As the struggle to make ends meet, feed our families, keep a roof over our heads, pay for a rising cost of living, with stagnant or falling income, forces and pressures are building that are making more and more people feel like Mr. Beale, “I’m as mad as Hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore” from the 1976 movie ‘Network.’
The words Mr. Beal spoke in 1976 were prophetic and Timeless, and are just as True for the realities of Today
Powerful and rich Mr. Jensen delivers his ‘corporate cosmology’ to the Mad Prophet of the Airways in the link below. Only with the benefit of hindsight can we see the 1976 movie was prophetic and current for our Time 36 years later as the world wakes up to see and realize the Global Corporatocracy that has consolidated power and control over every material aspect in the lives of the people-consumers of this world.
Unawares to me, earlier that Saturday, March 5, before I uploaded this report later that night, Michael Moore spoke to the Protesters in Madison, Wisconsin.
His speech contained similar themes to those in this 1976 movie ‘Network.” At the 19 minute mark he had the crowd chanting, “We have had it” a thought very similar to “I’m as mad as Hell, and I’m not going to take it anymore.”
I was happy to discover the Michael More video the next day, as in the Spirit transcending National boundaries, Space and Time.
This article was the lead paragraphs in the article ‘TV & POPULAR CULTURE: IDOLS, ADVERTISING AND UNREAL REALITY’ posted on March 5.
This Blog, being a work in progress, I thought it better to separate that article which was much too long for a Society accustomed to 30 second sound bytes, with attention deficit disorder to greater or lessor degrees, and give it a new current title.
The following video from the 70’s is strong evidence the more things change, the more they remain the same.
This article was written by Professor Richard Falk, currently the UN Special Rapporteur For Palestinian Human Rights.
Richard Falk is an International Law and International Relations Scholar who taught at Princeton University for forty years. Since 2002 he has lived in Santa Barbara, California, and taught at the local campus of the University of California in Global and International Studies and since 2005 chaired the Board of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation.
There are several pressures that push war in the direction of the absolute, and imperil the human future. Perhaps, the foremost of these is emergence, use, retention, and proliferation of nuclear weapons, as well as the development of biological and chemical weapons of mass destruction. Since Hiroshima and Nagasaki there have been several close calls involving heightened dangers of wars fought with nuclear weapons, especially associated with the Cold War rivalry, none more serious than the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. To entrust such weaponry to the vagaries of political leadership and the whims governmental institutions seems like a Mt. Everest of human folly, and yet the present challenges to nuclearism remain modest and marginal despite the collapse of the deterrence rationale that seemed plausible to many during the confrontation between the Soviet Union and the United States.
Underneath the tendency to develop for use whatever weapons and tactics that technology can provide is the fragmented political identities of a world divided into sovereign states. The inhabitants of these states of greatly varying size, capabilities, and vulnerabilities, have long been indoctrinated to view their own state through the idolatrous eyes of nationalism that view the extermination of the enemy as acceptable if necessary for national security or even desirable to satisfy national ambitions. The ideology of nationalism, nurturing the values of unquestioning patriotism, have led to an orientation that can be described as secular fundamentalism, vindicating militarist worldviews however dysfunctional given the risks and limits associated with gaining desired political ends by relying on military superiority. The crime of treason reinforces the absolutist claims of the secular state by disallowing defenses based on conscience, law, and belief.
As I have pointed out in other contexts, the militarily superior side has rarely prevailed in an armed conflict since the end of World War II unless also able to command the moral and legal heights wherein are located the symbols of legitimacy. The political failures of the colonial powers despite their military dominance provides many bloody illustrations of this trend of miltarist frustration that did not exist until the middle of the last century. Because of entrenched bureaucratic and economic interests (‘the military-industrial-media complex’), the experience is denied, military solutions for conflicts continue to be preferred, and futile recourse to war goes on and on.
One further check on the excesses of warfare is supposedly provided by the inhibiting role of conscience, the ethical component of the human sensibility. This sentiment was powerfully and memorably expressed by some lines in the Bertolt Brecht poem, “A German War Primer”:
General, your bomber is powerful
It smashes down forests and crushes a hundred men
But it has one defect:
It needs a driver.
This ‘defect,’ a driver is both a human cost, and maybe a brake on excess, as Brecht suggests a few lines later:
General, man is very useful
He can fly and he can kill
But he has one defect:
He can think.
Of course, military training and discipline are generally effective in overcoming this defect, especially as backed up by the nationalist ideology discussed above, while international humanitarian law vainly tries to give support to thinking and respecting limits. The Nuremberg Trials of Nazi surviving leaders even went so far as to decide that ‘superior orders’ were no excuse if war crimes were committed.
In the nuclear age this process went further as the stakes were so high. I recall visiting the headquarters of the Strategic Air Command (SAC) at the height of the Cold War. SAC was responsible for the missile force that then targeted many cities in the Soviet Union. What struck me at the time was the seeming technocratic indifference of those entrusted with operating the computers that would fire the missiles in contrast to the ideological zeal of the commanding generals who would give the orders to annihilate millions of civilians at a distant locations. I was told at the time that the lower ranked technical personnel had been tested to ensure that moral scruples would not interfere with their readiness to follow orders. I found this mix of commanders politically convinced that the enemy was evil and apolitical and amoral subordinates a frightening mix at the time, and still do, although I have not been invited back to SAC to see whether similar conditions now prevail. I suspect that they do, considering the differing requirements of the two roles. This view seems confirms by the enthusiasm expressed for carrying on the ‘war on terror’ in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks.
In this period new technological innovations in war making accentuate my earlier concerns. The reliance on drone attacks in Afghanistan (and elsewhere) removes the human person altogether from the war experience, except as in the role of programmer, and even here reliance on algorithms for targeting, removes any shred of responsibility. When mistakes are made, and innocent civilians are killed, the event is neutralized by being labeled ‘collateral damage,’ and an apology is issued but the practice goes on and is even extended. More important is the chilling effect of removing that human presence, both as a person of one’s own nation being at risk and as a source of potential questioning and even refusal. It should be recalled that the anti-war opposition of American soldiers in Vietnam exerted a powerful influence that helped over time finally to bring this failed war to an end.
What is at stake ultimately is the human spirit squeezed to near death by technological momentum, corporate greed, militarism, and secular fundamentalism. This web of historical forces continues to entrap major political actors in the world, and dims hopes for a sustainable future even without taking into account the dismal effects of the gathering clouds of climate change. Scenarios of future cyber warfare are also part of this overall process of destroying societies without risking lives directly. The cumulative effect of these developments is to make irrelevant the moral compass that alone provides acceptable guidance for a progressive human future.
NOTICE: The following 2 videos have actual graphic scenes of revolting, disgusting, fearful, sickening violence, evil, and the depravity of man’s brutality toward man from the Past. This is not for the weak at heart.
If we cannot face the evils from our Past, and learn from them Today, we will be ill-equipped to deal with them in the Tomorrows of the Future if humanity does not change it’s values and ways?
For Now we have Faith, Hope and Love, but the Greatest of these is Love.
1 Corinthianians 13
The following secret video of US forces killing civilians in Iraq is what catapulted Wikileaks to the forefront of public awareness
There are so many different visual presentations of this beautiful music and melding of the sublime voices of Celine Dion of Quebec & Andrea Bocelli on Youtube.
Looking for the version that was the 1st video I uploaded online in 2009, I viewed many on Youtube and it was hard to choose just one for this post on the occasion of the National Day of Quebec celebrated in the name of John the Baptist, the forerunner to Christ.
Most Quebecois and Canadians no longer practice the Faith.
Originally, I chose another version mainly because of a moving gif of a Dove featured in it, the Bird/Symbol of Peace that settled on Jesus when the Spirit of Christ entered him while being baptized by John in the Jordan River.
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. In him was life; and the life was the light of men. And the light shines in darkness; and the darkness did not understand it.
There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. The same came for a witness, to bear witness of the Light, that all men through him might believe. He was not that Light, but was sent to bear witness of that Light. That was the true Light, which lights every man that comes into the world. He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world did not know him. He came to his own, and his own did not receive him. But as many as received him, to them he gave power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on his name: Which were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father,) full of grace and truth.
SUNDAY, June 2, 2017, THE DAY AFTER CanaDa Day. I just found this other version of Celine and Andrea with different visuals, and significant differences in English words translated from Italian.
This is another video version of The Prayer with Celine and Josh Groban. The visuals and the melody of voices are also outstanding.
The Prayer is so inspiring to me, I have to include these other versions, also with beautiful visuals.
