A small update on Joy Carter's pay rise.

Following my last email, the university have replied swiftly for the first time:

Dear Alex,

 

Thank you for your email. I will pass on your response and further enquiries, though it may be after Christmas before you receive a response, as the Clerk to the Governors is out of the office at the moment.

 

Kind regards

Not suprising that whilst some student are still working hard at the university, important staff are taking a holiday. I wonder if they will get a bonus for it.

Re: Joy Carter's unbelievable pay rise.

I have received a reply regarding Vice-chancellor Joy Carter's recent pay rise:

Dear Alex,

The press office have forwarded your email to us. The response from Professor Carter is below.

The Vice-Chancellor’s salary is determined by the Board of Governors – it is not subject to national negotiations. Conversely, the pay negotiations for other members of staff working in higher education does take place at a national level and not at a local level. The University remains sympathetic to the trade unions' case. The University of Winchester gives the national debate great consideration and will continue to do all it can to bring the dispute to a swift and just resolution.

Kind regards

Of course, this email has merely given their official position on the pay strikes whilst trying to pass the burden of justification to the 'Board of Governors'. As a side note, it strikes me entirely unfair that the top paid staff can easily improve their lot at a rate six times that of inflation when other staff are entirely controlled by an unresponsive national system. Such is state capitalism I suppose. Obviously this response is far from adequate, this is my reply: 

Hi again,

I understand that you wish to pass the burden of justification onto a differing layer of Winchester University's bureaucratic system (the Board of Governors). In light of this I will send my response to you, trusting that either you will be able to expand and answer my questions in the first email (which I have reformed below) or forward my email to those that can, so that I may get a satisfactory response.

Besides the fact that it seems entirely unjust that the top earners at the university can alter their wage via a local board of their friends and peers, when those lower down on the chain must go to an unresponsive  national system, these questions have still not been answered:

I will number them to make your response easier:

1) Why, in light of the current struggle for fair pay for some staff, did the Board of Governors think it an appropriate action to give an already very well paid member of staff a pay increase six times that of inflation and more than twice that of the entire wage of the lowest paid members of staff?

2) What justification can there possibly be for this open insult, which it is, to those members of staff genuinely struggling?

3) Is it possible to see a report by the Board of Governors on this matter? And if so, where?

Kind Regards,
Alex Mason.


Once again, I will be posting their response on this blog.

A letter to the university regarding Joy Carters pay rise.

This is a letter to the University of Winchester regarding the recent anger at Vice Chancellor Joy Carter's recent £28,000 pay increase in the midst of staff protests over insufficient pay. I will be posting the reply on this blog. 




Hi there,

              it has recently come to my attention that Joy Carter has been given a £28,000 per year pay increase. To the outsider, this looks like an outrageous kick in the teeth for all of the staff that have been protesting against the insufficient 1% pay increase, especially when one considers the fact that some of the staff protesting take home wages smaller than their bosses recent bonus.

The excuse given for this pay rise was one of poverty, yet, it does not surprise me that a university professing the beliefs of the Christian church should have such a skewed view of poverty, with the wages of Joy Carter, before this recent hike, hardly being one even remotely comparable to poverty of any kind.

As a student, who pays a significant fee to the university, I demand to hear what justification can be given for this abhorrent injustice.

Eagerly awaiting your reply,

Alex Mason.

WINOL 16th October 2013

Another relatively solid bulletin.

Good points:
Alex Delaney did well to link forward to next week's WINOL in his PTC

A good volleyball story although it was mentioned that the participation was perhaps excessive in the story.

Liam literally managed to get 'it's a dream come true' from his interview.

Bad points:

Exiting the title sequence is still awkward a definite point to come out of it should be decided.

The green screen background hasn't been cleaned.

The focus of the camera was off in Calum's package

between Calum and Alex's parts there was a bizarre resurgence of the title music, this occurred again heading into the sports.

Framing in interviews and PTC's for Alex, Harvey and Drew was poor the rule of thirds shouldn't be applied in a PTC go central, and avoid giving too much headroom.

A mistake in sound with the OOV which faded the presenters mic down briefly.

The right idea with the walking PTC for the graduation piece, but a better route was needed as Matt walked almost out of vision as he went through the crowd.

Sports choice to film outside was poor, it makes no sense.

WINOL 9th October 2013

Good points:

A solid bulletin overall, with Matt Spencer doing well to capitalise on the 'legs' of the C.O.M.P.A.S.S meeting story as it was hard-hitting and relevant to any audience in Winchester.

Ellen's bee story was very well put together with a great 'it's a nightmare' quote from the beekeeper and good commitment wearing the beekeeper outfit to sign off.

The UKIP OOV had some great UPSOT of Farage laughing, well done at the sound desk.

Good establishing shots by Zeena in her STOPtober story, awkward to organise but they do make the package much better.

Tom Wright's pacing in his PTC was greatly improved and made for a good court report.

Sports' introduction of 3 cameras makes for much better footage. Although, graphics would add to the overall production.

Not so good points:

The mixing up of the final part of the intro music is really quite distracting.

Emma Wright's education story was faded out a little bit too early.

STOPtober interview with nurse was poorly framed, just needed the application of rule of thirds.

On screen quotes have been criticised, however, they do appear regularly in regional and national news broadcasts.

Critical Reflection

Critical Reflection

WINOL overall:

This term, WINOL has once again improved upon its news output, most notably in terms of quantity; with stories being rejected from the bulletin, not because of a lack of quality, but, simply because of the sheer quantity of alternative stories available to the editor. Whilst this may be disappointing to those whose packages were declined, it can only be seen as a positive. The choice available to the news editors means that more care can be taken in what genres of story are to be included in the bulletin, which gives a better editorial learning experience. This increase in quantity is attributed to the ability of the news team to produce newsworthy stories from what is available in such a quiet area, and shows a great level of journalistic competence in all areas of the course.

Circulation:

This term our circulation figures have steadily increased from the drought in traffic that unavoidably occurs over the summer break, with the highest global and UK Alexa rankings being on the 8^th of December (776,668) and 30^th of October (27,807) respectively. Despite the positive trend, we are down by comparison to this time last year when we reached an Alexa rank of 373,953 globally and 12,025 in the UK. Whilst this could be seen as representative of a decrease in quality or quantity, it is important to mention that last year WINOL had easy access to interviews with top political figures such as London mayor Boris Johnson and UKIP Leader Nigel Farage etc. due to the Eastleigh by-election which generated a lot of traffic for the site. This year however, even though the quality of journalism has remained the same, if not improved, the national interest created by the Eastleigh by-election was not available for us to capitalise upon.

Features this year have been condensed into one online magazine ‘Here & Now’ in which the formerly individual categories still have a space, but now it’s easy to browse the varying categories from one place, which should serve to keep visitors on the site for longer, as the technicalities of getting from one feature to another has been simplified greatly. The content covered by features this year has been of great variety, with travel providing light-hearted features following groups as they partake in local pastimes to the serious comment on issues such as the unimportance of Tom Daley’s homosexuality. Not to mention the great media content provided by the fashion site.

My role:

This term, my role has been mainly in production, being part of the team working behind the scenes on WINOL, sports week and in-studio features.

My usual routine for Tuesday and Wednesday involves setting up the studio as I enter the building, sorting out the green screen, positioning the table and cameras properly and making sure that the camera is focused etc., before heading up to the gallery to apply the appropriate background on the green screen and making sure it is functioning properly, e.g. cleaning up the background and foreground (I have posted a tutorial on how to do this on my blog). I also provided this service for the interviews of Labour's Rowenna Davis and The governor of Winchester Prison David Rodgers as well as the COMPASS meeting for the police and crime commissioner.

Once this has been done, I enter the newsroom, aiding the news team until we are ready to begin filming in the studio. Helping out has taken many forms, such as helping to film packages down in Winchester, as I did in Harvey's package for WINOL on 4/12/13, writing the headlines on multiple occasions, phoning the courts to verify details for packages and doing odd jobs to speed up the production of packages, so as to increase the potential time for rehearsal in the studio.

At the beginning of the term, due to technical difficulties when converting packages to the VT machine in the studio, I also had the role of converting the packages manually, once they had been completed, via the older versions of final cut in the MMC, but this was later resolved, meaning that it was no longer necessary and upped the efficiency of the process considerably (To do this, we consulted Corin the technician, who often helps in the studio when there is a more technical problem, from this experience, it would perhaps be a good idea to ask him to join WINOL one Wednesday to look over the entire process of converting packages, preparing the studio, using OOV’s and OB’s so that he might be able to help the team become more efficient in terms of the technical side of production, especially regarding OB’s, which we have yet to have complete success with).

Another improvement that has occurred in production has been the use of the radio studio to record the headlines. Whilst a simplistic change, it saves time and effort when going in to film the rest of the bulletin, as headlines often aren't completed until late on in the day. The ease of recording in the radio studio, which doesn’t require the production team, also allows time for production to chase the last of the packages and head into the final stages comfortably.

As for the production of the bulletin in the studio, I have performed every role: The most demanding of these for me has been sound, due to the sensitivity of the sliders combined with my tendency to acquire shaky hands in high pressure situations, but, I feel that I have overcome this issue quite easily and as a result I am confident in my understanding of the role. The main technicalities when in the role of sound is the multi-tasking required when bringing two sets of audio together, as is the case in the opening and closing credits as well as any UPSOT in OOV’s.

Directing, as a role, is fairly straightforward, providing adequate rehearsal time is available so as to see the OOVs, in-studio discussions and other more technical features of the bulletin prior to going 'live'. This is something I have learned from experience, with my first foray into the world of directing being subject to the issue of insufficient rehearsal time, this being said, the bulletin was still out on time without any fatal errors which I feel is an achievement on the basis that the production team managed to perform adequately with a bulletin they had never seen before. I also learned from said experience and applied a more hands on technique when making sure that those producing the packages and writing the script etc. were motivated to keep to schedule the second time round. My second experience as a director was much more successful as a result, although the issue of discrepancy between the timings given by the VT machine and the appropriate time to come out of a package in reality still causes problems when counting down for the sake of those in production roles. To fix this issue, I suggest a strict set of rules for reporters when filming their ‘outs’ for packages.

Working on the autocue is a role that produces little in the way of a challenge, requiring that the user keep in time with the presenter and only causes problems when the script has been submitted to the production team with errors, as was the case in the 4/12/13 WINOL. This issue was dealt with very professionally by the entire in-studio team, with good communication being key to the resolution. With regards to autocue, I have been able to offer grammatical changes and alternatives throughout the year that may otherwise have gone unnoticed.

Working on the VT machine is by far the easiest role in production, requiring only that play is pressed on cue so long as the running order has been accurately applied. This is a role I have performed but have chosen to avoid due the lack of a challenge it presents.

The vision mixer has been the most rewarding role in production for me, as I have enjoyed becoming fluent in the technicalities of the green screen, as well as enjoying the creative license afforded to the role during in-studio discussions as seen on the 20/11/13 WINOL (http://m.youtube.com/user/Winchesterjournalism/videos?desktop_uri=%2Fuser%2FWinchesterjournalism%2Fvideos), although, I did have the same opportunity in the discussion between Harry Parkhill and Nadine Forshaw during a bulletin that I directed, but in a more detached sense.

SUPERWINOL:

For the final WINOL I have produced a features package with Andrew and Emma, where I used my knowledge of final cut, acquired from my editing of Matt Collinge’s acoustic performance on VOLT, to edit the package, which can be seen on the final WINOL of the year.

I also played my usual part in the production process, this time being in control of the vision mixer when it came to the filming.

Besides my role in production, I have partaken in the filming of the Coffeehouse session involving Stephanie Fraser (http://youtu.be/DmkKLe6jJ1I), the filming of the aforementioned David Rodgers interview and the filming of Harvey's job losses story in the 4/12/13 Bulletin, which contained what I believe to be the most entertaining sign off for a package that I have seen on WINOL. This sign off also aided our circulation, as the members of the public in attendance questioned us on how they might be able to see the finished version of what we were filming.

Advertise:

Advertising is a key element in raising viewing figures and building the notoriety for any news brand. WINOL is restricted in this respect due to a lack of finances, but, having noticed the attention film crews receive when collecting footage out in the field, an easy way to attract viewers would be to print branded stickers, posters and business cards with all the necessary information so that we might apply them to the equipment such as camera bags, tripods, cameras etc. when venturing out to film, a point that was also raised by guest editor Paul Wood.

Another possible improvement, that has been mentioned relatively frequently by guest editors, is our lack of a defined target audience, as, whilst we are making packages of a good quality, they are somewhat vague in terms of defining our target audience. This being said, it is easy to see why this is the case, as our ‘beat’ is often lacking in enough stories to pander to just one section of Winchester’s population. It is a grave shame that WINOL cannot cover negative stories surrounding the university (of which there are a lot) and hold them to account, as this could provide a backbone to the bulletin that meant that students could be sure that they would find stories relevant to them every week on WINOL. The down side of this form of coverage would be that there would be less time to cover stories of national importance, which are often our most impressive packages.

This ethic could also be applied to sports, as we currently cover the home fixtures of AFC Totton and Basingstoke Town, which, unfortunately only generates viewers from the small numbers of supporters and staff at those clubs. As an alternative, it would possible to create a sports site that compiles all the information for all the university sports teams in one place (much like the features site has done with its varying genres), which is currently not available anywhere. This would mean covering the university football as we do in Basingstoke and Totton, but at a much lower financial cost to the reporters (which is quite restrictive to a number of students in the WINOL team), as they would be able to join the team on the buses to their away games. University sports teams would also be much keener to take part in interviews and ‘Soccer AM’ style sports features than staff at Basingstoke Town and AFC Totton have been, allowing for more in depth content, player profiles etc. Applying this idea across the wide variety of sports teams competing in national and regional leagues would address the relatively huge potential audience as well as enhancing our presence around the university campus through social networks involving sports team members. The site itself could contain league tables and league news (which could be commissioned, as I’m sure members of the sports teams would get involved) as well as pages for more in depth coverage (features etc.) of the more popular sports e.g. football, rugby, cricket and so on.

Overall, I have been impressed by the professionalism displayed across the WINOLverse, it has fully deserved all the awards and nominations it has received and it would seem that it is set up very well for further successes in the future.

Tutorial: How to use the Panasonic Live Switcher AV HS410.

Vision mixer tutorial:

After creating a background and saving said background on the SD card of the Panasonic Live Switcher AV HS410, the first task is applying that background to the visual output.

To do this the SD card button (pictured above) must be pressed, this will bring up the necessary functions on the bottom of the mixer's monitor (pictured below)

From here, the load out menu for the backgrounds saved on the SD card can be accessed by pressing F2 and then again on 'load', this should bring up a list of possible backgrounds and providing your preference has been saved with an appropriate name, it should be easy to find by scrolling with F2 and depressing F4 on your choice.

To return to the visual feeds press the Chromakey button.

Once opened, you may find that the live visual you wish to layer on top of the background is not showing, this is often due to the 'mix' and 'key' button found by the T-bar at the bottom right of the console (pictured below) not being pressed. If the live feed still does not show, Then moving the T-bar will fix this.

Once the appropriate background has been applied and the live feed brought up to the front you may find that the background is grainy and transparent. To fix this; make sure you are on chromakey and rotate F1 until you have reached the sample menu (pictured below)

Once on the sample menu you will need to select the background colour, This can be done by clicking F3, bringing up a selection menu that should have a 'select background colour' (check).

Once you have selected this by clicking F3, you must use the positioner found at the top right of the console (pictured below) and move the on-screen box onto your green screen and click the Z button ( the Z button can also be rotated to alter the size of the positioner). This tells the mixer which colour it should isolate when applying your background.

Once your background has been applied, you may find that the live feed looks transparent:

To fix this, whilst still on the 'sample' menu, depress F2 and click on the 'matte' option, this will help you ensure that the transparency is wholly eliminated by showing objects and background as black and white respectively.

Then, depress F3 and select 'clean FG noise' from the pop-up menu, using the same functions as when choosing 'select BG colour'.

Once this has been selected, using the positioner and Z functions, click on the objects you wish to bring forward (IMPORTANT: make sure the positioner box is entirely on the object you wish to bring forward, as clicking only partially on the object will bring the background colour forward as an object to be layered over your background, should this happen start again from the BG colour selection stage), this should fix transparency issues (WARNING: clicking on a moving presenter is hard, ask them to stay still).

Once this has been done, slight inconsistencies in the lighting (often due to the material of the green screen) may cause the background to appear translucent or grainy. To fix this, access 'clean BG noise' from the same list that ' clean FG noise' and 'select BG colour' was found.

Much in the same way that the foreground was cleaned, move the positioner onto the grainy areas and click using 'Z', this can be repeated until the grain has gone.

Once these functions have been done, you're good to go!

A short thought on what gonzo sought.

Hunter S. Thompson is known as one of the pioneering Gonzo journalists, immersing himself within a scenario in order to give a first-hand expression of what it was like to be there, putting the reader in the scene. The reason this was so significant as a style was that it represented the contemporary philosophical movement away from metaphysics and toward empiricism, following Frege, Russell and the Logical Positivist movement. It represented this movement in that, rather than describe the scene as a static moment within time, trying to express the thoughts of others and cover the entirety of the event in one sweeping statement about it, yet, as it is not possible to actually experience an event as a whole all at once, there really is no empirical backing behind this method of writing and so Thompson was radical in that he, accurately describes his experience, offering what is a much better representation of what one might have experienced should they have attended the event, e.g. The Kentucky Derby.

The reason that the truthful representation of events became so important during this period, especially in the US, was down to the abhorrent actions of the state against students and minorities, which was heavily publicised by the Black Panther movement. During this period, the general consensus, that had previously backed the word of the state as morally correct, shifted toward an extremely anti-establishment feeling, seeking the truth that was hidden by a corrupt government.

This change in opinion is in no small part due to the preceding world war, in which governments had been exposed as majorly betraying human rights for their own personal gain, which again caused a great sense of distrust toward establishment. From WWII, the development of psychological experiments such as the Stanford prison experiment and those before it, showed the transience of the human mind, and its ability to switch massively causing supposedly morally impressive persons to perform acts of heinous barbarity, the results of which showed how it was possible to get the German people to commit the abhorrent crimes during WWII.

It is this mental transience that is displayed in Thompson’s work, a notable example of which being Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas where, through his description of the hallucinogenic effects of various substances, Thompson draws attention to the fragility of our perception of the world as a fixed and accurate representation of the world around us.

Frege and a mention of Russell on Logic and Mathematics

Frege’s intent when he set out writing Begriffschrift, which was published in 1879, was to address the inefficiencies in mathematical notation, which he felt were insufficiently precise as well as mathematical proofs not being rigorous enough. Thus, Begriffschrift was a new method of mathematical notation that aimed to show more precisely what it was that a mathematical statement aimed to show, making it obvious how one step in a mathematical proof succeeded another.

Frege thought that mathematical statements, as with any other statement, relied upon logical premises, which can often cause problems. To address this problem Frege sought to show that all mathematics was derived from pure principles of logic. In order to prove this, Frege did two things, the first of which was to show that all mathematical concepts (numbers) can be derived from pure principles of logic:

To define the concept of numbers in purely logical terms, Frege stated that all numbers (not including 0 or infinity) could be summarised as follows: The number 2 for example is representative of a pair of things, which, when replicated, is identical to all other pairs of things.

The next step for Frege was to apply Aristotelian logic to mathematics in a general sense, however, this method was later proven to not be applicable by Gödel, although he created premises from which most arithmetic was deducible.

One of Frege’s most important theories was his rejection of Husserl and the German Idealist logic, which suggested that logic was a theory of judgment that was effected by human psychology. Frege, as an empiricist refuted this notion, stating that in order to be valid, mathematical proofs cannot rely upon the human psychology but must be objective in order to be considered valid. This theory can easily be seen as influencing the later theories of the logical positivist movement which considers all metaphysics as unnecessary absent of empirical proof.

Frege also sought to differentiate between sense meaning and empirical referential meaning outside of mathematics, stating that an objects referential meaning was the object itself so in the example of the evening and morning star, which is actually Venus, the referential meaning would be that which refers to the specific star as an empirical value so saying that the evening star and morning star are one and the same in a referential sense means that Venus is Venus, which is uninteresting, whereas the sense meaning denotes the its contribution to the sense of the sentence, so saying that the evening and morning star are one and the same in this sense denotes the mathematical discovery that whilst appearing as different stars they are in fact the same planet, which is of interest.

This study of logic and meaning has heavily influenced modern philosophers such as Michael Dummett and indeed philosophy itself, as with the rise of science, philosophy lost its ability to compete in terms of the discovery of knowledge and instead concerns itself with the definition of logic and the meaning behind concepts.

Russell’s early work saw him unknowingly repeat what a fairly anonymous Frege had already discovered. However, it wasn’t entirely in vain, as through his research, Russell found a paradox within Frege’s theories discovering self-defeating propositions following Frege’s logic. This had a profound impact on Frege, who believed the entirety of his work to be abolished; he never completed the 3^rd volume of Begriffschrift. Russell, whilst repeating Frege’s work in what some believe to be a less impressive manner, not expressing proofs in as rigorous a way as Frege, Russell and Whitehead’s Pricipia Mathematica popularised these theories, which has meant that an increased uptake in the subject has caused it advance in leaps and bounds since then.

Hannah Arendt on totalitarianism.

Arendt’s interest in the development of totalitarian regimes stems from its morbid originality, differing essentially from all other forms of political oppression, such as despotism, tyranny and dictatorship. Whenever a totalitarian regime has arisen, its success has relied heavily on the dismantling of the nation’s traditional and spiritual ideology, taking advantage of the ability to unite the masses once these divides have been removed. Once a nation has been united under one ideology, often following the failure of traditional political values (such as the German hyper-inflation pre WWII), the totalitarian government can then act in any way they see fit, as it’s no longer restricted by the regulations of long standing tradition, justifying itself as a new ideology that is superior to all aspects of the former powers. This begs the question, can a totalitarian regime last? As with the development and stabilising of the new regime, laws must be passed in order to maintain the ideology in the long term, however, it is at this point that the darker aspects of said ideology come to light (a good example being the Nazi regime’s anti-Semitic tendencies), creating divides once again between those within the regime.

Looking at the birth of totalitarian regime within its historical context seems to offer a justification for a regime which in its final form seems unjustifiable. Following the development of the British Empire, Darwin’s theories on the origin of species, Nietzsche’s declaration of the death of God and the industrial revolution, European civilisation went through a relatively peaceful 100 years, which lead to a general sense of humanities progression and superiority over those who had come before, meaning that European perspective was one of evolutionary success, overcoming the more animalistic aspects of the species. With this in mind, it seems far more appropriate that national cultures, such as Russia and Germany should be swept up by the fervour of a new system supposedly aiming to progress society into more advanced and unchartered territory. Totalitarian regimes offered the final steps toward the end product of human evolution explored by the philosophers of the time, with the Nazi regime adapting the theories of Friedrich Nietzsche and his Ubermensch and Stalin twisting Marxist Communist ideals to fit his own ends in the same way.

Through this contortion of these philosophies, the totalitarian regime is able to lift itself from the restraints of even its own law, under the pretence that the state’s decision is the perfect one, as it claims to be progressing towards the final point, where mankind becomes the embodiment of natural law, without deteriorating into lawlessness. In this sense, totalitarian government lends itself towards the philosophies of John Locke as opposed to Hobbes, with regard to natural law, suggesting that the state can engineer this final stage, as long as it is not opposed, justifying the tendencies of such regimes to world domination.

This sense of the totalitarian government’s superiority over “inferior races” distorts those within the regime’s sense of “guilt and innocence”/right and wrong/good and evil as those who would stand in defence of the “inferior races” are “guilty” of standing in the way of the natural law that requires inferior beings to “wither away”, thus actively defining themself as an inferior being. This allows the regime to redefine justice and law as their own will, requiring a mass movement to oppose it.

Therefore, the intent of a totalitarian regime is to bring those within it together as one, removing their individuality and restricting their ability to break away from the purpose of the regime and thus the regime itself. This purpose, as mentioned before is the self-proclaimed acceleration of the natural law of movement, which seeks to eliminate all weakness from the species, giving them the right to eliminate all opposed to their ideal. The way in which totalitarian regimes enforce this “oneness” of its people is through strict bureaucracy at every level, ensuring that all members are directly underneath another member of the society all the way through to the founders of the ideology. This means that no individual is capable of counteracting the progress of the regime without being singled out and thus, punished, as for the person above them in the hierarchy to ignore it, they would have to out themselves as against the system.

Arendt’s redefines the word terror for The Origin of Totalitarianism: Terror, as Arendt uses it, defines the essence of the natural law of movement, which totalitarian governments profess to accelerate. Terror is the warped view of evolution or natural law, which totalitarian governments use to justify the extermination of others.

 

 “Total terror, the essence of totalitarian government, exists neither for nor against men. It is supposed to provide the forces of nature or history with an incomparable instrument to accelerate their movement.”

“By pressing men against each other, total terror destroys the space between them.”

 

By this, Arendt is suggesting that this terror is the essence of a world even more anti-social than that of Hobbes, as whilst one might be part of a “superior” collective to begin with, total terror’s requirement for the superiority of the fittest would lead to terror, that which bound the society together, becoming the reason for its collapse into smaller factions of those who believe themselves superior within the original regime once all other “inferior” classes/races had been extinguished. Thus, terror, though never called terror by any regime, is the scapegoat for the heinous acts of these regimes, as it is the terror that passes judgement over who should live and who should “wither away”. This removes the responsibilities of choice that is so emphasised by post-war philosophers; and is indeed one of the main features of Jean Paul Sartre’s philosophy.

From this, Arendt believes it is therefore not a case of those within the regime being evil or inherently bad people, rather a people stripped of the ability to take the responsibility of choice upon them; it is this that Arendt considers their crime. Basically a system constructed by Sartre’s “bad faith”. This usually goes against one’s view of humanity and the irrational belief that people of one’s nation or class could not act in such a way. Yet, taking into account psychological tests such as the Milgram experiment and the Stanford Prison experiment it becomes clearer that it is possible for people, who to most would be considered good, can act in ways that we would consider evil once we remove their individuality and employ them as a cog within a regimented system. The Stanford Prison experiment is particularly interesting on the basis that it shows the way in which even the prosecuted assume a role within this system, meaning that for the most part they accept their conditions, regardless of the depravity of such a situation due to the continual reaffirmation from peers and others around you to fulfil a role within the systems of the regime.

 

From these experiments it seems that most of us are heavily influenced by our social restrictions, such as those who were under totalitarian regimes that suggest we should chase the will of nature or history to the detriment of those who are deemed inferior peoples by the regime, OR capitalist economics, that suggest we should chase profit at the detriment of millions who die in lesser economically developed countries every day, after being convinced by a system/regime that places value only upon its own concept, money, and that it isn’t profitable to help those oppressed by the system, at least not in the same way that war and the development of military technology is within the monetary regime. If we accept that we are, as a whole, easily influenced by the restrictions of any social system we find ourselves within, then it becomes paramount that we should retain as much individual freedom as possible if we are to avoid the destructive nature of bureaucracy and social programming.

 

“If the essence of government is defined as lawfulness, and if it is understood that laws are the stabilising forces in the public affairs of men (as indeed it always has been since Plato invoked Zeus, the god of boundaries , in his Laws), then the problem of movement of the body politic and the actions of its citizens arises. Lawfulness sets limitations to actions, but does not inspire them…”

 

Whilst, for the most part Arendt’s philosophies on the nature of totalitarianism and the methods of its success seem quite sane, there is an ironic lack of perception regarding Plato’s Republic when Arendt makes reference to Plato’s laws as representative of lawfulness, which Arendt attributes to non-totalitarian society, yet Plato’s Republic shares many similarities with that of totalitarian regimes such as Nazi Germany, with the philosopher king basing his unquestioned rule on the principle of basic axioms of their ideology, yet, was this not the exact role of Hitler or Stalin within a bureaucratised system that split its populous into singular pluralities based on function, much like the warrior and labour classes of Plato’s republic, thus Plato’s republic, chose the executioners of terror’s rule based upon their abilities performing a function, forming the warrior and labour classes in the same way that Himmler used race to choose who should become part of their elite force of SS troops and other classes within the Nazi regime. With these similarities considered, I would disagree with Arendt’s view that the Nazi and Stalin regimes were the pioneers of totalitarian politics on the basis of one of the very examples she uses as an alternative to totalitarianism.

Having said this, Arendt’s study of the totalitarian political system offers a very interesting and perhaps frightening perspective regarding the vulnerability of human morality when under the influence of  socio-political programmes, as well as a deeper understanding of human psychology and the influences of historical events on the general mind-set of a culture. Also, how the only way to prevent the recurrence of totalitarian regimes is through constant vigilance and awareness of our susceptibility to contemporary systems.

“It is not recognised that large corporations are the only unit of organisation capable to manage planning on a scale appropriate to contemporary high-technology ventures. A world without large corporations would be a world without technologically advanced products.” – John Kenneth Galbraith, The New Industrial State, 1972.

I do not disagree in so far as, yes, within the current system of economy where an amount of debt is created by any business venture due to the nature of the ever inflating economy, only the large corporations, who can exploit the slave trades of smaller and more debt ridden countries can actually manage to pass on the debts to smaller corporations.

For example, if we take the fact that these multi-national corporations are larger in terms of their economic power than most countries including some surprising European countries, such as Greece and Poland (the source of this info can be seen here: http://www.corporations.org/system/top100.html), and consider that therefore, competing for profit within the same markets, the debts must be shifted to the weakest countries in order to maintain profits for the stronger economic competitors. The fact that these Corporations are privately owned and serve only their profit margins means that they have no responsibility to a people and unflinchingly put countries in debt, seeing them as competitors, allying themselves with the higher powers of nations such as a the US in order to maximise profits at the expense of entire nations.

Iraq, under the control of Saddam Hussein, refused to let American corporations come in to extract oil, in order to reap the economic benefits themselves, this idea was of course rejected by the multi-national corporations and the US Government from which they were spawned, this led to the use of what is termed an ‘economic hitman’ (the first example of this method of resource extraction was Iran, 1953 when Dr. Mohammad Mossadegh, the democratically elected Prime Minister began to stand against the multi-national oil companies, asking that they pay more toward the people of Iran, rather than just exploiting the resources of Iran to the benefit of themselves, looking to take over the British oil assets within their own country, which is entirely understandable. Of course the British and US governments as well as the privately owned corporations who currently extracted the oil were not happy. Yet, as it was a perfectly reasonable request, the usual response of military action was not appropriate, or cost effective. It was at this point that CIA agent Kermit Roosevelt (relative of Teddy Roosevelt) was sent over to Iran with a few million dollars and was very effective in raising the ‘coup d'état ’ against Mossadegh, bringing him out of power in a relatively short amount of time, and in a way that was far more cost-effective than military action. They then brought in Mohammad Rezā Shāh Pahlavī, who was far more lenient towards the oil companies. However, it was decided that the risk of repercussion through the use of a government agent was too great and decided to use private consultants from branches of the corporations in order to make the use of these ‘hitmen’ more anonymously.), the economic hitman in this case however failed to bend Saddam Hussein to their will, with him apparently rejecting an offer similar to the one accepted by the house of Saud in Saudi Arabia. This led to the second stage of the extraction process; the use of ‘Jackals’ whose job it is to instigate the overthrow of a government, or assassinate the current leader. These Jackals could not get by Hussein’s very tight personal security though, and so they too failed, this is most likely because, according to John Perkins (Author of: Confessions of an Economic Hitman) Hussein himself was a former employee of the CIA, used to assassinate a former president of Iraq and had failed, meaning that he knew the system that would be used against him. This led to step three of the system: Military invasion in 1991. This led to the destruction of the Iraqi military, leaving Hussein defenseless, this meant that, at this point Hussein was vulnerable, and so the US government thought to just use him to control the people of Iraq as he had been doing, yet now, in his weakened state, manipulate him into the allowed exploitation of their resources. And so, at this point (90’s), the economic hitmen were sent back into Iraq again. However, once again Hussein refused the advances of these hitmen, and so this led to the most recent invasion of Iraq and the death of Saddam Hussein under the pretense that he was developing weapons of mass destruction. The destruction caused by the military invasion was also profitable for US-based multi-nationals such as Halliburton who gained hugely lucrative contracts at the expense of the Iraqi economy for the re-construction of a country which was destroyed by a movement started by their own beneficiaries, thus extracting more wealth from the nation, re-funding the expense of military mobilisation.

This process is repeated throughout the world, meaning that the current monetary system allows for profits to lead to the death of people and the de-stabilisation of economies, under the assumption that they must maximise profit, regardless of the social and environmental cost.

And so, yes, the large corporations are the only ones capable of functioning using the forefront of technology, however, this is because within the current system of monetarily based economics, the only way to succeed, within a system with more debt than money in circulation and thus a system of desperate competition to shift such debts onto others, is to overpower the entire economy of the country which supplies the resources needed, by, essentially, stealing it for rock-bottom prices on the basis that the economy has had any resistance removed or scared into line by the economic/monetary power of these alliances forged in the name of profit. So, the only legitimate way to enforce/maintain corporate and governmental responsibility for the wellbeing of the population, is to remove this monetary system.

I won’t dive head first into a what new systems could potentially replace this ridiculously outdated system, as we’d be here forever. However, I will suggest watching this video on an idea for a new method of global resource management, which, whilst full of flaws is the first step toward a far more efficient and economic (in the original sense of the word) system.

Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Z9WVZddH9w

Existentialism: An Overview.

Existentialism: the renewed interest in the dilemmas of personal choice. Clearly influenced by Nietzsche’s ‘Death of God’, which released the bonds of servitude created by organised religion, Existentialism is a reaction to the second world war and realisation that, if god is dead, as Nietzsche proclaimed, then where do we look for direction?

Following Nietzsche’s proclamation of the death of god, intellectual society was left with the knowledge that, if the moral restrictions that have been placed on us through religion are false creations of others in society, then what, in this seemingly pointless world, should we use to decide how we should conduct ourselves, if indeed we should allow anything to influence how we act.

Free from the restrictions of religion, we are liberated and given the choice of how we conduct ourselves and how we should use this short period of life that we have. This vision of humanity, with no preconditioned features, serving no purpose, gave inspiration to the gonzo journalism of Hunter S. Thompson and the like, who sought to portray events with no bias or preconditioned opinion. Such was the impact of existentialism.

With Existentialism, the development of one’s character came from the complete, passionate immersion in something. This could be considered an influence of Heidegger, the dirty Nazi bastard, who invented the term ‘Dasein’ by which he meant ‘being in the world’; the idea that, in order to be participating in the most constructive way in life, one must immerse oneself in a task, becoming the very action they are performing, such as one does when reading a book or a carpenter during his work. This could explain the desire of people to feel like an individual, to feel like what they are doing serves a purpose fulfilling our desire to be seen as part of life through our participation. The irony for those who wish to be seen taking part in life as an individual is that they place the importance in the act of being observed as opposed to the act of achieving Dasein.

The main aspect of Existentialism is that of choice, as before the realisation that god does not exist, humans were bound to follow the absolutes enforced by organised religion. This choice means that the responsibility of how a person conducts themselves is entirely down to them. All stereotypical preconceptions as to how certain groups should act are discarded, allowing for the freedom of groups such as homosexuals, females and the lower echelons of the social class system are now free to act as they will, no longer bound by the bleak expectations placed upon them by backward, metaphysical gibberish.

This liberation of ideas meant that, as a species we were free to roam our potential as individuals and push the boundaries of what is humanly possible. This bright future has, however, never been fully realised and I’m sure the likes of Jean Paul Satre would be bitterly disappointed in the religio-capitalism, that washes through the brains of the majority in the Western world, for allowing religion to remain, and not allowing for the fall of the bourgeoisie even in the face of mass starvation in a world where, with the proper application of scientific knowledge and resources, everyone could be fed and treated with humanity. In a time where morality is individual property, it is the wealthiest within our ‘economy’ with the least morality.

 

For more information on two of the key figures in terms of the existentialist movement I recommend these documentaries:

Jean Paul Satre (part 1(part two can be found on youtube)):

Martin Heidegger: