Sinclair Lewis ~ It Can’t Happen Here

First edition 1935

It Can’t Happen Here is the only one of Sinclair Lewis’s later novels to match the power of Main Street, Babbitt, and Arrowsmith. A cautionary tale about the fragility of democracy, it is an alarming, eerily timeless look at how fascism could take hold in America.

Written during the Great Depression, when the country was largely oblivious to Hitler’s aggression, it juxtaposes sharp political satire with the chillingly realistic rise of a president who becomes a dictator to save the nation from welfare cheats, sex, crime, and a liberal press.

THE handsome dining room of the Hotel Wessex, with its gilded plaster shields and the mural depicting the Green Mountains, had been reserved for the Ladies’ Night Dinner of the Fort Beulah Rotary Club.

Here in Vermont the affair was not so picturesque as it might have been on the Western prairies. Oh, it had its points: there was a skit in which Medary Cole (grist mill & feed store) and Louis Rotenstern (custom tailoring—pressing & cleaning) announced that they were those historic Vermonters, Brigham Young and Joseph Smith, and with their jokes about imaginary plural wives they got in ever so many funny digs at the ladies present. But the occasion was essentially serious. All of America was serious now, after the seven years of depression since 1929. It was just long enough after the Great War of 1914-18 for the young people who had been born in 1917 to be ready to go to college… or to another war, almost any old war that might be handy.

The features of this night among the Rotarians were nothing funny, at least not obviously funny, for they were the patriotic addresses of Brigadier General Herbert Y. Edgeways, U.S.A. (ret.), who dealt angrily with the topic “Peace through Defense—Millions for Arms but Not One Cent for Tribute,” and of Mrs. Adelaide Tarr Gimmitch— she who was no more renowned for her gallant anti-suffrage campaigning way back in 1919 than she was for having, during the Great War, kept the American soldiers entirely out of French cafés by the clever trick of sending them ten thousand sets of dominoes.

Nor could any social-minded patriot sneeze at her recent somewhat unappreciated effort to maintain the purity of the American Home by barring from the motion-picture industry all persons, actors or directors or cameramen, who had: (a) ever been divorced; (b) been born in any foreign country—except Great Britain, since Mrs. Gimmitch thought very highly of Queen Mary, or (c) declined to take an oath to revere the Flag, the Constitution, the Bible, and all other peculiarly American institutions. Read more

To Be Effective, Socialism Must Adapt To 21st Century Needs

• by: C.J. Polychroniou

Vijay Prashad

IS socialism making a comeback? If so, what exactly is socialism, why did it lose steam toward the latter part of the 20th century, and how do we distinguish democratic socialism, currently in an upward trend in the U.S., from social democracy, which has all but collapsed? Vijay Prashad, executive director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research and a leading scholar in socialist studies and the politics of the global South, offers answers to these questions.

C.J. Polychroniou: Socialism represented a powerful and viable alternative to capitalism from the mid-1800s all the way up to the third quarter of the 20th century, but entered a period of crisis soon thereafter for reasons that continue to be debated today. In your view, what are some of the main political, economic and ideological factors that help explain socialism’s setback in the contemporary era?

Vijay Prashad: The first thing to acknowledge is that “socialism” is not merely a set of ideas or a policy framework or anything like that. Socialism is a political movement, a general way of referring to a situation where the workers gain the upper hand in the class struggle and put in place institutions, policies and social networks that advantage the workers. When the political movement is weak and the workers are on the weaker side of the class struggle, it is impossible to speak confidently of “socialism.” So, we need to study carefully how and why workers — the immense majority of humanity — began to see the reservoirs of their strength get depleted. To my mind, the core issue here is globalization — a set of structural and subjective developments that weakened worker power. Let’s take the developments in turn.

There were three structural developments that are essential. First, major technological changes in the world of communications, database management and transportation that allowed firms to have a global reach. The global commodity chain of this period enabled firms to disarticulate production — break up factories into their constituent units and place them around the world. Second, the third world debt crisis debilitated the power of national liberation states and states that — even weakly — had tried to create development pathways for their populations in Africa, Asia and Latin America. The debt crisis led to [International Monetary Fund] IMF-driven structural adjustment programs that released hundreds of millions of workers to international capital and for the workforce of the new global commodity chain. Third, the collapse of the USSR and the Eastern bloc, as well as the changes in China provided international capital with hundreds of millions of more workers. What we saw is in this period of globalization was the break-up of the factory form, which weakened trade unions; the impossibility of nationalization of firms, which weakened national liberation states; and the use of the concept of arbitrage to force a race to the bottom for workers. These structural developments, from which workers have not recovered, deeply weakened the workers’ movement. Read more

The International Consortium Of Investigative Journalists ~ The ICIJ Offshore Leaks Database

This ICIJ database contains information on more than 785,000 offshore entities that are part of the Panama Papers, the Offshore Leaks, the Bahamas Leaks and the Paradise Papers investigations. The data covers nearly 80 years up to 2016 and links to people and companies in more than 200 countries and territories.

The real value of the database is that it strips away the secrecy that cloaks companies and trusts incorporated in tax havens and exposes the people behind them. This includes, when available, the names of the real owners of those opaque structures. In all, the interactive application reveals more than 720,000 names of people and companies behind secret offshore structures. They come from leaked records and not a standardized corporate registry, so there may be duplicates. In some cases, companies are listed as shareholders for another company or a trust, an arrangement that often helps obscure the flesh-and-blood people behind offshore entities.

[…]

ICIJ is publishing the information in the public interest. While many of the activities carried out through offshore entities are perfectly legal, extensive reporting by ICIJ and its media partners for more than five years has shown that the anonymity granted by the offshore economy facilitates money laundering, tax evasion, fraud and other crimes. Even when it’s legal, transparency advocates argue that the use of an alternative, parallel economy undermines democracy because it benefits a few at the expense of the majority.

Go to: https://offshoreleaks.icij.org/

Alessandro Baricco ~ The Game

• door: Linda Bouws

Alessandro Baricco. Ills. Joseph Sassoon Semah

Alessandro Baricco onderzoekt in The Game, opvolger van zijn zeer succesvolle boek De Barbaren’ [zie video onder artikel], de digitale revolutie en de gevolgen daarvan op onze beschaving. Deze revolutie heeft onze manier van denken en leven voorgoed veranderd. Maar lopen we niet het risico onze menselijkheid te verliezen in het digitale tijdperk? Waar en wanneer begon deze transformatie en waarheen leidt die ons?
Als een archeoloog onderzoekt Baricco de mijlpalen van de revolutie – van internet pioniers tot de uitvinding van de IPhone en Netflix, van het computerspel Space Invaders uit 1978 (de nulwervel van de digitale revolutie) tot kunstmatige intelligentie.

De Game is ontstaan uit de drang naar een leven zonder elite, net zoals de eerste technologische hulpmiddelen werden uitgevonden om de macht te vermalen door hem aan iedereen te geven. Nu heeft iedereen toegang tot elke informatie van de wereld, kan iedereen met iedereen communiceren en ook zijn mening geven, wat vroeger was voorbehouden aan de elite. Dankzij The Game is het monopolie van de elite niet langer onaantastbaar. In The Game zet Alessandro Baricco zich nadrukkelijk af tegen de oude elite die geen zin heeft de nieuwe wereld te begrijpen en zich ver weg houdt van de nieuw realiteit.

Baricco ziet het startpunt van de digitale revolutie in de zeventiger jaren als een digitale opstand tegen de rampzalige beschaving van de twintigste eeuw met zijn twee wereldoorlogen: die tragedie mag nooit worden herhaald. Informatica-ingenieurs, politieke militanten, hippies uit Californië zagen de technologie dan ook vooral als bevrijdingsinstrument, aldus Baricco. De digitale opstand richtte zich op de onbeweeglijkheid en de overmacht van elites door tools te bouwen die de beste bewegingsmarges garandeerden die de elites buiten konden sluiten. Ze braken de macht af en verdeelden die onder mensen.
Het logo van de vrijheidsstrijd werd: mens-toetsenbord-scherm, zowel een fysieke als mentale houding met de bereidheid de wereld via apparaten te benaderen. Apparaten werden een soort protheses, een verlengstuk van de mens.

Barricco markeert de presentatie van de iPhone door Steve Jobs, op 9 januari 2007, als het ontstaan van de Game.
‘In die telefoon – die geen telefoon meer was- was de logische structuur van computerspellen leesbaar (oersoep van de opstand), werd de houding van mens-toetsenbord-scherm geperfectioneerd, stierf het twintigste-eeuwse concept van diepgang, werd de oppervlakkigheid bekrachtigd als huisvesting van het zijn, en voorvoelde men de komst van post-ervaring.’
Voor Baricco is de Game de verzekering tegen de nachtmerrie van de twintigste eeuw: de voorwaarden om zoiets nog eens te laten gebeuren zijn ontmanteld. Maar er gingen ook mooie en waardevolle, unieke dingen ten onder, die we weer opnieuw moeten opbouwen met gebruikmaking van de Game en met zijn idee van design.

De Game heeft weliswaar geen grondwet, geen teksten waarmee ze wordt gelegitimeerd maar er zijn wel ’teksten’ waarin het genetisch erfgoed wordt bewaard, zoals Spacewar, een van de eerste computerspellen (1972), die de volledige genetische code van onze beschaving bevat. In die eerste computerspellen schemerde al de betekenis van computers door, de potenties van het digitale, de voordelen van de houding mens-toetsenbord-scherm, een bepaald idee van mentale architectuur, een idee van snelheid, de zaligverklaring van beweging, en het belang van puntentelling, aldus Baricco.
Maar nu worden ook de tekortkomingen zichtbaar: ten eerste is de Game moeilijk en vereist skills, die niet worden onderwezen. Ten tweede is nu een systeem ontstaan dat heeft geleid tot gigantische machtsconcentraties, die niet minder toegankelijk zijn dan de elites van de twintigste-eeuw. De derde tekortkoming is in het besluit om ‘de geraamte van de wereld’, de grote bolwerken van de twintigste eeuw, intact te laten: de staat, de scholen, de kerken.
Op dit moment hebben we geen oplossingen: het is nog niemand gelukt voor de Game een eigen model te bedenken van economische ontwikkelingen, sociale rechtvaardigheid en verdeling van rijkdom.
De rijken van de Game zijn nog steeds beperkt en rijk op een traditionele manier.

De grondleggers van de Game waren man, wit, Amerikaans en ingenieur/wetenschapper. De Intelligentie van nu is meer gevarieerd: er is behoefte aan vrouwelijke cultuur, aan humanistische kennis, aan een niet-Amerikaans geheugen, aan hedendaagse talenten en aan intelligentie uit de marges. Maar vooral het humanisme is belangrijk voor het voortbestaan van de Game. Mensen hebben behoefte zich mens te blijven voelen, nu men door de Game is gedwongen tot een hoog percentage kunstmatig leven. Kunstmatige intelligentie zal ons nog verder van onszelf afvoeren, dus dat betekent dat de komende honderd jaar niets waardevoller zal zijn dan alles waardoor de mensen zich mens voelen, aldus Baricco.
We moeten de identiteit van het soort bewaren en dat kan alleen als het humanisme de achterstand inloopt en toetreedt tot de Game. De Game moet van niet alleen geproduceerd door mensen, maar zich ontwikkelen naar een tool voor mensen.
We moeten komen tot contemporary humanities als setting van de Game, dan wordt het weer een verhaal van mensen en is de Game levensvatbaar.

Alessandro Baricco ~ The Game. Amsterdam, De Bezige Bij, 2019. ISBN 9789403147802

Linda Bouws – St. Metropool Internationale Kunstprojecten

Sarah Repucci ~ Freedom And The Media: A Downward Spiral

Key Findings:
– Freedom of the media has been deteriorating around the world over the past decade.
– In some of the most influential democracies in the world, populist leaders have overseen concerted attempts to throttle the independence of the media sector.
– While the threats to global media freedom are real and concerning in their own right, their impact on the state of democracy is what makes them truly dangerous.
– Experience has shown, however, that press freedom can rebound from even lengthy stints of repression when given the opportunity. The basic desire for democratic liberties, including access to honest and fact-based journalism, can never be extinguished.

The fundamental right to seek and disseminate information through an independent press is under attack, and part of the assault has come from an unexpected source. Elected leaders in many democracies, who should be press freedom’s staunchest defenders, have made explicit attempts to silence critical media voices and strengthen outlets that serve up favorable coverage. The trend is linked to a global decline in democracy itself: The erosion of press freedom is both a symptom of and a contributor to the breakdown of other democratic institutions and principles, a fact that makes it especially alarming.

According to Freedom House’s Freedom in the World data, media freedom has been deteriorating around the world over the past decade, with new forms of repression taking hold in open societies and authoritarian states alike. The trend is most acute in Europe, previously a bastion of well-established freedoms, and in Eurasia and the Middle East, where many of the world’s worst dictatorships are concentrated. If democratic powers cease to support media independence at home and impose no consequences for its restriction abroad, the free press corps could be in danger of virtual extinction.

Experience has shown, however, that press freedom can rebound from even lengthy stints of repression when given the opportunity. The basic desire for democratic liberties, including access to honest and fact-based journalism, can never be extinguished, and it is never too late to renew the demand that these rights be granted in full.

Read more: https://freedomhouse.org/freedom-media-2019

The Embassy Of Good Science