The key question here is: Can good people do evil things?
Totalitarian Regimes e.g Plato's Republic have control over every aspect of life, people's individuality is totally stripped away. Against these ideas are: contract theory, idea that the powers of the state should be limited (even by Hobbes), and liberalism, personal freedom protected by the state: "A life of liberty, in the pursuit of happiness and property".
Hannah Arendt argued that 20th century totalitarian regimes were different to anything that had come before, the main purpose of the regime is to utterly destroy the individual.
Mussolini - "Fascism is for liberty".
The doctrine of Fascism: The state is everything. "outside the state there can be neither individuals or groups. Everything in the state, nothing outside the state, nothing against the state."
Hannah Arendt thought that imperialism that had come before made totalitarian happen, it contained many traits which the new regimes could use. For example one trait is racism, within the racist movement you are superior based on your genes, not on anything you have done.
Our individuality makes us difficult to control, and gather up into a collective movement. There are two methods to destroy this individuality: Terror and Ideology
The purpose of terror is not to just murder vast numbers of people but also to destroy their individuality and ability to act against the state. Ideology eliminates the need and capacity for individual thought and experience among the executioners themselves. Orwell: war is peace; freedom is slavery; poverty is plenty. Ideology is also a type of specialist knowledge, as popper pointed out it is often used as a justification for the authority of rulers, and to avoid responsibility.
Ideology frees you from common sense and reality, you don't think you follow. When you are cut away from common sense anything can become possible. The norms are imposed on you from the state which sets limits to what is possible.
Hannah Arendt states that the first move Nazi's made on the road to the 'Final solution' was to deny Jews citizenship by making them stateless and removing their rights. These stateless people were perfect victims for a totalitarian regime. She highlights that the state is fragile, how quickly groups and whole people can fall through the cracks even in the heart of Europe. To be a civilized human we need to inhabit a man-made world of stable structures. We need these to give us access to common sense and a shared reality.
Control Language
Orwell was horrified by the capacity of totalitarian regimes to attempt to control minds, by manipulating language. Thought takes place in purely linguistic terms; to control language is to control thought. This therefore meant that mind control may be possible through manipulation of language.
Personal Responsibility in a dictatorship - Would I collaborate?
On 11th May 1960 Israeli Secret Service kidnapped Nazi figurative Adolf Eichmann in Argentina. He stood trial in Jerusalem for crimes he had committed during the "final solution". Eichmann's main responsibly during the Holocaust was to organise the transportation of millions of Jews from across Europe to concentration camps.
The Eichmann trail served three purposes:
1. Trial him for his crimes
2. Educate the world about the nature of the holocaust
3. Legitimise the Jewish state
For Arendt it was a shock to Eichmann, he spoke in endless cliches: proud of being a "law abiding citizen". She concluded that it was not necessary to possess great wickedness to commit great crimes. Arendt agreed with the judgement that he should be put to death, but disagreed with the reasoning, she believed Eichmann's crime was not thinking. He didn't make his own choices and choice is crucial an existentialists point of view. Eichmann did not choose, he simply followed the state. Eichmann followed Kant's categorical imperative, he invoked duty in an effort to explain his version of Kantianism.
As Satre states, the only thing you cannot escape is choice. What had become banal was the failure to think, Aredt is saying that we must look to our personal judgement and think in order to know how to act rather then follow the law. Sometimes disobedience is exactly our responsibly, and this is what Eichmann failed to realise.
A man has been charged in connection with the hit-and-run
death of 16-year-old Jade Clark.
A Volvo XC90 struck Jade Clark off her red moped as she was
riding along the A31 on Sunday 24th February. An inquest heard that
she died from a severe head injury.
Brian Hampton, 58, from Ashford, Kent was arrested on
Thursday morning, and a Volvo XC90 was seized.
Hampton has been charged with three offences – causing death
by careless driving, failing to stop following a collision and driving while
disqualified.
Inspector Matt Butler, of Dorset Police Traffic Unit said:
“I would like to express my personal gratitude to the local community and the media
for the huge amount of support”.
Officers launched an extensive search to hunt down the
driver of the Volvo XC90, and eliminated over 1000 vehicles prior to the
arrest.
A drink and drug user has been jailed for seven years after he robbed and threatened a teenager with a craft knife earlier this year.
Lewis Day Robinson from Junction Road, Andover, was released from prison in November, and within eight weeks has reoffended.
Robinson pushed the victim up against a chain link fence and held a yellow craft knife against the 17-year-old teenager’s throat.
The attack happened on the 7th of January at about 2pm along a pathway near Charlton Road in Andover.
The Judge described the weapon as “extremely sharp” and “extremely dangerous” and although the victim had no physical injury, it had the potential to be “lethal”.
Winchester Crown Court heard that he stole a £10 note from the victim’s wallet and some tobacco.
Passing sentence, Judge Peter Henry said: “You have for a young man the most appalling record”.
The 20-year old has 17 previous convictions and 29 offences, the Judge imposed a lengthy sentence of seven years behind bars, as he considered him to be: “a danger to the public”.
DC Paul Harfeild told WINOL that Robinson was caught on CCTV that morning in Wilkinson’s in Andover paying for the 49p craft knife.
The above video shows what it is like to be apart of WINOL on a weekly basis. It takes you behind the scenes and shows you the ins and outs of what work goes in to making our bulletin. From the initial stages of Monday morning meetings, sharing story ideas, reporters out on the field filming, interviewing, resolving complications that they encounter, right the way through to the editing in the newsroom and finally the production in our TV studio. The WINOL team is dedicated to making every week bigger and better! No other University gets the opportunity to broadcast weekly, we are provided with hands on experience, and a grounded foundation to help us step straight into a bigger organisation.
John Kenneth Galbraith wrote the The New Industrial State in 1967, it explored the economics of production and the effect large corporations could have over the state. Galbraith argues the the 'industrial system' is controlled by a technostructure rather than shareholders, he claims that the techno structure does not act to maximise profit but principally to maintain the organisation and ensure its further expansion. By 'industrial system' he means the companies that control two thirds of their output. The key aim of technostructure is to maintain its control over the company, the preference of financing via retained profit rather thank borrowing from banks.
The New Industrial State asserts that within the industrial sector of modern capitalist societies, the traditional mechanism of supply and demand is succeeded by the planning of large corporations, using things like advertising and vertical integration. The companies of the industrial system facilitate a system of informal price-fixing and price stability to ensure long-term planning is feasible.
The industrial state has near control of its capital supply, significant control of its labour supply and considerable influence within the state.
The problems of The New Industrial State are as follows:
1. Inflation
2. Increased role of the state
3. Destruction of profitability
4. Keynesian Military
Change and the Industrial System
The biggest change to the economy system is the advances in sophisticated technology. The state is perceived to be responsible for maintaining aggregate demand within the economy at a high level in order to minimise unemployment. Before World War Two there was a serious recession.
Industrial systems consists of 500-600 corporations in sectors such as communication, production and distribution. By 'industrial system' Galbraith means companies which control two thirds of their output.
Technology leads to planning, and planning is the central component of the Industrial system. Long term planning is necessary in order for production to exist. There is a clear association between planning and size, without large corporations there would be no technological advanced products.
Advanced technology and specialisation leads to increased bureaucratic planning. Galbraith argues in his book that planning is economically motivated, but is even more technologically motivated. He outlines three factors involved in the strategy of planning to ensure profit:
1. Integration
2. Production
3. Distribution
Technostructure
Within the industrial system the decisive unit of decision making is the group not an individual. The replacement of the free market with a planned solution puts action and decision making beyond the reach of an individual. It is no longer realistic for a superior to overrule a group decision. Technostructure is the collective term for all those involved in group decision-making and the organisation they form.
The goals of a technostructure are as follows:
1. Survival - this relies on a secure minimum of earnings, if they are not met there are two threats:
(a) interference from stockholders
(b) in absence of insufficient retained profits the need to appeal to outside sources of investment.
2. Growth - measured in sales volumes
3. Technical virtuosity
4. Increased rate of dividends
The basic need for technostructure is to prevent its revenue source from falling beneath a lower threshold, this require the control of prices. In order to protect the firm from heavy losses large and long term investments, prices, demand and revenue must be guaranteed.
The purpose of demand management is to ensure that a sufficient quantity of product is bought at a controlled price.
Capital and PowerEconomic goods are made by basic categories of inputs: land, labour, capital and entrepreneurship. Power was shifting from land to capital as capital became the hardest to replace.
Unemployment is the result when insufficient savings are invested and aggregate demand dips below production. The advances of Automation now means that workers are being replaced by machines, and labour and capital suffer as a result. Power rests with the decision makers.
Employment and Unemployment
There is a clear distinction between education and skill, skilled and unskilled blue collar works are becoming redundant. Whereas the technostructure has highly educated individuals; the importance of education is on the rise.
My notes this week are all a little discombobulated, I've randomly pieced together some pointers from the lecture:
Weber - Bureaucracy - This is the main source of legal power, for example the lawyers make the rules we have to follow.
When capitalism ended there was mass unemployment and the economy collapsed, but this was solved by Keynesianism The 1950's was the era of American Prosperity, the USA adopted Keynesian. Keynes is the great god. He discovered that Marx was wrong because you can add value through marketing, Marx did no predict bureaucracy would take over capitalism.
The critics of 'managed' society
Far left/far right - American civilization is" bureaucratic technological militaristic nihilism" It includes Heidegger, Sartre, Maoism, Franz Fanon.
Left - Maoism - third world-ism ecology, feminism, transvaluation anti globalisation as anti-capitalism, green movement.
Right - Racial disintegration, cultural decadence, economic parasitism, loss of national identity, globalisation as disintegrated, relative and absolute economic decline of the west.
Nihilist's do not believe in anything.
Heidegger believes society is a death machine, and that it is doomed! There is no point or purspose.
A bureaucratic power structure - democracy as a sifting "meritocracy", ruled by a technocratic elite of economic planners, scientists, generals, security experts and propagandists.
Hayek predicted that Keynesianism was corrupt.
Nietzsche - You're a slave if you're not prepared to die, it is either slavery or death.
This week I teamed up with fellow court reporter Luke Garratt to cover the Chris Huhne and Vicky Pryce sentencing. Luke did a fantastic and heroic job of getting to Southwark Crown Court and surviving the media scrum! I worked on getting reaction from the Lib Dems, and as expected they did not want to comment on camera. Therefore, I got some vox pops from the Eastleigh constituency to add some public reaction to the package. We also filmed all the national papers, as it made front page of nearly every single paper. This worked well as GVs to accompany the voice over and illustrate the story. In addition we used archive footage from 2011. This story made top story as it was the biggest national and local story. Watch it in the bulletin below.
This week I decided I wanted to give presenting a go, the only previous presenting experience I had was from the Live Eastleigh By-Elections coverage, so I wanted to give the WINOL bulletin a go. I felt I was a lot calmer then the Live show, I really enjoyed presenting, it is something I hope to do in the future. I definitely want to keep practising in order to build confidence on camera, and present more comfortably. If you missed the WINOL bulletin watch it here:
Here are the highlights of our coverage of the Eastleigh by-election. The show was on air live at 10pm which was streamed on Ustream, reaching a peak of 1600 viewers! We stayed on air until the results were annouced around 2am. I was extremely proud of the hard work that had gone in to make the night a success. For all of those involved in both the run up to the show, and the entire nights coverage we worked as a team creating a project that no other student course has ever done before. We had breaking news from inside our newsroom with the latest updates on the social media, an outside broadcast and Skype to the count and in studio guests from the four main parties that joined in on studio discussions.
This was an extremely valuable experience for me, I was the presenter for the first hour show; this was the first time I had ever done any presenting, and with it being Live, I was extremely nervous. I set myself the challenge, something outside of my comfort zone to push myself into trying new skills and a different role from the usual reporting that I do. It certainly will be an experience I will never forget.
WINOL this week: A family of a young girl killed when she was knocked off of her moped make an emotional appeal to the driver, the body of a 17 year old has been found in the New Forest and in lighter news, a local university sends Derek the teddy bear up into space.
This week the guest editor was Stuart Appleby, who graduated from The University of Winchester in 2011. It was great to speak with Stuart, he has been extremely successful after graduating, and kindly gave us great advice on the best way to get into journalism, from his own experience. He was very encouraging of my court reporting, and I appreciated the one-on-one discussion we had. Thank you Stuart! This is what he had to say about WINOL:
Today Fleet Street Fox kindly came down to Winchester to visit the WINOL team, and wow what a story she had to share! It was extremely exciting to hear first hand all the tricks of the journalism trade - even if there were elements we didn't want to hear! I guess it's always better to have someone tell you how it is, straight up and as soon as possible, rather then find out the hard way ourselves.
First of all, she had a chat with our class, telling us right from the start how she became who she is today, and explaining the alter ego of Fleet Street Fox. She chose to be a fox, because it represents journalists, rich people want to hunt foxes, and of course foxes are vermin, which holds what most people thinks of us, and what we do. The red and black colours which are the Nazi colours work because red is all about attention, passion and attraction, it's an exciting colour which draws people in, As foxy rightly pointed out if you have two twins, one in a fitted red dress, and another in a black dress, your eyes would draw to the red, because it's fiery. Red top tabloids have the right idea!
Foxy pointed out that in order to be a successful journalist, you have to do what you want to do regardless of other peoples opinion. If you have the drive you will go places, don't listen to people that hold you back. She said there is no qualification that you need in order to get you the job. Essentially all you need is enthusiasm, verging on the edge of a mental illness. Everyday, despite the way people will treat you, despite the put downs, the verbal abuse, the attacks, you have to get up and get on with it. Without fail, getting out of bed everyday to grace the day and tell yourself "brilliant, lets do it all again".
She explained that as a news reporter, you never get the right to your own opinion, you have to keep your thoughts to yourself! Tough as it sounds, you have to be objective. Susie Boniface remained anonymous throughout her writings so she could write about her personal life and delve deep into the dark corners of tabloid journalism.
As a journalist, everyone automatically thinks the worst of you, they think you are a lying, viscious thieving scumbag! Every time you have to knock on someone's door, or answer the phone you have to start from scratch again, and build up the trust, and persuade people that we aren't all horrible people that hack phones. All journalists represent each other, we don't just represent ourselves, we represent our trade. If someone does a bad thing, it makes us all look bad! Journalists have to argue that they are nice. The general rule is, "don't be a twat", and of course this will be a lot easier if you aren't actually a twat. You have to be robust, because you will have to mentally and psychically deal with attacks every single day, but don't let people put you down.
People that are not journalists simply won't understand, that the news never sleeps. You cannot just turn your phone off, and switch off when you want a break, it's non-stop and relationships will suffer. It's a struggle to have a social life outside of your career, few people other then fellow journo's will actually understand this.
Foxy says there are two halves of a brain, one part is the part where you're a journalist and everything is amazing, but then the other side is that you don't want to actually be there, and you just want to go home to your mum. It's vital to have a balance between these two. If you are too sensitive, and you want to run away from every story then you simply won't last as a journalist, but if you become too tough and obsessed with it, you'll end up turning into a nasty person and hacking phones! So its crucial to keep the balance.
Journalists have to behave like an entrepreneur; you have to sell yourself and represent yourself, to pull people's leavers your way. People always needs journalists, so we won't ever be out of a job, Although the delivery of news may change, for example online or via twitter, news itself doesn't change and people always what to know the latest gossip.
You have to learn at the end of the day that a judge will always believe someone else over a journalist. It's frustrating but it happens. Foxy advised the girls to learn self defence, because girls get attacked more then guys, and the only sympathy you'll get from police is: "thats journalism". Journalism can be a scary thing, it's a whole new way of life, but the story comes first, and you come second.
Thanks for visiting Foxy! And for signing my book! You taught me a hell of a lot about the future I plan to go into!
The family of a teenage girl who died in a fatal collision on the A31 are urging the driver to do the right thing and step forward.
Jade is at the rear of the photo, with brothers and sisters.
16 year old, Jade Clark, from Ringwood, was riding her red moped, on the way to a party, when the driver of a Volvo XC90 hit her.
Police were called to the westbound carriageway of the A31 near the Ashley Heath roundabout on Sunday 24th February at 8.23pm.
An inquest into the death was opened and adjourned today at Bournemouth Coroner’s Court. Evidence was heard that Jade died from a severe head injury.
At a press conference today Jade’s family spoke to local and national media to appeal for public help.
Her mother Sharon Clark said: “Jade was such a loving girl. Losing her has left a hole in our hearts and our lives that we will never fill.”
“To lose Jade the way we did is what’s hardest to bear. For a driver to cause Jade’s accident and then drive away, leaving her alone in the road, is almost too difficult to believe.”
Police are trying to trace the driver of a Volvo XC90 similar to the one pictured here
Traffic Inspector Matt Butler said: “A number of vehicles were involved in the incident and one of these vehicles – a Volvo XC90 – left the scene before the police arrived.”
“The front of the vehicle will be damaged. If anyone is aware of a Volvo XC90 which has sustained damage or has been repaired in the last few days, they should call the police urgently.”
The Crimestoppers Charity is offering a reward of up to £1000 for information that will help find the driver.
