Only those who never knew it could be 'proud' of colonialism

A good opinion piece describing the feelings when someone from the colonized land hears about the colonizer boasting about their cultures & development over centuries. Although, the piece is about an British-Indian-African speaking against the British rule in African countries, this can be easily expanded to include America, & other European countries (Germany, France, Belgium, Spain etc.)

British boast that at one point in history their empire was so big that sun never set in that empire, & they are proud of the legacy of their empire. But those British also forget to mention what British did in those colonized lands, in Australia, SouthEast Asia, South Asia, Middle East, several African countries, & of course, even in US. British policies colonized, humiliated, & subjugated the native people of these lands. They looted & transferred billions of treasures (if we value those treasures in current money) to UK. Even after exiting their colonies, they still interfere with the domestic policies of their colonies, because they still think that these regions are their colonies.

Let's talk about Americans. They proudly say that America is the most powerful country in the world, they have the best "democracy" in the world, & other regions, & their residents, should learn from America that how a country & its people should live, so these people can also develop. Americans don't stop to think how did their country become so "powerful"? By constantly interfering with the domestic & foreign policies of those countries, & if someone doesn't listen to the dictated terms of America, then they are forced to change their thinking or get punished severely. This is what political scientists have named, "imperialism."

If we look this international, diplomatic relationship on a micro level, it's very similar to a school yard bully forcing another student to do what the bully wants him / her to do. If that another student refuses to do such act, he / she is severely punished. When this happens on the school grounds, all of us, including Americans, call it bullying & condemn it, wholeheartedly. But these same Americans conveniently forget what America does on the international level is exactly same; "do what I say or you won't like the consequences for disobeying."

After all, an Iraqi, a Panamanian, a Colombian, a Yemeni, an Afghani, & the list goes on & on, won't feel such affection for America. They have felt, & are still feeling & living, the death & destruction of what America did to them. They don't feel happy or proud that America is such a powerful country, because that power is achieved by spreading terror, violence, misery, suffering, death & destruction. All that knowledge, scientific or otherwise, is useless if it is not backed by work, which doesn't harm anyone else. All that philanthropic work of Americans around the world is no good if those same Americans' tax dollars & moral support is for that same American army, which spreads misery, death & destruction in the poor villages of Afghanistan, Iraq, & Yemen.

After all, as the author of this piece pointed out, all empires, old & new, are "motivated by greed & cultural disrespect," & when one country wants to forcibly rule another country, it will always spread more misery & destruction than create anything valuable.

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https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/only-those-who-never-knew-it-could-be-proud-of-colonialism-a6831196.html

Way back in 1973, when I was a postgraduate student at Oxford, I fell out with my new best friend, Samantha. She was the daughter of a South African businessman and I had been exiled from Uganda. Africa bonded us for a while, then things fell apart. She couldn’t understand why I went on and on about colonialism and its impact on the subjugated. And I couldn’t forgive her for not understanding. ...

A new survey found nearly 43% of Britons are proud of the British Empire. They hang on to these feelings because this nation has never gone through an honest assessment of that past. Though British rule did deliver some good, like all empires it was motivated by greed and cultural disrespect. The 18th-century historian Edward Gibbon observed, “The history of empires is the history of human misery.” They who have assiduously painted over dark episodes in British history should know that whitewash is unreliable and temporary. Truths will out.
...

Ah, the many lessons we subjugated natives had to suffer through, amid the daily micro-humiliations of Western supremacy. The British banned home languages from playgrounds and spicy food in lunchboxes at our school; money spent on educating black children was a fraction of the funds made available for white kids in occupied lands. Just like in the UK, when the poor stole food, they were punished with extreme harshness. Resistance movements, like the Mau Mau in Kenya, had members tortured, imprisoned or killed.

Around 85 million Indian people died in famines between the years of 1760 and 1943, partly because of ruthless grain control policies. Churchill was unmoved when millions were perishing in Bengal. Indians, he thought, were “beastly people with a beastly religion.” They had no food because they bred like rabbits. There has not been a single deadly famine in India since independence. The Great Hedge of India (2001) by Roy Moxham described a vast hedge that was built by Victorian administrators so they could collect salt tax. Impoverished Indians were no longer able to afford this essential. Many suffered illnesses as a result or died.

What Rhodesians did to black people during this period remains hidden from British people. All they hear about is Mugabe, a monstrous product of colonialism, as was Idi Amin.

My last book, Exotic England, is both a critique of and a paean to my nation. I am here because they, imperialists, were there, in our lands. Though never equal, the relationship was not black and white. We learnt things, changed, fell in love sometimes. All of us have a responsibility to look honestly at this history, because so much of it lives on.

... Our education syllabus focuses on imperial vanities not realities. The media and arts do not yet reflect modern, global Britain.

So too, our foreign policies remain colonial. Blair was proud of the empire, so too Brown. The British still own the Chagos archipelago. In the Seventies, inhabitants were forcibly removed from the islands by our government and the largest atoll, Diego Garcia, turned into a US military base. A report quietly published last week suggests 98% of the dispossessed Chagossians want to go back. They do not matter. ...

That is not to mention the unconsciously colonialist British culture. A travel supplement on South Africa in a Sunday paper featured happy pictures almost all of European travellers and commentators, plus two local ladies selling fruit and a vineyard worker ... .

"Cold War Mentality" by Loujie

 
"Cold War Mentality" - Loujie, China Daily, China

"Israel; an alcoholic friend" by Andy Singer

 "Israel; an alcoholic friend" - Andy Singer, US

"Biggest Arms Exporters" by Rainer Hachfeld

"Biggest Arms Exporters" - Rainer Hachfeld, Neues Deutschland, Berlin, Germany

Civilian death toll from explosive weapons soars

What to comment on this news article than to say that the human blood has become very cheap now. Killing another human being has become extremely easy with the proliferation of small arms to large weapons. Be it armed gangs or law enforcement agencies or military, access to a weapon is easy, & the mentality of "shoot first, think later" has spread everywhere. 

Killing indiscriminately another human being carries no adverse consequences. Legal & illegal sales of arms & weapons is a huge lucrative business for both smuggling groups & such developed nations as US, Canada, Russia, China, Germany, France, UK, Sweden etc.

So, when one of the most profitable industries around the world is in making weapons, then how can we not expect a constant increase in civilian deaths. It would be a bit foolish & naïve to expect a decline in human deaths with the developed countries actively subsidizing their weapons industries & actively hawking their military wares on the international stage. And then everyone wants to innocently proclaim that they are only working for peace around the world.
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http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/jun/22/civilian-death-toll-explosive-weapons-soars-syria-gaza

The global civilian death toll from explosive weapons has increased dramatically in recent years, driven in part by the greater use of aerial bombs on populated areas, often by governments including Syria & Israel, according to a report.

Although the international community has taken concerted action to curb the use of chemical weapons, the report by advocacy group Action on Armed Violence (AOAV) confirms that conventional explosives, can be just as devastating & indiscriminate when used against towns & cities.

AOAV’s report, Explosive States, which examines data for 2014, found that when explosive weapons were used in urban areas, 92% of the casualties were civilians, compared with 34% in rural areas. In 2014, there were 32,662 civilian casualties from weapons including aerial bombs, mortars & car bombs, an increase of 5% on 2013, & 52% higher than 2011, when AOAV started collecting data.

“This is the third consecutive year that we have seen an increase in civilian deaths & injuries from explosive weapons,” Iain Overton, the director of investigations at AOAV, said. “With civilians bearing the brunt of explosive weapon harm in Gaza, Ukraine, Nigeria, Iraq, Syria & Afghanistan, the question has to be: how many more will have to die before states agree to end the use of explosive weapons in populated areas?”

More than half the civilian casualties in 2014 were caused by improvised explosive devices (IEDs) such as car bombs & suicide vests. The prevalence of such weapons in Iraq has helped make it the most dangerous place in the world for civilians, in terms of explosive weapons, with more than 10,000 casualties for the second year running. Syria was second with 6,245 recorded civilian casualties (though AOAV acknowledges that it is likely to be gross underestimate due to reporting difficulties).

Deaths by IED increased dramatically in Nigeria over the course of 2014, as Boko Haram targeted markets, bus stops & places of worship. Almost all the 2,407 casualties in the country were caused by car bombs, suicide bomb attacks or other IEDs.

The most striking and lethal development in 2014 was the increased use of aerial bombs by governments on densely populated areas. The number of civilian casualties from such weapons almost trebled from the previous year. The overwhelming majority of the casualties by aerial bombardment were caused by Syria (46% of the total) & Israel (35%).

In Syria, government forces made dramatically increased use of barrel bombs – containers filled with fuel, explosives & chunks of jagged metal typically pushed out of helicopters by hand, killing people & destroying buildings over a wide areas. In 2013, barrel bombs accounted for 20% of aerial attacks. In 2014, that proportion had doubled. The bulk of barrel bomb attacks (85%) were on urban areas.

Israeli air attacks accounted for more than half the civilian casualties in Gaza in 2014. According to UN figures, there were 2,131 deaths from Israel’s Operation Protective Edge in July & August, 69% of which were civilian. But Israel also used high explosive ground-launched & naval shells during that campaign against built-up targets. As a result, Israel outdid even Syria as the state responsible for the most civilian casualties from explosive weapons in 2014, according to the AOAV report.

“Our data shows that states were far more willing to carry out aerial bombings in populated areas, bucking a recent trend. It’s a deeply worrying development,” Overton said. “It’s almost no surprise to see Israel was the state force behind the most civilian casualties from explosive weapons. The weapons used in Gaza last year included thousands of unguided artillery shells, as well as massive aircraft bombs, which, even if guided to a target, can still impact a wide area. AOAV’s research suggests, that for artillery at least, Israel had relaxed the rules, making it easier for troops to use these weapons in or near populated areas. You simply can’t do that on such a large scale without increasing risk of death, injury & damage to civilians & civilian areas.”

World's refugee population hits all-time high of 60 million, half of them children – UN

Unsurprisingly, what else to expect from the report. To help these refugees, peace has to be instituted in the developing countries, but then that would mean that developed countries of the West (US, Canada, UK, Germany, France) and even new economic powers like China & Russia have to stop selling arms & weapons to these developing countries. These developing countries where these refugees are coming from don't have any resources of their own to manufacture these deadly arms & weapons.

Secondly, developed countries of the West have to stop installing their own puppet governments in these developing countries. They need to stop interfering with the negative development of the countries. It's well known how US constantly interfered in the internal affairs of Latin American & Middle Eastern countries. US interfered with Japan to the point that Japanese PM Shinzo Abe changed the constitution to make the country more militaristic. That's not exactly a positive step towards creating peace in the world.

Thirdly, aside from covert & political interference by the developed West, the West also needs to stop with the military interference in the shape of active invasions. Recent examples of Iraq, Syria, Libya, Afghanistan & some old examples of Cambodia, Vietnam, Philippines etc. by the American, British, French, & other forces would provide ample evidence of this interference.

In one of my prior blog posts, I mentioned that one of the primary reasons the developed countries of the West do all these interferences in the developing world is to create active chaos in developing countries. This chaos & anarchy helps developed countries to keep a strong control over financial, mineral, energy, & human resources of the developing countries.

Developing countries keep themselves embroiled in these messes, & spend their valuable resources in resolving these matters. Developed countries provide loans to developing countries, take out resources from the grounds of developing countries for their own use, & let the bright minds of the developing countries move to developed countries, where they are mostly used for menial labour.

Developing countries, which are embroiled in wars or not, are left to shoulder all the burden of either suffering from internally displaced refugees or provide for refugees who have sought refuge in their lands from foreign lands. Developed countries, on the other hand, cause the problem & then get out of the picture.

The primary reason this problem of refugees is keep getting worse with no sign of any improvement is that developed countries actually want more chaos & anarchy in developing countries. Hey, it's not happening in their corner of the world, so why bother resolving it. They actively cause it & prefer to keep it that way. When there is a problem in their corner of the world (problems arising from the dissolution of former Yugoslavia), then they are on the mission of resolving it asap & actually successfully achieve it, too. After all, when there's a will (to resolve a problem), there's always a way.
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https://www.rt.com/news/268144-un-report-refugee-increase/

The annual “Global Trends Report: World at War” was released ... by the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).

It stated that worldwide displacement is at the highest level ever recorded, adding that the number of people forcibly displaced at the end of last year had reached 59.5 million – compared to 51.2 million a year earlier, & 37.5 million a decade ago. 14 million people were displaced in 2014 alone.

According to figures detailed in the report, over half of those refugees are children.

The year 2014 also hit a 31-year low for the number of refugees who were able to return to their home countries, at just 126,800.

"We are witnessing a paradigm change, an unchecked slide into an era in which the scale of global forced displacement as well as the response required is now clearly dwarfing anything seen before," said UN High Commissioner for Refugees António Guterres.

The figures show that one in every 122 people on the planet is now either a refugee, internally displaced or seeking asylum. If these people had a country of their own, it would be the world's 24th largest.

Every day last year, approximately 42,500 people became refugees, asylum seekers or internally displaced, the report said.

And those numbers – which represent the biggest leap ever seen in a single year – are likely to worsen, according to the agency.

Causes of displacement

Since 2011, the main reason for the surge has been the war in Syria – now the world's largest driver of displacement, surpassing Afghanistan for the first time. A total of 7.6 million Syrians are internally displaced, & 3.9 million are outside the country.

The report noted that at least 15 conflicts have erupted or reignited worldwide in the past 5 years: 8 in Africa, 3 in the Middle East, one in Europe & 3 in Asia.

"Few of these crises have been resolved & most still generate new displacement," the report stated.

Meanwhile, continuous instability & conflict in Afghanistan, Somalia & other areas has led millions to be constantly on the move, stranded as long-term internally displaced or refugees.

The report also drew attention to the current Mediterranean refugee crisis – the result of instability in North Africa.

It added that countries housing the majority of refugees are part of the global poor. Almost 9 out of every 10 refugees were in regions or countries considered less economically developed. One-quarter were in nations among the UN's list of least developed nations.

In the face of the rising displacement numbers, Guterres warned that people in need of “compassion, aid & refuge are being abandoned.”

"For an age of unprecedented mass displacement, we need an unprecedented humanitarian response & a renewed global commitment to tolerance & protection for people fleeing conflict & persecution,” he said.

The UNHCR report comes just 3 days after an Amnesty International report said the world is facing the “worst refugee crisis since World War II.”

The report, called 'The Global Refugee Crisis: A Conspiracy of Neglect, accused governments of effectively letting thousands of people die by failing to provide them with basic human protection.

It paid particular attention to the situation in Syria, Mediterranean, Africa & Southeast Asia.

Amnesty is urging world leaders to call an international summit on tackling the refugee crisis, & for all countries to ratify the UN Refugee Convention. This gives displaced persons legal rights & status in the nations where they have sought refuge.

"Negative Energy Generator" by Andy Singer

"Negative Energy Generator" - Andy Singer, US

"Virtual World" by Andy Singer

"Virtual World" - Andy Singer, US

"Climate Conference" by Loujie

"Climate Conference" - Loujie, China Daily, China

Beautiful Creatures (Quote 1)

I almost agree with this movie line. Where I disagree is that all humans don't only consume & destroy this planet. There are lots of people who are doing a lot of good work; working for the humanity & the planet. Only problem is that their actions / work is like taking 1 step forward in the right direction & then, far more influential people wage a war against another country, & in the process, taking 5 steps backward. That's why, the world is slowly inching towards a world-wide catastrophic disaster.

 

Another point, which I disagree with (but atheists would love it), is that ideas like God are not invented out of thin air. And when leaders & elites use those ideas (God, righteousness etc.) to go to war with people who seem to disagree with them, it's not because one group thinks it's correct about its God & other isn't.

 

Leaders & elites use those sacred ideas to drive their public towards the war. The real objective of the war / fight is nothing to do religion. It's all to do with personal agendas of the leaders & the elites. For instance, the Crusades had nothing to do with religion but the Catholic Church wanted to capture lands & war booty from Italy to all the way to Jerusalem. Current wars are more to do with military-industrial complex, control over the resources (oil, gas, rare minerals etc.), & to basically show to the world, who has the biggest stick in the world. Nothing to do with restoring human rights, women rights, democracy, freedom etc.

 

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"Drones vs Torture" by Rick McKee

"Drones vs Torture" - Rick McKee, Augusta Chronicle, Augusta, GA, US

"No Peace on Earth" by Rick McKee

"No Peace on Earth" - Rick McKee, The Augusta Chronicle, Augusta, GA, US

"Hate" by Bob Englehart

"Hate" - Bob Englehart, Hartford Courant, Hartford, CT, US

"Global Business" by Paresh Nath

"Global Business" - Paresh Nath, India

How the internet is destroying us

Super loved this article ... left me speechless. Flawless. I tried picking a few lines to put it here, but it seemed every line was more important than the previous one, so I ended up putting here almost the whole article. Ironically, regardless of how much I loved this article, I still gotta use social media.
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The internet, its many evangelists tell us, is the answer to all our problems. It gives power to the people.
 
It’s a platform for equality that allows everyone an equal share in life’s riches. For the first time in history, anyone can produce, say or buy anything.
 
But today, as the internet heads towards putting more than half the world’s population online, all this promise has evaporated.
The dream has become a nightmare, in which I fear we billions of network users are victims, not beneficiaries.
 
In our super-connected 21st-century world, rather than promoting economic fairness, the net is a central reason for the growing gulf between rich & poor, & the hollowing out of the middle classes.
 
Rather than generating more jobs, it is - as I will explain - a cause of unemployment. Rather than creating more competition, it has created immensely powerful new monopolists such as Google & Amazon in a winner-takes-all economy.
 
Its cultural ramifications are equally chilling. Rather than creating transparency & openness, it secretly gathers information & keeps a watch on each & every one of us.
 
You need only have read the stories ... about how smart TVs can spy on us in our living rooms to realise that Orwell’s vision in Nineteen Eighty-Four, of a Big Brother society, is becoming a reality.
 
And thanks to the explosion in social media, rather than creating more democracy, the internet is empowering mob rule.
 
The internet has also unleashed a seemingly unstoppable flow of increasingly hardcore sexual materials. Only this week it emerged that half a million pornographic images are posted on Twitter every day.
 
Britain’s most senior judge warned recently that online pornography is a serious danger, fuelling rape & murder. Where will it stop?
 
And when people are not looking online at other people with no clothes on, they are looking at themselves.
 
Rather than fostering an intellectual renaissance, the internet has created a selfie-centred culture of voyeurism & narcissism.
 
Far from making us happy, it is provoking & channelling an outpouring of anger at the world around us.
 
Of course, the internet is not all bad. It has done tremendous good in connecting families, friends & work colleagues around the world.
 
The personal lives of 3 billion internet users have been transformed by the incredible convenience of email, social media, e-commerce & mobile apps.
 
Yes, we all rely on & even love our ever-shrinking & increasingly powerful mobile devices. Yes, the internet can, if used critically, be a source of great enlightenment in terms of the global sharing of ideas & information.
 
The app economy is already beginning to generate innovative solutions to some of the most pervasive problems on the planet, such as mapping clean water stations in Africa & providing access to credit for entrepreneurs in India.
 
But the hidden negatives outweigh the positives. Under our noses, one of the biggest ever shifts in power between people & big institutions is taking place, disguised in the language of inclusion & transparency.
 
Rather than providing a public service, the architects of our digital future are building a society that is a disservice to almost everyone except a few powerful, wealthy owners.
 
It’s easy to forget the crusading intentions with which the internet revolution began. But then the mantle passed from the techno wizards & visionaries to businessmen.
 
The internet lost a sense of common purpose, a general decency, perhaps even its soul. Money replaced all these things.
 
Amazon reflects much of what has gone wrong. Now by far the dominant internet retailer, it has achieved this position by crushing or acquiring its competitors & selling everything it can lay its hands on.
 
It has felt the need to expand so ruthlessly because in its type of e-commerce, margins are extremely tight & economies of scale vital. In 2013, Amazon made sales of $75 billion (£49 billion) but returned a profit of just $274 million (£178 million).
 
To succeed, it has to make itself a virtual monopoly, stifling rivals along the way. Inside the company this is known as the Gazelle Project, after founder Jeff Bezos instructed one of his staff that ‘Amazon should approach small book publishers the way a cheetah would pursue a sickly gazelle’.

The book trade - which is where Amazon began - was initially quite enthusiastic about the new arrival but now sees it as a predator as shops close down, unable to compete.
 
As Amazon expands into more retail sectors - from clothing, electronics & toys to garden furniture & jewellery - it is having the same effect there.
 
The impact on jobs is huge. While bricks-&-mortar retailers employ 47 people for every £65 million in sales, Amazon employs just 14, making it a job-killer rather than a job-creator.

‘Robotisation’ in its warehouses may reduce job numbers even further, until eventually Amazon eliminates the human factor from shopping completely. The ‘Everything Store’ is becoming the ‘Nobody store’.

Then there is Google, which discovered the holy grail of the information economy with its search engine sifting & indexing the mass of digital material on the worldwide web.
 
Last year Google processed 40,000 search queries a second, equal to 1.2 trillion searches a year. It controls around two-thirds of searches globally, with 90% dominance in markets such as Italy & Spain.
 
The service is free to use. Advertising pays the bills & makes the profits.
 
The irony is that Google was invented by a couple of idealistic computer science graduate students who so mistrusted advertisements that they banned them on their homepage. Now it is by far the largest & most powerful advertising company in history, valued at over £260 billion.
 
Unlike Amazon, its profits are mind-bogglingly high. In 2013, it returned nearly £10billion for its investors, from revenues of nearly £39billion.
 
Even more valuable, from Google’s point of view, is what it learns about us. And Google, for better or worse, never forgets. All our digital trails are crunched to provide Google & its corporate clients with our so-called ‘data exhaust’.

From this concept other internet services have developed, including Facebook, Wikipedia, the business networking site LinkedIn, & self-publishing platforms such as Twitter & YouTube.
 
Most pursue a Google-style strategy of giving away their tools & services free, relying on advertising sales for revenue. In the process, they have created significant wealth for their founders & investors.
 
On the surface, this seems like a win for everyone. We all get free internet tools & the entrepreneurs become super-rich.
 
But there is a catch. All of us are, in fact, working for Facebook & Google for nothing, manufacturing the very personal data that makes these companies so valuable.
 
The result is another massive loss of jobs. Google needs to employ only 46,000 people, compared with an industrial giant like General Motors, which is worth just a seventh of Google’s £260 billion but employs just over 200,000 people in its factories.
 
For all the claims that the internet has created more equal opportunity & distribution of wealth, the new economy actually resembles a doughnut — with a gaping hole in the middle where millions of workers were once paid to manufacture products.
 
Take the photo app Instagram, which allows anyone to share their own snaps online for others to see. When it was sold to Facebook for £651 million in 2012, it had just 13 full-time employees. Meanwhile, Kodak was closing 13 factories & 130 photo labs & laying off 47,000 workers.
 
Or WhatsApp, the instant messaging platform for which Facebook paid £12.4 billion. In one month it handled 54 billion messages from its 450 million users, yet it employs only 55 people to manage its service.
 
That’s because we are the ones doing most of the work. In this e-world, the quality of the technology is secondary.
 
What’s important — & what is actually being traded when these companies change hands — is you & me: our labour, our productivity, our network, our supposed creativity.
 
Yet for our input in adding intelligence to Google, or content to Facebook, we are paid nothing, merely being granted the right to use the software free. And that’s what is driving the new ‘data factory’ economy.
 
We think we are using Instagram to look at the world, but actually we are the ones being watched. And the more we reveal about ourselves, the more valuable we become to advertisers.
 
From social media networks such as Twitter & Facebook to Google, ... the exploitation of our personal information is what counts. These companies want to know us so intimately so they can package us up &, without our consent, sell us back to advertisers.
 
Another great irony in all this is that the internet was created by public-minded technologists such as the English academic Professor Sir Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web, who were all indifferent to money, sometimes even hostile to it.
 
Yet the internet they produced with such high humanitarian hopes has triggered one of the greatest accumulations of wealth in human history.
 
Jeff Bezos has made £19.5 billion from his Amazon Everything Store that offers cheaper prices than its rivals. Facebook co-founder Mark Zuckerberg has accumulated his £19.5 billion by making money out of friendship.
 
In 25 years, the internet has gone from the initial idealistic banning of all forms of commerce to transforming absolutely everything into profitable activity. Especially our privacy.
 
Tim Berners-Lee never imagined that his ‘social’ creation to help people to work together more easily could be used so cynically, both by private companies & by governments. Yet that’s what is happening.
 
As the internet transforms every electronic object into a connected device, we are drifting into a world where everything — our fitness, what we eat, our driving habits, how hard we work — can be profitably quantified by companies such as Google.
 
Faceless data-gatherers wearing all-seeing electronic glasses watch our every move. Our networked society is like a claustrophobic village pub, a frighteningly transparent community in which there are no longer any secrets or any anonymity.
 
We are observed by every unloving institution of the new digital surveillance state, from big data companies & the Government to insurance companies, healthcare providers & the police.
 
Google & Facebook boast that they know us more intimately than we know ourselves. They know what we did yesterday, today &, with the help of predictive technology, what we will do tomorrow.
 
And it is, frankly, our fault for choosing to live in a crystal republic where cars, mobile phones & televisions — hooked up to the internet — watch us.
 
Far from being the answer to our problems, the internet, whose pioneers believed it would save humanity, is diminishing our lives.
 
Instead of creating more transparency, we have devices that make the invisible visible. The sharing economy is really the selfish economy. Social media is, in fact, anti-social. And the success of the internet is a huge failure.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2962509/How-internet-destroying-pioneers-hoped-web-transform-society-devastating-new-book-says-way-diminishes-humanity.html

"Hate for Hate" - Gary Varvel

"Hate for Hate" - Gary Varvel, Indianapolis Star, Indianapolis, IN, US

The Lone Ranger (Quote 2)

When blood is spilled unjustly, either by governments, radicalized groups, or both; rivers do run red, then !!!

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The Palace of Shame that makes China angry

Good article. The West developed itself, in the past 500 or so years, primarily through the looting of treasures of inanimate objects & enslaving millions in the process. In many cases, they also occupied whole countries.

The West forced their way into several countries / kingdoms of yesteryear (South Asia, Latin America, North America, Africa, Australasia, Middle East) in the guise of "increasing trade & economy", then took over those lands through brutal means, kept it occupied for decades, & then after emptying the lands for whatever they were worth (all their treasures, financial & human capital), left the indigenous population fighting for scraps among themselves for decades to come. All this was going on, while, "civilized" society was ruling over "barbarians".

The Western countries still do the same thing by letting their companies force their way into their former occupied lands (developing countries) in the name of trade & taking advantage of weaker / corrupt governments of those countries (which are propped up by the West), then start plundering the mineral wealth of that country without ever properly compensating those countries, e.g. Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Rwanda, Uganda, Libya, Congo, Peru, Venezuela, Iraq etc.

When a good leader does come along in those former occupied lands, he/she asks for compensation, debt forgiveness, & reassesses all those contracts for mineral wealth being looted out of his/her country. Those leaders are scorned & the West tries to rile up a small minority of that country to create trouble for the that leader, e.g. Venezuela's late leader Chavez. Some other countries, like Greece, when asks for compensation for past wrongs, they are essentially told to go screw off, & "look to the future instead of past." When African countries, e.g. Congo asks for debt forgiveness, they are told that "a loan is a loan & has to be repaid", even though, that loan was essentially paid to a corrupt dictator, who was widely known that he was a corrupt dictator, but he kept getting the loans from international banks & monetary agencies.

How can the public & the honest governments of the developing countries ever trust the Western countries & their leaders, when the recent history of the world is replete with the West's dishonesty, lies, & exploitation of the developing countries with any means necessary?
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There is a deep, unhealed historical wound in the UK's relations with China - a wound that most British people know nothing about, but which causes China great pain. It stems from the destruction in 1860 of the country's most beautiful palace.

It's been described as China's ground zero - a place that tells a story of cultural destruction that everyone in China knows about, but hardly anyone outside.

The palace's fate is bitterly resented in Chinese minds & constantly resurfaces in Chinese popular films, angry social media debates, & furious rows about international art sales.

And it has left a controversial legacy in British art collections - royal, military, private - full of looted objects.

These days the site is just ruins - piles of scorched masonry, lakes with overgrown plants, lawns with a few stones scattered where many buildings once stood. The site swarms with Chinese visitors, taken there as part of a government-sponsored "patriotic education" programme.

As everyone in China is taught, it was once the most beautiful collection of architecture & art in the country. Its Chinese name was Yuanmingyuan - Garden of Perfect Brightness - where Chinese emperors had built a huge complex of palaces & other fine buildings, & filled them with cultural treasures.

A new digital reconstruction by a team at Tsinghua University gives a vivid idea of what this extraordinary place looked like when, 155 years ago, a joint British-French army approached Beijing.

The army was sent towards the end of the Opium Wars to force Chinese imperial rulers to open up their country further to Western trade & influence. In command on the British side was the 8th Earl of Elgin, from one of the most famous families in British imperial history.

French troops reached Beijing & the Summer Palace, where they began helping themselves to porcelain, silks & ancient books - or simply destroying what they found.

British troops joined in when they arrived shortly afterwards. "Officers and men seemed to have been seized with temporary insanity," said one witness. "In body & soul they were absorbed in one pursuit which was plunder, plunder."

Lord Elgin ordered the British troops to burn down the entire Summer Palace complex. The destruction, he wrote later, was intended "to mark, by a solemn act of retribution, the horror & indignation... with which we were inspired by the perpetration of a great crime".

I visited the current Lord Elgin, at his ancestral home in Scotland, to ask how he explained what had happened in 1860.

"There are things that perhaps you might have done differently," he says of his ancestor. "At the same time you've got to judge what was the feeling - intense feeling - at that particular moment."

China rejects such explanations.

"This is what they say to justify their actions," says Wang Daocheng, a leading Chinese scholar of these events. "That's the way they try to maintain the so-called moral high ground."

Soon after the Summer Palace's destruction in 1860, the 8th Earl of Elgin made a triumphant entry to the centre of Beijing, his procession symbolising British & Western domination - & Chinese humiliation.

China is also focusing increasingly on all the art that was looted by French & British forces - & taken to Europe. It was widely traded & still sits in all kinds of private & public collections.

"We're making a plan to start a series of actions to recover these antiques & get them back to China," says Niu Xianfeng, general director of the National Treasures Fund, affiliated to the Chinese Ministry of Culture.

"China will never give up the right to bring these looted or stolen treasures back."

Liu Yang, a researcher who has spent 15 years tracking down the artworks, says "British museums never reply" when he writes to ask what they have. But he has collected hundreds of images of looted items on his computer.

The Royal collection has several other items thought to be connected with the Beijing Summer Palace, including Chinese imperial sceptres, brass plaques & a mahogany screen.

The Wallace Collection in London has magnificent imperial vases from the palace.

British military museums have many items too. At the Royal Engineers' museum in Kent deputy curator James Scott showed me a beautiful jade ornament brought back from the 1860 campaign. There are also parts of a Chinese imperial throne acquired by the officer Charles Gordon - used for many decades as part of the furniture in the officers' mess.

Labelling these items is a sensitive matter. "We don't actually mention the word loot at all. We try to keep the interpretation as neutral as possible," says Scott.

Similar sensitivities are needed by auctioneers, who can make huge profits when items originally taken from the Summer Palace are re-sold today. Proof of their origin as part of the Chinese imperial collection - such as inscriptions by made by the soldiers who looted them - hugely increases their potential value.

Some newly wealthy Chinese have bid for such items. But having to pay for art that was stolen - as many Chinese see it - causes increasing resentment.

And what of the Elgin family? Does today's Lord Elgin think art should be returned to China?

"It's a very good arguing point" he concedes. But "the beauty of something is inherent in it wherever it happens to be".

"These things happen," he says of the 1860 events. "It's important to go ahead, rather than look back all the time."

The French, who joined in the looting of the palace, have been more open about their regret. "We call ourselves civilised & them barbarians," wrote the outraged author, Victor Hugo, about the destruction of the Summer Palace. "Here is what Civilisation has done to Barbarity."

http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-30810596

Leaders & Public

Regardless of where we live nowadays, in a so-called "democratic" country or a dictatorship, the public is molded & treated by respective government the same way. "V for Vendetta" -- put the fear in people's heart & they will follow you to the gates of hell.

 

Noam Chomsky on American Presidents (Quote)