Tweet
(from Abode of Chaos, via Flickr CC)
(If ya reckon it looks too long to read, just light it on fire and inhale; you’ll get the drift of the bitch-fest, lol.; actions are at the end.)
Longtime French social activist, ardent promoter of human rights, and author Stéphane Hessel died at age 95 on Feb. 26, shortly after his last television interview. At the start of WW II he fled collaborationist France for London and began working with the French Resistance movement. Arrested by the Gestapo in 1944, he was put in a concentration camp, where he was brutally tortured; he eventually escaped.
After the war, as a diplomat, he helped to co-author the UN Declaration of Human Rights, and became a champion of Palestinian and immigrant rights and dignity.
In 2010, as the Eurozone crisis was heating up, he penned the pamphlet Indignez-vous! (pronunciation here), or Time for Outrage! in order to imbue the young folks of France and Europe at large to resist the vicious oppression of citizens by the financial class with the same fervor that had fueled the Resistance. It sold in the millions in 35 countries, and is said to have been responsible for the term being used by the Indignados in Spain, and to have underpinned the election of François Hollande and Occupy movements globally. He wrote:
“Ninety-three years old. The last leg of my journey. The end is in sight. I am lucky to be able to seize the time I have left to reflect on my lifelong commitment to politics: the Resistance and the program designed sixty-six years ago by the National Council of the Resistance.
It’s time to take over! It’s time to get angry! . . . Let us not be defeated by the tyranny of the world financial markets that threaten peace and democracy everywhere. I wish all of you to find your reason for indignation. This is a precious thing.
The power of money which the resistance fought so hard against has never been as great and selfish and shameless as it is now. To the young, I say, look around you and you will find things that vindicate your outrage; to you who will create the 21st century we say with affection, to create is to resist, to resist is to create.”
Indignant? Outraged? Why, yes, thank you, Stéphane; don’t mind if I do tick off a few a few of the vindications for my being stuck in high dudgeon. Keep in mind that some of these items may also produce fear, but far better to be furious; it spurs action, not reticence, as fear tends to.
We recently discovered that our President, via his DoJ flack, can imagine ‘emergency scenarios’ in which he might assassinate citizens on US soil by drone, and refuses to give Congress the purported legal justifications for killing one of us abroad, much less the American public. He has at least let us know that anyone deemed an enemy of the state can be held indefinitely, and in secret if we manage to somehow offend the government. That the Senate is filled with Democrats who fund and often profit from the war and Empire machine, and overwhelmingly voted to confirm King of the Drones John Brennan to head the CIA, while the putative left’s favorite enemy Rand Paul filibustered his nomination in attempt to get him and Obomba to answer questions on potential domestic American targets…nauseates me. Two Democrats voted Nay; even Ron Wyden who had helped Paul’s filibuster…voted Aye; the nation yawns. Librul Fascists.
It disgusts me that after the post-meltdown of Wall Street, and Obomba’s signing ‘the most comprehensive regulatory bill in recent history’, more derivatives are being sold by the big banks than ever, and their total exposures can only be speculative. The new bubble will burst like the last bubble, and guess who will be on the hook for bailing them out? Lemon Socialism.
My eyes and ears spout steam when I think of the humans that lost their houses in one of the biggest public swindles in history, and yet the fraudsters who profited so mightily haven’t been held one jot accountable, unless you call some minor fines justice. Lanny Breuer’s ‘deferred prosecutions’ for documentable corruption, fraud, rate-fixing in the mind-numbing LIBOR scandal, and even bank money laundering for nations under US sanctions cause a similar reaction in me. Justice denied.
That the Federal Reserve’s endless virtual money-printing has caused the DOW to re-inflate to pre-2008 levels gravels me; but that in contrast, recent figures show that 40% of American families make less than $20,000 a year makes me livid, as does the fact that the top 1% in the US owns 40% of the wealth; the bottom 80% owns a paltry 7%. Banks receive near-zero interest loans, park the government bonds they buy at the Fed at 3%, and make money. The TBTF’s are sitting on trillions, not loaning to Main Street, awaiting the next bubble. Blood money.
It appalls me that inner city schools are closing at an alarming rate and are being ‘replaced’ by corporatized charter schools that provide for a loss of local control as one of the strings that come with the likely temporary grants to create them; Bill Gates calls it ‘reform’; Arne Duncan and Obomba seem to agree. Many schools and municipalities were severely impacted by toxic interest rate swaps; no one has gone to jail. The Education President.
Aggregate American student loan debt is about to reach the $1 trillion mark. None of those loans can be made part of bankruptcy settlements; now that most jobs added to the economy pay the minimum wage, few students will be able to keep up with the interest payments, much less pay them off. If the increases in college tuition continue apace, it’s not hard to imagine that soon only the wealthy will be able to afford college for their kids; self-funding students will become a thing of the past. ‘Ya want fries with that?’
It should be enraging to every American that so many children go to bed hungry, or go to school without breakfast now that many schools are being forced into shutting down their free breakfast programs (even if most of the foods their parents could buy easily is denatured processed, non-nutritious, health-damaging junk, full of empty calories, and calcium-stealing, diabetes-causing GMO high-fructose corn syrup). It galls me that no one knows how many children live in cars with their parents, or indeed how many homeless there are now. Race to the Top.
(courtesy of Global Trade Watch via Flickr CC)
It infuriates me that this Democratic president constructed a Congressional scenario in which the public safety net and Social Security are about to take major hits that will further impoverish and endanger vast numbers of us, and who have no one looking out for our interests. The Expendables.
Stir in the preferential treatment and subsidies that extractive mineral companies receive while they decimate the planet’s health in the name of the bottom line, sprinkle on Obomba’s stated plans to expedite the approval process for more mining, drilling, and planetary rape, including plans to underwrite loans for more nuclear power plants while the clean-up at the Hansford Reservation goes begging for funds, and yes; all of us might be aggravated. ‘Clean coal, clean fracked natural gas, clean nukes, tarsands oil crucial to US energy demands’; all lies. Morning in America.
Round 16 of the TTP ‘negotiations’ began Monday in Singapore, with at least 400 corporate ‘advisors’ aiming to bypass sovereign laws and create horrific effects for the 99% in signatory nations. Just one provision is here. Yes, sign another petition demanding the President allow us to see the language under consideration. He’s fast-tracking the trade deals as per his SOTUS. Transparency Redacted.
Good Guy whistleblowers in jail while War Criminals run free; why shouldn’t we? Under their faux legal justifications, should we able to detain them indefinitely for treason?
Lies for war-mongering, lies for Empire, as AFRICOM is on the march; lies about brown and black civilian deaths by drone assassination, lies about fast-tracked pharmaceuticals, many of which are killing people or causing their own bodily breakdowns. Lies about the dangers of GMOs, and total failure to fund independent studies of their emerging dangers in ten different ways. Lies about fiscal cliffs and invented financial crises that will heist more of the fruits of our labor to the 1%. Lies about ‘recovery’; lies about unemployment numbers… Fuck the lies; all I want is some truth.
No, that’s not all I want; not by a long shot. I lied. But it would be a good start. Now for some antidotes:
In February, Paul Mason wrote that those who consider that the Arab Spring was a flash in the pan are dead wrong, and that there has been a global change in consciousness, even though politicians are unable to ‘swerve toward a critique of capitalism’, millions of citizens now intuit that it’s necessary. Mason discusses social networking, horizontalism, a feminism that didn’t translate to ‘all women’’, self-obsessed ‘process, and much more. He quotes Slavoj Zizek having said, “There is a danger. Don’t fall in love with yourselves. What matters is the day after, when we will have to return to normal lives. Will there be any changes then?” Mason says Occupy has in fact done so since the days the Oligarchs via the White House and FBI shut down the encampments on The Commons. And beyond the solidarity, the memes, symbols, the rejection of the Elites, and the humor of the movement which still stand, and have changed the conversation globally, is this:
Two years ago I identified the defining character of this protest generation as follows: “People have a better understanding of power. The activists have read their Chomsky and their Hardt-Negri, but the ideas therein have become mimetic. Young people believe the issues are no longer class and economics, but simply power: they are clever to the point of expertise in knowing how to mess up hierarchies and see the various ‘revolutions’ in their own lives as part of an ‘exodus’ from oppression, not – as previous generations did – as a ‘diversion into the personal’.”
If I could list only one and not 20 reasons why it is still kicking off, it would be the rise of the networked individual colliding with the economic crisis. Something fundamental has happened – a shift in human consciousness and behaviour as momentous as that triggered by the arrival of mass consumption and mass culture in the 1900s.
As is (thank the gods) happening with the increased solidarity with the Idle No More indigenous (with women at the forefront of the movement), Arundahati Roy writes at the CultureJammers HQ:
Most important of all, India has a surviving adivasi (aboriginal) population of almost 100 million. They are the ones who still know the secrets of sustainable living. If they disappear, they will take those secrets with them. [snip]
The day capitalism is forced to tolerate non-capitalist societies in its midst and to acknowledge limits in its quest for domination, the day it is forced to recognize that its supply of raw material will not be endless, is the day when change will come.
If there is any hope for the world at all, it does not live in climate-change conference rooms or in cities with tall buildings. It lives low down on the ground, with its arms around the people who go to battle every day to protect their forests, their mountains and their rivers because they know that the forests, the mountains and the rivers protect them.
The first step toward re-imagining a world gone terribly wrong would be to stop the annihilation of those who have a different imagination – an imagination that is outside of capitalism as well as communism. An imagination which has an altogether different understanding of what constitutes happiness and fulfillment.
To gain this philosophical space, it is necessary to concede some physical space for the survival of those who may look like the keepers of our past but who may really be the guides to our future. To do this, we have to ask our rulers: Can you leave the waters in the rivers, the trees in the forest? Can you leave the bauxite in the mountain? If they say they cannot, then perhaps they should stop preaching morality to the victims of their wars.
Coming actions:
Tarsandsblockade actions March 16-23, target: Oklahoma and local actions. Buffy Sainte Marie will do a concert fundraiser in Norman.
From the Answer Coalition: ‘Be part of the action on Saturday, April 13 at the White House: U.S. drones out of Africa, the Middle East, Asia and everywhere!’
Join Strike Debt for a Week of Action to Declare a Healthcare Emergency: It’s a Matter of “Life or Debt”, March 16 – March 23
From La Via Campesina: March 26-30, the World Social Forum will be held in Tunis: Stop Land Grabbing, Reject GMO seeds, Develop Food Sovereignty
Occupy the Department of Education in DeeCee April 4-7. The movement to end corporate education ‘reform’ and opt out of high stakes student testing.
Also from La Via Campesina: April 17: International Day of Peasant’s Struggles: Resist the Commercialization of Nature and Stop Land Grabbing! (including seeds, water, soil, extractive minerals, etc.; fighting the introduction to GMOs)
Bonus: Remarks on Consensus from David Graeber via OWS
Get righteously angry and create a better world! Create a space for Peace and Light in your soul as you travel your chosen road. And dance while you take action in any ways that are available to you to subvert the Machine, even within your own circles of acquaintances. No good effort is ever wasted.
111 Comments
Au contraire, this diary is not Too Long To Read. I read every dang word, and even clicked to see which liberal Senators (I know, that’s an oxymoron) voted against Brennan (it was Leahy, Merkeley, Sanders).
In spite of the vast list of indignities we are suffering way too silently, I was lifted by your inclusion of Arundahati Roy’s words. We all need to re-discover our different imaginations.
Rec’d, of course, for keeping this stuff on the front burner and giving us antidotes for the poisonous world we inhabit.
Welcome, Miz Firecracker; I’m in awe that you read it all. I’d read another piece recently by a Sufi who’d echoed Roy’s sublime notion, saying we need desperately to imagine other stories... Given the fact that ideas can’t be arrested, they can float in the air to infect others who are struggling to find the truth and a way forward. If we limit our imaginations, and/or blithely accept the status quo even while being nagged inside that ‘something’s just not filling me’, we lead lives encased in strait jackets.
Who said, ‘To be able to imagine The Light, we must first know The Dark’? (or something like that, lol.)
Funny how those from the past seem to have done so much of it right, but were…subdued in the name of profit conquests, eh? Empire, the confluence of greed, power, and control. Well, fuck it; our time’s coming.
You’ve done it now. This will surely inspire some whiny ass titty baby pragprog poutrage from the likes of ABL and Praise Special Mop!
Hello wendydavis, righteous screed.
Just painted a two signs. My state Assembly (non)-Representative voted for the WI
mining billenvironmental destruction/resource giveaway/resume genocide on Native Tribal Families, bill and happens to live on a public road with a nice big public right of way.Sorry, can’t travel too far on my subsistence budget for the more national or state-wide events. Seeking permission from a near by acquaintance to legally park off the highway and walk to the spot.
WI Senate Bill 1 story.
Wendy, something happened that no one wants to admit. Nothing could destroy the Palestinians before “Abbas”. He divided them, and look at the Palestinians now. Barack Obama is our Abbas.
Merci beaucoup, wd, vous es le meilleur. I’ve been sitting here staying in touch with the University of Virginia and the Washington R-word (the issues of which it seems I am FDL’s proprietor), and I glanced over to the right at that list of recent diaries, and there you were,
I’m ashamed to admit I’d never heard of Stéphane Hessel until his death was announced on France24 TV. Thanks for publicizing his charge, and indeed embodying it with this fine post. I particularly appreciate the list of coming actions.
LOL, and uh-oh! ABL: whazzat: The American Basset League? Ah, well, perhaps they’ll have pity on a poor blind widdy with six kids who can’t get no Obamacare?
Touché, ma chere amie!
Not too long for me, sister. Recommended with appreciation.
Oui, je suis indigné.
This is from a French message board, dated 03/03/2013:
Rough translation:
(Please excuse my faltering French to English translation, it’s been a long time…;-)
His characterization of the power and worship of money and the thrall of our governments to argent, calling it by its right name: Mafia, strikes me as just right, n’est pas?
Outrage, yes.
Toujours indigné.
‘Allo, nonquixote, and ta. ;o) Had to google for WI Dept. of Natural Resources…but yikes: permitting only with the new law, no enforcement.
Thank you for adding to the list of outrages, though you could have added a quick dozen from WI, my stars.
That’s a bloody daring action you’ve undertaken, proving that traveling far isn’t necessary to making a big difference. You might even call the local press, see if someone can come to interview you. Or, have a friend call.
But hell, I’d meant to include Isaiah’s lovely comment to you in the OP, and I…forgot. Concentric circles of light and…(more).
Tu es trop gentil, mon cher ami; merci mille fois.
Mon dieu, it’s so nice to see you encore (my HS French only stretches so far). Thank you so very much; I’m honored you read it and appreciated it. (I might even read it later…)
I had never heard of this man, Stephane Hessel, and am pleased to hear of him now. I’m hoping there is some grand and jubilant parade for activists like him in the Far Off Beyond. (Possibly he can join forces with Audrey Hepburn, who also was a member of the Resistance, although still basically a child during her involvement.)
Also am glad to have a way to keep track of the Trans Pacific Plan.
Great diary – keep ‘em coming Wendy.
Goodness, Che Pasa; that message just about makes your heart expand into…infinity, doesn’t it? Yes, the mafia. Somewhere recently I read a piece that pointed out that at least the Mafia has some limits, all this…none. But bloody hell, I can’t recall the limits.
Your French is very adequate to the task, especially compared to mine. So many of the posts on Hessel I could find weren’t translated, sadly.
Oui, toujours indigné, until we build the world we deserve..
Goodness, Che Pasa; that message just about makes your heart expand into…infinity, doesn’t it? Yes, the mafia. Somewhere recently I read a piece that pointed out that at least the Mafia has some limits, all this…none. But bloody hell, I can’t recall the limits.
Your French is very adequate to the task, especially compared to mine. So many of the posts on Hessel I could find weren’t translated, sadly.
Mais oui, toujours indigné, until we build the world we deserve…
And a song to go with the thought. I’d say the images are outdated, but…not really, eh?
Pas de quois, mon ami. Ah, I had not heard of him either, and had only heard of Gene Sharp said to be the grandfather of the Arab Spring. Kissesfrogs said no, he was not all he was cracked up to be, especially concerning Ukraine, so: je ne sais pas. She’d said on my post about him that she’d write one herself to explain what she meant, but never did.
Thank you for reading, and good luck with the Redskin deletion. Sorry I haven’t kept up with it, but there are only so many hours in the days, and so very many issues…
Picking the latest outrage gets tough, just noticed a new post from WI on UI job sharing, short-changing workers again, just passed by the legislature, in the myFDL list. Am seeking a supporting cast, already had your suggestions on the to-do list, but thanks. Watching the weather and letting the paint dry.
A good weekend to everyone.
> ABL: whazzat
That would be Angry Barack Lady, co-failed co-griftress.
Highly evocative imagery, I’d say. A reminder of times gone by perhaps, but just because they aren’t as open to view as they once were, it doesn’t mean they’ve actually gone away, né? Viz: Il papa — among so, so many others.
As long as we’re doing Buffy, I’ll just link to one of my favorites
No No Keshagesh
Sad state of affairs, lakota; and Kessel’s right: the youth need further inspiration, and we need to act in aid of them now. Idle No More is clear about that: the women teach, the youth act (with the Elders’ help).
My best to you.
What an image, elisemattu, and I didn’t know that about Audrey Hepburn. So many brave and dedicated souls have walked the roads less traveled on this great blue-green ball of a planet, eh?
Yes, Lori Wallach watches the trade deals as part of Public Citizen (that’s where I got all my info at the link I provided at the word ‘horrific’ in the post). But unless someone else leaks from this event, we will be in the dark until it’s passed. In.fur.i.ating. as all giddy-up, the bastards.
In my humble opinion, we need longer diaries because millions of uptight, short-sighted, narrow-minded hypocrites keep voting for neurotic, psychotic, pig-headed politicians who keep kissing the asses of those schizophrenic, egocentric, paranoiac, prima-donnas on Wall Street.
And pretty soon, there’ll be drones flying everywhere, from the mountains, to the prairies, to the oceans white with foam.
Yeah. I think we need some longer diaries.
Thank you, wendydavis.
Rec’d.
Heh. Not long ago there was a bill in the British Parliament to require folks on UI to take jobs at minimum wage. It may have been the outrage that killed it.
Yes, have a good weekend; it’s nasty here, high winds and blowing mixed rain and snow. Keep the spirit!
LoL, mon ami. Tu es drôle x deux.
Yes, and Cheney’s in the news, saying in a new documentary that he lied about not shooting down Flight 93, etc. And Kissinger the Zombie is back, but being outed for his connections with death squads in Operation Condor (transcript of the video interview).
And ‘No Greedy Guts’ is one of my favorites as well; thank you. I reckon you might just be a big John Trudell fan as well, yes? ;~)
On edit: bugger; I forgot the link, Che Pasa. Silly old crone.
The Bing of yours it does not make the traduction, no? I made a download of the browser called Chrome of the Google for the traductions fast like a Le Mans. (Th’occasion was an essai of M. Edward Said, who was denouncing with breaths of fire M. Albert Camus.)
Re: Bad Girl! ;^)
Thnks for the links, I’ve been delving into the Operation Condor Thing (somewhat unwillingly) of late, and of course the WATER Thing is driving a lot of bad blood in NM and all over the Southwest. Don’t get me started on the Texas water grab on the Rio Grande.
Meanwhile, the question remains, who can you really trust?
Oh, Isaiah; please keep me laughing! That was just parfait, mon cher.
Merci, darlin’ dear. ;~)
Way-ull, podner; I just dunno about that. First off, I need to go Bing-de-google what the heck a ‘traduction’ is. Sounds like some kinda 4 wheel drive farm vehicle. Am I close? I wanna know what the heck yer talkin’ about, but… ;-)
I presume that’s the same translation program that you get with the site translate.google.com, which any browser can get you to: you enter the text to be translated on the left and it gives you the English on the right. I find it useful but untrustworthy for most languages, maybe not French.
Camus was certainly a strange duck.
I’d never heard ‘Bad Girl!’, thank you. Gotta scoot for a few minutes, and I’ll ponder that question. Meanwhile, enjoy one of my very favorites of his. Gets into my bones and won’t let go… Anchored a diary with it; it was a real meltdown of a post. Reckoned I’d have to pull my account and leave in embarrassment; oy.
Soon.
Aloha, wendy and Branch Davisians…! This might spark some action…
100% Green Water Spark Plugs…! ;-)
Happy International Woman’s Day, wahines…! *g*
Y’all Rawk…! Here’s two awesome ladies in action…! ;-)
Uh-oh; just binged it, French for ‘translation’; oh, dear me. Miz Wickes would be sooo disappointed in me.
Never knew you could do whole pages, but I did try some web translator to say something to mi amigo jaango one day, and one of my (ahem) detractors pounced all over it, kinda like I’d mistakenly told him his mother wears Manolo Blahnicks er somethin’.
Thanks Wendy, Great Stuff.
Aloha, Tuttle. Medea! She needs to read about the Librul Fascist term yes? What an astounding woman. And there was that reference to Holder’s NEW note to Rand Paul. Now, how much do we believe that now, eh? How much clamoring was there? Jonathan Turley said on C-Span that there was none, but it may have come later.
Is it just to neutralize any potential outrage? Likely. It may be the same as O saying we don’t torture any more, and his supporters wave their flags and cheer. But hell’s bell’s, right in one of those Times or WaPo pieces on Terror Tuesday, it became clear that he/they still send people to other nations for torture, but only if they can say ‘it’s a short-term’ rendition. I might put up a video of a Guardian interview about Petraeus, Iraq and torture a friend alerted me to yesterday.
So much evil afoot, and our rasks are so enormous. Is that water energy thing for real? I haven’t a clue.
So
Oh, thanks for the left-paging, mods. I just signed back in and saw it was so.
Welcome, and the water and land grabs are beyond hideous by now. The Source of Life. We were joking on one of my recent posts that soon clean (sic) air will be financialized, sold by the can. ‘Top o’ the Himalayas Air; the first hit’s free!’
As to the trust question, I thought about it while doing some chores, and…I have no idea how to begin to answer it. I trust Mr. wd and a few good friends, both in RL and the virtual world. Learned the hard way that I couldn’t even trust all of my relations; so sad.
Seems to be the same. With Safari, the Google.com page link — to a PDF — sublink “translate this page”, was so slow that it seemed not to load at all. Google of course read my mind and offered Chrome’s browser for lickity-split translating.
I dinnae tell wendydavis the French-to-English translations are funny like all machine translators since she only reads grim stuff online and would be confused.
Welcome, jo6pac; thank you for reading for soooo long, and liking it. :~)
But in English it means something like betrayal, and machine translators tend to betray syntax. The word hasn’t been coined yet for what they do to idioms.
Hasn’t anyone pointed out that when Holder wrote his letter he wasn’t under oath, like when he testified? I didn’t go to law school, but I lived about ten blocks from one.
See how you misunderestimate my funny (mon humour)? Here, Perfesser; c’est moi on la guitare…
Ha; yes the coin’s been termed, I reckon: torture idioms.
Speaking of oaths, the new CIA Godfather took his on a pre-Bill of Rights version of the Constitution.
Actually, our DSWright had already cited that.
Those guys think of everything. Otherwise he would have invoked the fifth.
*snort*
Thanks for the reference to Stephane Hessel’s Time for Outrage. Apparently some folks around here know about it. I’m third on the library Hold waiting list.
I find it hard to be outraged after so many shocks, but I don’t need to be outraged; other people need to be who aren’t already. Once again the kairos is ripe for mass outrage, if we can muster it. More and more people are clear that the current political economy is not working for people. More people are reluctant to see yet another war.
Liked the David Graeber piece on consensus. He says better what I have tried to say about it. There seems to be a lot bubbling around the country.
I’m still reading Kevin Phillips’s 1775: A Good Year for a Revolution. It is remarkably good about how the functioning governments of the colonies had essentially been taken over by the American “patriot” class by 1775 and how that came about. And why. And how ordinary folks in different parts of the various colonies came to be involved in the conflict and why. Not at all the Enlightenment noble battle of ideas portray in everybody’s civics class. But you all knew that. The good part is the detail that he provides.
That may have just won ‘comment of the post’ award, AitchD. With an almost ineffable reason to justify it. :-)
Yes, more need to get furious, and we can only hope that more and more of us are awakening and seeking to understand what’s wrong with the state of the republic. My own hope and belief that for now, the understanding is creeping two by two, and will soon creep four by four, until it’s exponential and reaches critical mass. Once the folks at the coffee shops and diners speak of more of the understory of their news broadcasts…who knows?
My other hope and almost-prayer is that the critical mass is reached a bit ahead of the next financial crash. If not, it’s not hard to imagine that a law and order rightist demagogue (even military) owns the place next.
No, Phillips is telling me things I didn’t know; wish I could peek into your brain and read what you learned from his book. At least the Cliff’s Notes version. ;~)
I’m going to invoke a fifth of Rum and Coke to mute my despair at the confirmation of this depraved, dronedeath-dealing sack of cowardly shit.
So sorry to have forgotten this until now, but for those among who who speak Frog pretty well, very well, or fluently:
The painting of Hessel in the post was apparently done by ‘The Abode of Chaos’ folks. As one does frequently, flitting from link to link with unreserved curiosity online, I came across this film by the same folks. I’ll let the page speak for the project, but it’s all central to their museum in Sainte Germain au Mt. D’Or. I only took time for a bit of it.
Bon soir, et merci, wendydavis.
Booktv interview with Stéphane Hessel. Didn’t see a date, but it refers to him as 93-year old, so about 2 years ago.
Sensible plan there, a whole bottle could do serious damage, especially with that sugar content.
What is the Washington R-word? R for wretched Republican? Maybe something else?
… Once again the kairos is ripe for mass outrage, if we can muster it. More and more people are clear that the current political economy is not working for people. More people are reluctant to see yet another war…
That’s exactly why I keep on Occupying, Tarheel…! ;-)
WHAT? You’ve got my full attention now. A link, mme?
The one from those old John Wayne movies where people say things like “killin’ injun chillun is jes’ like killin’ baby rattlesnakes.” (For more, see my latest post on the subject.”)
Bon soit, mais pas de quois, marym in IL. Merci for the link; I look forward to it, and hope there are subtitles, lol.
You may be interested in the film I linked @ 53. I’m hoping that I can remember to watch the rest. ;-)
Live free or die! Sugar-free might work too.
Okay; I never knew that Rumsfeld had claimed that Flight 93 had been ‘shot down’. But according to Maureen Dowd (who knows?, not a fan) in a new documentary about Darth Cheney, he claims that he lied all along about Dubya having ordered it ‘shot down’ (from what I can make of it), and hoo-boy, what tales he tells about being puppet-master to, and detractor of, the Brush-cutter.
Keep listening. When it reaches your coffee shop, you will know that it is as the Elizabethans put it, “the fullness of time”.
The law and order rightist demagogues are beginning to squabble, but the military owns the place. Just Google Richland County SC sheriff new vehicle. “Just in case”.
One thing I learned from Phillips so far is the extent to which the existing militia networks in each state allowed the British army to be caught flatfooted in 1775. Lexington and Concord happened because the British army was sent to confiscate the Lexington and Concord militia’s gunpowder and somehow a rumor circulated through the New England backcountry that the British Navy had burned Boston, resulting in 15,000 men from other town’s militias showing up to defend Boston.
Before 1775, the militias had established committees of correspondence, a coordinated network separate from the British administration and committees of safety, which functioned as snoops on Tory neighbors and also began stockpiling weapons and gunpowder sometimes apart and sometimes with the militia magazines.
The committees of correspondence established their own postal service of fast riders.
The most radical element in Boston were the seamen, subject to impressment into the British Navy if intercepted at sea and sometimes shanghai’d in port. The most radical element in Philadelphia were the “artisans”, “mechanics”, and “printers”. The most radical element in the South were settlers who had come down the Great Wagon Road or those who had been transported to Georgia, who were seeking cheap land and who were frustrated by Britain’s Indian policy, honoring the 1763 dividing line that ran along the Appalachians. And that as the colonial governments ground to a halt, local networks appeared that delivered their functions to the cities and the backcountry.
The divisions among merchants and planters as to where Britain allowed them to market and which were required to go through British middlemen. The British attempts to stem emigration as the Manchester cotton mills started.
To my mind the key item was the growth of political networks and economic networks that cut out the British middleman and the crown interests began to take hold much before 1775. Essentially in 1775, Britain had to re-enter as an invading an occupying force much different from its previous colonial imperial relationship. At that point colonist complaints about “the rights of Englishmen not being honored” stopped and the rhetoric about tyranny began.
It is the details that are helpful. It is not an analogy for the current crisis nor a template for response to that crisis. (That is where the TEA Party folks miss the boat big time, those that are not astro-turfed.)
The Boston Massacre is the equivalent of Kent State for approximately the same reasons. The real crisis in 1775 came when a city that was going about its own affairs independently got invaded to bring it to heel. That is more like Prague 1968. And it was not just Boston. Charleston successfully repulsed a naval invasion the same year. New York was siezed.
“the kairos is ripe”
I missed that, TD, until CTut quoted you further down. Is it from Hessel’s pamphlet? In any case, the first attested use of “kairos” may interest people just for fun:
Metra phulassesthai; kairos d’ epi pasin aristos.
Heed proportions; the-right-occasion is best in all things.
(Hesiod, Works and Days 694, c. 700 B.C.E.)
;^)
Now tell me about “Heed proportions”. Is that like muting outrage to a slow boil?
There’s a whole bunch of pissed-off IAVA vets, and growing daily, that are highly trained and PTSD’d…! 8-(
Date is 9/27/11 and thanks for the link, what an example of a human being to hope to be able to emulate.
I think this is the wisdom those IAVA folks should hear in their PTSD:
There are a bunch of their brothers and sisters and VFP vets in Boston who took it hard during the Occupy evictions. And there’s no anti-war movement for the MIC to use as a foil this time. The calamity is clear. Gonna be harder to get away with the Dolchstoßlegende of “Iraq-Afghanistan syndrome” as the need for a war to cure it. Might be why we are seeing the militarization of police forces.
I’m over the top already with the never ending outrage. Tired.
Latest and greatest here in Austin is the City Council wanting to turn over management of our great public utility to an appointed independent board. I’m working on that so we don’t lose our sustainable power generation, energy efficiency and low income considerations to the potential for more coal and nuclear and the citizens be damned.
It’s a mighty fine utility the way it is with the City Council who are elected and accountable as its overseers. That’s my focus these days.
The world is so dense now with so much that’s egregious, it’s hard to keep up.
He’s written an autobiography – The Power of Indignation. Just published in 2012, can’t find any reviews except a few words on Amazon.
I sincerely appreciate that you provided the short version, mon ami. As soon as you began to describe the alternatives-to-the-British system, I could think of all the support structures going on in communities that we never even hear about, except tangentially. The Bigs, like Occupy Sandy, etc., yes.
But I also pinged on the popularity of the Taliban in Afghanistan, and how it was said that they (metaphorically) made the trains run on time (collected garbage, repaired things, lent money, etc.), and how important that is to power, influence.
Losing steam here, but…thank you.
In the preceding lines Hesiod has been talking about not overloading a wagon or a boat. In our context it might be making sure we’re not going off half-cocked. (Maybe not the best advice in the initial stages of a movement.)
Sit and relax with the video @54 and a cup of tea. Just took a pause at the 1 hour mark as Mr Hessel is about to begin with environmental challenges. Demeanor, voice, face, remarks, trans-formative for the moment.
thanks for the suggestion, buddy. i’ll take a look see.
So much happening now is indeed egregious, greenwarrior, and while outrage among many of us here has almost become normalized that now and again a sense of the absurdity of it all really makes me laugh in incredulity, there are still things that considered altogether…piss me purple. It was hard to know when to quit in this post.
I watched the two intros and the beginning of his talk. Just from the intros, the man’s clearly a power house. And he’s so adorable. Thanks again for the suggestion. I’ll go back to it.
And thanks, marym in IL, for turning us on to it.
And for folks here who are also denizens of the early morning diner, now known as Over Easy, guess what he said his primary message is?
Never. Give. Up.
I agree: thanks, miI. I started looking at it, but its bed time for us old folks in the East (particularly since we’re all going to lose an hour tomorrow night unless you live in Arizona).
Good night, wd and Branch Davisians.
Wendy, I didn’t see a date on those remarks. Would you happen to know when they were written?
See y’all manana.
I couldn’t remember where I’d seen the link, gw, besides at OWSnet. But I just bing-de-googled, and the several hits that carried the piece were all dated Feb. 26.
G’night; dream well, darlin’.
This article/diary was a great read. I’ve been wanting to write something that is this pissed off for awhile, but haven’t publicly.
I like to take my anger and channel it toward the right winger who push their foul ideas.
Just today I was writing about how theI applaud the work that CMD, Media Matters, Brad Friedman and others are doing but I wish there was a group like the Southern Poverty Laws Center for RW asshole billionaires that figures out how to take the assets of the bad guys.
Because it’s not just good enough to expose them, we expose them and nobody prosecutes! Or we find out that they changed the law so that what they are doing is no longer illegal (Citizens United)
I’m not a lawyer, but if I was, I’d be trying to dream up ways to take the Koch’s money. Journalism exposing them is great, but a lawsuit that ends in me taking the right wing billionaires money is better.
My non-lawyer mind says the most effective unexplored tool is challenging corporate charters. I’m not sure exactly how that would work, but if a corporate charter is vacated, each of the individuals suddenly has liability. Just an idea.
wd … coming along this way late … lots of comments … you are often now getting in the PUAC/PUYC/OE FDL comments count territory which I think is mighty fine wd … congratulations…
The wd MyFDL diary uptop is a superb one… thank you for taking the time to put it together wd… Recommended
On occasion my FDL “longer” comments have attracted negative comments for being too long but when I read them it often comes out to only 3-4 minutes tops time wise…if people can’t give or don’t want to hand over 3-4 minutes to read stuff here at FDL that seems a direct contradiction to ” a whole lots of words and reading” FDL premise.
Write what you know and feel and don’t worry about the time clock stuff wd — on occasion I torture myself by reading some of the comment “threads” ( I am being charitable using that term here ) at HuffPost and Yahoo … after the first fifty to one hundred or two hundred it becomes and is numbing. Yikes!!
On a more serious note it is getting more absurd as we slog along into this still early 21st century… I still recall quite easily where I was on 9/11/2001 and what I was doing when the TeeVee machine started showing one of the two WTC towers billowing smoke after being hit by a large jetliner. Then the second WTC was hit as well by a jetliner…at that point it all passed from accidental to something much darker.
When the WTC tower with the large antennae array on top began falling in and down it seemed surreal in the most suspended disbelief of Hollywood blockbuster special FX ways. While one expected the WTC tower to fall sideways as well as downwards the rate of fall speed of the WTC collapses was on that day incredible as one watched it take place in real time.
WTC towers fell down 11 years ago and the cause or circumstances of that falling remain less than well lit ( barely lit? ) and not genuinely,factually knowable as to who actually brought WTC towers down.
Absurd as all that was and still is along came Iraq Attack in March 2003 and then along came Bush and Cheney improved and a more stealth equipped Bush/Cheney upgrade called Barack Obama who since Jan.20,2009 has been as surreal as Ronald Reagan but far more able to talk smooth and deliver slick campaign politics while shape shifting into a POTUS who evidently wants to show USians how Hitler was able to do and keep doing what Hitler did to the German people post 1933.
Anyone here in early 2013 who still thinks Obama is not doing Bush and Cheney with more stealth with some very dangerous precedents being cemented in by Obama due to IOKIYAAD Obama is cloaked with is someone who really illustrates how Germans fell for Hitler in the 1930′s. This has to be how it looked,felt and sounded in 1930′s Germany — by the time WW2 took off it was way too late to stop Hitler and for lots of Germans that was the last thing they even wanted to do. Stop Obama? Many USians asking “Why?” while endorsing / supporting Obama. It is eerie.
I have no illusions that things in the USA are going to get all Dinah Shore like as in the classic “See the USA in a Chevrolet!” TV commercials Dinah Shore did from late 1950′s/early 1960′s. Whatever is coming this way seems to be more aligned with “The Outer Limits” then related to anything Dinah Shore ever was seen doing on 1950′s era TeeVee back then.
Absurd it is and has gone wd… better now to learn to bend then break as this second decade of 21st century unreels.
Plainly USA paper money has gone / is going all funny and that fact seems to be directly related to One Percent and USG and it’s puppets in USian banking circles sabotaging the USD in order to bring about a new and coming repeated 2007-2008 like Meltdown like event again. Assets meanwhile are being taken up by One Percenters while more common USians are being left behind facing bleak and desperate day to day outcomes.
Barack Obama truly does not seem to have any Franklin Delano Roosevelt political inclinations or nobility in him. Barack Obama really should be in a jailhouse — not the WH — that Obama is not already in a jailhouse is not going to end well for many USians in bottom 4/5′s of USA as ranked socially and economically and as politically not empowered. The D vs. R junk ain’t worth a good spit and that is a fact.
At this point Iran is in American Empire’s cross hairs and staying there — Obama is putting the likes of John Brennan in as CIA boss and Chuck Hagel in at DoD — SoD Hagel then went to Afghanistan to “see the situation there” — wtf!? — these Obama WH warmongers still don’t know what a Debacle it is in Afghanistan for American Empire?
Why can’t USians get some actually talented,smart and contrariwise types in at CIA and DoD? — I know the answer is a obvious one. Because that is not who Obama or Bush or Clinton or Reagan wanted / want in positions of power doing good and wise things instead of ramming bad stuff down/up common USians.
Meanwhile …
China has to know American Empire is all about war mongering run by war bastards while catapulting propaganda that is very well done suggesting that American Empire is this planet’s and the 7 billion plus human kind on this planet best friend. See TPP. See USN “pivoting” to SE Asia to perform Mr. Rodgers skits — please note >>> some acidic Onion style mockery on my part.
The deception(s) in this of course very perilous and deadly.
It has gone absurd wd…much like 1914 would … to bend is better then to break … by all means stay with it wd …
thank you wd …sincerely… sta
X2.
Thank you for that! Very well put. Most people, to my huge frustration, just do not get that.
Hello, spocko. I may not be understanding you well as to how your main concern is judgements against the Kochs. You seem to mean ‘in civil suits’, as you mentioned SPLC. Are you thinking of class action suits by citizens who might want to prove they were damaged by ALEC style laws adopted by various states? My guess is that proving cause and effect would be seriously hard, and it would take some pretty deep pockets to go up against folks who could keep you tied up in court forever.
THD’s idea about corporate charter challenges is interesting, although I’m not sure what a challenge would look like. Possibilities might run from: the charter is illegal; the charter isn’t being adhered to, and the first would require a challenge by Justice, would the second? Or would that be a challenge by cranky stockholders? I dunno much about it, but I did tuck away a three-part piece I ran into the other day on healthy corporate charters…for later reading, lol. (So much to learn and read, not to mention understand.)
‘Nobody prosecutes’ is of course key, as is the fact that Congress Critters take the big bucks and can almost always be counted on to vote the Big Bucks way. Anyone who thinks that the Dems are better at this than the Rs baffles me, at least at the federal level. States are something altogether different.
Money aside, by my reckoning one of the biggest tells to Uniparty charges was that the Dems decided not to do anything about the filibuster rules but some bogus penny-ante silliness. Ass covering?
Anyoo, I have a jammed morning, and will pop in and out as I’m able. Looks like everyone will do a grand job of keeping the conversation going; good. ;-)
Those acronym posts serve a very different purpose, of course. ;-) (not to my taste) And I’ll try on the clock suggestion. Just think if I’d included all I kinda/sorta wanted to!
Re: the falling towers: I found it hilarious that Holder’s letter to Rand Paul (oh, I mean the first one, ha!) indirectly implied that American citizens might have been involved in that, thus, killing them would have met ‘emergency’ levels, or whatever…
Yes, the blinders of the Democratic base are troubling and aggravating as all giddy-up, though many different reasons underpin that, not that I admire any of them. A few I at least understand given for so many their only source of news is the teevee. The Obomba supporters here, now, trouble me far more, but many now say they’re eager to hold his feet to the fire, and Dems in Congress, too. What fire with Obomba? Yeah. Kinda late.
Gotta go; client just arrived.
“you are often now getting in the PUAC/PUYC/OE FDL comments count territory”
I first noticed that with the 2-day marathon thread (2 weeks ago?) about the so-called rally for the environment put on by people who wouldn’t let Jill Stein speak. I think the reason, sta, is that while exchanging recipes and the like can be a good way to blow off steam, people are realizing that the Branch Davisians is where the real action is.
A friend was laughing that inside won week i got named a cult, a saint, and something else, lol. Branch Davisians seems to need italics, but what do I know?
Whoosh; that un went three days, but of course the Sat. Main Event was during those days. But interestingly enough, in Zeese and Flowers’ recent newsletter: ‘Gang Greens or Fresh Greens‘, they were some of the only big movement people to challenge 350.org and other groups like Sierra Club and pointed out their variance between fracking objections on NY and NJ (?) (Chesapeake bucks).
Well done, Margaret and Kevin.
Back to the salt mines. ;-)
That’s a nice article indeed, wd, with the choice of really being serious about the environment or not well posed.
Yesterday the upper house of the Maryland State legislature finally passed a bill to create an off-shore wind farm after a three-year push by the Governor. (The lower house had already passed a version of the bill.) Evidently the logjam was broken by including a provision to subsidize the project by adding $1.50 a month to residential electric bills and a 1.5% monthly surcharge on businesses. Naturally people like you and me will wonder where that money is really going; in principle I’d like to investigate, but don’t have the time at the moment
Left a link at your latest post on the Washington R-Word. It’s not like they don’t have options
I recommended this excellent (as usual) diary yesterday, and now I must recommend also this wonderful comment, ThD.
“…To my mind the key item was the growth of political networks and economic networks that cut out the British middleman and the crown interests began to take hold much before 1775…”
I remember in reading the historical antecedents for Washington and Hamilton, that their personal experiences were such that they simply were among those accumulating interests – Washington, in being held back from rising through the ranks because he was a colonial, not British, and Hamilton having been born and raised in a West Indies backwater. Both brilliant men, impossible to keep them under the imperial thumb. And each, when the time came, already familiar to the people as men of integrity.
There will come a time…
Thanks, jis, that’s cute. To be sure, more is involved than what uniforms they wear. As I understand it, for instance, the name of the cheerleaders, the [R-word]-ettes, would have to change.
I’m so slow – all I kept thinking was wot? UC Davis?
Branch Davisians! Light finally dawns.
I provide the phulassisthai. ( Sounds like molasses pie, doesn’t it?) Slow as, that’s me is why I love these lengthy comments and comments threads. I get to catch up!
My transliterative thought was: Don’t fire till you see the whites of their eyes. Too many westerns at the local picture show when I was way too young.
“Don’t fire till you see the whites of their eyes”
Yes, that’s good, juliania, although when I whimsically threw in the first attestation of kairos I might have explained that in metra phulassesthai the second word is the verb, “heed”; the first, the “proportions” (or, as some would more conventionally translate metra, “measures”). But this is getting off-topic.
BTW, Branch Davisians was coined by someone commenting two or three wd threads back.
slight edit: phulassasthai (the philologists would never forgive me)
Sorry, EFB, for the liberty I took – just can’t get anything sticky out of metra. And yes, I recall that coinage, just had taken this long to figure it out.
Good thing man is the measure, not woman.
The windfarm story is a bit long to take in for right now, but that the project is now a mere third of the original proposal strikes me as…a bit suspicious. As always, the devil’s in the details. A fair bill would have put zero burden on the poor, but that might be hard to calculate.
IIRC, it may have been CTuttle who’d quipped about Davisites, and reckoning that we might tweak it toward true cult status, thinking of the Branch Davidians, amended it a li’l bit. ;-)
Yes, I thought Zeese and Flowers brought great clarity to the issue. They’ve tried to roll with the fact (after a hard start) that those uppity kids pre-empted the October2011 movement and zipped themselves into Zuccotti Park.
Oh, and we must also consider that old Hesiod may have been full of beans. Reminds me of the: ‘in all things, moderation’ dodge. (grin)
“man is the measure”
No!!! That’s the standard, hoary, sexist mistranslation of anthrôpos, which is not a gender-differentiated term in Greek itself. (“Man” is anêr, accusativeandra.)
What Protagoras actually said is “human is the measure of all things.”
“full of beans”
Only if we apply him uncritically to our times; he was speaking to his.
But I’m beginning to be sorry I brought him in: It’s caused too much confusion.
Methinks you’re taking any wee jests a bit too much…to heart.
Not caring much either way about the Hesiod quote, I just came to bring the live blog of the cricket contest/s. It may be over, but the accompanying articles might be of interest to Miz Kiwi. ;-)
(Truth is, I’d thought juliania had been spoofing on her ‘man v. woman’ construct, lol.)
“juliania had been spoofing”
Of course her comment was tongue-in-cheek, but I only want to clarify that she was really spoofing the crusty old Oxbridge classicists of the 19th century, not the Greeks themselves.
I didn’t realize you even had someone from New Zealand in the thread. Wow!
But all that said, I’d sure like to get back to indignez-vous.
(And I will. To clue you in in advance, tomorrow’s 5 myths piece will point out that AIDS is still an outrageous scandal.)
And one more point of history: As to the actions coming up shortly in Norman, the U. of Okla. was also a fairly big deal back in the day (with an interesting picture).
Thanks, wendydavis – you really know how to lift my spirits not! Nah, it’s been a grim two days, halfway through the last now, with the Brits doggedly digging in and a pitch that doesn’t favor bowlers – ai cas’ acerbo, ai fat’ empre crudele! Or something like that anyway – I do mangle my quotes, but I mean no harm. I have been doggedly listening to radiosport.co.nz nearly four days now (the first was rained out) and our young chaps did so swimmingly the first day they probably don’t or didn’t know what to do with it – ‘fraid from an outright win it is gonna go to a draw – bulldog isn’t the mascot for the Brits for nothing.
Well, we were champs for a day – funny game, cricket! Let’s get back to that outrage!
[Y'r right on that spoofing stuff, but you know, sometimes it doesn't sound like a spoof, sorry about that! Funny, I've been a lifelong proponent of inclusive use of 'man' as including both sexes, comes back to bite me! It's all molasses; ya gotta laugh sometimes.]
Yes indeed, as Socrates makes clear (or unclear) in Politeia(admirably translated by Bloom). We do agree, you know :))
So you’re the kiwi?! I would not have guessed.
As to Plato’s Republic, I refuse to take the bait. It’s Time for Outrage!
Loved the photo of Abbie, the Pentagon Lifter; than you, EF Beall.
Here’s thing, though. For me, the WaPo’s take on stuff doesn’t matter. While they’ve printed a few great investigative pieces in the past, I only care issue by issue, as I do with most ‘journalistic’ efforts.
That said, if there is an AIDS scandal, you might consider writing that up (I’m watching Angels in America for the fifth or whatever time (I love that it’s another offbeat love story), and it is an important subject.
For my take on any reason that my posts draw great comments, and in gratifying numbers, is that I’m kinda the radical vox populi here, add the atheistic, spiritual dei to it now and again, and write and respond an essentially real human being, flaws, warts, and all.
Trying for some honest feedback to you; I hope you take it in the spirit I intend. I could have just vacated the premises. ;o)
It seems only right that Branch Davisians would invoke other languages to help express broad-ranging concerns. Besides, it’s kind of fun.
Long live flaws and warts, WD.
“For me, the WaPo’s take on stuff doesn’t matter”
You may not remember, wd, but you’ve made that point to me before. One reason that it hasn’t stopped me from writing what’s in WaPo is because I’m not writing for you, or for FDL, alone. I’m not trying to preach to the choir with the 5 myths pieces, but to move people a little bit for whom the paper’s take does matter somewhat.
And I know that the pieces are reaching people beyond FDL. They score well on internet searches, and the sites that either quote them directly or link to them include blogrunner.com, liberalroundup.com,birchindigo.com, and webworldout.appspot.com that I know of, and I’m sure there are more.
I believe you will agree that I’ve made lots of comments in these pages that are more to your taste, but to me that’s not the only task.
And the last paragraph in your comment is unnecessary.
:)
How kind of you, econobuzz. And to me, in a way it’s difference between the intellectualization of an issue, or the intuitive gut-kick/pierced-heart expression of what might be deemed worthy of a diary/blog/article. Both may be valid.
But there seems to me to be a place at the intersection of reason and spiritual moral understanding meets theism that can resonate further if writing is even just shy of Art.
Theater and music demonstrate that so clearly. Seriously, it’s hard for me to imagine anyone of good conscience and ethos watching this scene and not having their values crystallize in the moment.
‘Who are you?’
‘Your negation; I’m just the shadow on your on your grave’. Always: the yin, the yang, The Light, The Shadow, the expansive embrace, the constricted fear… Humans; sigh.