speech by Corinna Milborn (author and journalist) who spoke about the multiple crises we are facing right now. She spoke about the fact that this is not only a financial crisis, but also political, environmental, educational, migration crisis. Among other speakers, Chistian Felber, the founder of Attack (the anti-globalization organization) in Austria, as well as Robert Misik, a renowned author and journalist were speaking in Audimax. Pity I missed them.

Felber will speak again on Monday at 17h at the TU (University of Technology).

I must say: congratulations to this great agenda! It makes the movement move away from being only about the education to being about the system in general. Because, hey, if the system was not about the corporations/profits/moneymaking but the people, high quality education would not be in question. The protest is expanding throughout Austria and support comes from unions (metal/textile/food workers) and political parties (Grüne/Green & SPÖ/Social Party Austria), as well as the Upper Chamber of Employment. If you want to support, want to listen to the speeches, or are just curious, take a look at the agenda at http://unibrennt.at/?cat=8&lang=en

Here the information on speakers:

Corinna Milborn

Christian Felber

Robert Misik

And here a few pictures from yesterday. Check out my favourite banner: “Rich parents for everyone!”

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Div_2009 013

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Proud to be (also) Austrian! II

Thursday, October 29th, 2009

I have been angry with Austrian students since half a year ago, when I’ve witnessed a class in which the students were asked to prepare 3min presentations with the topic “What moves me/touches me”.  27 out of 30 students started their presentation by saying “It was extremely hard finding something that moves/touches me”. I was mad!!! At the times of a major financial crisis, ongoing destruction of our environment, movements in Iran, two unjust wars, those young people who should be the intellectual elite of Austria were not able to find something that moved them?! Shouldn’t the students be the ones kicking-off changes in a society?

At the same class, many students were protesting against the freedom and spontaneity so untypical for the lectures at the Vienna University. The professor tried to teach through opening her students’ minds, and making them experience the lessons, not learn them by heart. Quite few people in the class didn’t like this.

But surprise, surprise! The past few days, we learned that there is something that moves them, after all. And – now they are fighting for more freedom!

Since five days, the University of Vienna is under siege by its students. The dissatisfaction began with the transition form the old system (Mag.) to BA and MA system. Apparently, the new system is more restrictive and unfair. Yesterday’s demonstration in Vienna was attended by somewhere between 10.000-50.000 people. The demonstrations expanded to Graz, Salzburg, Linz. And hey, they are loud and determined. And they know what they want. They want more freedom in their curricula, they want a free entry (which I do not agree with. I think one should prove they really want and are able to study. By letting everyone study everything, you crowd the universities and thus decrease the quality of education). They want to be freed from fees. They want 50% of women employed at the university (YES!). They want no discrimination. They want better, transparent financing of the academic system (true, if we have billions to rescue banks, why are we stingy with our most strategic area – education?). And a more transparent, democratic system. For a complete list please go to: http://unibrennt.at/?cat=8&lang=en (Have patience with the site, it is currently very slow.)

Yes, we have been bitching long enough about this new generation being too passive, completely apolitical and unwilling to demonstrate. I am happy and proud (hey, this is the second time in a week that I am proud to be also-Austrian!!!) that Austrian students showed that this is not necessarily true. I hope they will make a change (since Obama didn’t really)  and inspire the older generation to openly and loudly articulate their dissatisfaction. Because this world is what we make of it.

I am off to the demonstration.

Hair II

Saturday, August 8th, 2009

Few days ago, I read a statement in Grazia (British fashion& gossip magazine) saying that women can relax because it is now “allowed” NOT to have a Brazilian – now we may leave a stripe of hair down there. This had left me strange feeling: I wondered who has the right to dictate how that what I have between my legs should look like. And then, I grabbed Spiegel, Germany’s highly respected political magazine, to find a three page article about the newest fashion dictatorship of body-hair removal. And yesterday, I had a body-hair discussion with two female friends. The topic was sparked by our visit to a newly opened, stylish and expensive waxing studio. We were all surprised to see the price list was divided in two identically big halves: women and men. Which made me angrily protest (again) against men depilating their body hair. Men with moderate body hair are sexy – hair gives them the manly touch that clearly differentiates them from women. There is something gayish (yeah, call it meterosexual if you like), insecure, even childish to shaved chest. And then there is something very uncharming to it when it starts growing and turns into tiny black, unattractive, stubbing spikes. Why the hell would you ever do that to yourself? Have women really been so successful in hiding the pains of hair removal and hair re-growth? Maybe we made a mistake – had we confronted men with our legs, arm pits, bikini-zones and arms full of black stubby hair, maybe they wouldn’t have been so stupid to start depilating their bodies.

But let’s get serious here. The discussion about the removal of male chest-hair is not a discussion about a beauty norm or personal preference. It is a discussion about manipulation, about distraction, about consumerism, about fake liberty. In today’s world, when we are rapidly tuning towards living in “The Brave New World” or “Matrix”, the discussion about male body hair is a very important discussion.

Men depilating their body-hair is yet another step towards continuously blurring boarders between sexes. With the identities of the sexes invisible and roles completely androgynous, the natural fundament of our society will be crashed. When men are no longer men and women are no longer women, one more fundament, one more orientation, one more natural-law will have disappeared. And nothing new will come to replace it. While men used to be strong, hairy and concerned with how to win the next battle and secure the survival of their family, now they are slim, smooth and concerned with which bottle of skin conditioner to buy. Something is foul here.

And then there is this pathologic need to “take things into our hands” which the post-modern society managed to train us into. Just as the neo-liberal capitalistic system managed to free us from all traditional values and rules in order to establish greed as the only valuable rule, it managed to make us feel free and responsible to reshape every single aspect of our being. It is that self-realisation aspect in which it is not the nation, the social class or the education that are responsible for our success and our life-stories – it is only and exclusively us and how we manage ourselves and our lives. The neo-liberal capitalism gave us the right, which has then unfortunately turned into a painful obligation, to construct and shape every single aspect of our existence, including our body hair. While this can be liberating and fun, it can also be frustrating and exhausting. And here’s the real danger – concerned with shaping ourselves and our lives, we cannot be concerned with shaping the world we live in.

Taking things into your hands can turn into a problem, when the “things” are not important and when the re-shaping process turns into a process of enslaving instead of liberating. Look at what happened with women: For generations, feminists have been fighting against treating women as objects which can be shaped and used however men, or the society, wants it. Unfortunately, today women have turned into objects more then they have ever been. They are literally blackmailed by the existence of a new virtual woman presented by the media: the Bimbo. She is airbrushed, siliconised and liposucted, über-naturally slim and toned, with huge breasts, plumped lips, not a trace of cellulites, body-hair, brain or any other natural “imperfections”. The appearance of Bimbo resulted with naturally beautiful women feeling frustrated, insecure and unhappy. It resulted in a rocketing rise in eating disorders, deaths through anorexia, plastic surgeries and of course, bought cosmetic products and services. But what is even worse, it resulted in women wasting an incredible amount of time and energy on their looks. And we all know that today, more then ever, there are more important things to be occupied with than looks.

And because half of the market cannot be enough, now it is men’s turn to become victims. Have their ego crashed and have them waste money on cosmetics and have them waste their time figuring out the newest depilation techniques! Sheep like that are much easier to manipulate. The male Bimbo is already a reality. Open any magazine and you will find a six-packed, completely shaved, wrinkle and grey-hair-free Ken smiling at you, selling you one of the newest products.

Finally, there is the hidden agenda to create a complete dissatisfaction with anything we are born with. Because if you are unsatisfied with everything you are born with, and if you believe you must take things into your hands to change it and shape it the way magazines told you it should be, you will be a fantastic consumer of cosmetics, pharmaceuticals and various services such as waxing, hair colouring and breast-enhancing. It seems to work. Today, leaving anything untouched and unchanged seems like a proof of failure or weakness. And being  unhappy with yourself is good: self-secure and strong people might rebel. We seem to be safe from this: After you’ve spent 10 hours in the office, 2 in the gym and 1 reading about the newest diet, you will not have the capacity to notice the socio-economic system crashing, rich getting richer and the environment being poisoned to the point of no return. And even if you do, you will be way too tired to try and change anything.

This is why male body hair is important: To learn to love ourselves just the way we are. And to start working on improving the world rather then our unimportant little asses.

Angry. Again.

Sunday, July 12th, 2009

Last week, Croatian Prime Minister Ivo Sanader resigned out of the blue, leaving his obligations towards the country and its citizens from one minute to the other. He escaped the sinking ship, many commented. Just like that. Now he is resting on his luxury yacht.

Bush destroyed a whole country of 27 millions inhabitants, killed hundreds of thousands (some estimate million) of people, all under pretence that proved to be false and just to occupy the oil fields (which were sold out to foreign investors last week). And as a reward, he is now happily retired on a ranch in Texas.

The investment bankers who invented toxic derivates and created the crisis which took millions of jobs and destroyed lives of millions of people are stealing again (look at what is happening with the oil price). The only punishment for the created crisis was sending Madoff to prison for 150 years. This was obviously just a symbolic act – other hundreds of thousands of same thieves are still stealing and earning their million-dollar bonuses.

Why is it that if I go and steal or destroy someone’s home and kill their family, I would immediately end in a prison? And those who do the same crime, but on a much larger scale get rewarded?

How can it be that the politicians, the ones who should serve and protect us, are the only group of people with a total immunity? Why are there absolutely no consequences to their wrong-doing? Shouldn’t they be the ones who should be especially critically observed and especially punished if they betrayed the people who elected them and gave them power?  Why are we accepting this? When I start a job, I sign a contract – if I am not fulfilling what I promised to or if I am stealing from the company that I signed a contract with, they will fire me, even prosecute me. Why do we treat our leaders differently?

What happened to the promised regulations of the financial markets? Where were the protesters at the G8? Why are we not able to get up and force the change? Are we already totally lobotomised?

Yeah, summer is here, let’s enjoy it. After all, we have more interesting topics to thing about. For instance, what did MJ look like when he died?

Aren’t we just great?

Thursday, June 25th, 2009

Yesterday, UNODC (United Nations on Drugs and Crime) released the World Drug Report 2009. The Report shows that global markets for cocaine, opiates and cannabis are steady or in decline, while the production and use of synthetic drugs is feared to be increasing in the developing world.

Should this be strange? Every other person in our fantastic western society is on legal drugs: antidepressants. We don’t need cocaine, opiates or cannabis anymore – we have soma. And we even get it for free – they are covered by the health/social security. “Mine are very weak” said a friend few days ago, “they are for kids and teenagers.” Great, so now we even started legally drugging our kids and teenagers.

We should urgently start exporting antidepressants to the developing world. We get to earn money and they don’t have to “produce and use” synthetic drugs. A win-win situation par excellence.

Iran and the Art of Posing Questions

Sunday, June 21st, 2009

… written on 18 June 2009…

I have just received a friend’s message on Facebook asking me to change my picture to green to show my support for the Iranian people. “Great,” I thought. “That’s the least I can do.” But then I asked myself, “Why?” Green is not the colour of the people of Iran, green is the colour of Mousawi. Why should I promote Mousawi on my profile?

In that moment, I understood that how the world is reacting to what is going on in Iran is yet another showcase of our society’s biggest failure: ignorance. We are continuously forgetting to ask questions and through this, crippling our awareness and our ability to have our own critical opinion.

A few weeks ago, there was a scandal in Austria because students in a high-school asked why Jews boarded the trains to Auschwitz. The kids were punished and labelled as anti-Semitic. They will never again dare to ask questions. I have witnessed a similar aversion towards questions at Vienna University. I attended a course taught by a professor who tried to motivate students to be more involved and more critical. This only resulted in students, who are used to passively memorise what has been served to them, starting a “riot” against the professor.

The broadcast media is playing a huge role in this, and the media is setting its own agenda. Following CNN, for example, you quickly get a very simplified, black and white picture of what is going on in Iran – of a whole country rising up in opposition against the “bad” anti-Semitic Ahmadinejad, of a whole country for the “good” reformer Mousawi. These are high-intensity, emotional reports. Suddenly you will find yourself hating a regime in a far away country and supporting the people on the streets. Without having a real clue WHY?

Watching CNN, you see again how easy it is for the media to construct a reality of their choice (it is again on us to ask “why” this very choice). The viewers are fed this reality in such a way that they are not given space to develop their own critical awareness. And it proved again with Iran: Not only are we not posing the right questions. We are not posing any questions at all.

And it is so easy to start with WHY’s: Why is Ahmadinejad “bad”? Why should Mousawi be good? Why do I believe that the elections were fraudulent? Why should I become involved? You can then continue with WHAT’s: What are those protests really about? What do Iranian people actually want? What is actually going on behind the curtains? And what role does the rest of the world play?

And once you get more informed, new important questions will rise:

What about the country’s history?

Iranians have a history of protesting and starting revolutions.  Those past protests and revolutions were often manipulated by the “west”,  ending in numerous changes in their regimes. Unfortunately, most of the time, the changes were for the worse, not bringing the wanted freedom and well-being to the population. The current regime has also come to power through the revolution of 1979.

Who are the stakeholders?

When you try to understand modern Iranian history, the political changes, regimes and power-struggles, you will get dizzy for the complexity and sad for the tragedy of this country’s history. The most tragic part in Iranian modern history is the fact that most of the upheavals were instrumented by the western world, lead by Great Britain and USA. It shocks to see how the destiny of a country of that size and that cultural history can be manipulated through a series of tragic events. So you cannot but wonder if anyone has their fingers in current protests again – and why.

Do you always believe the media?

We are witnessing yet another media-phenomenon. The Iranian government has restricted reporting, so the media had started a hunt for “gossip” and amateur reports.

The emergence of new technology, including mobile phone cameras and internet sites such as Youtube, Twitter and Facebook, has made our society addicted to any “forbidden” or “intimate” material. CNN made a special topic out of this, turning reporting from Iran into a mixture of a quest for Holy Grail and Big Brother. This ended in viewers happy to witness a hunt for forbidden and unreachable content and forgetting to question what they are seeing and hearing.

And ironically, just between the forbidden pictures from Iran, there was a report about an opening of a Banksy exhibition in the Bristol Museum. This graffiti artist owes a huge part of his fame to the fact that what he did was forbidden and he managed to stay anonymous.

What is democracy?

One of the issues discussed on CNN was if Arab people are jealous of Iranian people’s will to stand up for their rights. If we remember that only recently, USA was governed by a man whom 78% of US citizens did not approve of, then the question should have been if the US people are jealous and why haven’t they protested to push their will through? Millions of people around the world have protested against the USA’s planned attack on Iraq. In a truly democratic world, wouldn’t that have changed USA’s plans?

We are also forgetting the problems with Florida votes which lead to last Bush’s last victory. Why didn’t we get this involved back then?

Furthermore, it seems that we are only hearing the louder side, Mousawi’s followers in Teheran. But only because they are louder and more visible, are they really a majority?

And finally, let us not forget that the choice Iranian people have had in this election was far from democratic. Both candidates come from the same regime. Which leads us to the next question:

Is any change good change?

Since 1979 revolution, Iran is governed by the religious leaders. The current man in power is not Ahmadinejad, it is Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Both Ahmadinejad and Mousawi are “his people”. And although Mousawi is called a “reformer”, his reforms are minimal and will not change the repressive regime in this country (as he himself stated on his website). Women will stay discriminated against, marriage age will stay 13, and people will get stoned.  Meaning that the actual protests in support of Mousawi are not about the real change of the sysrem, they are about fair counting of the votes.  Which, it has to be admitted, is a start.

It will be interesting to watch how this episode about the Iranian elections will end. I don’t like the fact that this is happening so shortly after (for the first time in the history) Israel has been not so fully supported by the USA.  Hopefully it will, just like all other stories hyped up by the media, simply get exchanged for a newer hype. But what will be left is a huge task for us not to stay ignorant, and for the Iranian people to bring true change to their country.

And once they have this vision, I will immediately change all my pictures into whatever colour they ask me to.

….and today, three days later, I must add: every dead person is one dead person too much…..