Tuesday, January 1, 2019
Can We Fight Climate Change With Energy Efficient Light Bulbs?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHusLy_K5KU
Der Spiegel’s counterfeit journalism and the campaign against “fake news”
By Peter Schwarz
31 December 2018
The exposure of journalistic
fraud at the German news weekly Der Spiegel has lifted the lid on the
manipulation of public opinion by the so-called “authoritative” media. While
Facebook, Google, Twitter and other social media systematically censor
unwelcome posts, the supposedly “reliable” and “objective” reporting by the
mainstream media proves to be propaganda produced in cooperation with the state
to promote the interests of the ruling class. In the name of combatting “fake
news,” freedom of the press and freedom of opinion are being gutted.
Last week, the editors
of Der Spiegel, the highest-circulation German news magazine, admitted that
they had published 55 articles by the journalist Claas Relotius that were
“completely or partially invented, falsified, forged.”
Relotius has also written
numerous articles for other German media outlets.
Since the public
acknowledgment by Der Spiegel’s editors, the news weekly’s editorial board
has endeavoured to portray the Relotius scandal as a unique case in which
genius, a desire for prestige, nihilistic energy and psychological instability
came together. According to media reports, Spiegel has provided the
counterfeiter, who voluntarily resigned following his exposure, with
psychological care and a lawyer.
Relotius may be an exception
in the brazenness of his forgeries, but the much more important question is why
his fabrications were published by Spiegel and other media and why he
was awarded numerous journalistic prizes. At the tender age of 33, Relotius has
received almost a dozen prestigious awards by juries that included not only
journalists, but also prominent figures in politics and public life.
His forgeries, as it turns
out, were by no means difficult to see through. The Spiegel editorial
board repeatedly ignored anomalies and warnings. Now it admits with disarming
openness that Relotius’ reports were “too good to be true.”
What is the significance of
this scandal? According to commentators, although Relotius’ reports were fake,
they were still “beautiful,” i.e., they corresponded to the narrative the
editors and journalism award jurors wanted to promulgate. In his writing, “the
present is concentrated into a readable format, the grand outlines of
contemporary history become comprehensible, and suddenly the great whole
becomes completely humanly comprehensible,” Spiegel editor-in-chief
Ullrich Fichtner gushed following the exposure. As long as the forgeries were
not discovered, they were welcome.
Many of Relotius’ articles
deal with topics that are particularly sensitive from the point of view of
bourgeois propaganda, such as the background to Trump’s rise in the US and the
wars in Iraq and Syria.
To justify the Western
military interventions in the Middle East, a fairy tale by Relotius about two
young brothers (“lion boys”) kidnapped, tortured and trained by the Islamic
State (ISIS) to become suicide bombers proved much more effective than a
carefully researched piece into the real background to the wars. Such an
article would have to admit—if it were honest—that ISIS and other Islamist
militias are, above all, a product of the intrigues of the US and its allies in
NATO and in the Middle East.
Relotius’s fabrications fit
seamlessly into a stream of disinformation that has lasted for nearly 16
years—since then-US Secretary of State Colin Powell gave his infamous speech at
the UN on Iraqi weapons of mass destruction. Although the entire speech was
based on lies and forgeries, it was largely accepted uncritically by the
international media and served as a justification for the bloodiest war of the
21st century, which continues to this day.
Freedom of the press is an
achievement of the bourgeois revolution. The bourgeoisie upheld it as long as
it was fighting against the supremacy of the aristocracy, and later enshrined
it in its constitutions. While capitalism remained capable of social
compromise, such freedoms retained a spark of life.
But freedom of the press is
not compatible with war, militarism and a society based on intolerable levels
of social inequality.
Bob Woodward and Carl
Bernstein, who exposed the Watergate scandal, were still being celebrated and
honoured in the 1970s. Today, Julian Assange and Edward Snowden, who have
uncovered incomparably more serious crimes of US imperialism, are isolated and
living in forced exile, and must fear for their lives. Outrageous
counterfeiters such as Relotius, on the other hand, are awarded prizes.
The incestuous relationship
between the world of politics and the media has taken on a dimension that
defies description. Billion-dollar media conglomerates dominate the press.
Journalists and leading politicians know each other, mingle at the same bars,
and frolic together alongside film stars and other celebrities at annual press
galas.
As with the establishment
political parties, the terms “left” and “right” have lost all meaning in
relation to the media. Stefan Aust, previously the long-standing
editor-in-chief of Spiegel, who began his career in 1966 at the left-wing
publication konkret, is now editor of Die Welt, the flagship paper of
the right-wing Springer publishing house.
Nikolaus Blome, deputy
editor-in-chief of Springer's rag Bild, worked for a time for the Spiegel editor-in-chief.
Other leading journalists also regularly switch from one publication to the
other, with the pro-Green Party taz proving to be particularly
fertile ground for up-and-coming bourgeois journalists.
Relotius has also published
his articles across the entire spectrum of the German media—from taz to Die
Zeit, the Süddeutsche Zeitung, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung and
Springer’s Welt. In second place behind Spiegel in terms of
articles published by Relotius is the Swiss Weltwoche, mouthpiece of the
ultra-right Swiss People’s Party, with 28 pieces.
Social reality, the sentiments
and needs of the masses hardly exist in the closed circle of the political
parties, the media and the super-rich. The media have become instruments of
state propaganda. This is the reason Claas Relotius—a contemporary version of
Thomas Mann’s impostor Felix Krull—could become a star journalist.
Workers and young people have
long been suspicious of the official media and are searching the internet for
alternative, more objective sources of information. This is the reason for the
hysterical campaign against “fake news,” which serves as a pretext for
censoring the internet and is directed in particular against left-wing,
anti-capitalist publications. Both the European Union and the German government
have enacted internet censorship laws under the false flag of combatting “fake
news.” Facebook alone employs 30,000 people to censor unwelcome posts. Terms
such as “comrade” and “brother” suffice for an entry to be deleted.
This censorship, which is
particularly directed against the World Socialist Web Site, shows how
important it is to build and disseminate wsws.org.
As the central organ of the International Committee of the Fourth
International, the WSWS is completely independent of bourgeois donors and
government influence. It calls things by their name, analyses the facts with
ruthless objectivity and fights to arm the working class with an understanding
of the capitalist crisis and a socialist perspective.
External reality itself is always already transcendentally constituted
Excerpts from:
‘Ugly, Creepy, Disgusting, and
Other Modes of Abjection’
by Jela Krečič and Slavoj
Žižek
[…]
In James Cameron’s Titanic
(1997) there is a short shot from above of an unidentified old couple lying
embraced in their bed while the ship is already sinking, so their cabin is
half-flooded and a stream of water is running all around the bed. This shot,
although meant as a realistic shot, creates the impression of a dream scene—a
bed with the tightly embraced couple in the midst of strong flow of water,
touchingly rendering the stability of love in the midst of a disaster. This
detail in an otherwise average commercial movie bears witness to an authentic
cinematic touch, that of making reality appear as a dream scene. A variation of
the same motif are those magic moments in some films when it seems as if an
entity that belongs to fantasy space intervenes in ordinary reality so that the
frontier that separates the fantasy space from ordinary reality is momentarily
suspended.
[…]
One should emphasize the
hyperrealism of such moments; the spectralization of material reality overlaps
with full focus on material objects. How is this paradox possible? There is
only one solution: external reality itself is not simply out there, it is already
transcendentally constituted so that it is experienced as such—as “normal”
reality out there—only if it fits these transcendental coordinates.
[…]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RcVzevWX4U
[CFP] CONFERENCE 2019: SOCIAL CAPITAL WORKING GROUP
http://iippe.org/cfp-conference-2019-social-capital-working-group/
THEME: ENVISIONING THE FUTURE. ALTERNATIVE ECONOMIES, COLLECTIVES AND COMMUNITIES
Asimina Christoforou, Athens University of Economics and Business
Luca Andriani, Birkbeck, University of London
Collective and community economies represent alternative ways of dealing with important issues such as deprivations, inequalities and conflicts. These alternative economic approaches rely on the strength of social norms and networks of cooperation and solidarity challenging conventional universals of homo economicus. They can be found in a variety of collective efforts and initiatives, which include, but are not restricted to, cooperative production in worker-recuperated enterprises; social kitchens and second-hand stores for the satisfaction of basic needs; community and environmental movements against reckless urban and industrial expansion; alternative currencies and microfinance institutions for local exchange and credit.
In light of these developments, we invite proposals for papers to be presented in the Social Capital Working Group’s panels at IIPPE’s Annual Conference. Proposals could examine the development of alternative collective and community economies in different parts of the world and investigate their potential to combat the individualisation and marketisation of human action and to create transformational relations toward a cooperative and solidaristic economy and society. Many studies have pointed to the critical role of social capital as norms and networks of trust, reciprocity and collaboration in creating values and institutions of cooperation, democracy and welfare. Yet some point to the possibility of degeneration as a result of inherent tensions between economic and social objectives and the pressures of a global environment where the pursuit of economic profit and cost-competitiveness prevail. These are hypotheses that need to be further theorised and empirically tested in order to uncover the role of social norms and networks in developing alternative perceptions and practices of working and living on the basis of cooperative values and institutions.
We also encourage contributions that generally address the topic of social capital. We welcome works that derive from various social science disciplines and use different units of analysis (individual, regional, country or cross-country level), methodologies and techniques (theoretical, empirical, qualitative and quantitative).
SUBMISSION INFO:
SUBMISSION DEADLINE: Please submit your proposal by January 15, 2019.
SUBMISSION INSTRUCTIONS:
To submit a proposal, please go to the IIPPE home page http://iippe.org/and check “Submit proposal”. You will be transferred to the Electronic Proposal Form (EPF) located at https://afep-iippe2019.sciencesconf.org/. There you first need to register on the platform and create an account. (For English, select the small English flag near the upper left corner of the page.)
To register, click on the down arrow next to the “Login” button in the upper right corner of the page, and then select “Create account”. Fill in the simple information and submit, and you will get a response for confirmation sent to the email address given. Once you have done that, you can submit a proposal.
To submit, select “Submission” from the left column. “Step 1: Instructions” gives you all the instructions that are necessary beyond the obvious ones provided during the submission process by the site. “Step 2: Submit” takes you to the submission process itself. When you submit, be sure to select “IIPPE Paper” under the category “Type”. Only after that will a category “Topic” with the list of Working Groups appear. Please choose “Social Capital Working Group” to submit to our panel.
GENERAL INFO:
For queries and suggestions, you may contact Asimina Christoforou, Coordinator of the Social Capital Working Group: asimina.christoforou@gmail.com.
For general information about IIPPE, Working Groups, and the Conference: http://iippe.org.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)