Lesson of humanity

In Poland children and teenagers spend a lot of time at school. During my college years I would have up to 45 lessons weekly plus 2-3 hours of homework if someone could be bothered. Primary school was not much better.
We were taught number of subjects like Polish literature, Polish grammar, math, physics, biology and many, many more. There were even lessons teaching how to be a good citizen - pretty sound idea, sadly its execution was much worst therefore this subject has been canceled, which I think is shame as we are not born with knowledge and skills of being a good citizen.
What we were never taught was how to be a human. That goes without saying or does it? For some reason we assume that our children will simply be decent people, ignoring everyday example of kids who are everything but decent people. Papers, TV programs and the web are full of contemplation on reasons of teenagers bad behavior. To me the answer is easy: we do not teach our children how to be helpful, noble, respectful, so they do not know it. We cannot blame them for lack of knowledge and skills we never taught them, can we. Of course we can and we do.
It seems to me that teachers should pay more attentions to moral side of education and try to teach their pupils and students how to be a good human, how to notice other people and their misery.

Poland is mostly christian country and it is still common for children to attend religious classes where they are told about rules and laws, about sin, about redemption. But are they told to be a good human being? To help elderly person with their shopping or not to bully collegue at school? I cannot recall anything like this. Even more priests that I remember bullied some of us themselves. I could never agree that Christianity is about laws and rules, nor any other religion for that matter. However you will not find out during those classes about it. Jesus (as) was a great man not because he knew religious laws, but because he saw people and helped them.

We are what we are taught. If no one teaches us how to be a good man we end up not being able to be a good man. We believe that profit and company's efficiency are the most important values in our lives.

We need classes of humanity, we need teachers to teach children to be good. We really do need it. We have to tell our children that other human is far more important than any company in the world. Otherwise they will not know it.
Many of us fear "Matrix". We are creating now.

If we want man to love another man we MUST teach our children to do so.

Is "trickle down effect" pissing on the poor?

We've been fed with this story about "trickle down effect" for long years, some blame Milton Friedman for this, but however I guess he can be called the founder of Chicago Economy School he's not the only one to blame, nor was he first.
Towards the end of nineteenth century in USA the same promise was called "horse and sparrow" and it argued that if you feed a horse enough oath, some of it will reach sparrows on the road. You got the idea, I hope? This is exactly what rich has for us.

There is no "trickle down effect", market will not regulate itself magically, private sector will not run the state better. Why?
Private entrepreneurs have basically one goal: to earn more money. Yo cannot really blame them for this, and I do not. Earning money is their job. It is not however job of the state. No matter what political theory you support, I believe we can agree that every state consists of wide range of different people: children, adults, single mums, housewives, fathers, disabled people, middle class doctors, teachers etc and the state is theirs as well as riches. The very idea of the state is that it is made to serve its people, not one group, but all of us.

Milton Friedman was himself son of wealthy immigrant and simply could not look at the world as worst off people: it is nearly impossible to out ourselves into someone else's position, as we all know it. He advocated what he thought was best for economy. Except the economy for Friedman means: the rich and their profits. It is not the same economy as we see it everyday in the shop wondering why everything is getting more expensive. Friedman failed to notice or failed to tell us that the less we earn the biggest profit goes to the rich, the more we pay the biggest profit goes to the rich. They get richer, we get poorer. He must have known this, such smarty guy, just forgot to mention in his very smart ideas or maybe just did not notice all hose millions of workers that make rich rich?

Some may say that Friedman's ideas helped UK or USA during 70s and 80s. Well, not quite so. Vast branches of national properties were given to private companies making narrow part of societies enormously wealthy. People working in those places were, it is true, for some time better off. But why so? Is it because private management is more effective than state's one? Not really. Those prizing privatization fail to notice that workers got their decent wages thanks to trade unions which were at the time very powerful. It is not so nowadays. And we can see the effects. Unemployment grows, salaries shrink. Prices grow. In most wealthy countries of the world there are millions of children hungry, millions of homeless people, millions of people who cannot afford education, who cannot afford health insurance. There are bankers making scummy deals and being promoted. It is not country for the poor man.

We are still better off than most of the world, but it is not thanks to Friedman and his Chicago school of economics, it is not thanks to Mrs Thatcher or Mr Reagan, not thanks to "trickle down fairy tale", it is thanks to what is left of Keynesian school, thanks to the state based on social equality as it was before "rise of the rich". But we are going down. I think many of us have already noticed, haven't we?

Can we do something about it? Yes. It will be difficult, because people owning media are rich, so we cannot expect them to broadcast such leftist points of view, but we have to reclaim what is OURS. The state.

Does history repeat itself?

Obeying law seems probably not just to me one of the conditions of the state. It is important that most of us act according to rules and I hope you will agree with me? What happens than if some really important people break the law and they get away with it? My guess would be: we lose respect for the law, don’t we? At least I do, not sure about you, guys.
Here’s what happened: a group of American politicians openly gave multiple speeches in support of the organization called Mujahedeen e Khalq (People’s Mujahedeen of Iran), the organization that occupies proudly place on Foreign Terrorist Organization (1) of US Department of State, moreover Howard Dean (ex-governor of Vermont) said about the boss of MEK, Maryam Rajavi: “I do not find her very terrorist like” (2). I suppose he would know, as according to his own words he met Mrs Rajavi several times on dinner, hmmmm……
Mr Dean was one of around thirty respective figures present at the conference in Willard Hotel on the 16th July 2011, along him you could meet there such people like Ed Rendell ( ex-governor of Pennsylvania), General Shelton, Andy Card and many others. They were all paid, by – let me remind you an organization listed as a terrorist one on official list of USA’s government. If you do something like this, expect men in black at your door very soon.
You may ask what it is about. MEK’s leaders (Mrs Rajavi and her husband) are hoping that thanks to millions they spend paying American politics their organization will be taken off the list soon. They really spend loads of money here. Money no one knows where they come from. And, guess what, no one even investigate this matter. Money goes to the politicians through very sophisticated maze of organizations, clear set to hide they real source. According to some sources they may come from Israel. No wonder here of course as some claim that it was MEK’s assassins that killed Iranian scientists last year.
MEK was founded on September 5, 1965 on Marxists principles “devoted to armed struggle against the Shah of Iran, capitalism, and 'Western imperialism” (3) and is responsible for many assassinations and bombings in which died also six American citizens. MEK actively joined Islamic Revolution in 1979, but soon lost trust of Ayatollah Khomeini and its members were expelled. They found safe haven in, no wonder here: Iraq. Iraq-Iran war started very soon and MEK members fought in it on side of Saddam Hussein, killing they own country folks, and not only them, because after the war finally finished they were sent against Kurds in Northern Iraq and Shiites. As a result of these activities they have very few friends, except for renewed American politicians….. They are despised in Iran both by the government and the opposition and still Hilary Clinton apparently thinks seriously that MEK could provide an alternative to ayatollahs rule. That must raise the question: what is real goal of White House policy in Iran, because it is hard to believe that the organization treating even its own members, according to Human Right Watch ruthlessly, known from killings thousands of Iranians could seriously build democracy in Iran.
American government already made similar mistake in Iran: helping to replace Dr. Mosadegh (Iran’s democratically elected prime minister in 1950’s) with a dictator, Mohammed Reza Pahlavi, which ultimately led to Islamic Revolution and the situation we have today.
Is USA going to make similar mistake again?



1. http://www.state.gov/j/ct/rls/other/des/123085.htm
2. http://www.npr.org/2011/08/15/139648748/op-ed-iranian-group-must-stay-on-terror-list?ft=1&f
3. Keddie, Nikkie, “Roots of the Revolution”, 1981, p.238

Muddle in my head.

I did write anything for few months now, I got no real excuse, that is truth, the main reason is just being lazy or maybe lack of motivation. It is a terrible sickness really.
On the other hand there are so many things going on that it's rather difficult to make an opinion about them on the run. So many things changing constantly, even really well informed people have problem to make their mind.
I am trying to watch really carefully what is happening in the Middle East, importance of this part of the world is really hard to overestimate, but as some of you know, I am planning to tie my fate with it, so I guess I am rather personally involved now.

The problem with Middle East is that is kind of difficult to find unbiased news and/or knowledge. Many people and many countries have their interests in there, therefore it's not easy to find out what really is going on or really happened.

I will say again what I said few months ago: Egyptian revolution may be very important not just for Egyptians themselves, but also for rest of the world. No matter what is your political point of view, you probably noticed that something fishy is going on in the world. I will not go into great details here, as I have some very strong opinion regarding some issues, and this post is not meant to discuss those things today.
Egyptians showed us that even in front of pretty brutal regime we can try to do something, it takes courage and desperation. Egyptians showed us that we can never loose hope, we always have to believe that something can be changed.

There are things that badly need change in Europe or other things that really shouldn't be changed. Many people, including myself lost their faith in political parties, we often don't see those people as real representatives of our nations and we often see some things we do not agree with, but really: what can be done? Most of just wave those things away, saying: I can do nothing and it is even usually truth: no one really listens to me, I have no way of saying what is my opinion, except.... for internet. And here I can find that I am not alone, here I can find that there are many people thinking likewise.

I have a dream, I want a world to be a place to live for everyone and I do believe that one day we'll reach this goal.

Sout Al Horeya صوت الحريه Amir Eid - Hany Adel - Hawary On Guitar & Sher...

Multiculturalism is a fact

A day earlier, British prime minister David Cameron said:

"Frankly, we need a lot less of the passive tolerance of recent years and much more active, muscular liberalism," (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-12371994)
And then:
"Let's properly judge these organisations: Do they believe in universal human rights - including for women and people of other faiths? Do they believe in equality of all before the law? Do they believe in democracy and the right of people to elect their own government? Do they encourage integration or separatism?" (same source)
If you want to listen to all the speech by Mr. Cameron, you'll find it here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HiIk14m1EgE

John Rees made a comment on infamous words of Mr Prime Minister, and I will make mine:

1. No, we do not need any more of ANY liberalism, we suffer liberalism for last few decades and I believe that it is well proven this just does not work. It is liberalism that pushed us into the crisis from which Europe will not recover for next few years, not to mention "muscular liberalism", as we also know this one, too, or more precisely Iraqis and Afghanis know it very good.
2. Mr. Cameron obviously decided to carry on very populist politics and this is very sad, especially that he apparently did not watch the news, and was not aware what was happening at the very same time in Egypt.
3. Multiculturalism did not fail, I am alive example of that, as I am not English, living in UK and I feel quite good here and I do appreciate what was built in this country by British government and British people (sadly I feel I have to stretch it: also British people that happen to be Muslims).
4. Making speeches like that can be seen as an afford to alienate and marginalize Muslim majority in UK, and this will certainly not create any greater sense of national identity, unless what Mr. Cameron meant was some sort of "white power"? I'm sorry Mr. Cameron, but Britain is not white any more, it is multi-coloured now and you really cannot change it.
5. There were, no doubt here, made some mistakes in the unifications policy before and I can see it clearly even not being English or even British. The very first one is: the language - many, far too many people that moved over to UK to work are not able to communicate in this language and this problem was not dealt with nearly at all. Moreover wherever you go, you can find a translator, there are clerks in banks and other places that speak foreign languages.... which of course very kind and nice, but the thing is that language and communication are the very first thing that make bounds between people.
Another problem is that English people do not know anything about Islam (for example) and many Muslims here live on the side of the society, because they can feel what Mr. Cameron expressed: not being accepted as part of society, ironically most of those people have British passport, and were born here.....

Dear Mr. Cameron you do not create sense of unity by dividing people....

Did Kissinger influence Egyptian revolution?

President Obama said: "the people of Egypt have spoken.....", they indeed have, they have spoken with the power that smoulders in every big group of the people, the power that can overthrow ANY regime. They have showed how powerful people can be, and it looks the world needed this reminder, as our so called representatives forget very quickly who they represent.
Nearly 40 years ago another important American official said something else, something probably much more close to real Western point of view. This man was Henry Kissinger, very powerful and very influential man, even though he does not hold any official position any more. What Henry Kissinger said was: "The Arabs had been weak; now they were strong." (1) That was any answer for the question why did not USA support any sort of concession from the Israel side after 1967 war, in short: USA do not talk to the weak. And exactly the same president Obama showed during last 3 weeks, neither him, nor his administration was thrilled when first demonstration took place in Tahrir Square, i am sure you still remember this, don't you? USA did not and still do not want any sort of democracy in Middle East, and they will not support any such movement, nor will Europe, because that will mean that governments would have at least partially follow the will of the nations. This is why Arab (and not only) nations have to take their fate in their own hands. because Arabs and all other people of the world do deserve freedom and decent lives. So does Palestinians.

There is no accident in the fact that USA support Israel so extensively for decades now, and it is not that USA likes Israel so much that they are worried about them so much, no way...... Powerful Israel in the middle of Arab countries prevents them from united policy, this is still the policy of divide and rule that was mastered by British Empire, sometimes the policy of the stick (more often) and the carrot, but always a policy, no accidents. It is called realpolitik, the policy based on power and practical issues rather than moral ones, which means: Palestinians can starve and die (so can Tibetans for example) as long as interests of USA are preserved...... or shall I say interests of global companies rather, because it does not look at all that any recent administration or government really represents the people that gave them the power.

If Arabs want to be really independent they have to be strong, as it was put more than clearly by Henry Kissinger.

Importance of street sweepers

Egyptian revolution can change the world, this is what nearly everyone already knows> Egypt is an important country, both to the region and to the world, but its importance is not just geostrategically. What Egyptians are now doing, though I believe they do not even think about it now, is fighting western colonialism in the form of globalization, as they fight exploitation of so called developing countries by those who are developed already, they fight all those negative stereotypes which are willingly believed in the West and they fight racist assumption that are wide-spread through Europe and America (oh, yeah, I know it is not politically correct to talk about it, but me being white I know what other white people say...... and that grieves me a lot).
Europe and USA still have a huge problem with accepting independence of countries in Asia, Africa and South America, we still try to interfere, justifying it with protecting our interests. But... what about about the interests of Arabs, Latinos (heard those "jokes" on "Top Gear" about Mexicans? ), Indians, Black People of Africa etc? Because protecting our interest means that someone is loosing out a great deal. Like USA and UK protected the interest of their companies in Iraq, I do not believe that most of Iraqis are very happy with what happened, and this is just one example.
problem is that none of the western governments is going to accept independence of those countries just on the moral ground, they have mouths full of freedom and liberties, but what they actually do is protecting the interest of global companies, as they ALWAYS did. And they do not even talk on the behalf of the people of Europe and USA, as we never had any benefit of exploitation Africa, Asia or South America.
Hopefully we are witnessing another breach is New World Order, another blow to the system designed to enrich rich and enslave all the others.
Many so called experts claim that there is a danger of turning Egypt in some sort of theocratic dictatorship, but they do not give us any proofs of such assumption, they cannot give us any proofs, because from leaders and thinkers of Muslim Brotherhood say you just cannot draw such an idea, so they just made it up, exactly as they made up Massive Destruction Weapons in Iraq. Muslim Brotherhood is not any more radical that Tea Party (ever heard or read Sarah Palin? she's much worst than Tariq Ramadan in my opinion).
Of course, any government that will emerge in Egypt will face a very hard task of fulfil people's demands, and people are not very patient (though Egyptian might be different ;) ), but this revolution gives them a huge chance of improving their lives from a street sweeper to an university lecturer, because society does not only consist of businessmen.

Egyptian intifada

Last days I have spent watching carefully what is going on in Egypt, it is important to me for several reasons: though I am not an Egyptian myself, I can say I love this country, but putting personal reasons aside: Egypt is a big and important country and taking down the dictator and introducing democracy in there will, probably, be a turning point for all Middle East and maybe even for a wider area. this is evident from reaction of leaders of neighbouring countries, like Israel or Saudi Arabia which supported dictator Mubarak and Israel is called a democratic country! What a mockery.
Democracy means that all of the citizens have their say in a country, this is not the case in Israel, Saudi Arabia or any of the Middle Easy countries, where tens of millions people every day are oppressed, but they also mostly live in extreme poverty.

I really hope that Egyptians will succeed in introducing democracy, for their sake and for the sake of freedom in the world. This would be an evident proof that reasons for which Western countries support tyrants like Mubarak are just a lie, nothing else but this!

We, in Europe and USA are being told constantly that only those dictators can guarantee a stability in those countries, which extremely peculiar point of view, as it assumes that Arab people are not able to make reasonable decisions! It is racism, called by professor Edward Said "orientalism", the view widely spread throughout western media and, I'm guessing among our so called "elites".

Egypt's protest shows clearly that Arabs are capable of peaceful protesting and non-violent demanding their natural and basic rights!

I hope that Egypt and other countries in region will manage soon to abolish their oppressing leaders and send them to their supporters in Washington D.C. and London.

Leadership

http://english.aljazeera.net/news/africa/2011/01/2011113192110570350.html

"I understand the Tunisians, I understand their demands. I am sad about what is happening now after 50 years of service to the country, military service, all the different posts, 23 years of the presidency," Ben Ali said.

I don't know enough about president Ben Ali to judge whether his sadness over the recent occurrences in Tunisia is genuine or not, I just know what Tunisian themselves write about him on forums and blogs, not much good things....

What stuck me was he astonishment that after so many years of "service" people of Tunisia are apparently not happy. I am not much surprised from little I know about the standard of life of Tunisians.... enough to say that resent riots started as a result of a death of a young man who set himself on fire in an act of desperation after police confiscated his vegetable stall, his only of of earning livelihood. The young man was graduated from a university, had to sell vegetables for living, burnt himself alive because Tunisian police decided to take even that away from him.
I do not really know how common such situations are in Tunisia, but consistency with which young Tunisian keep trying to get illegally to Europe, even though if they succeed their life here would be very difficult, lets me think it must be rather tough life over in Tunisia.
Yet president Ben Ali is surprised.

And he is not isolated in this astonishment, in this lack of understanding of his own nation. That seems rather common illness of politician, not just in such dictatorship countries like Tunisia, but in Europe as well. My personal feeling is that our governments have no really knowledge what their nations want, what is good for them. They talk about things they have no idea at all. Most of our presidents, prime ministers, ministers, members of parliament never in their lives did any work, they were always well off, their went to good schools, never used public transport, they never had to look for a job, to spend hours in job agencies, to cut expenses to cover financial crisis caused by some rich people we will never see. No, they do not know hat is it like. And yet, they claim to speak on hour behalf, to act on hour behalf and most of their actions shows clearly we are actually loosing out on their decisions.

It is assumed democracy is a political system of representatives of some particular group of people, but I do not really feel at all like this would be the case. Do you? I can hardly remember any acts or bills introduces by parliaments or governments that would in some way made my life easier. What can recall easily, though, is constant talk of necessity of cutting off public spendings, constant promising of creating new place of work for millions and millions of unemployed people in Europe

The idea of democracy is actually great, sadly we have a huge problem with putting it into practice. I have read an article claiming that in UK 90% of higher public offices are occupied by graduates of 4 best universities. I don't know whether it is true or not, but it certainly feels like that. I do not think that those people can represent warehouses workers or people spending most of their lives on the assembly lines, can they? I do not see a reason why cannot be a son or daughter of butcher to be a prime minister, why does it have to be a child of a professor or some kind of a noble? What is wrong with butchers?

I will finish today with a quote, a saying by a Prophet of Islam:

‎"Leader of a group (nation) is their servant". (Prophet Mohammed - peace be upon him)

I wonder if president Ben Ali consider himself a servant of a young man that burnt himself alive?

The very basic assumption of most modern political systems is that governments represent their electors. This is not true.
Moreover, they not only do not represent the majority who gave them power, their actions more and more often actually work against the best benefit of their nations. Our, democratically chosen governments betrayed us and they keep doing this, they keep lying to us on a daily basis.
If they don't represent me, someone may ask, whom do they represent then? I will answer this with a short story: as a young boy I read lots of stories about Sherlock Holmes, by sir Arthur Conan Doyle. This brilliant detective kept saying: if don't know who the criminal is, look for a motive, this will show you inevitably a perpetrator. I strongly believe this rule of thumb applies here as well. My dear reader, think for few minutes: who is constantly gaining, whose power and wealth increase.

Still not sure? OK, I will tell you.

Those of the shareholders of the global corporations.

Let me put that plain: I do believe and I have good reasons for this that our governments represent nowadays global corporations, which seriously affect the living of the people all over the world.
USA is still the most powerful country in the world, people living there, still enjoy quite often a good living, however both common opinion and statistic say that the life of an average citizen of USA lost on quality during last thirty years, things get more expensive, bills consume bigger and bigger chunks of our salaries, more and more of us lose our jobs, education gets more expensive, so does health care ( I luckily live in the country where this one is free, which is told something bad, as American capitalists keep claiming.... hmm... from my point of view, free health care gives me a lot of benefits, and I'm willing to pay for that). Those processes are very slow, however they take place in USA, in Europe and everywhere else. On the other hand those huge, powerful companies usually increase their profit year by year, like British Tesco, last financial year they had nearly £3 billions of pure profit. Can you even imagine so much money? But those profits happen on someone expanse, and this someone is YOU!!! Whoever you are, and wherever you live, you, my dear reader pay for those ever increasing profits.

Governments and the rich work most of time hand in hand, as in most of the cases members of the governments are those lucky ones who are at the same time part of those very small (comparing to the rest) group of the privileged.

We, the people (sounds a bit odd, doesn't it?) have to understand: THEY - the governments do not represent us any more. We, the people have lost the power, we have lost influence over our lives, over fates of our children, because there is someone else who make decisions, someone who does not care if you have enough money to pay your bill, to pay off your mortgage, to pay for your children education. You don't even know this people, they don't hang around your neighbourhood, even your presence in their neighbourhood would be consider an insult, and you can be sure that a police officer would ask you what on earth are you doing there? You don't even exist for those people. You are the number. Same as the profit. Ooops, sorry, I really forgot, I am talking now about the most important value of our times, and I should do so with greater respect: THE PROFIT.

You, whoever you are and wherever you live have to understand, they will sacrifice you and your family and all of your friends in the name of financial profit. You are not important any more. You are nothing, so am I, of course.

And, no, I don't agree with this, I don't want the world to bow in front the golden calf. Do you remember this story? And, yes, this is a sin, making money more important than a human being is unforgivable sin. It is a sin against humanity and against God. It is also a crime, and it leads to crimes.

Any man, even poor, uneducated, in rags is more important than all of the money of the world. You, my dear reader, are more important than all the money of the world!