Dean Richards’ Final Post and What Comes Next

So, here we are. The final post on darichards.com. Next week Monday, everything will be moved over to kyranarcher.com, and some things will definitely be changing. You’ll be able to see those changes in practice quite soon, since I’ll be uploading one post every day in the first (work) week of the new site, but one thing I can already tell you is that there will be less opinion. I won’t say that there isn’t going to be any opinion, but recently I felt like there was too much of topics like Islam and Russia, topics I might not be able to shut up about myself but which might be a lot less interesting for you.

I do still find them important. I wholeheartedly believe that our image of Islam and particularly of Muslims is extremely flawed, and that the “war on terrorism” continues to perpetuate itself, only creating more terrorism as it hopelessly tries to eradicate it. I also still strongly believe that although Russia is full of flaws and that many of its action are completely unjustified, we in the West are often little better, constantly making the same mistakes as Russia does but interpreting them in different ways. I doubt I’ll ever stop believing in the power of looking at issues from the other’s point of view and how much that can help with creating a world without war. When it comes to pacifism, I am probably an extremist. I wholly intend to remain one.

Still, for regular readers, these opinions are no longer new. I have shared them so often and with so little effect that it’s just time for change. Perhaps those opinions have simply grown too solid, changing too little for them to remain interesting.

Anyway, that’s enough rambling. There will be new posts at KyranArcher.com next week Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, and of course another one on the following Monday. Next week, we’ll first be heading into East Timor, a small country bordering Indonesia, so I hope to see you then!

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History is Politics and Politics is History

Soon*, darichards.com will make way for a new website, KyranArcher.com. Some of the reasons for this are summarised at the bottom of this page, but the name isn’t all that’s changing: there will be some adjustments to the content as well. One of these adjustments is that I will be adding a segment on history, picking up some of the more interesting and entertaining sides of what our world has already been through. This post will serve as some much needed background!

So, let’s start with the first part of the title: history is politics. It sounds very basic, and in fact it is, because any introductory course on either history or politics, or anything in between, would probably start with that sentence. We are led to believe by everyone around us that history is based on facts, that there is no such thing as opinion involved in it: why would there, after all, when history is fully based on things that actually happened? But unfortunately it just isn’t so simple.

For one, history is for a large part based on interpretation. This goes especially for ancient history, where things are so vague that historians spend most of their time drawing major conclusions from minimal amounts of data, but it also goes for recent history. The same action can be interpreted in completely different ways depending on the perspective and on the political background of whoever is talking: Hitler’s popularity before World War II, for instance, can be interpreted as a result of the German people’s tendency to hold fascist beliefs, or as a result of poor economic circumstances, both of which have completely different implications.

Moreover, leaving out a small fact can completely alter the image of a certain event. Neglecting to mention that the British Empire had barely any need for slaves in comparison to its former colony the United States makes their international ban on slavery in the 1800s sound a whole lot more noble than perhaps it really was. Context also plays a role: perhaps the Babylonians were brutal and bloodthirsty when they sacked Nineveh in 612 BC, but perhaps they were actually rather kind compared to the Assyrians, whose king only a few years earlier had attempted to completely wipe Babylon off the face of the earth by killing its inhabitants and ruining the acres with salt.

The real problem is that these mistakes are an every-day reality, and not one we usually make on purpose. To avoid falling for these, to avoid ignoring or neglecting facts that don’t fit our own worldview, is difficult, and takes constant conscious attention. Even the best of historians are not immune to it, and that is something we should always keep in mind.

The opposite also holds, though: politics is, for a large part, history. When studying politics, you will spend most of your time looking at things that happened in the past, learning from the mistakes that were made back then. Unfortunately, the lessons we learn from this are usually reserved only for academics and students studying history or politics, and not for the actual politicians who could put it to use in practice, but it remains a vital part of politics.

All in all, there are precious few topics that have as much overlap as history and politics do, which teaches one very important lesson: even historical “facts” are not always entirely true, and sometimes it takes a while for us to realise that there’s also another side to the “truth.”

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There’s a new site coming at KyranArcher.com! Why, you ask? Well… Dean Richards was a name I came up with much too little consideration, basically being the first name I came up with after deciding that my unpronounceable, ridiculously long Dutch name REALLY wouldn’t do. Now, I’ve put a bit more thought into it, and although any name change always sounds and feels odd at first, I’m sure Kyran Archer will sound as natural as any other in no time!

As to why I chose this specific name: I just like names with a Y, and Archer was the surname that, to me, fit with it the best. I rejected a good couple of thousand names, so I’m certain that this one will make sense once it becomes more familiar!

Thanks for sticking around, and hopefully I’ll see you at KyranArcher.com soon!

Russell Brand: Time For Revolution Or Too Good To Be True?

A few days ago, my friend Ben went to the blog’s Facebook page and asked what my thoughts were on Russell Brand: could his views truly improve the world, or is it just too good to be true? It’s a good question, so let’s delve right into it.

First of all, that Brand’s ideas are extremely appealing is no surprise. He is a comedian, after all, so he is able to bring his message in an entertaining and convincing way. On top of that, he is rather extremely far on the left-wing side of the political spectrum, something that inevitably appeals to me and quite a few of my friends. Because of that, as I watch his videos and read his articles, I find myself nodding along, agreeing with basically everything he says. Fox News is ridiculous, politicians are overly privileged, Muslims are marginalised, and we need change, all ideas I can definitely get behind. But that’s exactly the problem.

Russell Brand is a populist. Despite the fact that that puts him in the same category as people such as Adolf Hitler and Marine Le Pen, it isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it is something to keep in mind. He preaches exactly what people (or at least a certain group of people) want to hear, namely that the elites are too powerful and that it’s time for the lower classes and the marginalised to step up and take power. Now who doesn’t want that, except those few elites who are holding us all back? It sounds perfect, and together with the brilliant way in which he brings it and his undeniable charisma, that makes it hard to resist his views, even those as extreme as his calls for revolution.

One thing you might notice, though, is that he keeps going back to the same topics. In particular, consider his ongoing “feud” with Fox News: is it really such a surprise that I, and many others, agree with his views on that topic? Or did he just find a target so easy to destroy from a left-wing mindset that disagreeing is basically impossible? It’s an extremely clever tactic (which, by the way, might not be deliberate), because it very easily convinces the viewer and/or reader that they agree with him. And once you’ve got someone agreeing with you, convincing them of the next point is going to be a lot easier, even if that next point is something a little more doubtful than the validity of opinions on Fox News from a left-wing point of view.

None of this has yet shown that Brand’s views might be too good to be true, though. Instead, it has merely shown that he is a populist, and a good one too, who would be easily capable of convincing us of things that might not be entirely rational. Whether that’s actually what he does is the second question.

Now, like any other person, Brand has plenty of rational arguments backing up his views: otherwise he wouldn’t have believed in them himself. That means that he is certainly not wrong about everything, but I definitely wouldn’t argue that he’s right about everything either. There are some things that, to me, at least, appear incredibly irrational, wrapped brilliantly in a package of populist rhetoric that could fool anyone (including myself, perhaps, had I not been asked to look at it critically).

Most importantly, like any typical populist, Brand does not really offer solutions. He criticises others, but that doesn’t mean that he knows how to do it better. That puts him in a great position, because it’s no secret that democracy isn’t perfect, yet there is no way to prove that any alternative is equally or even more imperfect unless they were put in practice, which they simply aren’t. Particularly his criticism of politicians appears rather one-sided, perhaps even ignorant: he paints a picture of politicians as people looking for power and money, getting rich while the population stays poor. In reality, politicians are human beings too, often inspired by great ideals which are then curbed by the reality of millions of people having completely different demands, restrained further by an awfully limited budget.

That doesn’t take away the fact that the rich and the elite have a disproportional influence on things. I would be the last person to argue that democracy is perfect, after all. Yet still, to paint the picture he paints, to criticise so easily without real solutions, is just too simple. While many of his views are perfectly acceptable, his call for people not to vote is both mindless and a prime example of ignorant populist rhetoric. In fact, that the rich are much more likely to vote than the poor is not a small factor contributing to the gap he so strongly criticises, and it is exactly the lower classes who will be attracted to his ideas.

Ardent supporters might still argue that his call for revolution is the solution he proposes, but that too seems hardly grounded in reality. He hasn’t provided any steps towards that revolution, and even if he did, there is one fundamental problem which throughout history has proven to be a major issue: democracy can function with minimal involvement by the population; revolutions cannot. Perhaps his revolution, much like Communism, truly could bring more equality and prosperity, but just like Communism, it needs cooperation by everyone, and that’s just not going to happen.

What makes democracy function at least to some extent is that all those people with completely different views, from Fox News to Russell Brand himself, can coexist within it. The system does not collapse despite the fact that hardly anyone upholds the same ideology. Revolution and rule by the masses, on the other hand, requires people to agree. In a perfect world, all 7 billion of us would align and work together to achieve that situation, but the world doesn’t work that way. There will never be unanimous consent about any political system, and that is why democracy still rules our lives: because while a revolution cannot exist with major disagreement, a democracy cannot exist without it.

Neither can people. Disagreement will always remain, and as long as it does, calls for revolution, unfortunately, can do nothing more than harm the advances we are already making. Russell Brand’s views, then, are perhaps too simple to all be true, and the world is far from simple.

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Don’t forget to rate/share/like this post, and if you have any thoughts of your own, please do leave them in the comments! And if you’re new here? Feel free to like the Facebook page for regular updates, or try having a look at the list of most popular posts!

More on related topics by Dean Richards:

Democracy Is Destructive and a Bad Solution

How The Gaza Conflict Shows That Independent Press Doesn’t Exist

The Elections That Can Make Or Break Europe: May 2014

The War in the Middle East: An End In Sight?

In a week like this, you might expect me to give my insights on Charlie Hebdo and everything surrounding it. But I won’t. I assume that for regular readers it isn’t difficult to guess what my views are, and either way, the topic has been discussed so much that at this stage I have little news to add. This video, and this and this post from the past, should sum it up quite well. Instead, what I would like to talk about this week is a comment from a book called THE NEXT 100 YEARS: A FORECAST FOR THE 21^ST CENTURY, by George Friedmann. In this book, he suggests not only that the US will dominate the rest of the century, but also that the war between Jihadists and the West has already reached its final stages. So, could it be that the war by the West in the Middle East is about to end?

There are several ways in which wars can end. My personal favourite is through rational peace talks, either between the parties themselves or possibly with help from organisations such as the United Nations. A second is when one side wins, making peace emerge simply because there is no more war to fight, and a final option is when both sides run out of resources or get tired of the constant warfare.

Judging from the way things are right now, the latter is rather unlikely. It is, after all, not a war between two states, but a war between certain individuals and an outside state. Those people who fare war against the West are not going to get bored or “run out of resources”, because in their view, it is a struggle for freedom and justice, and those are not things people tend to give up on so easily. More likely, the West would be the side to run out of resources, causing a retreat and taking away the reasons for terrorist attacks. That, however, seems equally distant, considering the fact that the West has changed its tactic in such a way that the costs have become minimalised, with drones doing the work and thus only worsening the war, as drones don’t always act justly and thus fuel anti-Western sentiments even further.

The same thing goes for the scenario in which the war would end up with a winner. The West cannot possibly win, because they only fuel the popularity of the terrorists whenever they intensify their war efforts. The terrorists are unlikely to win as well, and either way, that is certainly not a scenario which George Friedmann imagined, seeing as he assumed that the 21^st century would be the age of the US.

The final option, peace talks, might be more possible. That, however, appears to be just as far away, because at this stage, particularly with IS, there are no efforts made to create peace through talks, and there doesn’t seem to be any point to it anymore either. Organisations like Hamas could be pacified if only they were dealt with as a legitimate political party, but we have long moved on from the point where that would solve all the issues the Middle East faces.

All in all, then, I cannot think of any scenario in which this war is about to come to an end. It would require a Western retreat, as the terrorists can hardly be expected to retreat from their own lands, but that scenario appears more remote than it has ever been before. Of course, politics can be surprising, and I certainly do have hope, but to suggest so easily with little explanation that this war is about to come to an end, seems unlikely to say the least.

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Don’t forget to rate/share/like this post, and if you have any thoughts of your own, please do leave them in the comments! And if you’re new here? Feel free to like the Facebook page for regular updates, or try having a look at the list of most popular posts!

More on related topics by Dean Richards:

Are Islamic Countries Violent, Extremist and Anti-Democratic?

The West: Where You’re Innocent Until Proven Guilty Unless You’re A Muslim

Obama’s Hypocrisy: The CIA Torture Report

The Problem With Human Rights

Human Rights are everywhere. Thought up about 7 decades ago as a nicely idealistic but non-compulsory way of seeming superior to the horrors of World War II, they have become a term that we just cannot stop talking about, particularly in the West. That might, however, not be entirely as positive as it sounds. After all, human rights were never meant to be used in this way, and that might just make them a less-than-ideal way to improve the world and to achieve those “human rights” we strive for.

Some people might be surprised to see the suggestion that human rights were never meant to develop in this way back in the 1940s, so let’s start with a look back. When the Universal Declaration of Human Rights  was adopted by the United Nations, it was not ratified by each individual nation. It was adopted by the General Assembly, and they had no power to make international law. Moreover, the rights defined in the document were often rather vague and open to interpretation, so much so that even its leading supporters continued to allow racial segregation (in the case of the US) and had no intention of letting go of their colonial empires (in the case of Europe), despite the obvious contradiction with the agreement.

In practice, not much has changed since then. Countries which have adopted the many subsequent Human Rights agreements continue to ignore them whenever it’s convenient. That goes for countries such as Saudi Arabia, which ratified the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women yet continues to uphold laws that makes discrimination against women no subtle business, but it also goes for countries such as the US, which is just one of 150 countries that still engage in torture (whether legally or in practice), despite this being one of the more basic principles of human rights protection. Human rights, then, are respected only when convenient.

This in itself is not strange. Citizens of many countries have several hundreds of “human rights”, making it incredibly challenging for poor countries to attempt to respect them all. Resources are limited, and since the majority of human rights are violated in practice rather than by actual law, this means that governments have to prioritise some decisions over others. If that means improving health care, education or employment over prosecuting bad police officers who violate human rights, then that might just be something we have to accept.

The problem is that some countries have it easier than others. Partly due to the fact that most agreements over human rights have been dictated by the West, but also for a great part due to wealth and resources, Western countries have to make barely any changes to uphold these human rights agreements. Because of that, a sense of superiority has evolved. Western countries are not only dictating what the rest of the world should do based on its own ideology (liberalisation, democracy, capitalism etc), but it is doing so in an arrogant way, forcing countries to focus on issues they deem important. Even organisations such as Human Rights Watch are very guilty of this, choosing to focus on issues that the Western public (its financial donors) find important while ignoring other “human rights abuses”, and thus taking away the ability for countries to decide for themselves what is the best way to spend their limited resources.

Worse still is that the West has failed to make the few minor changes it should still make to achieve those human rights itself. The US still engages in torture, Guantanamo Bay is still open, innocent civilians are killed by drone strikes on a daily basis, and Europe walks a very fine line between “freedom of expression” and hate speech. Islamic countries, for instance, find freedom of religion a much more important human right than freedom of expression, and while our Western view is different, there is no way of concluding without prejudice that either of those options is superior. We just have different views, but because the West feels superior, it attempts to dictate what other countries should do while shrugging off the criticism.

The problem is that this has a terribly counter-productive effect: non-Western countries recognise the hypocrisy of those Western countries, something we fail to do ourselves due to our bias, and because of that, they react in the opposite direction. They become angry and frustrated, leading some to become only more radical in their traditional views just to avoid succumbing to Western power. This in turn makes the West only more arrogant, and conflict will continue to rise.

Of course, none of this means that the concept of human rights has been useless. It is a great concept, and although it still has much more ideological and populist power than it has actual power in practice, it could be a great tool to improve what we consider “human rights.” The current dialogue, however, is harmful. We need to realise that our conception of human rights is not infallible nor universal, and that other countries are not necessarily inferior just because their human rights record is less ideal. Those countries often know better what is best for them than we do, and even the people of those extremes such as Russia, Saudi Arabia and Uganda would benefit from a less hostile international arena.

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Don’t forget to rate/share/like this post, and if you have any thoughts of your own, please do leave them in the comments! And if you’re new here? Feel free to like the Facebook page for regular updates, or try having a look at the list of most popular posts!

More on related topics by Dean Richards:

Western Tyranny and the Olympics: Stop Harassing Russia over its Human Rights Record

Uruguayan Heroism: The Plight of Refugees and Torture Victims

Are Islamic Countries Violent, Extremist and Anti-Democratic?

The Value of Pictures

“Stop talking and smile at the camera.” – a very irritated father to his ~8 year old daughter at Schiphol airport.

Airports are always a fun place to be at, so I can never quite stop myself from looking around and observing all those thousands of people walking about, some rushing to catch a plane, others spending hours in the shopping area as if it’s a nice day out. This time, my trip happened to coincide with a blogging day, so when the rather odd quote at the top of this post came about, I couldn’t help turning it into a post. After all, this was no real unusual comment.

When the comment was made, the father had been desperately trying to make a selfie (on one of those sticks you can put your phone on) of himself and his daughter at a large window, with the planes in the background. I happened to be sitting right across from them watching those same planes and failing to keep my attention on my Politics textbook, when the father began to get a little frustrated. At first, he seemed to be enjoying his daughter’s jokes and derp faces, but as the minutes started to pass by, he got angry. They HAD to make that photo.

The eventual end result was the most typical example of a deceptive holiday photo that you’ll ever find: two feigned smiles while in reality all happiness had faded away. In fact, while they started out being quite cheerful and excited about their flight back home, they ended up feeling grumpy in the case of the dad, and at the very least a whole lot less excited in the case of the daughter. But what for? A photo? Is that really worth the trouble?

What makes this so strange is that the picture gives the holiday no added value whatsoever. It certainly won’t be a picture that will forever give good memories of that wonderful holiday in the country of cheese and tulips (and, let’s be honest, weed and prostitutes). Instead, it will serve only as a nice Facebook status update with a short caption explaining how great a time they had, followed by a lot of likes by mostly disinterested Facebook contacts. In short, then, the picture doesn’t serve to enhance the experience, but instead serves only to get some attention. A cute smile might haul in some extra likes, and then everyone will know where they’ve gone.

Most likely, you’ll interpret that conclusion as an accusation, as a judgement on the man’s actions. But I’m not so sure. Wanting to be unique and to be recognised for that uniqueness is one of the most human things you can do, so unless there is something wrong with humanity (a case which, admittedly, can be made), there is no reason to judge the father, However, it is something to think about. What if we did it differently?

That doesn’t mean I think we should return to the time of giant photo collages of every holiday that don’t include any selfies. In essence, that’s the exact same thing, as that collage is always the first thing to be pulled out at family get-togethers when the destination country is brought up, regardless of context. It just misses the like button, but other than that it fits the pattern in every way. Instead, how about a holiday without posed pictures? Or, more extreme, a holiday without any pictures at all. What you might find is that, although you won’t have any physical evidence of your trip, you’ll see a lot more. You’ll remember a lot more. And in the end, who really needs that evidence when the experience itself can be so great?

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Don’t forget to rate/share/like this post, and if you have any thoughts of your own, please do leave them in the comments! And if you’re new here? Feel free to like the Facebook page for regular updates, or try having a look at the list of most popular posts!

More on related topics by Dean Richards:

Why Advertisement Is The Most Important Invention of the Last Two Centuries

The New Lent: A True Way to Improve Yourself

Nine Life Lessons for People Travelling through Wales (or for travelling anywhere… and actually also for people sitting on their couch…)

Uruguayan Heroism: The Plight of Refugees and Torture Victims

When reading the news, and, for that matter, posts on this blog, you might start to think that awfully little is done to help the people of this world who are in need. That, unfortunately, would probably be true. Still, that doesn’t mean that nobody is taking action or that nobody in the world actually cares about the struggles of these people. There are exceptions out there, and those exceptions need to be underlined, because we are in desperate need of some good examples.

In 2010, José Mujica became President of the South-American country of Uruguay, a rather small nation of 3.5 million that is dwarfed in comparison with its neighbours Brazil and Argentina. From the very beginning, he has been an exceptional character who has drawn much praise from the international community: aside from bringing about legalisation of gay marriage and marijuana (the latter in order to combat powerful drug cartels), he is mostly known for being the “poorest President in the world.” Not because Uruguay is such a poor country, mind you, but because he donates 90% of his salary to good causes and refuses to live in his presidential palace, instead sticking to an old farmhouse in the country and driving a very old Volkswagen Beetle. In short, he is the Pope Francis of politics.

That doesn’t necessarily mean that he is popular in his own country or that he is the most perfect President any country could have: his popularity ratings have been dropping, because in the end, people care more about economic results than the lifestyle of their country’s leader. But still, it portrays a message to world leaders all over, and that can only be a good thing.

What inspired this post, however, was one of his more recent decisions: Mujica decided to help some of the Syrian refugees. Doing what no other country has willingly consented to, Mujica invited over 100 Syrian refugees to come and live in his country, where they will be given jobs and education, all of it without any compensation. The argument is simple: Uruguay, just like any other country, needs people to work. Grateful Syrian refugees are perfect for that, because they will be more than willing to work, which means that his decision does not only help these refugees, but that it might even have a positive effect on the economy in the long run.

The five freed ex-Guantanamo detainees (the sixth was still in the hospital)

Better still, a few days ago six Arabic men arrived from Guantanamo Bay: they too had been invited. These six men had been locked up without a trial for 12 years, meaning that in every legal sense they were nothing more than innocent yet still they had to suffer, if not physical, at the very least immense psychological torture. Because no country would have them, though, they were stuck in Guantanamo for a further 5 years after they were “proven innocent” in 2009, with no chance to continue the lives that had been so brutally taken away from them. These six men were taken in by Uruguay, finally giving them and their entire families the chance to start a new life. Where nations priding themselves in their human rights record faltered, the small nation of Uruguay stepped up, showing the world that the time when it was up to Western countries to give the right example has long passed.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that it’s all perfect now. In fact, there are millions of refugees still stuck in the Middle East, many of them living in refugee camps for years, if not decades, making those 120 people flown to Uruguay seem almost insignificant, but that doesn’t take away the importance of the initiative. Mujica has shown that this is possible, and all these 120 lives, each of them as important as our own lives, will be improved beyond comparison. A lot of work still remains to be done, but it is the heroism of people like Mujica that can make a difference. The only question is whether the rest of the world will follow the example.

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Don’t forget to rate/share/like this post, and if you have any thoughts of your own, please do leave them in the comments! And if you’re new here? Feel free to like the Facebook page for regular updates, or try having a look at the list of most popular posts!

More on related topics by Dean Richards:

The West: Where You’re Innocent Until Proven Guilty Unless You’re a Muslim

Obama’s Hypocrisy: The CIA Torture Report

Are Islamic Countries Violent, Extremist and Anti-Democratic?

Obama’s Hypocrisy: The CIA Torture Report

The CIA released a secret document detailing their interrogation techniques up to 2009, and one man is celebrating the harsh realities it reveals: Barack Obama. After all, he is the one who put a stop to the programme, so with just a few pretty words he can give a great boost to his approval rating, putting all the bad stuff on Bush. But is Obama really any better? Let’s have a quick look at his words in reaction to the report.

First of all, Obama makes it clear that what the CIA did was “brutal and wrong”, and that it is a thing of the past that should stay in the past. Sounds great and all, but the truth is that Obama didn’t really stop these brutal methods: he merely changed them. As CIA lawyer John Rizzo points out, whereas Bush captured suspected terrorists and then let them be interrogated, Obama just kills them outright with his drone bombs. Bush let innocent people wither away for years in places like Guantanamo Bay without receiving a trial, eventually being forced to release some of them when they were proven innocent, while Obama got rid of that problem the easy way by making sure that there is no innocence left to prove: suspects are killed without a trial.

Worse still is how Obama mentions that the interrogation methods were “counterproductive”. Oh really? And how about those drone strikes then? Drone strikes don’t just kill “suspected terrorists”, but they take with them the entire extended family, the neighbours, three chickens and the dog from across the street. That is just as, if not even more counterproductive, because while at least Bush was able to lie about interrogation methods, these civilian deaths are a harsh reality that nobody in the Middle East is unfamiliar with.

But Obama’s comments get even better: “One of the things that sets us apart from other countries is that when we make mistakes, we admit them.” Yeah, as long as it’s mistakes made by your Republican predecessor, it’s easy enough to admit them. And no doubt, whoever comes next will say the exact same thing about your drone strikes. Feigning superiority over the rest of the world just because you have a system in which every 4 years there might be a completely different person ruling the country is rather sad, and certainly not a reason for pride.

In the end, the one thing we learn from reports such as these is that we aren’t learning anything. We’re just going from one cruel method to another, always making sure to change the tactic to divert criticism, but never truly making an effort to improve our ways. Heck, the people responsible for the torture, which, by the way, is against both international and national law, are not even going to be prosecuted. Why would they, after all, when those in power know that in 5 years time they might fall victim to the same thing?

But by next week we’ll have forgotten this again. Too bad that the same cannot be said for people living in the Middle East, and so, the cycle of terrorism and brutality continues.

~

Don’t forget to rate/share/like this post, and if you have any thoughts of your own, please do leave them in the comments! And if you’re new here? Feel free to like the Facebook page for regular updates, or try having a look at the list of most popular posts!

More on related topics by Dean Richards:

Are Islamic Countries Violent, Extremist and Anti-Democratic?

The West: Where You’re Innocent Until Proven Guilty Unless You’re A Muslim

Is Islamophobia The New Anti-Semitism?

What We Ignore About Michael Brown and Eric Garner

For weeks I have left the topic of Michael Brown unconsidered, and later also the case of Eric Garner. But there is much to say, much that still goes almost unmentioned in the mainstream debate, so the time has come to address it. Before I do, though, there are a few disclaimers to avoid unnecessary anger. This post will not in any way suggest that what either of these policemen did was right, or that their victims in any way deserved to die (which would be nothing less than ridiculous). It will not even claim that the judges were right to make the decisions they made. It will merely criticise the way the movement evolved, because after all, no movement is perfect, especially not one that involves so many people with so many different experiences.

The first thing to consider is how much the way the media reported on these cases has shaped our beliefs, opinions and knowledge about them. Before writing this, I spent about half an hour looking at commentaries and videos on the cases that were made in their immediate aftermath. Back then, we condemned the police officers much less, and many arguments were brought up that have now been forgotten. Instead, we’re left with a very single-sided view of both debates, in which, just to name some, it seems to be taken for granted that Michael Brown held his hands up and in which it often seems to be suggested that Pantaleo actually intended on killing Eric Garner.

Because of that, we cannot view the legal cases and the social uprising as fully connected. The social uprising deals mainly with race, in combination with police violence, and it views the cases only from one point of view. The juries, on the other hand, were presented with all the evidence, and were faced with much more than just race. In fact, the colour of the victims’ skins played no role at all there, because how can you ever prove that things would have gone differently if the victims were white? Sure, we can look at statistics and conclude that black people are more often victims of police violence than white people, but as much as that is relevant for a social debate, it says nothing about the individual case of either of these killings.

Again, that doesn’t mean that I agree with the jury’s verdict (nor that I necessarily disagree). I am simply not mentioning the many arguments in favour of starting a trial, because we already know those, so repeating them here would only make this post unnecessarily long. In the end, it’s the arguments that back the jury’s decision that are left neglected.

This is important particularly because it causes polarisation, something that is rather undeniable in the current situation. The public completely ignores the point of view of the police, and because of that, arguments in defence of the police are left unrefuted. After all, we’re not even addressing them. This creates a situation in which the police, with complete justification, feel like their arguments are not being heard, and therefore they can continue to believe that they are right. The police are people too, and when you discuss a topic with “people”, the only way to convince them is to have some kind of common ground. Right now, all we have is anger and opposition, with no real dialogue going on.

There is one other consideration that needs to be mentioned: the problem does not lie with Darren Wilson or Daniel Pantaleo. It is a systemic problem that can be traced back to many factors in society, ranging from racism to gun laws to the fact that police officers use choke-holds on a daily basis. To punish the individuals will not help solve those systemic problems. It might satisfy some feelings of revenge, but since I have just finished reading Wuthering Heights, I can assure you that revenge does nobody any good. What we need is systemic change, and that is going to come neither from violent protests nor from jury decisions.

That doesn’t mean that I am able to tell you how we do bring about that change. There are so many factors, so much interwoven and secured by various parties and laws, that it will take years, if not decades to get rid of them. But at least we need to start the debate rather than the fight. Distrust of the police is not only a result of police misbehaviour, but it also a cause. Being a policeman in the US, after all, does not only mean being hated by a large majority of the people around you, but it also means knowing that everyone around you could have the power to end your life in an instant, that you have no better weapons than they do, that your uniform makes you a more noticeable target than anyone else, and that on top of all that, rather than hiding from the danger, you have to go in search of it.

Who in their right mind would go for a job like that? The answer, perhaps, is that you either have to be very devoted to doing good, or to be very much into violence, and unfortunately, the latter is not so uncommon. But solving that problem is not as simple as some might want it to seem.

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Don’t forget to rate/share/like this post, and if you have any thoughts of your own, please do leave them in the comments! And if you’re new here? Feel free to like the Facebook page for regular updates, or try having a look at the list of most popular posts!

More on related topics by Dean Richards:

Why Michael Brown Was Killed And What It Means For The Future

The Dutch “Black Pete” And The Importance Of Weak Politicians

White People’s Opinion on Racism is Important

The Bright Side of Politics

Politics has a bad image, and probably for good reason: bad things happen all the time, and it is exactly the bad things that make it into mainstream media, which includes blog posts by random Dutch guys. In the past few weeks, or perhaps even months, I spent my time explaining problem after problem and letting you know why we should care about these things. However, even though raising awareness is certainly a good way to use politics to improve the world, it does have the rather unfortunate side-effect of also reminding us that things aren’t perfect right now. Ignoring the positive side, though, would be wrong, because despite all that is wrong with this world, there is also much that makes this world amazing.

To start out with the obvious, you are reading this. You are reading a blog post by a guy who certainly hasn’t always been equally positive about the people in power, yet that guy still has a head to spew these thoughts from. We have the internet, a place where freedom of speech is so well developed that we make a major fuss about laws that might threaten that freedom to even the tiniest extent, because even the thought that we might be imprisoned for having views belongs to a different world. Better still, the fact that we own a computer or a phone indicates enormous prosperity, because apparently, we don’t have to spend every day of our lives trying to get food and can instead spend it on amazing technology and creating blog posts with too many rainbow pictures.

Perhaps slightly less obvious is the enormous political and economic progress that has been made in the past few decades. More democracies exist than ever before in history, and while it’s terrible that there are still millions of slaves in this world, it would be ridiculous to forget that there are also 7 billion people who aren’t slaves, something that couldn’t be said a century ago. Additionally, to steal a few facts from John Green, infant mortality has never been lower, divorce rates have been constantly going down since 2006, absolute poverty has gone down more in the past 50 years than in the previous 500, literacy rates have increased and malaria mortality rates have plummeted.

As to my own blog posts over the past few weeks, while the dismantling of dictatorships that were held together by the Cold War has led to conflicts in recent years, it also means that dictators are toppling by the dozens, and that is certainly not a bad thing. Burkina Faso might have faced political crisis, but it got rid of its dictator, and Somalia, despite being ruined by the US in the 1990s now has a functioning democracy. Better still, racism has reached a point where we can debate traditions and police-shootings rather than actual laws upholding those actions, and regardless of how much I will keep whining about the discrimination that Muslims face on an everyday basis, islamophobia is becoming a term that people use and I have no doubt that there will come a day very soon when WordPress will no longer put that red line underneath it as if it is a word I made up.

All of these things show that the world is improving, and while I often forget to mention that simply because progress requires us to identify (and to improve) the bad things, there is no doubt that there are many good things out there as well. In fact, we, as humanity, are doing great, and we will continue to do great.

It is often said that misery and suffering are part of the human condition, and that’s true. But so is happiness. And we shouldn’t forget that. Life is not without its misery, but neither is it without its happiness, and as much as we should be aware of the former, it is the latter that can remind us of why we’re still here. Happiness and positivity are inescapable, even if it sometimes takes a while, and that goes not only for life in general, but even for politics.

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Don’t forget to rate/share/like this post, and if you have any thoughts of your own, please do leave them in the comments! And if you’re new here? Feel free to like the Facebook page for regular updates, or try having a look at the list of most popular posts!

More on related topics by Dean Richards:

Our Purpose: A Simple and Concrete Explanation of the Meaning of Life

The Truth About Your Country

The Political Situation of Somalia: A (Very) Brief History