h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Thanks for your Invitation but for today, my session time is nearly ending in a couple of minutes and I might have a look into your thread, given that you provide a link to it (which would keep me off from searching for it).

I might take part in that debate you´ve mentioned if I get the time to do so. Just bear in mind, that I´m a German living in Germany and therefore my opinions are based on what I draw from the media (in particular the BBC). But from another angle, I might give a picture of what some German contributors on German news websites think about the UK and her referendum to whether stay or leave the EU.

As an anglophile German, as I consider myself to be, my views are a bit biased, most pro-British and less pro-EU, but also not nationalistic. In the current stage of the EU, I tend to be in favour what is best for the UK in the first place and not for Brussels and her bureaucrats because it´s the latter who will get the blame for the failing of the European Project because it leaves the people too less space to breath and exercise their right for direct democracy.

It´s a pity that it has to be parties like the UKIP who are there to Point out what goes wrong and being the voice of the people either not heard or simply ignored. If Europe (the EU) isn´t for the people, than the EU is better to go back to what she was before, the EEC. Otherwise, I see no future for it anymore. This my stance is more left-leaning, but I can´t do anything about it to change that my opinion just because it´s parties like the UKIP who is airing and talking the mind of the people.

It´s the problem of the left-wing parties that they have surrendered themselves to power and commerce and neglect the people for which they should be there.

Have a nice evening.

Regards,
Thomas

Note to Melvyn: I´ll read your response tomorrow, so take your time with your reply. See you tomorrow.
Cheers, Thomas

Hi Chris

I don't think this is exactly a "private conversation".. but Thomas and I have a long experience of finding others on the net get quickly fed up with our somewhat long exchanges..

But as for the EU referendum I am currently writing something that has found a focus on the EU because it is a cross-roads that we have been promised will be ahead...This piece really started with thoughts around an article that was highlighted on my fb feed that asked British people whether they could be proud about British History selecting the five worst atrocities committed in the name of that enterprise.. My analysis of each of those five and their causal factors led me to pose own question "Can we be proud of our future?" To my mind it is the question that everyone needs to answer to their satisfaction before deciding whether they see the future that they would like to build by their own blood, sweat, toil and tears as being within EU or not.

Hi Thomas

Just taking your first "piece" re Merkel and the Migrant Crisis,, Reading it I was struck not with Mrs Thatcher but with someone else who willingly associated himself with her as another "principled politician".. Obviously Gordon Brown.. I was reminded in particular of what I regarded as an similarly aberrant and over-hasty decision that he made when he suddenly found himself as the "Iron Chancellor" who could save the European and possibly world financial systems.. I was in Bligny and was apoplectic when he issued that guarantee on Bank accounts at 100% of their face value, when the Irish PM had sensibly backed those inflated values at 80%.. At a stroke, and by pure executive action as a Prime Minister who had not been elected to that office, having been finessed into the leadership of the Labour Party he increased the National Debt by the kind of factor that pay for a world war and we have been paying the price as a country for 7 years... And what may not be pure coincidence is that both were brought up by fathers who were Protestant ministers... Shades of Goethe's Faust ..

Melvyn

Hi Thomas

On your second piece re the European superstate... A lot of what I am writing at the moment is around the way that in the 1860s three authoritarian regimes began the massive exploitation of their fantastic cheap continental Land and Labour resources which suddenly could be exploited thanks to massive investment in railway systems that unlocked the Economic Fundamentals. They were Germany, Russia and the USA, and they were made to work by top down government that could keep the masses either satisfied or suppressed, repressed, so that even in bad times they saw it natural to turn to "Strong men" who were in a familiar tradition (Merkel/Putin ?Trump)..The complex situation re the interplay of these three actually shaped the story of the EU..with the problem that since the reunion of Germany there has been an inequality between the Superpower and the rest... I felt that this was at the back of Merkel's feelings about Greece.. Basically only Germany had the capacity to secure the settlements by "self-generated power"... France has no real capacity to 'make a change'.. I read the book written by the French PM in 1980 and personally signed in comradeship with my father-in-law.. As an old history teacher he described France as a great kind of hinge/axis across Europe too fixed (perhaps crucified) to be able to move without others moving as well. This was the time when the EU Economic miracle was stalled, and France was just drifting.. He advised the Socialist Party Congress to welcome the idea of Spain and Portugal entering the EU because the low cost labour and land would stop the EU being undercut by producers outside the EU...And 10 years later, as I may have mentioned, Mrs Thatcher and M, Mitterand agreed to make Germany pay with committing itself to the euro and the De Lore Plan for this more rigidly centralised EU.. The mighty Germany was to be tied down like Gulliver in Gulliver's travels....All of this is far too negative, and "après moi le deluge"... Already 7 years ago young French people were complaining that the older generations over-paid themselves to make the EU look successful, but they did it by stealing their future... This is why my piece is all about finding a future that we can be proud of... And I quote two visions from during the Second World War. One a book about the First Europe written in 1941 for those who want to build a third Europe of peace between nations and between classes, and suggesting that the Middle Ages which had no political superstructure but was held together by a sense of mutual moral authority...The other was an article written in 1941 which proposed a Europe based upon the British Commonwealth as it had recently changed with the Ottawa Agreement and self-governing dominion status... I believe that this is closer to the kind of direction that DC is working, but as an English politician he hopes to stay in the EU and work an English Revolution from within..Fortunately Mme Lagarde (one suspects) must be quietly advising everyone to look carefully at what the UK is doing and see whether there are things that they could do likewise.

Melvyn

On the far right

Really following on from what I have written about Germany as a superpower I go back in my mind to the Realpolitik of Bismarck who was a Crown minister and not a "politician".. He had no respect for democracy...As I used to tell my students when he said that "the masses are only interested in full stomachs", that he did not necessarily mean only their own full stomachs..I assume that he meant as long as everyone had work and earnings and were part of an expanding and world-beating economy (as Prussia then Germany were) then people did not really mind who was in charge...But then you get the Economic Miracle of the 1920s when once again it did not really matter who was in charge and "good men" could just ignore politics- after all Germany was saved by the USA whose motto was "the business of America is business"... But all of that forward thrust and momentum comes out in ignorant anger against soft targets, with the German right usually much more prone to real violence than the French or the British.. Nigel Farage and UKIP's problem (thank goodness) is that the people who "support" them, by and large do not.. They attract "losers" who like to whinge and blame other people.. Our image of German people (and we do see quite a lot of them on holiday when we go to the Med) is that they prefer to be doing something than nothing... Even Beer Keller drinking turns into a hyper-activity.

Melvyn

Thomas: the conversation is at F19585?thread="smiley - cheers" title="cheers" class="smiley" src="http://www.h2g2.com/h2g2/skins/Alabaster/images/Smilies/f_cheers.gif"/>

My apologies for that - a lengthy post seems to have been replaced by some code. How peculiar. I'll try again...

At least the link seems to have worked for Thomas.

Second attempt: an edited version...

CASSEROLEON: As a lifelong student of philosophy, I certainly have no objection to lengthy discourses but I'm sure you always taught your students to focus on the relevant data in order to maintain a clear argument in writing an essay. For me, the balance between the interconnectedness of contingency, where everything is a crossroads, and the oversimplified teleological view of things like national and racial destiny makes writing about history one of the most challenging and interesting forms of non-fiction.

Chris (hoping)

Hi Chris

Your comment sets my mind on the reworking of my part two-- next job.. which I tackle that "proud" question with the statement that I consider myself first and foremost a Citizen of the world, and that at present after a life time spent studying history for answers my prevalent mood is one of "infinite sadness" at the state of the world.. Which took me straight back to Dr. Bronowski's "infinite sadness" at the end of "The Ascent of Man".. and to much else.. When Bronowski died more or less around the time the series was broadcast I was struck with that kind of sadness because I realised that he was one of the few people who had brightened my future... As long as he lived there was the possibility that I might have been able to have a conversation with him sometime.. Still, every so often I find myself going back to the book he wrote with Brian Mazlich "The Western Intellectual Tradition".. I still have my Penguin version that was one of the first pieces of indulgent spending of my student grant in 1963.. It seemed to me then essential "wider reading" and I would still recommend it...At that time its task of trying to produce a coherent account that married the Humanities and the Sciences seemed an essential challenge.. One that the world seems to have given up on.. Perhaps you know of John Ralston Saul's "Voltaire's *********-The Dictatorship of Reason in the West".. (Saul being one of the post Arthur Miller secretaries on PEN)

Cass

CASSEROLEON: I wish more people could see themselves as citizens of the world; it's too small a place to be divided up by artificial barriers.

I'm not sure that "the world has given up on" the challenge, I don't think that the world has ever really got to grips with it. There's a view (at least from Fichte, Schelling, Hegel etc onwards) that the division between science and humanities is implicit in the Enlightenment and this has gradually begun to manifest itself from the beginning of the 19th century (I think the word scientist was first used in 1833). The debates that ensued, from Huxley v Arnold to Leavis v Snow only ever seem to have formalised the division and the work of people like Ralston and, before him, Max Horkheimer (my favourite quotation of his: "...the wholly enlightened earth is radiant with triumphant calamity") never seem to filter down much from the world of philosophy.

Chris

Hi Melvyn,

“Just taking your first "piece" re Merkel and the Migrant Crisis, Reading it I was struck not with Mrs Thatcher but with someone else who willingly associated himself with her as another "principled politician". Obviously Gordon Brown. I was reminded in particular of what I regarded as an similarly aberrant and over-hasty decision that he made when he suddenly found himself as the "Iron Chancellor" who could save the European and possibly world financial systems.”

That is not bad at all, your comparison there. Brown seems to be just another example of how power is corrupting oneself in regards of self-perception and estimation. Well, he didn´t lasted that long, didn´t he?

“On your second piece re the European superstate. …They were Germany, Russia and the USA, and they were made to work by top down government that could keep the masses either satisfied or suppressed, repressed, so that even in bad times they saw it natural to turn to "Strong men" who were in a familiar tradition (Merkel/Putin ?Trump). The complex situation re the interplay of these three actually shaped the story of the EU, with the problem that since the reunion of Germany there has been an inequality between the Superpower and the rest... I felt that this was at the back of Merkel's feelings about Greece. Basically only Germany had the capacity to secure the settlements by "self-generated power"... France has no real capacity to 'make a change'.”

I think what they all have in common is some sort of a “big ego” that needs to be “pleased” in various ways. Merkel has been “made” to “make believe” that she´s that “strong leader” but stubbornness is no quality of strength when it goes against all rationality and that is what happened. In fact, I regard her as being the slave of the industrial, economical and financial vested interests of domestic and international brands and not caring much about the people who elected her, or better to say the German people to whom she is by constitution respon-sible and should be accountable to.

You may have noticed, so far this has also been reported on the BBC News website, that what “made” her to switch to the open door policy for refugees was in particular the greed of the German economy to get “cheap but skilled and qualified manpower”. Soon enough, after just a couple of weeks, it turned out that this was not so. From all those who arrived since September 2015, just a very small percentage of less than 10% meets the criteria for qualified employees. Around 90% are either totally unqualified or less qualified and can´t be integrated into the German Job Market that swiftly as those who were that eager to get them ever thought. I was often wondering, what do these people actually know about Syria at all? And who was even really interested in that country before the refugee crisis reached Europe by that mass influx of refugees? I´d rather say that if there was an interest in Syria, it was probably shared among few people, but not by the wider public.

In short, Trump is imo just some sort of an American idiot that has lots of money and all he can do, is to incite people and make some sort of “hate speeches” towards and about minorities. He´s worse than G.W. Bush jr. ever was. Trump would have the means to really start a new World War. I hope that the Americans won´t elect him for President this year, but one might fear that in the land of the opportunities, everything is possible as long as one has enough money to get his campaign paid and running.

Putin is also a “power addicted” politician, who clings on to some sort of “post-Stalinist-Soviet-nostalgia”. What he says and what not less might believe is, that he puts the interest of his people at the top, but that´s what he says himself and the reality in Russia and among the Russians who are not with him is telling a different story. Either way, he and his mate Medvediev are good chums who changed offices in the past decades and hold the power in their hands. There´s little chance for any opposition party to get into power for both of them will do everything to see that it won´t come to that.

There is obviously a rise in “power addicted” politicians in some countries. It´s like as you said, that they “just heed the call for the strong man”. Look at Turkey, where Erdogan, former PM and now President of the Turkish Republic is very eager to set up a “Presidential Democracy” where he pretends to have the American pattern in mind but in fact, he´s just about to secure his power and to extend it for which the Turkish people would had to vote in a referendum to change their constitution. In addition to that, he´s the one who is a strong sympathiser of Islamism and was very “inclined” to just turn “a blind eye” on the international travel of Jihadists coming from various parts of this world, Europe but also Asia (Afghanistan, Pakistan), to go to Syria and Iraq where ISIL has her strongholds in occupied territory. This has backfired on him last year with suicide attacks, one in a border town in Turkey (Suruc) in Summer, the next was in Ankara in October 2015 and the latest in January 2016 in Istanbul where 10 German tourists were killed and another one succumbed to her injuries a couple of weeks later, following her already killed husband. Now, since he suspended the cease fire with the PKK, he´s turned South-East Turkey into a war zone in order to root them out. But that is not all, he´s suing journalists for critical articles about him and his conduct as President who should, by constitution remain neutral and impartial in daily politics. He even was suing the leader of the opposition for insult because this man dared to call Erdogan a “dictator”, just telling the truth in regards of Erdogan´s acting.

Such people can´t bear critics. Merkel is “taking on her Teflon coat”, Putin is persecuting dis-sidents, Trump has – thank God – nothing really worthy to say, Erdogan is dreaming of a revival of the former Ottoman Empire and thus opposing everything the founder of the Turkish Republic, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, ever stood for (in particular secularism).

What is the reason behind that that some people are quick inclined to call for the strong man because they feel that average politicians are not delivering what they expect them to. It´s always a tricky thing because you can criticize average politicians and you also can give them the boot in elections and they just go. It´s very hard with those “strong men” because once they grabbed power, they won´t let go of it and they can´t bear being criticized.


“As an old history teacher he described France as a great kind of hinge/axis across Europe too fixed (perhaps crucified) to be able to move without others moving as well. This was the time when the EU Economic miracle was stalled, and France was just drifting. He advised the Socialist Party Congress to welcome the idea of Spain and Portugal entering the EU because the low cost labour and land would stop the EU being undercut by producers outside the EU...”

That is an interesting opinion about France. Well, I trust you that you have the insiders eye on that country for decades.

“This is why my piece is all about finding a future that we can be proud of ...”

Sorry, but I have lost my desire to be proud of what others have done a very long time ago and I can just be proud (if I want to) of I have done myself. You know me as being an individualist and opponent to everything collective. This might be some of my faults, but that´s the way I am.

“On the far right …

But all of that forward thrust and momentum comes out in ignorant anger against soft targets, with the German right usually much more prone to real violence than the French or the British. Nigel Farage and UKIP's problem (thank goodness) is that the people who "support" them, by and large do not. They attract "losers" who like to whinge and blame other people.”

I think that we could agree that in a relative sense of the perpetrators to the majority of the public, the “rent a mob” rioters and Asylum centre ransacking criminals are a minority. I don´t know whether you´ve noticed the incidents that went down in Corsica, which is also part of the French Republic. They attacked Muslims (most of them apparently of Northern African appearance). The last incident took place there just the day before yesterday where a Muslim Butchers Shop was strayed with bullets. That happened at night and so, nobody was killed. I have come across several articles in which French Muslims were talking about the growing anti-Islamism they feel and encounter in France since the CH incident one year ago. The Paris incidents from November last year have just increased that.

In Britain, this “Britain First” movement, apparently a semi-Fascist organisation (although they deny to be of that sort, of course) are going into areas predominately inhabited by Muslims to “deliver” their propaganda (handing out their news papers and provoking the Muslim residents). They say that they “claim their country back”. They also went to the Jungle Camp last year to talk to the refugees there who wanted to get the chance to come into the UK. You can see such things on YouTube. They are very close to the ideology of the EDL, BNP, NF or former BUF, just that they try to come across more “decent” and “modest”. But they all have the same aim, which is to kick the Muslims out of the UK. That is what they frankly say (in one way or another). This is what the meaning behind “we claim our country back” really is all about.

In Germany, we have those so called “PEGIDA” movement which has nearly the same aim and language like all the other movements across Europe who oppose the settlement of Muslims. Some members or sympathisers of such movements are more, some are less, in-clined to use violence for the purpose of their political stance. This isn´t a German phenome-non any longer, it is in fact a European one and if you´d like to take the Americans in (re Trump) it would even be a “world” one.

Radical Islamists and those of them who turned themselves into murdering Jihadists have nearly achieved their aim in giving Islam a bad name, let others associate it with medieval rules and violence as a means to “judge” alleged “perpetrators” or “Infidels”. The peaceful Muslim community across Europe was silent for too long. For various reasons, fear, shame, maybe tacit approval and just disinterest because of the insults they felt especially by the cartoons of CH. Those moderate and peaceful Muslims, who I rather like to believe that they are still the majority, are suffering from that bad image, suffering from the hate ISIL is aiming to spread and thus provoking a counter reaction from the Muslims in order to recruit even more Jihadists for their cause, in case the non-Muslims in the European countries will tend to have a go at everybody they know or even deem to be a Muslim.

Believe it or not, but this ISIL terrorists have learned a lot from history, not that they understood the consequences from it, but they selected and took the patterns from it on which they established their “rule”. Not less of them are European converts, one of them a German who knows about the Nazi era and couldn’t are less to use the same hatred towards Jews or any other “infidel”, even Muslims who are not of the “Sunni” faith.

ISIL is the modern dangerous face of Nazi-Fascism combined with religious zeal in which the real fascists appear to be just some sort of nutters, but also determined to use violence if they get the chance and the means to use it.

I regard all of them as the biggest threat to our civilization since WWII.

“Our image of German people (and we do see quite a lot of them on holiday when we go to the Med) is that they prefer to be doing something than nothing... Even Beer Keller drinking turns into a hyper-activity”

Yes, some stereotypes are often proved by some of their representatives. You wouldn´t find me in any “Beer Keller”.



Cheers,
Thomas

Sorry Chris, but it´s not working. Here´s the result after clicking on the link:

"Unable to find your page

Oh dear.
Sorry about this.
This isn't at all what's supposed to happen.
This is exactly the sort of thing that can cause stress and anxiety.
Those are not good things.

Have a look at this calming image that we've chosen just for occasions such as this. Hopefully it will help keep you calm while we look into the problem."

The facilities of this site are rather comparable with the minimum what I´d call "Stone Age".

Thomas: Yes, they are a bit like Douglas Adams' view of the world - idiosyncratic, but the poor volunteers are grappling heroically with the mess that the BBC left in the software from what I can gather.

Hi Chris,

I was just clicking on your name to get to your space and found that thread:

"Opinions about the UK EU referendum anyone?"

Is that the one you were talking about yesterday?

If so, I could go there and subscribe to this thread and there would be no need to bother with any links on this site.

Look Forward to your reply.

Thomas

Yes, that is the one. I look forward to reading your opinions.

Hi Chris

As I keep boring people with-- It was the blessing and curse of my life to have been born in Oxford and into our local branch of the Labour Party which was blessed by the scrapping of the separate university seats so that "Town and Gown" mixed in all the meetings that I attended.. And of course Oxford was created as a special observatory for the study not only of the whole Earth but the whole universe... I came as a terrible shock to me to have my father come into my little ration-book seventh-birthday tea-party with the news of the Bevan-Wilson revolt that in effect meant that the party that claimed the role of the "progressive party" in our two party system, washed its hands of the responsibility of government and became the Conservative Party dedicated to protecting the recent gains... I had to realise that not everyone could see the world through the Oxford lens, which was really why I have been studying world history ever since, and why I turned down the chance to study at Oxford. Great for many, but still too much "sweetness and light" for this world...Though as an adoptive Londoner the window on the present world I was pleased that our daughter went to Oxford, and noted that her best friend, fellow physicist went on to research and academia working on a map of the universe.. Practicalities took him to Sydney closer to the space telescopes etc.

Cass

Chris

PS.. Huxley Aldous or Julian.. I find Julian Huxley's "On Living in a Revolution" 1944 very instructive about the kind of thinking that dominated my early life--- and the work of Monnet in France and the Common Market.. I have been quoting his 1941 essay "Reconstruction and Peace" which included his idea of a joined-up European Economy.. But as I point out it is implied both the Keynes writing about Versailles and the reality of Nazi Germany, which was run as one great war economy.. My French father-in-law and his brother had to escape from an upstairs window and go to hide in the fields when someone tipped off their Mum that the Millice had them on the list to be rounded up and sent as slave labour to the Third Reich.

Cass

PPS.. Re German thought and Humanity I highly recommend Eric Heller "The Disinherited Mind"- if you are not familiar with it.

Cass

Hi Thomas

I go along with more or less all that you say.. But the important theme re Merkel and all the others is the same as emerged in the 1860s.. In nb Germany, the USA and Russia the scale of life that was made possible by new Science and Technology meant that "the early bird gets the worm".. And the problem with thinking things out, is that there is not always time... This has been the constant frustration of mine with my French connections.. As an Englishman I know that "there is a tide in the affairs of man" etc, and in the English tradition I believe in keeping things at a human level at which it is possible to improvise and invent as you go along.. I suppose this was a lesson learned at sea... But in the inhuman scale that we have created decisions may have to be made almost instantly.. And someone has to say "do it" or "no".. In the case of Merkel and Brown they both did and they both got it wrong.. But then we have created worlds I suppose after the style of the Roman Empire, and indeed our concept of Civilization has often been seen as "a place where things are done in a controlled and thoughtful way" as opposed to a savage place... But as in my theme of "The Bursting of the Dykes" from a couple of years ago, and the letters that I wrote about the new stormy climate with violent winds and rain ten years ago, I am dismayed that I knew enough to see that these things were on their way, while those who were in the business of taking care of our business could not see it for themselves, or even grasp it when spelled out to them.


As for being proud of the future, it must inevitably grow out of past, but is not predetermined. And in fact does not and will not ever exist. We always only live in the present, but the future is often the more powerful for much of what we do today is intended to shape our future, and all salesmanship of a commercial or political kind is based on selling us a future of our dreams...But I suspect that when I finally finish all that I am writing, I will have to admit that I have probably spent too much of my life committed to France and the dream of one world and spreading the blessing of English Peace to give up too easily...But much depends on whether people in Europe and the UK show some willingness to put their shoulder to the wheel...And you must not forget that in the 1850s and 1860s it was the mood of optimism and progress that triggered that explosion of change in the three superpowers.. This is all in what I am writing.

Cheers

Melvyn

Hi Melvyn,

“… But the important theme re Merkel and all the others is the same as emerged in the 1860s.. In nb Germany, the USA and Russia the scale of life that was made possible by new Science and Technology meant that "the early bird gets the worm".. And the problem with thinking things out, is that there is not always time... This has been the constant frustration of mine with my French connections ...”

Yes, that was some 150 to 160 years ago and all the three then super powers have severe problems these days. What I´m missing in your global picture is the Asian continent, in par-ticular the PR China and India, both countries who are economically on the rise for the past decades and there was and still is much talk that the near future, in a global sense, belongs to them. Thanks to the Western industrial countries whose companies were too eager to shut down their factories and work places in favour to enter new markets and take advantage of cheap labour forces of which there was – and still – is plenty of them in China and India.

If it wasn´t for both of them, the USA and Russia being Atomic super powers, they might not play the role anymore they still try to keep to themselves. Germany is really a minor player in such regards and since the VW scandal, revealed in the USA a couple of months ago, German reputation has got some damage from it.

“... But I suspect that when I finally finish all that I am writing, I will have to admit that I have probably spent too much of my life committed to France and the dream of one world and spreading the blessing of English Peace to give up too easily...”

Everybody has his/her hobby horse and forgive me for being to many times too much of a realistic pessimist, but I still believe in the blessing of English Peace, which I´ve learned about more just through reading your essays. The problem is still, as it was back then in history as well, that too less are either listening to it, or even don´t understand it. Worst of all is to understand but reject it. This is why the blessing of English Peace is still in the waiting to unfold universally, but what we got after WWII was the blessing of the American way of life. I´m not sure whether that was a big mistake and the other way (the English) might had been the better.

I´ve got to go now.

Cheers,
Thomas