Michael Schätzlein – Pike & Hurricane

Kidnapped, Butchered, Offered: Human Sacrifices in the 21st Century

Michael Schätzlein — Fri, 03 Jun 2016 13:03:16 +0000

When a head- and limbless body of a boy was found floating down the Thames in London in 2001, it sparked widespread international interest. Not only due to the gruesome details of the murder – but also because his stomach contained an extract of the calabar bean, a fruit whose components effectively work like a nerve gas: leaving the body of the victim paralysed, while still being able to feel pain. The fruit is used in voodoo magic in sub-Saharan Africa. As a result, ritual murder was deemed the most likely explanation for the killing. The heinous crime reminded the world once again that human sacrifices and medicinal killings, i.e. murder in order to harvest organs for medicinal use, are still a reality today.

Commonly associated with the bloody excesses of the Aztecs and cheap tribal exploitation films from the 1980s, human sacrifices are an often overlooked issue in nowadays’ world. In India, quite a few cases have emerged in recent years, most notoriously that of P. R. Palanichamy, the head of the country’s largest granite export firm, in which it was alleged that he had ordered the killing of four people for personal gain. In another case, a 10-year-old boy was killed by a man in Nepal, hoping to cure his ill son as a result.

Witch doctors were to blame for many of the atrocities.

However, human sacrifices mainly occur in sub-Saharan Africa. In early 2016, amidst an election that was criticised by the international community, it was alleged that six children had been mutilated and sacrificed in rural Uganda, in order to win the favour of mystical beings and to thus boost election results. The allegations were made by the charity Kyampisi Childcare Ministries, which provides education for children in Uganda and cares for survivors of child sacrifice. It is reported that a veritable industry builds on ritual murders. In exchange for money, the rich and powerful can order the ritual killing of children, who are often kidnapped or trafficked for this very purpose.

Reports indicate that the practice is still alive and well in Botswana, Liberia, Namibia, Nigeria, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, and Uganda. While ritual killings are considered murder in all of these countries, the laws are hard to enforce, as ritual killings often go unreported, due to the secret nature of these murders and the common complicity of relatives of the victims, which are often especially vulnerable: children, women, and disabled people are most commonly targeted. It is also worth noting that these problems do not only persist in countries where most people still adhere to traditional beliefs, but also in countries that are largely Christian or Muslim.

While some of the sacrifices are performed for purely spiritual reasons, most of them are done for personal gain, be it in the form of material wealth, health or power. It is also proven that some of the deeds are committed out of fear of repercussions if the sacrifice was not to be performed as planned, be it in the form of peer pressure or doom brought about by vengeful spirits. Closely connected to the ritual murders are medicinal killings, in which the body parts of the victims are harvested for later use in traditional medicine. Especially Albinos, often considered unnatural by superstitious and uneducated populations, are at great risk of being abducted and murdered for their body parts, which are then used as medicinal ingredients or powerful charms.

People suffering from albinism are especially at risk

When looking at these crimes, it becomes apparent that they all have a common themes: the murders are always perpetrated by or at the advice of witch doctors, gurus, and other spiritual leaders. Why is that so? In sub-Saharan Africa, witch doctors still have a very eminent position in society. They foretell the future, record traditions and the oral history of their communities, and are said to be able to cure all kinds of sicknesses that are commonly believed to be a result of witchcraft or moody ancestors. In countries that often have less than one doctor in 8,000 people, witch doctors are the persons to call on for whatever ailment might befall one. Due to their role as shamans and traditional niche in society, it is easy for them to ensnare superstitious populations in their charlatanry.
Many government measures aimed at stopping human sacrifices and medicinal murders thus target witch doctors, either through the regulation of their work or through education campaigns. Only one year ago, Tanzania made the headlines when more than 200 witch doctors were arrested in order to prevent further killings of Tanzanian albinos. In Uganda, the problem of human sacrifice has become so rampant that a special Anti-Human Sacrifice and Trafficking Task Force has been set up in order to tackle the problem. While official figures only show about twenty to thirty cases a year in Uganda, the real figure is likely way higher.

In the end, however, change will have to come about from within the communities. While increased accessibility of education and medical services will surely aid in decreasing the amount of human sacrifices and medicinal murders, it is peoples’ minds that need to change.

Related articles:

Witchcraft in Africa: Practice and belief

Witchcraft Brewery: The Dark History of Beer, Witchcraft and Gender

Witch Hunts and Violence in Papua New Guinea – A Millenary Belief System

Photo credits:

Picture 1: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Public Health Image Library, in the Public Domain

Picture 2: ViktorDobai, licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0

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Reichsbürger – Citizens of the Reich

Michael Schätzlein — Fri, 03 Jun 2016 13:03:11 +0000

Imagine the following: A person gets stopped by the German police for speeding, but when asked for their ID and driver’s licence, they not only refuse to show them in the first place, but it also turns out that their papers are fake and bear the name of the German Reich, something that has not existed since the end of World War 2. Further, the person insists that they are a citizen of the German Reich and that the policemen thus have no authority over them, as the Federal Republic of Germany which they are working for does not exist. Indeed, these so-called “Reichsbürger” (citizens of the Reich) are no uncommon occurrence any more, and there is a worrying trend towards radicalisation.

The beginnings of the Reichsbürger movement date back to 1985, when Wolfgang Ebel proclaimed the founding of his Provisional Imperial Government and appointed himself Reich Chancellor. Since then, a large number of offshoots following a similar ideology have been founded, revealing one of the greatest problems of the movement: as anyone can assume an imaginative and pompous title and claim sovereignty over Germany and the legitimisation of the leaders is sketchy at best, the movement has troubles uniting under one leader. The Sonnenstaatland website, which specialises in these kinds of movements, lists seven German Reichs alone – all with different leaders, seats of government, and constitutions.

A common theme in the ideology of these movements is the thesis that the German Reich continues to exist and that Germany still is occupied by Allied forces. The Federal Republic, then, is in truth a company, a financial agency controlled by the Allies, Big Capital or the Jews, depending on who you ask. This is further affirmed by misinterpreting the ambiguous name of the German Personalausweis, or personal identification, as “personnel identification“, insinuating that everyone who has a German ID is in truth an employee of aforementioned elusive financial agency. The goal of the Reichsbürger movement is to go back to the glory of days past, to a Reich in its old borders of before the Second World War.

The people participating in these organisations are often referred to alternatingly as esoterics with right-wing extremist tendencies, or right-wing extremists with esoteric tendencies. Indeed, the Reichsbürger movement is a melting pool of many different brands of people, including conspiracy theorists and Holocaust deniers, and quite a few of them have been declared not criminally responsible by reason of mental disorder in their many clashes with the German authorities.

Of course, not all of the Reichsbürger are merely motivated by a drive for independence – in many cases, it is about money. On the one hand, Reichsbürger usually opt not to pay taxes, fines and other public dues, yet are more than willing to accept benefits if the German state should pay them. Others may draw out eventual bankruptcies by refusing to cooperate with their creditors. On the other hand, the leaders of the imaginary states can make a lot of money by selling all sorts of fake identifications, licence plates, and driver’s licences to their gullible followers.

Fuelled by their contempt for any form of state authority, the Reichsbürger have long been a thorn in the side of German civil administration and judiciary. Since they neither respect laws nor the authority of the enforcers of German law, it is near impossible to reason with them. Many spend their lives within the illusionary borders around their home, without ever fulfilling their duties as German citizens. Officials’ attempts to contact them are answered by endless monologues on why the Federal Republic does not exist, with references to a sheer unlimited amount of documents, letters and outdated constitutions. Many have taken to obstructing the work of the German authorities as much as possible, by flooding them with requests, lawsuits, or even bogus debt claims – a veritable paper terrorism has been unleashed.

A Reichsbürger protest in Berlin

There are also signs of radicalisation. Compared to other German right-wing extremist groups, the Reichsbürger’s fetishism for weapons has been described as being the strongest. In 2014, a known Reichsbürger was arrested after trying to buy an AK-47 in Luxembourg using a fake ID from a supposed “Prussian Free State”. In March 2016, several Reichsbürger attempted to thwart a process against one of their own by causing a turmoil in the court room and stealing the record of proceedings in the process. Further, Reichsbürger are known for routinely trying to harass, blackmail or intimidate officials. In 2012, 15 to 20 men clad in the uniforms of the now-dissolved Reichsbürger vigilante group “Deutsche Polizei Hilfswerk” (DPHW) tried to arrest a bailiff in the line of duty.

While the German state cracked down hard on these groups after each of these excesses, it cannot do much against the routinely obstruction of the administration’s work. Due to its high fragmentation, it is also hard to collect data on the Reichsbürger movement. The Ministry of the Interior estimates their numbers to be in the thousands, with their numbers constantly rising, probably due to increased presence in the media and a general dissatisfaction with the powers that be. The federal State of Brandenburg alone counts more than 150 known Reichsbürger in its territory. As the revisionist ideology of the Reichsbürger movement inherently cannot be reconciled with the German Constitution, their groups have been deemed anti-constitutional, and four out of sixteen federal branches of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution are currently observing the movement.

The rise of the Reichsbürger movement goes hand-in-hand with that of the far-right in Germany. It indicates a weakening of the State’s authority and the State monopoly on violence. While it is unlikely that the Reichsbürger movement will ever have success in reaching their goals, dealing with them will continue to cost the taxpayer exorbitant amounts of tax money.

Photo credits:

Dirk Ingo Franke, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0

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Sand, Salt, Stars: UF Trip to Jordan

Michael Schätzlein — Mon, 02 May 2016 13:16:16 +0000

Our trip started with a train to Denmark and Copenhagen airport a little before 5am on Saturday, the 26th of March. Our travel went smoothly, with a layover in Vienna Airport, before finally arriving at the destination our group of 14 had been long looking forward to and which we had planned for intensively: Amman, the capital of Jordan. With a new stamp in our passports, we went through security and out into Jordan.

Most of us slept surprisingly well, but were woken up when the muezzin started calling for prayer at 4.10 am. A quick fresh orange juice breakfast to go and four hours later, we sat in our buses and headed up north. Before noon, we arrived in Jerash – the Pompeii of the Middle East – and spent two hours exploring the ancient city and climbing rocks. Although culturally so different, it was very interesting to see that the city’s architecture resembles the one of most ancient Roman or Greek cities, including amphitheatres, pillars, and temples.

We got on our two busses again and headed to the Dead Sea. After a few compulsory tourist snaps, we floated around, tried to ‘swim’, and clumsy-us got some salt in our eyes, as expected. A quite painful experience! Most of us then paid for some healthy skin mud and before long, we were all muddy and black and enjoyed the view to Palestine on the other side of the Sea.

The first official day, Easter Monday started with an early wake-up call to make it to the World Health Organisation (WHO) by 10 o’clock. Even though we were in the world’s 4^th driest country, it rained heavily, with people shovelling and brushing water away around us. After a warm welcome, we were introduced to the WHO in Jordan, which mainly deals with communicable diseases and the changing epidemiology of disease, mainly due to the aging population, similarly to many countries in Europe. The situation is further complicated by the influx of refugees from Syria.

Apart from the WHO, we used our time in Amman to meet representatives of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the embassies of Sweden and the United States of America, Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism (ARIJ), UNICEF, EcoPeace Jordan, and the Royal Al-Bayt Institute for Islamic Thought. The meetings provided us with a broad background on Jordan, be it in terms of politics, religion, or foreign aid. We learned about the difficulties of being a journalist in Jordan and the potentially dramatic ecological changes that may arise if the Dead Sea dries out even further. At the School of International Studies of the University of Jordan, we got to meet some of our peers, and we were educated on LGBT issues when we met the owner of an Amman gay bar.

Our most engaging visit, which took place on the sixth day of our trip, was the one we paid to Shefighter, a gym created to train girls in self-defence. Its founder, Lina Khalifeh, greeted us warmly, and, after changing into gym clothes, we gathered round and listened to Lina speaking about her organisation, women in the Middle East, the legal response to domestic abuse, and the ways in which women organise themselves. During the practical part, we learned how to disarm a person attacking with a knife and how to escape from a situation in which somebody is trying to suffocate us.

After four days of interesting meetings and lectures in Amman, it was once more time to take in more of the country of Jordan. Running on only a few hours of sleep, we packed up the vans and headed south for the world-famous ruin city of Petra, which was built around 300 BC. The sun was out and it was the perfect day to explore the historical site.

We continued our journey to the next and final destination of our trip: Wadi Rum, also known as the Valley of the Moon, which is the biggest Wadi (valley) in Jordan. It is not a desert in the conventional sense – that is, if your mind unintentionally thinks of a vast sea of sand dunes – but rather a mix of various colours of sand, rocky sandstone mountains and numerous plants growing here and there. After adapting to the local clothing style (turbans) we jumped into jeeps and headed off into the desert.

Our first stop took us to a Bedouin tent with a spring. Nowadays, only a few Bedouin families are living directly in the desert – most of them congregate in smaller villages, with tourism being the main source of income. However, due to the negative developments in the region, the number of visitors has dropped significantly in recent times. Nevertheless, Wadi Rum continues to be a popular location for movie productions. Hence, our second stop was not only the main scene for the famous 1960s movie Lawrence of Arabia, but also provided the setting for Matt Damon’s last great extra-terrestrial experience in The Martian.

The jeep tour was not for educational purposes only, though. Our next stop took us to a small mountain with a sand dune, providing a perfect slope for sandboarding, rolling or simply running (and falling) down the hill. After some time, our group split up – while some took the jeep deeper into the desert and close to the Saudi border to enjoy the view a bit more, some others returned to the village and took camels for a ride to the ruins of an ancient temple. After that, our two groups reconvened at the best sun set sand dune in the whole of Wadi Rum, where we watched the sun slowly disappear behind the horizon. Enchanted by an atmosphere resembling A Thousand and One Nights, most of us decided to end the day by sleeping outside in the moonlight-bathed Wadi Rum.

On the next morning, it was time to return to cold, rainy Sweden. After a daring speedy drive to the airport and some difficulties involving the loss of a passport, we finally took the plane back to Malmö.

Written by the travel group, compiled and edited by Michael Schätzlein

Photo credits:

Carolin Jamusch for Malmö Association of Foreign Affairs

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Falun Gong: No End in Sight

Michael Schätzlein — Mon, 02 May 2016 13:16:05 +0000

When the People’s Bank of China announced that it would switch its 1 yuan notes for coins back in January, it did so not only to increase durability and recyclability of the money, but allegedly also to counter the spread of subversive comments criticising the government written on the low-value notes. The move is believed to target Falun Gong, a spiritual group that has been persecuted for almost two decades now and whose members are said to be behind the reactionary messages. It is one of many attempts in a seventeen-year campaign of the Communist Party at curbing the movement’s influence and wiping them out.

Falun Gong, often also referred to as Falun Dafa, is a spiritual practice based on qigong, which sets it apart from other persecuted groups like the Tibetans and the Uyghurs, who are defined by their ethnic belonging and political aspirations. It first emerged in 1992, during the so-called “qigong fever” of the 1980s and 1990s, when public practices of qigong became a mass phenomenon in China.

Qigong combines conscious breathing, posturing of the body and movements with meditation, and has its roots in traditional Chinese culture, spanning back thousands of years. It is praised by its practitioners for its recreational and spiritual value, but is also used in medicine and martial arts. Attempts at formalising and grouping the various qigong schools were first made under Mao Zedong at the end of the 1940s. After Mao’s death in 1976, the practice became ever more popular, and an estimated 60 to 200 million Chinese were avid followers of qigong at its peak.

The Chinese government, wary of movements that might undermine the Communist Party’s rule, set up a regulatory body in 1985. However, Falun Gong proved elusive from the start: since it does not require formal membership and membership fees are non-existent, the practice was harder to control than other schools of qigong. Apart from that, its sheer size – it had an estimated 70 million practitioners by the end of the 1990s – meant that the movement could prove to be a challenge to the Chinese government itself.

Chinese governmental pressure increased, which was answered in turn with resistance from the Falun Gong community. Since Falun Gong is more spirituality-oriented than other schools of qigong and its followers are thus more invested in it, attempts to curb the influence of Falun Gong were met with staunch resistance. In April 1999, ten thousand of the estimated 70 million practitioners of Falun Gong demonstrated peacefully in Beijing, demanding an end to persecution. Two months later, the Party initiated a large-scale crackdown on Falun Gong and other qigong schools, imprisoning thousands of Falun Gong members and closing qigong clinics and research institutions.

While some of the schools were allowed to continue their practice under increased government oversight, Falun Gong and the related school of Zhong Gong were banned. Hundreds of thousands of Falun Gong members were sent to labour camps, while others were detained in prisons, psychiatric clinics, or extrajudicial black sites, often living under grave conditions and usually having been sentenced without due judicial proceedings. The goal is re-education: Falun Gong inmates are to renounce their beliefs and to promise that they would never contact the movement again. By 2009, more than 2,000 deaths resulting from physical abuse and torture had been recorded. While the labour camps were officially abolished in 2013, they continue to exist under a different guise.

In 2006, allegations were made that the Chinese government was harvesting organs from Falun Gong prisoners, often said to be good donors due to their healthy lifestyle. The Kilgour-Matas report, written by former Canadian Secretary of State David Kilgour and human rights lawyer David Matas, came to the conclusion that there was no source for more than 40,000 organs that were transplanted between 2000 and 2005 in China. Also, the waiting time for a new organ was deemed suspiciously low – about two weeks as compared to 32.5 months in Canada, indicating that organs were procured on demand. The publication of the report caused widespread alarm among the international community. While China denied the allegations, it also could not provide a satisfactory answer to the claims.

In response to the crackdown, the Falun Gong movement went underground, continuing to maintain its presence through the distribution of Falun Gong materials among the Chinese population. Those who fled abroad founded a healthy exile movement that soon became enmeshed with other opposition groups of the Chinese diaspora, challenging Chinese state media through own newspapers, TV and radio stations, and providing tools to those whose who stayed behind in order to circumvent government censorship. Further, foreign members of Falun Gong, now mainly living in the USA and Taiwan, initiated a veritable flood of lawsuits against Communist Party officials, and the movement is today reported to have filed the highest percentage of all human rights lawsuits in the 21^st century. The Chinese government has responded by tapping the diaspora’s communication channels and employing diplomatic pressure to disrupt Falun Gong members’ activities.

All attempts to curb the influence of Falun Gong over the last seventeen years seem to have failed at eradicating the movement. Their numbers are still believed to be in the tens of millions, although gauging the amount of members has proved difficult. The consistent failure of anti-Falun Gong policies thus begs the question why the Communist Party continues its campaign of persecution. The explanation is simple: the Communist Party has made the case of Falun Gong a vital matter to the nation, and it is so deeply invested in the movement’s persecution that admitting a failure of its policies would deal a severe blow to the government. The price both in terms of resources and political prestige would have been lower if it had it backed down earlier, but that moment is long gone.

Photo credits:

Picture 1: Tom Waterhouse, licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0

Picture 2: ep_jhu, licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0

Picture 3: longtrekhome, licensed under CC BY 2.0

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Why Sweden Should Not Join NATO

Michael Schätzlein — Sat, 02 Apr 2016 11:10:33 +0000

This opinion piece is part of a two-part series. Click here to read the pro-NATO article.

It has been one and a half years since a pixelated picture of something sparked one of the largest military manoeuvres in recent Swedish history. Despite all efforts, the object was never found. The suspect was quickly named – Russia was credited with the elusive alleged submarine. It marked yet another incident in a long row of Swedish submarine scares spanning back all the way to 1962. However, many doubts were raised concerning the veracity of the picture, and both Russian and Western experts suspected the Swedish military of staging the event in order to push for more funding. It was not an isolated incident, though. It was the end of 2014, the conflict in Ukraine was in full motion, and the sabre-rattling of both Western and Russian forces had drowned out all calls for peace. In Swedish public debate, the subject of NATO – long a no-no – was on the table yet again. But there are good reasons why Sweden has not, and should not join NATO.

The first thing that comes to mind when looking at the pro-NATO side of the story is how mind-boggling it is that it is discussed under all the wrong pretexts. Russia is neither interested, nor capable of attacking or even conquering Sweden, despite all bellicose statements pointing to the contrary. While Russia’s military is surely a force to be reckoned with, its military budget is only a tenth of NATO’s. Russia does not stand a chance in conventional warfare. Even when considering all other actors in the region, Sweden is in no particular danger. Statements like the one made in 2012 by then Supreme Commander of the Swedish Armed Forces, Sverker Göransson, that Sweden would only be capable to defend itself for a week are cheap fear-mongering and hold no connection to reality.

Sweden has neither a large Russian minority, nor a common history that would enable Russia to make a claim on Swedish lands and legitimise its actions towards its own people. If anything, Russia will direct its gaze towards Eastern Europe, the South Caucasus, or the Central Asian countries. Rather than ogling Swedish territory, Russia is interested in keeping Sweden out of NATO. Joining simply for the sake of defying Russia would be a childish and erroneous decision.

Since Sweden has previously deployed troops in Afghanistan, holds joint exercises with NATO, and contributes to NATO’s rapid response forces, it can be said to have abandoned its treasured principle of neutrality. However, the additional decision-making powers praised by the pro-NATO faction are minimal, while the diplomatic consequences would be severe. Pushing away Russia will not open up for a peaceful process or an increase in stability in the Ukrainian conflict – rather, it will only complicate things again, and threatens to render the considerable progress that has been made so far null.

It should also be noted that Sweden is quite a pacifist society, and has enjoyed a longer period of peace than many other European countries. Combat actions would only garner limited approval from the population. When Sweden signed the Memorandum of Understanding with NATO in 2014, marking a strengthening in Sweden-NATO relations, and thus allowing the stationing of NATO troops in Sweden, it did so in a hasty process, without due prior deliberations. This was criticised by many people, and politicians from Miljöpartiet presented a motion to the Riksdag in which they demanded that the negotiations be halted until the case had been properly assessed.

One of the inevitable consequences of joining NATO will be the marked increase in military spending. In 2014, NATO members pledged to increase their defence budget to 2% of their GDP until 2024. Since Sweden currently can only account for 1.2%, it will have to redistribute quite a bit of its resources amid a weak economy, an education system suffering from too-low spending and a congested housing market. Devoting funds to fending off an imaginary threat can hardly be justified.

Finally, the issue of Sweden joining NATO should also be viewed on a larger scale. Sweden is heading toward militarism if the demands of its hardliners are met. They would be following in step with the scourge of militarism that has loomed over Europe and large parts of the world and humanity, which has reaped bitter harvests from warfare. Sweden will have to decide whether it shall betray majority interests, economy, its principles of non-alignment, and strong development aid for a NATO whose forces have rarely been used for the common good. Peace must be brought by peaceful means, not by guns and bombs.

Photo credits:

Cover picture: Marc Riboud, edited by Michael Schätzlein

Picture 1: European Union Naval Force Somalia Operation Atalanta, licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0

Picture 2: Ulrika, licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0

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Abolitionists, Suffragettes, Feminists: The Story of a Bill

Michael Schätzlein — Tue, 01 Mar 2016 11:43:21 +0000

When the Treasury of the United States of America announced that the $10 bill was deemed too easy to counterfeit back in 2012, the officials likely didn’t expect that the decision to put a woman on the face of the $10 bill would spark such a big debate among American society. Four years later, the decision on whom to put on the new bill still has not been taken, due to the sheer amount of comments on the matter. It would be the first woman to grace a dollar bill in more than a hundred years. Previously, Martha Washington, the wife of the well-known founding father, had made a short appearance on $1 silver certificates. There are huge divides between the various camps, allowing an insight into the American soul.

The move by the Obama administration is seen as one acknowledging the empowerment of women. As a result, a lot of the potential candidates discussed by the public are not scientists or authors like in many other states around the planet, but those promoting equality. In the feminist camp, the suffragettes Susan B. Anthony and the women’s rights pioneers Betty Friedan and Elizabeth Cady Stanton are in high currency. Others favour Eleanor Roosevelt, the late First Lady and stateswoman who dedicated her life to the advancement of human rights.

Harriet Tubman

However, not everyone agrees with these proposals. Especially among black rights activists, it is paramount that the person not only be a woman, but also black, as a recognition of the black community’s struggle. Many different names come to mind, the most prominent being Rosa Parks, the woman who refused to stand up for a white man on the bus, making her one of the idols of the black rights movement. Other candidates put forward by this camp are Harriet Tubman, abolitionist and founder of the Underground Railroad during the American Civil War; Fannie Lou Hamer, who fought for black voting rights in the 1960s; and Sojourner Truth, a suffragist and abolitionist.

The person currently on the $10-dollar bill is Alexander Hamilton, creator of the American financial system and one of the most prominent founding fathers of the nation, but there’s a catch. Where he is popular, the person on the $20 bill, President Andrew Jackson, is not. Jackson has a heinous past of owning hundreds of slaves and waging war on Native American populations.

The most contentious issue, however, is not necessarily who to put on the new bill, but if whoever is selected should grace the new $10 bill at all. The $10 bill does not have a very high value in relation to other bills, and it is also not very common, as most ATMs dispense $20 bills instead. People argue that putting a woman on this bill would depreciate women. As a result, many people favour postponing the new issue of $10 bills and putting the $10 candidate on the $20 bill instead to replace someone unworthy rather than President Hamilton on the $10.

The most high-profile proponent of this measure is the Women on 20s campaign. The movement demands that both a woman to be put on the $20 bill and vignettes of suffragettes be put on the opposite side of Mr. Hamilton’s $10 bill. In an online poll with more than 600,000 participants, the campaign elected Harriet Tubman as a favourite, winning over Eleanor Roosevelt by 15,000 votes.

Indeed, the USA are far behind other countries when it comes to featuring women on notes. Both of its neighbours, Canada and Mexico, already have women on their bills. The same applies to almost all Western countries. Australia has taken it a step further and features a woman on either the back or the front of its notes. Even socially conservative countries such as Syria and Turkey are more advanced in this than the United States.

Jeb Bush would opt for Margaret Thatcher.

In politics, however, the question has been ignored or does not seem to play an important role. Indeed, when asked about who should be on the new bill at a Republican primary election debate, only about half of the presidential candidates could give a valid answer. A few opted for their mothers or daughters, some for foreigners, one even proposed to have no person at all on the new bill, discounting the move as a nonpartisan “gesture.” The issue threatens to become a national embarrassment, a failed PR stunt by the current Obama administration complicated even further by its failure to decide on the question before the 2015 deadline ran out.

In any case, even if a decision on the matter is taken in the near future, we will not see the bill in circulation anytime soon. Each new bill requires long development and rigorous tests in order to prevent counterfeiting. Further, as a result of a recent court decision, the new bill will also feature a raised tactile texture in order to allow blind people to identify the bill’s value. This further complicates the development of the new bill.

What remains is a debate around a subject that goes to the very heart of America. The festering wounds of continuous oppression, both of women and African Americans, that are revealed in the process make clear that the United States is still haunted by the spectres of days past, and that it will take a long time until these issues are finally addressed appropriately. The introduction of a symbol that is intended to make up for past wrongdoings, then, is only a small step on the road of redemption.

Photo credits:

Picture 1: Maryland GovPics, licensed under CC BY 2.0

Picture 2: Quinn Dombrowski, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

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Abkhazia – A Frozen Conflict

Michael Schätzlein — Sun, 10 Jan 2016 13:00:39 +0000

Imagine you live your entire life in one place, but one day, suddenly you’re told that you have to leave, and that you will be shot if you do not. This has happened many a time in human history, be it indigenous people being expelled from their homelands, or ethnic cleansings taking place during wars. In most cases, it is the minority or a technologically inferior indigenous population that is being persecuted. However, there are exceptions – and Abkhazia is one of them.

New Athos Monastery

Abkhazia is a region in the north-west of Georgia, with its own language, culture, and a long history of violence. Colonised by the ancient Greeks, it later on became a frontline between the Byzantine Empire and various outside threats. In the 780s, the Kingdom of Abkhazia was established, and it flourished for more than 200 years, until it was incorporated into the Georgian Kingdom through succession. Weakened by numerous invasions by Mongols, infighting and economic decline as a result of being isolated from the rest of the Christian world, Georgia fell under Turko-Iranian influence after 1400. Following a power struggle between the Russian and Ottoman Empires over the region, more than 40% of predominantly Muslim Abkhazians were expelled from the region. Ethnic Georgians soon took their place, and the Abkhazians became a minority in their own country.

Following the fall of the Soviet Union, Abkhazia, just like Georgia, longed for independence. By then, ethnic Georgians made up almost half of the population. In 1992, only months after an unsuccessful war with the breakaway region of South Ossetia had come to an end, Georgia waged war against Abkhazia over the question of Abkhazia’s independence. As a result of Russia backing Abkhazia, Georgia had to back off after a year. Today, South Ossetia and Abkhazia, just like Transnistria and Nagorno-Karabakh, with whom Abkhazia forms the Community for Democracy and Rights of Nations, are frozen conflicts. Their autonomy and borders remain disputed, and without outside support from Russia or Azerbaijan, none of them would be able to survive economically or politically.

During and after the 1992-1993 war, the Abkhazian side pursued a policy of ethnic cleansing. Between 8,000 and 10,000 Georgians were killed, and between 200,000 and 250,000 became internally displaced persons, making the Abkhazian territory deplete of inhabitants of Georgian ethnicity. While about 50,000 have returned to Abkhazia’s southernmost province of Gali, many still remain within Georgia proper.

Abkhazia has a lot to offer

Lika Kvaratskhelia is one of those who left and never returned. She was born in Ukraine during the war, as her parents had sought refuge there. They stayed in Ukraine and later moved back to Georgia. As most of her family moved back to the Gali district after the war, she has travelled to Abkhazia on various occasions. To her, Abkhazia is a beautiful country, but still overshadowed by the scars the war has left. One can still find scorch marks and bullet holes on walls, and there are still buildings around that clearly were reconstructed from ruins.

Economic mismanagement, a weak administration and a high corruption have so far hindered the reconstruction of the country. In the home village of her grandparents, abductions still occur frequently, with subsequent extortion of the victims’ relatives, and one time, Lika’s grandparents were robbed by eight men in their own home and badly injured in the process. In 2008, a marauding band of Russian soldiers came to the village from the nearest military base, occupied a house, plundered the village and raped at least three of Lika’s neighbours at the time.

Although she always was open about being Georgian, even in Abkhazia’s capital of Sochumi, Lika was never met with hostility by the locals. Common Abkhazians tend to blame the Georgian government and its “puppeteer”, the USA, for the bad blood between the two countries, while Georgians – including Lika – tend to blame Russia.

The official flag of Abkhazia

Indeed, Russia has a huge influence on Abkhazia. Russia was the first country to recognise Abkhazia in 2008 and since Abkhazia lacks international recognition, most people use Russian passports to travel outside of the country. Russia is Abkhazia’s major trading partner, with more than 60% of Abkhazia’s exports and imports flowing between itself and Russia, and the Rubble being Abkhazia’s official currency. Since 2008, a vast majority of the country’s profitable tourist industry is financed by Russian tourists, and most of the media are Russian in language as well. Further, the Abkhazian and Russian military are deeply integrated, and Abkhazia has relinquished control over its borders to the Russian Federation. In the Abkhazian public sphere, pictures of Putin and Russian Flags are ubiquitous. Russia is presented as a caring big brother of the feeble nation of Abkhazia, and Putin as the strong man that keeps the Georgian enemy away.

An abandoned building in Sochumi

In the end, the fate of Abkhazia is that of a frozen conflict. Diplomatic relations between the two countries have been cut off, and the views of the common people are not exactly reconciliatory either. Like other Georgians, Lika thinks that Abkhazia rightfully belongs to Georgia. Abkhazians, on the other hand, still see their culture and heritage threatened by Georgia, as evidenced by the 1998 onslaught on the Gali region and the political crisis of 2014, when the acting president at the time, Aleksandr Ankvab, was ousted from his position over accusations that his liberal policies towards the Gali Georgians would endanger Abkhazia as a whole. The Russian Federation also continues its aggressive stance towards the helpless Georgia, silently annexing Georgian territory around South Ossetia by moving its border ever further south.

For Abkhazia, a bright future is still very distant. As long as peoples’ attitudes and those of the governments don’t change, there will be no chance for reconciliation and international recognition. The heavy involvement of Russia in Abkhazia begs the question whether Abkhazia in its quest of ousting the Georgian “oppressors” has not been occupied by a much larger actor.

By Michael Schätzlein

Image credit:

Picture 1, 4: Marco Fieber, licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Picture 2: mikesub, licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Picture 3: Wikipedia, licensed in the public domain

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Online Advertisement – an Outdated Business Model?

Michael Schätzlein — Tue, 01 Dec 2015 10:24:08 +0000

Online advertisements are immensely popular with website owners, but are often unwanted by users. Nobody wants to see a 30-second advertisement in order to be able to watch a two-minute video, and nobody likes pop-ups with deliberately hidden “close” buttons. Apart from that, advertisements slow down the sites’ loading process, drain one’s mobile phone’s data limit, and are an additional vulnerability through which malware can enter the device. As a result, a growing number of people resort to installing ad blockers on their devices. This puts the ad industry in a dilemma. New ideas are needed.

The internet is free. A lot of people take this for granted. However, many people forget that hosting a website costs money, and that the hosts need to finance them somehow. Many websites that are not paid for out of the pocket of the person in charge therefore resort to asking for donations, premium memberships, sell their users’ data, or let companies place advertisements on their website.

Advertisements are ubiquitous.

While the global revenue from online advertisement is still experiencing a steep increase, so is the market for ad blockers. In the past year, the ad blockers’ user count has increased by 48%, and for 2016, experts have projected a loss of $21.3 billion in online advertisement revenue through the usage of ad blockers – and these figures only account for the United States. The global user amounts may still be quite low, but the pressure on the online industry is growing.

When the German tabloid BILD, the largest newspaper in Germany, decided a couple of weeks ago to exclude all users running ad blockers from the otherwise free content on their website, and offering a subscription-based service disabling all ads as an alternative, it caused a huge outrage among the German online community. While some showed understanding for the tabloid’s decision, the overall reaction was rather negative. Some people got creative and wrote scripts that circumvent BILDs technical blockades, or plugins that would prevent you from entering the BILD website ever again.

One may feel annoyed by ads.

Not knowing how to deal with the backlash, BILD started to sue against people offering advice on how to circumvent the tabloid’s technical blockade. As a result of the ensuing Streisand Effect, people only became more conscious about the existence of ad blockers and the ways in which one can circumvent BILD’s security.

Even without the ad blockers, a lot of money is being wasted on online advertisement. Internet giant Google, whose revenue stems by 90% from its ad sales, admitted last year that only about 56% of all ads embedded on a website ever get seen for more than one second. Another report by Google-owned Spider.io pointed out that a lot of these ad views were generated by infected computers organised in botnets.

The underlying issue is that everything nowadays is geared towards ad revenue. New solutions must be found. Duolingo, the largest language learning website in the world, is entirely free for its users, without resorting to ad sales or selling user data. Instead, the company lets users practice their newly-acquired language skills through the translation of articles – a service for which the articles’ authors pay a sum to Duolingo. The site has partnered up with CNN and Buzzfeed, for whom Duolingo has users translate articles for their international editions.

A ReCAPTCHA

Duolingo was created by Guatemalan Luis von Ahn, who is also the founder of ReCAPTCHA, an anti-bot tool. Just like Duolingo, ReCAPTCHA uses an alternative business model. Every time users enter a word in order to verify themselves as humans, they help transcribe book and article scans for the website’s clients. The idea behind Duolingo and ReCAPTCHA impressed the internet giants, and Google has since acquired ReCAPTCHA for its own services, and holds a $45 million stake in Duolingo through its investment branch Google Ventures.

Now, Google lets people transcribe books word by word for its Books service, addresses for Google Earth, and articles from the New York Times’ archives, and improves its image recognition algorithms through the displaying of similarly-themed pictures, from which people have to sort the odd man out. However, Google has since drawn criticism for its involvement in ReCAPTCHA. In the beginning of 2015, a woman sued Google in a class-action lawsuit, alleging that Google outsources unpaid labour to its users and thus generating significant revenue and improvement of its services.

In any case, the rise of ad blockers will continue, and website owners will be more and more pressed to seek other business models for their websites. Duolingo and ReCAPTCHA are just two examples of how websites could be financed in the future – one only needs some fantasy.

By Michael Schätzlein

Image credit:

Picture 1: Yuya Sekiguchi, licensed under CC BY 2.0

Picture 2: Hernán Piñera, licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0

Picture 3: Matt Hampel, licensed under CC BY 2.0

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Deutschland Under the Star-Spangled Banner

Michael Schätzlein — Sat, 31 Oct 2015 10:31:38 +0000

When in America, have you ever eaten a hot dog at a baseball game? Or, have you ever watched the American Walt Disney classic Snow White and The Seven Dwarves? Some wildly popular “American” foods and past-times are actually, well, quite German. Although Germans were one of the largest and most industrious ethnic groups to immigrate to the USA, German culture seems to have all but disappeared due to Americanisation. How did this happen?

Germans were involved in the colonisation of the New World from the very beginning. However, while the first German settler arrived in Jamestown in 1608, it would take another 75 years until the first permanent German settlement, fittingly named Germantown, would be established. In the early phases of colonisation, it was mainly people of religious sects, such as the Mennonites, and paupers from the Palatinate region in Germany who arrived in the New World, fleeing persecution, poverty and military conscription. In order to pay for their trip, many of them ended up in working camps on arrival, as a form of indentured servitude, before moving on westwards.

The German settlers spread out over the entire Midwest and northern parts of the USA, a lot of them settling down in Pennsylvania. Germans acquired renown as successful farmers and keepers of livestock, but also branched out in other fields. Germans made history in America: the first Bible to be printed in the USA was German, the first millionaire in the New World, John Jacob Astor, made his fortune by trading fur and real estates, and John Peter Zenger, a printer and journalist, was hailed as the hero defending the freedom of press against the colonial overlords in New York.

Today, in some pockets of the United States, German culture and language continue to thrive. The Texas and Pennsylvanian German dialects are obvious examples of this perseverance of German heritage in the USA. In Pennsylvania, especially, the Old Order Amish and Mennonites still speak German in every-day life. Pennsylvanian German, or Deitsch, is a dialect that came into being when various south-western German dialects and the present-day dialect of the federal state of Rhineland-Palatinate were combined. Over the years, usage of the dialect has declined, although there is also a revivalist movement that tries to pass on this relic of a bygone era.

Through a forum for learners of German, I met Daniel Kauffman*, an American of German descent who grew up in Pennsylvania, the American state that initially attracted the most Palatinates. Although he never had a formal education in Deitsch, Daniel was able to pick it up from his father and his grandmother. After his grandmother passed away, however, possibilities to use the language became scarcer and scarcer. Today, he only uses it when travelling through Amish country. Listening to a recording of him speaking PA German, I can hear which area his ancestors came from, and I can understand all of it.

During the 1800s, immigration to the New World rose sharply. After the failed German Revolution of 1848, political enemies of the ruling elites and people hoping for societal change left the country in flocks. Towards the end of the century, emigration from Germany intensified. During that period, Hamburg gained importance as an emigration harbour.

Despite German expatriates’ separation from their homeland, German immigrants continued to practice German traditions and culture: establishing singing societies, German churches and synagogues all over the country. Due to the many adherents of sectarian denominations, religious life was fruitful. But this clinging to traditions also proved to be fatal when the First and Second World War came around. Germans lobbied against America’s participation in World War II, and as a result, the non-German population grew wary of the German Americans. Many were accused of spying on the USA or endorsing the German war effort. A special census listing only German Americans was made, and more than 4,000 of them were imprisoned. German Americans faced discrimination and persecution from vigilante mobs.

The German American community reacted with resignation to this stigma. German names were anglicised, the usage of German in everyday speech was limited, and German traditions were relinquished. Within a couple of decades, German Americans had assimilated so well that they went mostly unnoticed, which was in contrast to Italian and Irish Americans. Post-war German-American relations were focussing on the declared enemy, the Soviet Union, and reunification. The stigma only faded away slowly. Real efforts to improve the relations between the two peoples was only made in the early 1980s under the Reagan Administration, but it wasn’t until 2010 when a congressional caucus was formed for German Americans.

When the 2000 census was called, more than 42 million Americans claimed German or partially German ancestry, making up about 15 percent of the USA’s 282 million inhabitants and dwarfing any other ethnic background, with descendants of Irish and African Americans making up 11 and 9 percent respectively.

To Daniel, German culture in the USA manifests most where it has been amalgamated into American culture. Almost every American sends their child off to kindergarten. American Christians, Catholics, and, even, unreligious folks go on Easter egg hunts in spring or make gingerbread houses and gather under a Christmas tree in winter. One example that is more specific to Pennsylvania is the Butzemann, or Butz, which is a German bogeyman written in common folklore that scares kids into behaving. German cultural societies, such as the Delaware Sängerbund (singing society), continue to exist, and, in autumn, many American universities, restaurants, and festival grounds have their own Oktoberfest.

In the end, however, Daniel felt that he was slowly losing his dialect in America, so he packed up his things and went on a sojourn to reconnect with his ancestral roots. He is now living in Austria where he studies German. His studies are funded, in part, by a grant he received from one of the last remaining vestiges of German culture in America: Sängerbund. In less direct ways, however, German influence is apparent in many areas of American culture. Although most Americans may assume that their sausages and hamburgers from 7-11 are an American invention or that some of their beloved tales and children’s stories were from the genius of Walt Disney, German culture created part of the foundation for American cuisine, folklore, and traditions just as the Italian pizza at Domino’s and the Mexican burrito at Chipotle perpetuate the melting pot of American life. In this fragmented way, German culture and Daniel’s heritage live on.

By Michael Schätzlein

Image Credit:

Picture 1: Ted Knudsen licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0

Picture 2: spablab licensed under

CC BY 2.0

* Names were changed to preserve anonymity.

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“Refugees Welcome”: Protest on Stortorget

Michael Schätzlein — Wed, 30 Sep 2015 10:06:37 +0000

The population of Malmö tends to be very active politically, which is shown by numerous protests, be it against neo-Nazi violence, the Swedish branch organisation of the German anti-Islamisation group PEGIDA or, more recently, in the name of Free the Nipple.

On the backdrop of the ongoing refugee crisis, around 4,000 people gathered on Stortorget on the 13th of September in order to protest for a more humane treatment of refugees. The protest, which was held under the motto of “Refugees Welcome”, was organised by the youth of organisation of the Greens Party, but was also attended by groups from many other parties and creeds, including a delegation from the Student Union.

[Best_Wordpress_Gallery id=”2″ gal_title=”Refugees Welcome]

By Michael Schätzlein

Image credit: Michael Schätzlein

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