Category: video

Echoes of war

David Swanson joined the Marines of Echo Company in April 2004 as an embedded photographer for The Philadelphia Inquirer. He was widely recognised for the image of Private Eric Ayon. Echoes of war is Swanson’s account of his time spent with Echo Company in Ramadi, one of the most dangerous places in Iraq at the time. Swanson published this video some years after it had disappeared from the pages of The Philadelphia Inquirer.

#allesdichtmachen​: Gelaber statt Debatte

“Ich schlage vor, lasst uns einfach Mal tauschen: Jan-Josef Liefers wird Corona-Spezialist und Christian Drosten und Melanie Brinkmann bilden das neue Ermittler-Duo im Tatort. Ich kann mir gut vorstellen, was dann passiert: die Infektionszahlen explodieren und der Tatot wird besser.”

Die beste Instanz

“Wir führen diese Debatte über Rassismus auf einer total primitiven Ebene. Es handelt sich um ein Menschenrecht. Schutz vor Diskriminierung ist ein Menschenrecht.”
Natasha A. Kelly

“Ich würde mir wünschen, dass wir wegkommen davon diese Ereignisse, wie sie jetzt auch im WDR passiert sind, immer als Einzelfälle zu diskutieren. Und es ist ja heute immer wieder aufgekommen, daß es sich um strukturelle Probleme handelt, die nach ’45 nicht einfach aufgehört haben. Und ich glaube es gibt ‘ne Situation, in der man sich in Deutschland sehr, sehr stark wünscht, daß nach ’45 ein besseres Deutschland entstanden ist [sic]. Aber der Wunsch alleine erzeugt noch nicht die Realität. Und da brauchen strukturelle Probleme strukturelle Lösungen.”
Max Czollek

Gemeinsam mit ihren Gästen formuliert Enissa Amani eine bemerkenswerte Antwort auf die vom WDR am 09.11.2020 erstmalig ausgestrahlte Sendung “Die letzte Instanz“, deren Umgang mit dem Thema Rassismus bestenfalls als naiv zu bezeichnen ist.

Pathlesspedaled interviews: Jan Heine

“…but beyond that you just go for a ride and, you know, usually, especially when you are riding with friends, you’re talking. Not about bikes, about anything. And so you sort of forget the whole bike thing and the bike intrudes when it does things that you don’t expect. Or you never notice the bike, you say ‘man, this is a great bike’ we just rode, you know, 75 miles and not once did I think about the bike. You know, so it sort of the best bike is the one that you don’t notice. And, you know, people sometimes think because we focus so much about bikes [sic] and technology that we’re constantly thinking about bikes. But I think about my bike when I am not riding, so that I don’t have to think about it when I’m riding.”
Jan Heine

How is he the victim?

“How is he the victim in this scenario? This is a pregnant woman who had to arrange new levels of protection because of the amount of racist abuse she was receiving, which escalated when she announced that she was pregnant. She’s always had racist abuse, but when she announced her pregnancy it multiplied because there is so much toxic racism in our society. … That’s not Danny Baker’s fault but what is Danny Baker’s fault is that he did something which was so offensive that when I first saw it I actually thought it was a prank. I just thought nobody, nobody who the BBC gives a platform [sic] could be stupid enough to say this and not intend it to be racist. Because it is one of [sic] and we could talk about unintended racism or micro-aggression, this is none of those. This is the most blatant, clear cut example of racism. It is a [sic] Generations of people have recognised this as an overtly racist trope. Within people’s lifetimes, black people still being compared to monkeys and dehumanised regularly. … So, I’m not interested in him. I’m not interested in him or what happens to him. By the way, he’s already done a show which was more successful than his previous shows since he’s been sacked. So, if you are worried about his career then I suspect there is no reason to. I am not interested in him, I’m worried about the millions of black people who regularly live with this kind of abuse and then have to be in spaces like this where everybody denies it’s a problem. That is something that I could not feel more strongly about and I’m living it right now in this conversation. It’s not good enough.”
Afua Hirsch

Danny Baker, a mulit-award winning broadcaster, has recently been fired from the BBC after seemingly comparing Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor to a monkey.

Swipe my race: If you’re only dating someone for their skin colour, you should consider why

“I don’t think the stereotypes evolve as quickly as society evolves. I don’t think we get enough varied stereotypes as society is varied, because society is moving so quickly. Especially in a city like London. We’re so diverse, all of us, and the stereotypes don’t keep up.”

Don’t feel sorry for refugees — believe in them

“We take in so few refugees worldwide. We resettle less than .1 percent. That .1 percent benefits us more than them. It dumbfounds me how the word refugee is consided something to be dirty, something to be ashamed of. They have nothing to be ashamed of. We have seen advances in every aspect of our lives except our humanity. There are 65.3 million people who have been forced out of their homes because of war. The largest number in history. We are the ones who should be ashamed.”
Luma Mufleh

Papering over poverty

“The Tories last year voted against a housing bill, right, this bill, it wasn’t asking much, it wasn’t attempting to turn Buckingham Palace into temporary housing for sex offenders. It was suggesting that private landlords have a legal obligation to ensure their properties are fit for human habitation. What sort of fucker votes against that? I wonder how many of the seventy Tory MPs, who are also private landlords, voted against that, including David Cameron? I’ll give you a clue: it was all of them!” Jonathan Pie, played by British actor Tom Walker, suggests that a healthy UK economy would need to do more than to create an environment in which only the wealthy do well.

Why are people so angry? Blame modernity

“The modern world’s cherished ideas of liberty, equality and prosperity are more popular than ever before. The problem is that it is difficult for the vast majority of the human population to realise them.” Pankaj Mishra appearing on yesterday’s BBC Newsnight programme.

Complexity is the enemy of security: how to stay relevant in a hacked world

“And one way to fight back is through Open Source. To make sure that the systems we use are trustworthy and can be verified and can be veryfied by anybody [sic]. Relying on Open Source to bring us privacy and trustworthy security is a crucial point for our future on the Internet. The Utopia is gone, it’s not coming back. But we can do what we can to maintain as much trust on the Internet as possible. And openess is key to trust. Without openess there is no trust—without trust there is no democracy.”
Mikko Hypponen