anti-muslim bigotry

Today and last night there has been an impressive display of support for the victims of the attack in Paris on Charlie Hebdo. It comes after a series of high profile violent incidents commited globally by Islamic extremeists globally.

To me, this instance brings home a mixture of feelings, sorrow for a tragic waste of life. anger at the conditions which create philosophies that uphold certain life and demonise others as worthless and dismay that as a society we can't seem to move beyond ideological petty spats. Foremost on my mind at the moment is my utter disgust and the bigotry and hateful comments, the seemingly growing Anti-Islamic attitudes spilling themselves into every day life. It disheartens me that the response of many comic book artists has been to attack and insult. While I staunchly defend the right to freedom of expression and press, this is a petty move. The equivalent of schoolyard bullying, using local laws as an ability to pop a witty "yo mama" joke. It is childish and insulting. I agree that we should not feel the need to fear reproaches such as this massacre. It was heinous and inhumane, but the response has been a very low-blow, and kick to the groin of a community who is torn apart by extremeists on one side and an agressive, generalized western response.

As a country, Ireland's reputation has always been one of welcome. The hospitable Irish have a reputation for kindness and compassion. Unfortunately, this is not how I see our society too often. Far too common now are hateful, ill-founded and graceless comments objectifying and generalizing demographics. "Filthy travellers", "disgusting pro-lifers", and "junkie/homeless scum" are gross, stagnant comments that fail to promote any positive environment for forward momentum and progress. They have no place in a modern society, especially not one who prides itself on being western, developed and advanced.

"Those muslims, is there anything they won't do..."

It deeply saddens me that we have become defensive in our attitudes to an entrie demographic. Callous conservative attitudes that leave no room for geniune cooperation merely hold us all back, as a society. How you can claim to support justice and equality, and uphold your own country proudly as an example, while at the same time demonising and bullying another nationality or group makes no sense. If we were truly the country we uphold ourselves to be we would stand in solidarity against the true enemy; fundamentalist extremeism.

Unfortunately the aggressive attitudes being portrayed against the global Islamic population is not a battle against fundametalism. It is an ill-thought out display of fear and hatred. We need to move beyond this attitude. Extremeism is a threat to our global way of life, and our muslim brothers and sisters are victims too. They need to be stood beside, not vilified. The attitudes I hear being expressed and the anti-Islam behavious, from Germany and to further abroad, make me very worried. These are the attitudes that have led to aggressive occupations and wars in the past and nothing the world needs more of.

It makes me deeply worried that these prejudiced attitudes are so prevelant in a society that is so multi-cultural and intermixed. Ireland, and the rest of the Western world not only welcome Muslims(and other demographics) into the country, we also lean on them for many parts of our economy.

These generalized attitudes are the cause of the problems we see today. What else could it be? Osama Bin Laden did not have a personal vendatta against the men and women in the Trade centre on 9/11, but he had a hateful agenda based on gross generalisation and misleading philosophies. It is ludicrous to lump people like Bin Laden and IS with their victims and peace orientated Muslims, like Malala Yousafzi. The solidarity between Muslims and Christians is sometimes stronger in places riddled by violence, like Cairo in 2011, than it has been in the Western world. If an existence based on peace and harmony can be created there, it can be created here. Furthermore, if the approach is that of an atheist, I would implore you to abandon anti-religion dogmas, they do no good and only perputuate non-critical and cyclical thinking. As a modern atheist, the ability to look beyond the obvious and abandon rigid declarations and beliefs should be paramount.

"But its our country, our rules, if they don't like it..."

In essence, I agree with this statement. I would want all, immigrant or national, of all ethnicities and religions to adhere to the laws in the country the reside. This is neccessary for social cohesion and if it were the case we would have no massacres anywhere in the world. Unfortunately this statement can also be extremely poorly founded and used simply as an aggressive attack against a migrant who simply knows no differently.

As I have said before we, as a population so proud, should lead an international example. That is two-fold. First, by leading by example. If we want our rules, laws and culture to be respected, we must respect others. We must educate ignorance and not respond with aggression and angry postulation. Second we must respect anothers culture and appreciate their background. How can we expect to understand and combat the issues that we face globally if we cannot even begin to make strides towards comprehending our differences.

In the coming months, years and decades I would hope that our generation, through education and compassion will become capable of understanding the complex issues that face our society. We cannot simply continue on a "this is right, that is wrong" basis. We need to understand the why and the how, and we need to stop taking a pathetic cop out of blaming an entire global community for the behaviour of a minority. Only then can we move forward, together, to root out these injustices and stop perpetually recreating them for ourselves with a new target to blame.

Jonathan Farrell

Asalaam Aleikum
السلام عليكم

NekNominations and a Generations Insecurities

Sometimes it takes something special frustrating and upsetting to bubble to the surface to grant me inspiration to write these posts. In those cases I guess they become rants and, thus, are probably rambling and lacking in coherency. For that much I'll have to apologize. That is the vein that inspires this post, frustrated and apologetic.

As a member of a generation of young people who seem at times listless and at other times driven, sometimes inspirational and sometimes excessively stagnant, I have often been struck by our sense of insecurity as people. I would be slow to believe anyone who claimed they were free from insecurity and anxiety in their lives and I have suffered from these as much as anyone else. They are perfectly natural and, I believe a recurring part of our lives that must be allowed to play its role. A potent defensive mechanism that should be listened to. These tell-tale signs our subconscious throws our way can often be difficult to interpret and destructive in their nature, but it seems to me that it becomes its most destructive when we pay them no attention or, worse, smother them.

Depression and anxiety awareness is gaining a growing voice in our society and this is fantastic news. I know very little of depression so I won't make assumptions in this post, but all too well I know of the façade we often front ourselves with. We are obsessed and terrified with how others perceive. We worry what our friends think of us, our workmates, strangers even! It is this fear that drives our behaviour, and some of it is beneficial. Most people won't streak down Grafton Street because...hell, what would people think? Think of what? Think of us. The streaker. But then again, others will do exactly that...for the exact same reason, bizarrely.

Young men are forever surrounded with concepts and images of what is macho and masculine, of what is cool and what will get the women. I find it unlikely that any heterosexual male has every had the thought of "oh shit...what if?" when the first gay person enters their life. What would be think if one was gay, shock, horror! Undoubtedly, young girls and women are subject to these expectations as much as boys and men. It is both fundamentally beneficial and horribly damaging. However, one of the fundamental flaws with the general masculine male facade is to be strong. A real man doesn't suffer from insecurity, a real man is a rock, we are told.

This last month three young men have died from NekNominations. This is absolutely horrendous. Under what circumstances does society deem it too far. The point when peer pressure manifests itself in the form of unintended suicide. It has become a completely expected aspect of youth to drink to excess. This is a fundamental weakness in our social confidence. People often frown when I say I rarely drink, but when I drink I drink to excess. It is a weakness that needs to be fought, but at least I am aware of it. Too many people, I feel, suffer from this social anxiety. The impules, the need felt by my generation to get absolutely wasted every time they want to socialize with each other is a tragic sign of our absolute inability to be secure and happy in one others company in sobriety. Surely "pre-drinks" would not have developed to be such a norm if this was not a fundamental flaw in our thinking. How many 17-25 year olds say they "couldn't stand x nightclub if they weren't hammered." Surely this is a sign that we are not truly able relish in sociability without intoxication. The implications for this speak for themselves, but they have come to light even more fundamentally through NekNominations.

 I would like to point out, that I am not claiming the three young men to be insecure beings, but that a masking requirement has emerged a social norm in a very dangerous form. The need to anaesthetise ourselves has clearly existed for generations, but when this destructive, narcissistic trend that has emerged as normality on our social medias is combined with it it grants a pat on the back for people who are essentially falling prey to their own personal weaknesses, and we are to blame.

We define ourselves by what exists within the box, it is impossible not to. Every complex of possible identities is within the box. It is the opposite of something else so we must fall into programme somewhere...there are only so many binaries.

Does this mean young people are forever condemned to live lives of of fear and worry, stressing over whether or not they are meeting societies expectations of what they are supposed to be? Maybe. I hope not though. We are probably condemned to insecurity regardless, but what I think is important is that we are conscious of the trends of our mind. Descartes famously wrote "I think, therefore I am." But it is not enough to think...or even to be. We must live, and for this we must be conscious. We must know what we think, be able to identify the trends that exist in our minds and recognize when these trends are destructive, to ourselves and to others.

Initially when I began this post, it was out of anger. I intended on finishing this post with something along the lines of "I make no apology for my anger at those who have wantonly participated in this trend." Instead I will write that we are all victims in this scenario. What frustrates me is that we never ever seem to learn from our mistakes as a society...one day, I hope! I just wish our self induced emotional smothering didn't cost us young lives! 

Unilever's Altruism?

This evening a YouTube ad caught my attention. Normally, I skip right over these things but this time something about it caught my eye; the caption. A mildly moving question seeming to pry into our globally minded hearts, cleverly designed to create a melancholic sentiment its content would later settle. But that wasn’t what caught my attention. The word “Unilever” did. I took a step back from my hurried “skip ad” button with incredulity. Surely not, I thought.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PWTVCkvQzY8

I claim, in no way, to be any sort of ethical guru, but something called out to me and I watched through the ad. Since returning to India I have been dosed with what I can only deem a healthy dose of scepticism, courtesy mostly of one man preaching wariness of our unconscious reliance of major global brands. Unilever, according to Teletrader.com is worth just under 50 billion euros and is one of the world’s leading food companies and the second largest packaged consumer goods in the world. It is a monster company. I was shocked when I began looking on the backs of my deodorant, my soap, my foods and, not mine, but the countless other household goods around my home. They have often been criticized for contradictory messaging in advertising (Lynx and Dove) and its lack of land protection policies.

Otherwise, Oxfam have dubbed Unilever, along with Nestle, as amongst the most improved of their rated food brands. Further, Oxfam and Unicef have partnered with Unilever’s newest campaign. Sounds promising, right? Maybe global pressure has gotten to Unilever and it really does create the sense amongst companies that they must be seen to work for a better world. But, forgive me for being cynical, but I think a step back should be taken here. What exactly are Unilever stating in this “Project Sunlight” campaign? Very little, from what I could gather. They promised little, but made profound and sensational statements throughout their advert. Indeed, the video seemed to be little other than an advert. It felt entirely like a piece of marketing.

A good friend of mine may remember my rant when I sat down with a coffee in McDonalds on Grafton Street, Dublin, on a cool spring Wednesday evening. Sitting down at the table, a card displaying an appetising double cheeseburger (I have a shameful weakness for these bad boys) sat perched between me and my friend. Below the burger the picture had emblazoned a one euro coin, if I remember correctly. The idea of the picture was written on the card, for every double cheeseburger bought Maccers donated a portion of the money to a good cause. At this point I can’t even remember the stated cause. I thought, well and good but! I couldn’t stomach it. I couldn’t appreciate the supposed decency that was being portrayed that, in my opinion glorified the purchase of an unhealthy product of a not to kindly considered multi-national company. To me, it was a cold hearted ploy to comfort a society’s tendency to unhealthy and unconscious choice of food. By eating this burger, you are doing good and thus any guilt you might feel was assuaged. Maybe you’d even buy another; after all, you were helping the world.

This is what this new Unilever campaign seems to sing to me. On one hand, I want to believe the steps that Unilever insinuate to be taking are truly altruistic, but I don’t see any evidence towards this. A foray onto the Project Sunlight told me very little. In fact, amongst their snazzily laid out website Unilever paralleled their products with tug the heartstrings style captions concerning global sustainability and citizenship, and yet they still produce aerosols. Seems kinda backwards to me. This campaign really gets on my nerves. I am no major corporation bashing hater, and marketing and advertisement are well and good in my books in most instances. I do agree that they manipulate people and if people want to be taken in, so be it. It galls me but there is little I can do about it. However, there are a few things I can’t stomach, manipulative marketing towards children and towards health are high amongst them. Many internet trends in the last few decades have shown that people are more than willing to “do good” by acting online. I am undoubtedly one of them. I also make no claim that there is a subconscious sense of patting oneself on the pack through these actions that is not exactly entirely selfless. Be that as it may, it exists to a huge extent. Many websites make a fortune off these sensations, we need look no further than the Kony 2012 campaign to see how powerfully this sentiment can be used to dupe us; but the Kony campaign has been hidden away in our minds. Why did Kony flash so brazenly across out cyberspace, as powerful and then distantly gone as a supernova? We are all completely aware of our prideful desire to do good, to be good but to not necessarily overstrain ourselves. We are ashamed of it. So we hide behind the internet for fear the cause we might support may not be so virtuous. We tentatively click to petitions, unsure of whether we are being manipulated or not. How could we not when we hear of instances of profiteering supposed well doers. Only in recent weeks Kim Kardashian has been publicly slammed for withholding over 90% of her Pilipino typhoon fund. How inexorably sickening of a human being does that take?

Maybe I am overly cynical, or maybe not. I know one thing though; we definitely need to stop kidding ourselves. How can a society of animals who pride themselves and attribute their very existence in their ability to think, allow others to do it for them.  We shun effort and feel it’s ok to justify our day to day choices because some surface pretension gives us comfort. We are all guilty of unconscious behaviour. We find it difficult to consider others close in physical proximity to us, let alone further abroad. But we need, as a species to wake up and start thinking for ourselves. Learning from others is well and good but sometimes we have to start learning from our own abilities or else we will only do damage. We cannot continue to accept collective wisdom and public statements as fact. How can we justify buying Knowr, Lynx and Dove, with a simple shrug saying “ah well have you heard about that campaign, they seem to be doing some sort of good”. None of us are perfect, we make mistakes. I for one buy things I am aware as unethical. We all have weaknesses, but what makes me upset as an unwillingness to think about our choices. By letting others make them for us on such a lowly subconscious manipulative basis, we cannot make progress. Yes, it is good that Unilever are making stides to be a more ethical company, but it is important to question why. Are they responding to international consumer pressure or are they taking advantage of the growing trends of consumer desire, pre-emptively. Is it an honest move, or a gambit to which we will fall for and then hide from like Kony? And will it happen to us, again and again?

International Dilemmas and Consitencies.

Since my experiences in India I have repeatedly voiced, internally and externally, and developed opinions on things of greater concern than myself. I have finally, not before time, caught up on the Syria situation, learnt about the hegemonic injustices of Russia's homophobic laws and spouted on and on about China, Tibet and the human rights transgressions of the People's Republic of China. Undoubtedly I have worn the ear off some off you on more than one occasion. I have set up a facebook page to keep myself and interested friends in an information loop with each other, read countless articles about topics concerning global issues, but I still feel ignorant and helpless. I believe it was during GP week when one of our speakers announced, profoundly helpfully, that to make difference in the world one needs to combine their talents with their passions, and that leads me to writing here and anywhere else I can find an outlet for my spoutings, there will be other outlets soon and I will post about it here when they have heard from me.

In light of the current global climate I am finding it very difficult not to feel overwhelmed. On one hand I have my own personal interest topics keeping me ticking over with reading and thinking about how I can make a change. The situation in China only appears to be more revealing of the ongoing atrocities against it's people, who by more and more reports express greater and greater dissatisfaction and the communist government. At this time in my life I am still passionately interested in ancient Chinese culture, as I have been for many years. The selfish part of me wails and despairs at the shameless degradation of the Shaolin Temple to a simple tourist attraction, screams at the damage done to a unique Buddhist tradition and yearns to flee into the cloud wrapped heights of the WuDang Monastery. Such destruction to incredibly beautiful cultural icons does not end at the simple shaming of the sanctity of these relics of ancient Chinese life, it extends to brutal decimation of ways of life and families, of homes and well being, and of life itself.

During my team studying the Anthropology of Human Rights and Justice I probed my personal interest in Chinese culture into the murky domain of a topic I had only heard little of; Tibetan suppression. I bought a book titled The Snow Lion and the Dragon of Amazon and was horrified by what I discovered. Attached to this blog post will be a copy of an essay I wrote concerning a specific aspect of Sino-Tibetan suppression. Today, in India alone, over 100,000 Tibetan refugees have fled from their homeland to live in imitation of the Dalai Lama. Huge Tibetan homesteads have sprung up in northern India, and they have spread globally too. Today the modernisation of Ladakh, in India, however mimics the destructive forces at play in Tibet itself. The occupation of Tibet by China has been referred to as genocide, cultural genocide, and unjust. Tibetans seem universally support Autonomy and Independence for Tibet, and they are met with brutal suppression including imprisonment, torture and murder for their outspoken, or even peaceful demonstrations. Even private worship or association with an outspoken citizen is enough to condemn a civilian to imprisonment or death.

After a year long of reading and following Tibetan events, and my return from India, I came across a report that shocked me profoundly. The report depicted some of the most vile findings I have ever read about. There is no doubt in my mind that the destructive murderous treatment of Tibetans is of a significant scale. This report claimed that the figures of Tibetan's were dwarfed by those representing Falun Gong practitioners in China.

Furthermore, the report indicated that 66% of the victims of alleged torture and
ill-treatment in China were Falun Gong practitioners, with the remaining victims
comprising Uighurs (11%), sex workers (8%), Tibetans (6%), human rights defenders
(5%), political dissidents (2%), and others (persons infected with HIV/AIDS and
members of religious groups 2%).

The topic of the report concerned the unwilling removal and transplantation of the organs of Falun Gong practitioners. The horrendous nature of this act bid the question, why? I remain assured that Falun Gong is simply a spiritual practise similar to that of Qi Gong, an entirely peaceful spiritual act. This year, on July 11th, the Irish Times reported "Oireachtas joint committee hears that some 65,000 Falun Gong practitioners have been murdered to facilitate organ transplant."The concern that human rights atrocities, and of such heinous nature could happen on such a scale in one of the worlds most important countries still baffles me. This year China applies to sit on the UN Human Rights Council, in similar attempts to its typical international brow beating that allowed it to host the 2008 Olympic Games. The current council members will vote on their choice of appropriate member states in November this year and I will be writing and campaigning and sending letters opposing the election of China to this position. In light of the state of human rights transgressions, clearly overlooked by state authority, it would be a shame to allow China to assume a substantial role in alleviating and fighting circumstances and imposing rules it so belligerently offends.

That being said, this rant all comes together today, not due to the fact that I so vehemently oppose the Chinese Governments behaviour, but because a greater issue may be at hand in our coming weeks. Up until my education at the hands of one of my team mates in India I know very little about the Syrian crisis. Now I sit eyes and ears glued to any clip, news piece or article that comes my way dealing with the topic and, alas, I feel ignorant. The situation is surrounded by criticism and conspiracy theories and international threats that, if I am being honest, I haven't yet managed to form a genuine opinion on the situation. I know some simple facts. I know the murder of 1500 people through the use of chemical weapons is wrong and I believe something must be done and soon. I agree with Obama's statements that the world cannot simply sit idly while a nation full of people murder each other, but I also disagree that any military strike will create any beneficial growth in the region. I understand the frustration that bids him to smite away wrong doers who commit atrocities on each other, but I would love to hear a contingency for any aftermath that would follow military action.

Beyond the Syrian condition, I wish the United States and the UK would be more consistent in their consideration of international violations. For the past 70 years, at the least, the Chinese government has been murdering its citizens and we have heard no inkling of direct opposition to these crimes against ethnic minorities. Both Cameron and Obama have been brow beaten my the Chinese Communist Party, with threats of economical sanctions, to the point where evasive dodging of a public apology for meeting with the Dalai Lama, although both figures made it clear they met the Dalai Lama solely as a religious figure and held no regard for any political status he my hold. How states that persistently voice their opposition to global injustice can sit idly by while the conditions in China remain rife with horror. Unfortunately, I know the answer. China has simply become to powerful and too important to bend to the will of the West. I can't remember where I read it today but I came across a quote "China needs the world as much as the world needs China", and this is too true, but the economic suffering globally is too unpredictable and perhaps considered far too risky so for the time being the West is held at China's will, and without their agreement there won't be any ground broken over Syria any time soon, at least not diplomatically.

All in all, I am a very confused and annoyed man this afternoon.