Prodosh Aich - Lies with Long Legs

Who are the writers of sellable texts for the publishers? And where do they get their knowledge? Knowledge? Aren’t we back to the elite? What if they are wrong? If their sources were inadequate? If they are deliberately misleading us? What is going to happen with those excluded areas of knowledge? Is it not common knowledge that all sorts of short-lived stories are presented to us which then vanish into thin air in next to no time? The Germans may very well remember the gentlemen Kanther, Koch and Kohl and the many tricks of financing political parties in a “representative democracy” or we all may remember Viet Nam, Iraq, Somalia, and Kosovo. Don’t we hear daily from the political elite and other namesakes that they are constantly “occupying” topics and “selling” ideas to us? Are they ashamed of doing this, just a little bit? Do we have even the slightest indication, in spite of the growing number of “talk shows”, that the elite in any country, elite in any field, are inhibited while they talk of “selling” ideas? Is there anything today which can not be bought?

No one will deny that after the invention of the script, after this first big leap in the area of communication, a lot of changes have taken place. There is diversity with a quantitative growth of „media“ on a high technological level. But do we also possess measuring or verification rods in order to judge, whether the variety and increased number of the „media“ do transport more „information“? Or do they deliver the same “information” in many different wrappings? We should all be able to recall also cases of “disinformation”, of misleading information, provided our memory has not been damaged already by the “freedoms” within the “information and media society”. We shall not embarrass Germans or Europeans reminding them of their illegal practices of financing political parties or of corruption. We shall not ask how often their top hundred-odd celebrities became victims of slips in their memory (black-outs) whenever their illegal activities were exposed and they were publicly asked to explain.

We may not even discuss, for example, the reaction of Roman Herzog on television while holding the high office of President of the Federal Constitutional Court in Germany. As we may recall the public disclosure by the obnoxious right wing extremist Dr. Gerhard Frey, Chairman and Financier of the Neo–Nazi–Party (DVU) immediately after Professor Theodor Maunz, the most celebrated German expert in Constitutional Law, expired. Both had been clandestinely meeting every week to discuss the legal constitutional fights of DVU against the German democratic government. Roman Herzog told the reporter that he almost exploded on hearing the news. The reporter didn’t ask any further questions during that television report. Did the reporter know that Dr. Roman Herzog had been an academic assistant to the same Professor Theodor Maunz, already as a young senior law student and later became his colleague for many years? Did the reporter know that the most used commentary of the German “Grundgesetz” (Constitution) carries the names Maunz-Herzog as authors and that all constitutional experts in the Federal Republic of Germany still keep Theodor Maunz in high esteem? How many top „media“ people know that Theodor Maunz was also one of the most renowned constitutional experts in Adolf Hitler’s “Third Reich”? He contributed to the establishment of the primacy of the “Fuehrer–Prinzip” (principle of absolute leadership) overriding the Constitution. Despite all this, one of the top German reporters was content with that hypocritical reaction of Roman Herzog posing on television that he “was about to explode” on getting the news of Maunz meeting the Chairman and Financier of the Neo–Nazi–Party (DVU). Assuming that the reporter did not know much about the “Mr. Hyde” side of Dr. Maunz, shouldn’t he have at least enquired, tried to find out whether Roman Herzog was still fit to continue as the topmost Watchman of the Constitution, since he had miserably failed to detect the real political conviction of his mentor and colleague, Theodor Maunz, for so many years? Naturally no public pressure was put on Roman Herzog, the uppermost guardian and protector of the Constitution of the new German Republic. We won’t know whether there would have been public pressure against Herzog if all facts were made public. Anyway. Roman Herzog himself left this high office soon. Voluntarily. Only to become the President of the Federal Republic of Germany. No, we do not wish to raise all these issues. They are so out of date. Who would be interested in chronicles like these?

But we have to raise a few more questions in the context of „might-media-manipulation“. What is the correlation between the expansion of „media“ and the progressive decrease of our memory? Should we overlook the monotony every morning, when we see the same kind of headlines in our dailies despite the diversification of media institutions? Can we just ignore the disappointment that more media did not lead to more detailed and varied information and news? Just accept it that all newspapers, magazines, the radio and television are fed by the same agencies, same sources? But then, if all “eaters” are cutting their share from the same cake – advertisement budgets or multinational corporations – where could any alternate programmers with a different and fresh line of thinking come from? Why would anyone risk veering away from the status quo in the media? No wonder that the “Guinness-principle” holds – more rapid, more thrilling, more entertaining and better in technical quality. All that counts is the ratio of consumers. Is there a demand for complicated historical background of events? Are such (hi)stories also entertaining? And, are we not addicted to entertainment? Entertainment does not need memory. Memory only burdens. Don’t we spend enough time already on our fight to overcome the travails and tedium of daily life?

We may also not recall the “freedom of the press” during the Gulf War. We hope, we have not completely forgotten, how powerful those daily press conferences from NATO headquarters were, while the “humanitarian action in Kosovo” was on. We were to believe that the “military action” was inevitable if human civilisation was to be saved and that NATO was only dropping “bomb–carpets”, which were intelligent, sophisticated and civilised enough to distinguish between “Milosevics” and innocent Yugoslav children and women. We may still remember those press conferences from the “White House” during the “Campaign” against international terrorism in Afghanistan, another “unavoidable military attack” to destroy the evil. There too we were to believe that US bombs do not kill human beings, but only the “bin Ladens”. Well, there were a few “collateral damages”. Collateral damages? Moreover, the civilised “international community” never drops bombs. Those were only punishing “air-strikes” to restore freedom and peace. Enduring peace. And what has really been achieved? This will become evident later in Iraq or in Syria, in Somalia or in Sudan or in Iran or in North Korea. And then?

Do we still remember what happened in the “Gulf War”? Do we remember its end? Our “mind–memory” does not seem to have any capacity left for the “Gulf War”. This has apparently been deleted as trash. Today we may be prejudiced enough to think at best that the Iraqi children born after 1990 are responsible for Saddam Hussein still being in power. In spite of the “Gulf War”. How are we otherwise to understand the continuous missile and bomb attacks on Iraq by the British and US forces? Are these attacks approved by resolutions of the United Nations or by any proforma decisions of the “civilised International Community”?