View allAll Photos Tagged LIBERALISM
in these days Europe remembers the August days in former Czechoslovakia, when the Soviets and their allies (including DDR, East Germany) occupied this country to destroy all efforts of a liberal and human socialism, the so called Prague Spring with Alexander Dubcek.
time to remember Dubcek, the great and liberal Vaclav Havel, and also Jan Palach, the 20y old student from Melnik, who burned himself on Wenzels place in January 1969 to protest against the soviet occupation.
twenty years later the iron curtain began to fall down, and in 1990 I had the chance for my first visit in Prague and Bohemia. the begin of my deep love for this city and this country, with which my family is connected in several ways
the photos of this first visit are blurred, shots from diapositives,. but I like them as paintings of this exciting time, full of hope for democracy and liberalism in Europe. time to remember all this. and one can imagine the Prague during the socialist time, lots of renovated buildings, but also multiple decay of historic buildings.
during all my visits there I could watch the transformation to a renovated, colourful, vibrant, capitalistic and nowadays often overcrowded city. but I am still in love with Prague...
Robert Burns (25 January 1759 – 21 July 1796), also known familiarly as Rabbie Burns, the National Bard, Bard of Ayrshire, the Ploughman Poet and various other names and epithets,[nb 1] was a Scottish poet and lyricist. He is widely regarded as the national poet of Scotland and is celebrated worldwide. He is the best known of the poets who have written in the Scots language, although much of his writing is in a "light Scots dialect" of English, accessible to an audience beyond Scotland. He also wrote in standard English, and in these writings his political or civil commentary is often at its bluntest.
He is regarded as a pioneer of the Romantic movement, and after his death he became a great source of inspiration to the founders of both liberalism and socialism, and a cultural icon in Scotland and among the Scottish diaspora around the world. Celebration of his life and work became almost a national charismatic cult during the 19th and 20th centuries, and his influence has long been strong on Scottish literature. In 2009 he was chosen as the greatest Scot by the Scottish public in a vote run by Scottish television channel STV.
As well as making original compositions, Burns also collected folk songs from across Scotland, often revising or adapting them. His poem (and song) "Auld Lang Syne" is often sung at Hogmanay (the last day of the year), and "Scots Wha Hae" served for a long time as an unofficial national anthem of the country. Other poems and songs of Burns that remain well known across the world today include "A Red, Red Rose", "A Man's a Man for A' That", "To a Louse", "To a Mouse", "The Battle of Sherramuir", "Tam o' Shanter" and "Ae Fond Kiss".
The concept of this image and write-up stems from the book Between Two Ages, which was written by Zbigniew Brzezinski and published in 1970. The content of this book deals with issues from the Cold War era. Much of the information is obsolete, yet some of it can be applied to our time. He even left a few nuggets of insight into the globalist plan.
Brzezinski wondered how America would fare in its transition from the industrial age to the technetronic age (the digital age or the third industrial revolution). Currently, we are in transition between the third industrial revolution and the fourth industrial revolution. The first industrial revolution occurred in the 18th and 19th centuries and introduced mechanization and industry. The second industrial revolution took place in the late 19th and early 20th century and brought electricity and mass production. The third industrial revolution, from the mid-20th century to the present, gave us computers and the internet. We are currently entering the fourth industrial revolution. It will usher in artificial intelligence, machine learning, robotics, quantum computing, blockchain and digital ledgers, digital tokenization and crypto assets, virtual and mixed reality, biotechnology and transhumanism. The fourth industrial revolution will introduce a new worldwide economic system based around digital biometric IDs, central bank digital currencies, social credit scores, and carbon footprint trackers. During COVID-19, the transition of the fourth industrial revolution was referred to as the Great Reset or Build Back Better. Understand this: they cannot bring in this new system without the implementation of digital IDs!
The elitist scum don’t have the power to take over the world by force. They must seize it slowly through deception, propaganda, social engineering, and technology. Technology has both unified and fragmented society. Civilization was once separated by time and space. A person on one side of the world didn’t know what was happening on the other side. A traveler or messenger would have to travel a long way to relay distant news. Technology gave us the radio, the television, and the internet. As technology advanced, it reduced time and space between people. This sped things up. Today, we find people with similar interests online. We put less effort into local friendships that build community. We, instead, build impersonal relationships with people from around the world. We have isolated ourselves from the real world and those around us. This isolates us from our social support system, and we become lonely. A similar situation happens with nations. Nations also had a certain amount of time and space, which acted as insulators against excessive friction. This gave them room to maneuver, and it gave them the distance needed to maintain their own identity.
As people increasingly moved to the big cities, it became harder for them to make and maintain friendships. Agenda 21 of the United Nations aims to relocate individuals from rural areas to the cities. They call it sustainability. They will use endangered species as an excuse to keep or push people off the land. Aww, those poor endangered turtles and frogs! The Bundy Ranch standoff highlighted some of these things. “When the U.S. government declared the Mojave desert tortoise an endangered species in 1989, it effectively marked the cattle ranchers of Nevada’s Clark County for extinction. Rancher Cliven Bundy once had neighbors on the range: when the tortoise was listed, there were about 50 cattle-ranching families in the county. Some of them fought court battles to stay, rejecting the idea their cattle posed a danger to the tortoises. But, one by one, they slowly gave up and disappeared. Clark County is not an isolated case. Disputes over land rights are playing out in many Western states, especially in rural areas, where some residents and lawmakers question the legitimacy of the federal government’s claim to swathes of land.” They also want to designate more and more land as parklands and protected areas.
Previously, I posted a write-up inspired by three Canadian government documents. These documents said that climate change would eventually drive people off parts of the land, and that insurance companies would not provide insurance to anyone living in such areas. They also talked about regularly using weather manipulation. Shocker! One thing I failed to mention was their plan to give large tracts of land to the Indians. They admitted that this would cause anger, protests, and violence. British Columbia passed legislation to incorporate this United Nations declaration into law: the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act. The government is now working towards giving the Indians vast plots of land. The Indians are claiming a city not far from me! This would destroy private property rights in the province. Read the communist manifesto, and you’ll see who desires to abolish private property. Decolonization! Truth and reconciliation! This is nothing new to me; I knew these things were coming many years ago. I knew they would use the Indians to drive us from the rural areas into the cities. Eventually, they will remove the Indians from the land. They are but pawns.
Agenda 21 is the 100-year plan of the United Nations to implement global governance. They must rely on public-private partnerships (governments, corporations, NGOs, and billionaires) to execute their plan. This is a form of fascism! As we speak, governments, corporations, and billionaires are swallowing up rural lands. Rural data centers, anyone? Save the environment! Climate emergency! Mismanage the forests to create wildfires. Mismanage logging to cause flooding. 15-minute smart cities are the future! How about Saudi Arabia’s megacity NEOM, which will be 170 kilometers long! NEOM will be a special economic zone—a Network state. Or what about Tri-State City, which would span across the Netherlands, Belgium, and Germany? Get the farmers off the land; we need to build our Tower of Babel! “The next Global superpower will be a Network state.” These megacity Network states will be part of a worldwide techno-feudal system. In the Book of Revelation, there are ten kings, just sayin’.
When one era ends and another begins, the lines get blurred. At the time, it’s hard to distinguish which era is which. This new era will shape our society culturally, psychologically, socially, and economically. It will affect all aspects of our lives. In order to bring us into this age, they will need to swap the old system with the new. The old is not compatible with the new.
AI will replace many jobs, so we must introduce Universal Basic Income. Yet, to truly solve this problem, we must merge man with AI. Transhumanism will bring about worldwide equality! These post-humans will become dependent on the new system. There will be no going back to the old system or way of life. They must deal with their loss of humanity. They must find a new sense of meaning in this brave new world. Their perceived reality will be different, yet their new sensations will be quite real.
Everyone will be completely malleable. We will tamper with their very essence. We will modify their personality, manipulate their behavior, exploit their emotions, control their reason, and guide their conscious decisions. No longer will propaganda be needed to manipulate them. “I foresee the time when we shall have the means and therefore, inevitably, the temptation to manipulate the behaviour and intellectual functioning of all the people through environmental and biochemical manipulation of the brain.” Indeed, Brzezinski mentioned using chemicals for mind control and altering the human genetic structure. He also believed that in a few decades, “they could develop a system that would seriously impair the brain performance of very large populations.” Such a society would be dominated by technocrats whose claim to power would be superior scientific knowledge. They would not hesitate to influence public behavior with the latest modern technology. They would keep society under close surveillance and control.
People’s reality has moved from a local to a global context. Brzezinski doesn’t like the term “global village,” instead, he likes the term “global city.” A village has important characteristics such as: “personal stability, interpersonal intimacy, implicitly shared values, and traditions.” A global city, on the other hand, is “a nervous, agitated, tense, and fragmented web of interdependent relations.” The interactions of the global city lack intimacy, which causes insecurity. The high-trust culture associated with village intimacy will be absent from the nervous interaction of the global city.
A global community fragments humanity. It detaches people from their traditional roots. In the past, an individual only associated with their family and village. Eventually, their reach expanded to other regions of the nation. Today, we associate with a global community. The past had greater cohesion and harmony than the global ecosystem of today. Currently, experts from around the world collaborate to solve problems. This sounds like ‘global citizens,’ from a ‘global community,’ solving ‘global problems.’ Kumbaya! Social engineering at its finest!
Mass media exploits our fragmented society, creating a highly controlled society. Cultural change will come through social engineering. People will deliberately and consciously choose to follow what they’ve been fed. According to Brzezinski, electronic devices could be used to educate children from home. This is reminiscent of COVID-19! During the next plandemic or climate lockdown, these “developments may become the handmaidens of constructive change.” Brzezinski also concluded that feminism would enhance society’s cultural growth and standards. Of course, anything that corrupts and fragments society helps the globalist agenda.
“A community of the developed nations must eventually be formed if the world is to respond effectively to the increasingly serious crisis that in different ways now threatens both the advanced world and the Third World.” They want to bring together the leaders of the developed world to discuss global problems. As you can see today, we have globalist entities like the G7 and G20. They desire to use global cooperation to string the world’s nations together, using “a variety of indirect ties.” They can then steer those nations by using various intergovernmental organizations. Of course, their crowning jewel is the United Nations. They must have interconnected cooperation—a cooperative community of nations. They want the rich nations to help the poor nations, because they don’t want the third world to revolt against the system. Foreign aid, here we come, cha-ching, cha-ching! Foreign aid is also a great tool for guiding the Third World in the desired direction.
Brzezinski said that sovereignty is fiction. He stated that they must make “intensive efforts to shape a new world monetary structure.” Cashless society, here we come! They want to build an “international structure of production and financing” for international trade. In progressive stages, they want to introduce free-trade areas. Of course, these free-trade areas (economic zones) are really megacity Network states. They want to bring in a “global taxation system.” Woohoo, a global carbon tax!
Just think! A man on a white horse brings peace to the Middle East. Then the Jews start building their new temple. Strange, a rider on a red horse then comes to take peace from the earth? The Enlightenment tradition has failed! Liberalism has failed! Democracy has failed! Free market capitalism has failed! Therefore, we’ll introduce a new authoritarian system! Stakeholder capitalism (fascism), here we come! Green economy, here we go! Fight the state, fight diversity, have your civil war, the red horseman will slaughter you with his sword. Oh, wait, what do we have here? The mother of all harlots—the world religion—rides in on the Beast with seven heads and ten horns (kings). We’ll create a one-world religion and bring spiritual unity. Hey, let’s have a ceremony for the new Jewish temple! Now, the vision of the trashumanists will come true: an AI god will be introduced. Oh, what’s this abominable idol of desolation sitting in the temple? World, here’s your new AI god! Surprise, surprise, a zealous Jew kills the antichrist at the celebration. Wow, say it ain’t so, the antichrist comes back to life! “He opposes and exalts himself above every so-called god or object of worship, so that he sits in God’s temple, proclaiming that he himself is God.” Hooray, the christ has risen! Let’s worship the antichrist and his Image. Then the Beast and the ten kings destroy the harlot (Revelation 17:16). She served her purpose; we have the true christ now! Ta-da, all people must take the Mark of the Beast-chip. Finally, the world has transitioned into the new age. It’s an age of global technocratic governance and transhumanism.
The mindset of some of these globalists and transhumanists could be used to create a sci-fi movie: The technocrats rule as kings in their Network states. They recreate mankind in their own image (trans-humans). They recreate nature (trans-nature). Eventually, the useless eaters—the peasant class—are done away with. No upgrades for you! The technocrats then fight to outlast, outwit, and outplay one another, until they destroy the earth and what’s left of mankind. Next, they inhabit the planets, recreating the universe (trans-universe). In the end, they fight until one is left standing. The winner is declared god!
“This new perspective involves growing recognition that man’s propensity for scientific innovation cannot be restrained—that as long as man’s mind functions, scientific innovation will be one of its expressions.” ‒ Zbigniew Brzezinski
Our world appears to be like The Truman Show: scripted and fake! I’ve stumbled upon numerous things over the years, and I hope to study them deeply. It would take a lifetime of reading. Nevertheless, I think it’s possible to find the evidence needed to answer my questions.
What if wars are planned?
What if communism was aided and abetted?
What if fascism was nurtured too?
What if protests are planned?
What if economic crashes are deliberate too?
What if the Federal Reserve is privately owned?
What if we were taken off the Gold Standard to kill the middle class and indebt us?
What if most of our politicians are puppets?
What if political parties are one big uniparty?
What if our democracy is an illusion?
What if Western Intelligence is run by outside interests?
What if the CIA assassinates American Presidents?
What if the CIA assassinates people like Charlie Kirk too?
What if the CIA is behind the mainstream news?
What if the CIA is behind Hollywood too?
What if the CIA is behind the music industry?
What if the CIA is behind the drug epidemic? What if they want sex, drugs, and debauchery too?
What if the CIA is behind the drug cartels?
What if the CIA is behind the Mafias?
What if the CIA is behind the gangs?
What if the CIA is behind domestic terrorist attacks? What about 9/11 too?
What if the CIA is behind many of the international terrorist groups?
What if the CIA is behind many of the mass shootings?
What if the CIA is behind many of the serial killers?
What if the CIA uses brainwashing and mind control?
What if the CIA was behind the feminist movement?
What if the CIA was behind playboy and Hugh Hefner?
What if the CIA was behind Hustler and Larry Flynt?
What if the CIA was behind Jeffrey Epstein?
What if the CIA is behind human sex trafficking?
What if the CIA is behind human trafficking?
What if the CIA is behind the porn industry?
What if Western intelligence was behind major occult figures?
What if Western intelligence was promoting the occult?
What if Western intelligence was promoting the New Age movement?
What if esoteric ideologies have shaped our thinking to accept the new world order?
What if the CIA assassinated foreign politicians and installed puppets? What if these puppets allowed the World Bank, IMF, and corporations to rape their natural resources and make them debt-slaves too?
What if the CIA is behind many of the AI companies? What if their CEOs are in bed with Trump too?
What if the Internet is a net and the World Wide Web is a web to ensnare us?
What if our education system is meant to dumb us down and indoctrinate us?
What if sex education is meant to make the youth promiscuous?
What if race and gender theory are preparing them for a transhuman society without race and gender?
What if schools are sexually grooming children?
What if the lack of discipline in schools spoils and ruins them?
What if they discourage old-school parental discipline such as spanking?
What if the welfare system is used to make people dependant?
What if the welfare system was used to break up the black family? What if abortion is used to keep their population numbers down too?
What if birth control was legalized for population control?
What if abortion was legalized for population control?
What if homosexuality was legalized for population control?
What if they made AIDS in a laboratory?
What if they weaponized cancer?
What if they weaponized Lyme disease and other diseases? What about Dementia, Alzheimer’s, and Autism too?
What if antidepressants fry our brains? What if they cause suicides, killings, and mass shootings too?
What if they use frequencies, microwave technology, and 5G to harm and control us?
What if chemtrails rain down heavy metals? What if they block sunlight too?
What if plastics screw with our hormones? What if microplastics can be linked to chronic diseases too?
What if they put fluoride in the water to pacify us?
What if genetically modified foods modify us?
What if AI is meant to replace us?
What if Climate Change is a hoax?
What if green energy is a scam?
What if COVID-19 was a plandemic?
What if mRNA technology alters DNA?
What if vaccines are for population control?
What if they are trying to sterilize us? What if sterilizing agents have been found in baby products too?
What if multiculturalism is meant to replace our culture?
What if mass immigration is meant to bring down the West too?
What if work visas are meant for cheap labour?
What if modern technology is meant to rewire our brains?
What if the purpose of the United Nations is world governance?
What if they’re building a surveillance society?
What if they’re building a cashless society?
What if they’re building a transhuman society?
What if ten rulers control the world from behind the scenes? What if they’re the patriarchs of the wealthiest families in the world? What if they’re Satan’s minions too?
What if?
Revelation 17:12-13: “The ten horns you saw are ten kings who have not yet received a kingdom, but who for one hour will receive authority as kings along with the Beast. They have one purpose and will give their power and authority to the Beast.”
Ok, I know that today is my birthday and I should take something better, but on the last couple of days I've been working on a paper to send to college about Auguste Comte, Positivism, Saint-Simon, Marx, socialism and liberalism and its influence on the actual conception of the State so I really don't care and think about pictures lol
But a few minutes ago I just thought about my weight and decided to take a shot: 80kg... remember picture #2 taken on January 4th?? (83,1kg at 7AM this was taken at 7PM)
Don't ask for credentials. They know best.....( "Because that’s what we do in Ontario"; Kathleen Wynne Premier of Ontario)
______________________________________
CANADIAN CHARTER OF RIGHTS AND FREEDOMS Part 1
Fundamental Freedoms:
Everyone has the following fundamental freedoms:
(a) freedom of conscience and religion;
(b) freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression, including freedom of the press and other media of communication;
(c) freedom of peaceful assembly; and
(d) freedom of association.
..... But
.
I love this memorial to a strong man. He fought for equality and acceptance.
The Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial is a national memorial located in West Potomac Park next to the National Mall in Washington, D.C., United States. It covers four acres (1.6 ha) and includes the Stone of Hope, a granite statue of Civil Rights Movement leader Martin Luther King Jr. carved by sculptor Lei Yixin. The inspiration for the memorial design is a line from King's "I Have a Dream" speech: "Out of the mountain of despair, a stone of hope." The memorial opened to the public on August 22, 2011, after more than two decades of planning, fund-raising, and construction.
This national memorial is the 395th unit in the United States National Park Service. The monumental memorial is located at the northwest corner of the Tidal Basin near the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial, on a sightline linking the Lincoln Memorial to the northwest and the Jefferson Memorial to the southeast. The official address of the monument, 1964 Independence Avenue, S.W., commemorates the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
A ceremony dedicating the memorial was scheduled for Sunday, August 28, 2011, the 48th anniversary of the "I Have a Dream" speech that Martin Luther King Jr. delivered from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1963 but was postponed until October 16 (the 16th anniversary of the 1995 Million Man March on the National Mall) due to Hurricane Irene.
Although this is not the first memorial to an African American in Washington, D.C., King is the first African American honored with a memorial on or near the National Mall and only the fourth non-President to be memorialized in such a way. The King Memorial is administered by the National Park Service (NPS).
Delivering the "I Have a Dream" speech at the 1963 Washington, D.C. Civil Rights March.
Martin Luther King Jr. (January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968), an American clergyman, activist, and prominent leader in the Civil Rights Movement, was an iconic figure in the advancement of civil rights in the United States and around the world and advocated for using nonviolent resistance, inspired by Mahatma Gandhi. Although during his life he was monitored by the FBI for presumed communist sympathies, King is now presented as a heroic leader in the history of modern American liberalism.
At the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, King imagined an end to racial inequality in his "I Have a Dream" speech. This speech has been canonized as one of the greatest pieces of American oratory. In 1964, King became the youngest person to receive the Nobel Peace Prize for his work to end racial segregation and racial discrimination through civil disobedience and other nonviolent means.
At the time of his death, he had refocused his efforts on ending poverty and stopping the Vietnam War. King was backing the Memphis sanitation strike and organizing a mass occupation of Washington, D.C. – the Poor People's Campaign – when he was assassinated in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968.
in these days Europe remembers the August days in former Czechoslovakia, when the Soviets and their allies (including DDR, East Germany) occupied this country to destroy all efforts of a liberal and human socialism, the so called Prague Spring with Alexander Dubcek.
time to remember Dubcek, the great and liberal Vaclav Havel, and also Jan Palach, the 20y old student from Melnik, who burned himself on Wenzels place in January 1969 to protest against the soviet occupation.
twenty years later the iron curtain began to fall down, and in 1990 I had the chance for my first visit in Prague and Bohemia. the begin of my deep love for this city and this country, with which my family is connected in several ways
the photos of this first visit are blurred, shots from diapositives,. but I like them as paintings of this exciting time, full of hope for democracy and liberalism in Europe. time to remember all this. and one can imagine the Prague during the socialist time, lots of renovated buildings, but also multiple decay of historic buildings.
during all my visits there I could watch the transformation to a renovated, colourful, vibrant, capitalistic and nowadays often overcrowded city. but I am still in love with Prague...
Martin Luther King Memorial, West Potomac Park, Washington DC,, USA 2015.
The Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial is located in West Potomac Park in Washington, D.C., southwest of the National Mall. The national memorial is America's 395th unit in the National Park Service. The monumental memorial is located at the northwest corner of the Tidal Basin near the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial, on a sightline linking the Lincoln Memorial to the northwest and the Jefferson Memorial to the southeast. The official address of the monument, 1964 Independence Avenue, S.W., commemorates the year the Civil Rights Act of 1964 became law.
Covering four acres and including a statue of King by sculptor Lei Yixin, the memorial opened to the public on August 22, 2011, after more than two decades of planning, fund-raising and construction. A ceremony dedicating the Memorial was scheduled for Sunday, August 28, 2011, the 48th anniversary of the "I Have a Dream" speech that Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1963, but due to Hurricane Irene it was postponed until October 16 (the 16th anniversary of the 1995 Million Man March on the National Mall).
Although this is not the first memorial to an African American in Washington, D.C., King is the first African American honoured with a memorial on or near the National Mall and only the fourth non-President to be memorialised in such a way. The King Memorial is administered by the National Park Service (NPS).
Martin Luther King, Jr. (January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968), an American clergyman, activist, and prominent leader in the African-American Civil Rights Movement, was an iconic figure in the advancement of civil rights in the United States and around the world. He advocated the use of non-violent resistance, inspired by Mahatma Gandhi. Although during his life he was monitored by the FBI for presumed communist sympathies, King is now presented as a heroic leader in the history of modern American liberalism.
At the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, King imagined an end to racial inequality in his "I Have a Dream" speech. This speech has been canonized as one of the greatest pieces of American oratory. In 1964, King became the youngest person to receive the Nobel Peace Prize for his work to end racial segregation and racial discrimination through civil disobedience and other non-violent means.
At the time of his death, he had refocused his efforts on ending poverty and stopping the Vietnam War. King was backing the Memphis Sanitation Strike and organizing a mass occupation of Washington, D.C. – the Poor People's Campaign - when he was killed in Memphis, Tennessee, on April 4, 1968.
Full sized is a must of course:
www.flickr.com/photos/25036088@N06/3424896427/sizes/o/
Blogspamed:
ncomment.com/blog/2009/04/08/war-13/
Interviews:
The Drill Down:
thedrilldown.com/2009/04/13/the-drill-down-o83-ncomments-...
Social Blend:
Submitted to Mixx by cGt2099:
www.mixx.com/photos/4792775/war_i
Submitted to Digg by Mu:
digg.com/tech_news/War_is_Here_Are_You_Prepared_Digger_Comic
Submitted to Reddit by nomdeweb:
www.reddit.com/r/comics/comments/8b4io/the_great_reddit_v...
Added to Meneame by thombjork:
meneame.net/story/guerra-digg-vs-reddit-parte-i
Mu got himself buried, thus Slashered makes his move:
digg.com/comics_animation/Alien_Salamanders_attack_Digg_a...
Blog links:
Division by Zer0:
dbzer0.com/blog/the-three-struggling-powers-of-non-social...
NowSourcing:
nowsourcing.com/2009/04/13/on-being-a-webcomic/
blography:
catinatree.com/blography/view.php?s=5090&p=841
Almost Effortless:
almosteffortless.com/2009/04/12/weekly-digest-4-12-09/
Conceptis Addict:
conceptisaddict.blogspot.com/2009/04/i-am-in-cartoon.html
Radio Exile:
radioexile.com/2009/04/09/daily-dose-thursday-linkage-18/
OLM:
Give Up Internet:
giveupinternet.com/2009/04/09/digg-vs-reddit-war-by-ncomm...
in these days Europe remembers the August days in former Czechoslovakia, when the Soviets and their allies (including DDR, East Germany) occupied this country to destroy all efforts of a liberal and human socialism, the so called Prague Spring with Alexander Dubcek.
time to remember Dubcek, the great and liberal Vaclav Havel, and also Jan Palach, the 20y old student from Melnik, who burned himself on Wenzels place in January 1969 to protest against the soviet occupation.
twenty years later the iron curtain began to fall down, and in 1990 I had the chance for my first visit in Prague and Bohemia. the begin of my deep love for this city and this country, with which my family is connected in several ways
the photos of this first visit are blurred, shots from diapositives,. but I like them as paintings of this exciting time, full of hope for democracy and liberalism in Europe. time to remember all this. and one can imagine the Prague during the socialist time, lots of renovated buildings, but also multiple decay of historic buildings.
during all my visits there I could watch the transformation to a renovated, colourful, vibrant, capitalistic and nowadays often overcrowded city. but I am still in love with Prague...
The wind blew as 'twad blawn its last;
The rattling showers rose on the blast;
The speedy gleams the darkness swallow'd;
Loud, deep, and lang, the thunder bellow'd:
That night, a child might understand,
The devil had business on his hand.
RABBIE BURNS
Robert Burns (25 January 1759 – 21 July 1796) (also known as Rabbie Burns, Scotland's favourite son, the Ploughman Poet, Robden of Solway Firth, the Bard of Ayrshire and in Scotland as simply The Bard was a Scottish poet and a lyricist. He is widely regarded as the national poet of Scotland, and is celebrated worldwide. He is the best known of the poets who have written in the Scots language, although much of his writing is also in English and a "light" Scots dialect, accessible to an audience beyond Scotland. He also wrote in standard English, and in these his political or civil commentary is often at its most blunt.
He is regarded as a pioneer of the Romantic movement, and after his death he became a great source of inspiration to the founders of both liberalism and socialism. A cultural icon in Scotland and among the Scottish Diaspora around the world, celebration of his life and work became almost a national charismatic cult during the 19th and 20th centuries, and his influence has long been strong on Scottish literature.
I have posted this on his birthday.
in these days Europe remembers the August days in former Czechoslovakia, when the Soviets and their allies (including DDR, East Germany) occupied this country to destroy all efforts of a liberal and human socialism, the so called Prague Spring with Alexander Dubcek.
time to remember Dubcek, the great and liberal Vaclav Havel, and also Jan Palach, the 20y old student from Melnik, who burned himself on Wenzels place in January 1969 to protest against the soviet occupation.
twenty years later the iron curtain began to fall down, and in 1990 I had the chance for my first visit in Prague and Bohemia. the begin of my deep love for this city and this country, with which my family is connected in several ways
the photos of this first visit are blurred, shots from diapositives,. but I like them as paintings of this exciting time, full of hope for democracy and liberalism in Europe. time to remember all this. and one can imagine the Prague during the socialist time, lots of renovated buildings, but also multiple decay of historic buildings.
during all my visits there I could watch the transformation to a renovated, colourful, vibrant, capitalistic and nowadays often overcrowded city. but I am still in love with Prague...
One of Hungary’s most significant prime ministers, Imre Nagy – here at Vértanúk tere (Martyrs' square) standing atop his own gnarled copper-wrought bridge – had a decisive role in the 1956 revolution against the Soviet Union. Though this would ultimately lead to his execution, it was the start of Hungary regaining control.
Imre Nagy is remembered with great affection in today’s Hungary. Although a communist leader during its years of one-party rule, Nagy was the voice of liberalism and reform, advocating national communism, free from the shackles of the Soviet Union. Following the Hungarian Revolution of 1956, Nagy was arrested, tried in secret and executed. His rehabilitation and reburial in 1989 played a significant and symbolic role in ending communist rule in Hungary.
Nagey was secretly tried and executed on June 17th 1958 for treason and attempting “to overthrow the democratic state order”. The Hungarians were only told of his execution once it had been carried out. Nagy was buried in a remote area of the Kozma Street Cemetery and nothing about his life or death was allowed to be celebrated or commemorated by the new hard-line government.
In 1989, after the end of the Cold War, Nagy’s grave was found with other victims from the 1956 Uprising in an area overrun with weeds etc. The area was renewed and Nagy, along with others, was given what many Hungarians would have deemed a proper burial with a marked grave. An estimated 100,000 people attended his re-internment.
Day 17 of Occupy Wall Street saw zombie bankers chasing money. A few photos from the Zombie march and around camp. October 3, 2011
Good Magazine: The (Un)Official Occupy Wall Street Photographer's 15 Favorite Frames
The Occupy Wall Street Creative Commons Project
Day 1 September 17 Photos - Preoccupation and Occupation Begins
Day 2 September 18 Photos - People settle in; cardboard sign menage begins
Day 3 September 19 Photos - Community forms; protest signs
Day 7 September 23 Photos - First rain, protest signs, life
Day 8 September 24 Photos - Pepper spray day, Zuni Tikka, people
Day 21 October 6 Photos - Naomi Klein
Day 23 October 8 - Faces of OWS
Day 28 October 13 - Tom Morello of RATM
Day 31 - protesting Chihuahua and The Daily Show
Day 36 - Parents and Kids Day and quite a crowd
Day 40 - protesting hotties, Reverend Billy and tents
Day 43 Photos - Snow storm at OWS of the first NYC winter snowfall
Day 47 - Solidarity with Occupy Oakland
Day 52 November 7 - Jonathan Lethem, Lynn Nottage and Jennifer Egan
Day 53 November 8 - David Crosby and Graham Nash play OWS
Day 57 November 12 - Former NJ Gov. Jim McGreevey
Day 60 November 15 - Police evict protesters from Zuccotti
Occupy Colorado Springs Colorado on November 20
Do you want to see the Occupy Wall Street series laid out thematically? Click here
I have always worshipped naked female beauty and it might have been perceived as being letcherous but obviously it was a different kind of fascination and more about myself. That stayed with me when I became an adult and I adored the Art Nouveau Flower Girls so sensual and subtle. For the people at the end of the Nineteenth Century it was their kind of The Sixties because strict Victorian values had been replaced by a feeling of the dawn of the modern age we are now in and a new convienence world. Of course it was all an illusion as World War One brought everone back to a grim reality. However Art Nouveau resufaced in The Sixties as it was a bit 'trippy' and had connotations of liberalism and free love. I think I am very much that type of girl as I think whatever one does is okay if it's done for the right reasons and doesn't hurt anyone else. Yes I guess in my old age I'm a bit of a hippy as I do as I please and live for all the little pleasures..
Historical research reveals that diverse political rationalities have framed the political means and objectives of state frontiers and borders, just as the difficult work of making borders actual has drawn upon a great variety of technologies
The single word ”border” conceals a multiplicity and implies a constancy where genealogical investigation uncovers mutation and descent. Historical research reveals that diverse political rationalities have framed the political means and objectives of state frontiers and borders, just as the difficult work of making borders actual has drawn upon a great variety of technologies and heterogeneous administrative practices, ranging from maps of the territory, the creation of specialized border officials, and architectures of fortification to today’s experimentation with bio- digitalized forms of surveillance. This chapter argues that we are witnessing a novel development within this history of borders and border-making, what I want to call the emergence of the humanitarian border. While a great deal has been written about the militarization, securitization and fortification of borders today, there is far less consideration of the humanitarianization of borders. But if the investment of border regimes by biometric technologies rightly warrants being treated as an event within the history of the making and remaking of borders (Amoore 2006), then arguably so too does the reinvention of the border as a space of humanitarian government.
Under what conditions are we seeing the rise of humanitarian borders? The emergence of the humanitarian border goes hand in hand with the move which has made state frontiers into privileged symbolic and regulatory instruments within strategies of migration control. It is part of a much wider trend that has been dubbed the ”rebordering” of political and territorial space (Andreas and Biersteker 2003). The humanitarian border emerges once it becomes established that border crossing has become, for thousands of migrants seeking, for a variety of reasons, to access the territories of the global North, a matter of life and death. It crystallizes as a way of governing this novel and disturbing situation,and compensating for the social violence embodied in the regime of migration control.The idea of a humanitarian border might sound at first counterintuitive or even oxymoronic. After all, we often think of contemporary humanitarianism as a force that, operating in the name of the universal but endangered subject of humanity, transcends the walled space of the inter-national system. This is, of course, quite valid. Yet it would be a mistake to draw any simple equation between humanitarian projects and what Deleuze and Guattari would call logics of deterritoralization. While humanitarian programmes might unsettle certain norms of statehood, it is important to recognize the ways in which the exercise of humanitarian power is connected to the actualization of new spaces. Whether by its redefinition of certain locales as humanitarian ”zones” and crises as ”emergencies” (Calhoun 2004), the authority it confers on certain experts to move rapidly across networks of aid and intervention, or its will to designate those populating these zones as ”victims,” it seems justified to follow Debrix’s (1998) observation that humanitarianism implies reterritorialization on top of deterritorialization. Humanitarian zones can materialize in various situations – in conflict zones, amidst the relief of famine, and against the backdrop of state failure. But the case that interests me in what follows is a specific one: a situation where the actual borders of states and gateways to the territory become themselves zones of humanitarian government. Understanding the consequences of this is paramount, since it has an important bearing on what is often termed the securitization of borders and citizenship.
Foucault and Frontiers
It is probably fair to say that the theme of frontiers is largely absent from the two courses that are today read together as Foucault’s lectures on ”governmentality” (Foucault 1991; 2007; 2008). This is not to suggest that frontiers receive no mention at all. Within these lectures we certainly encounter passing remarks on the theme. For instance, Foucault speaks at one point of ”the administrative state, born in the territoriality of national boundaries in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and corresponding to a society of regulation and discipline” (Foucault 1991: 104).1 Elsewhere, he notes how the calculation and demarcation of new frontiers served as one of the practical elements of military-diplomatic technology, a machine he associates with the government of Europe in the image of a balance of power and according to the governmental logic of raison d’état. ”When the diplomats, the ambassadors who negotiated the treaty of Westphalia, received instructions from their government, they were explicitly advised to ensure that the new frontiers, the distribution of states, the new relationships to be established between the German states and the Empire, and the zones of influence of France, Sweden, and Austria be established in terms of a principle: to maintain a balance between the different European states” (Foucault 2007: 297).
But these are only hints of what significance the question of frontiers might have within the different technologies of power which Foucault sought to analyze. They are only fragmentary reflections on the place borders and frontiers might occupy within the genealogy of the modern state which Foucault outlines with his research into governmentality.2
Why was Foucault apparently not particularly interested in borders when he composed these lectures? One possible answer is suggested by Elden’s careful and important work on power-knowledge and territory. Elden takes issue with Foucault for the way in which he discusses territorial rule largely as a foil which allows him to provide a more fully-worked out account of governmentality and its administration of population. Despite the fact that the term appears prominently in the title of Foucault’s lectures, ”the issue of territory continually emerges only to be repeatedly marginalized, eclipsed, and underplayed” (Elden 2007: 1). Because Foucault fails to reckon more fully with the many ways in which the production of territory – and most crucially its demarcation by practices of frontier marking and control – serves as a precondition for the government of population, it is not surprising that the question of frontiers occupies little space in his narrative.But there is another explanation for the relative absence of questions of frontiers in Foucault’s writing on governmentality. And here we have to acknowledge that, framed as it is previously, this is a problematic question. For it risks the kind of retrospective fallacy which projects a set of very contemporary issues and concerns onto Foucault’s time. It is probably fair to speculate that frontiers and border security was not a political issue during the 1970s in the way that it is today in many western states. ”Borders” had yet to be constituted as a sort of meta-issue, capable of condensing a whole complex of political fears and concerns, including globalization, the loss of sovereignty, terrorism, trafficking and unchecked immigration. The question of the welfare state certainly was an issue, perhaps even a meta-issue, when Foucault was lecturing, and it is perhaps not coincidental that he should devote so much space to the examination of pastoralism. But not the border. The point is not to suggest that Foucault’s work evolved in close,
Humanitarian Government
Before I address the question of the humanitarian border, it is necessary to explain what I understand by the humanitarian. Here my thinking has been shaped by recent work that engages the humanitarian not as a set of ideas and ideologies, nor simply as the activity of certain nongovernmental actors and organizations, but as a complex domain possessing specific forms of governmental reason. Fassin’s work on this theme is particularly important. Fassin demonstrates that humanitarianism can be fruitfully connected to the broader field of government which Foucault outlined, where government is not a necessary attribute of states but a rationalized activity than can be carried out by all sorts of agents, in various contexts, and towards multiple ends. At its core, ”Humanitarian government can be defined as the administration of human collectivities in the name of a higher moral principle which sees the preservation of life and the alleviation of suffering as the highest value of action” (Fassin 2007: 151). As he goes on to stress, the value of such a definition is that we do not see a particular state, or a non-state form such as a nongovernmental organization, as the necessary agent of humanitarian action. Instead, it becomes possible to think in terms of a complex assemblage, comprising particular forms of humanitarian.reason, specific forms of authority (medical, legal, spiritual) but also certain technologies of government – such as mechanisms for raising funds and training volunteers, administering aid and shelter, documenting injustice, and publicizing abuse. Seen from this angle humanitarianism appears as a much more supple, protean thing. Crucially, it opens up our ability to perceive ”a broader political and moral logic at work both within and outside state forms” (ibid.).
If the humanitarian can be situated in relation to the analytics of government, it can also be contextualized in relation to the biopolitical. ”Not only did the last century see the emergence of regimes committed to the physical destruction of populations,” observes Redfield, ”but also of entities devoted to monitoring and assisting populations in maintaining their physical existence, even while protesting the necessity of such an action and the failure of anyone to do much more than this bare minimum” (2005: 329). It is this ”minimalist biopolitics,” as Redfield puts it, that will be so characteristic of the humanitarian. And here the accent should be placed on the adjective “minimalist” if we are not to commit the kind of move which I criticized above, namely collapsing everything new into existing Foucauldian categories. It is important to regard contemporary humanitarianism as a novel formation and a site of ambivalence and undecideability, and not just as one more instance of what Hardt and Negri (2000) might call global “biopolitical production.”The Birth of the Humanitarian Border
In a press release issued on June 29, 2007, the International Organization for Migration (IOM) publicized a visit which its then Director General, Brunson McKinley, was about to make to a ”reception centre for migrants” on the Mediterranean island of Lampedusa (IOM 2007). The Director General is quoted as saying: ”Many more boats will probably arrive on Lampedusa over the summer with their desperate human cargo and we have to ensure we can adequately respond to their immediate needs.... This is why IOM will continue to work closely with the Italian government, the Italian Red Cross, UNHCR and other partners to provide appropriate humanitarian responses to irregular migrants and asylum seekers reaching the island.”
The same press release observes that IOM’s work with its ”partners” was part of a wider effort to improve the administration of the ”reception” (the word ”detention” is conspicuously absent) and ”repatriation” of ”irregular migrants” in Italy. Reception centers were being expanded, and problems of overcrowding alleviated. The statement goes on to observe that IOM had opened its office on Lampedusa in April 2006. Since that time ”Forced returns from Lampedusa [had] stopped.”
Lampedusa is a small Italian island located some 200 km south of Sicily and 300 km to the north of Libya. Its geographical location provides a clue as to how it is that in 2004 this Italian outpost first entered the spotlight of European and even world public attention, becoming a potent signifier for anxieties about an international migration crisis (Andrijasevic 2006). For it was then that this Italian holiday destination became the main point of arrival for boats carrying migrants from Libya to Italy. That year more than 10,000 migrants are reported to have passed through the ”temporary stay and assistance centre” (CPTA) the Italian state maintains on the island. The vast majority had arrived in overcrowded, makeshift boats after a perilous sea journey lasting up to several weeks. Usually these boats
are intercepted in Italian waters by the Italian border guards and the migrants transferred to the holding center on the island. Following detention, which can last for more than a month, they are either transferred to other CPTAs in Sicily and southern Italy, or expelled to Libya.Finally, there is a point to be made about humanitarianism, power and order. Those looking to locate contemporary humanitarianism within a bigger picture would perhaps follow the lead of Hardt and Negri. As these theorists of ”Empire” see things, NGOs like Amnesty International and Médecins sans Frontières (MSF) are, contrary to their own best intentions, implicated in global order. As agents of ”moral intervention” who, because they participate in the construction of emergency, ”prefigure the state of exception from below,” these actors serve as the preeminent ”frontline force of imperial intervention.” As such, Hardt and Negri see humanitarianism as ”completely immersed in the biopolitical context of the constitution of Empire” (Hardt and Negri 2000: 36).Humanitarianism, Borders, Politics
Foucauldian writing about borders has mirrored the wider field of governmentality studies in at least one respect. While it has produced some fascinating and insightful accounts of contemporary strategies and technologies of border-making and border policing, it has tended to confine its attention to official and often state-sanctioned projects. Political dynamics and political acts have certainly not been ignored. But little attention has been paid to the possibility that politics and resistance operate not just in an extrinsic relationship to contemporary regimes, but within them.12 To date this literature has largely failed to view politics as something constitutive and productive of border regimes and technologies. That is to say, there is little appreciation of the ways in which movements of opposition, and those particular kinds of resistance which Foucault calls ”counter conduct,” can operate not externally to modes of bordering but by means of ”a series of exchanges” and ”reciprocal supports” (Foucault 2007: 355).
There is a certain paradox involved when we speak of Foucault and frontiers. In certain key respects it could be said that Foucault is one of our most eminent and original theorists of bordering. For at the heart of one of his most widely read works – namely Discipline and Punish – what does one
find if not the question of power and how its modalities should be studied by focusing on practices of partitionment, segmentation, division, enclosure; practices that will underpin the ordering and policing of ever more aspects of the life of populations from the nineteenth century onwards. But while Foucault is interested in a range of practices which clearly pertain to the question of bordering understood in a somewhat general sense, one thing the reading of his lectures on security, governmentality and biopolitics reveals is that he had little to say explicitly about the specific forms of bordering associated with the government of the state. To put it differently, Foucault dealt at length with what we might call the microphysics of bordering, but much less with the place of borders considered at the level of tactics and strategies of governmentality.Recent literature has begun to address this imbalance, demonstrating that many of Foucault’s concepts are useful and important for understanding what kinds of power relations and governmental regimes are at stake in contemporary projects which are re-making state borders amidst renewed political concerns over things like terrorism and illegal immigration. However, the overarching theme of this chapter has been the need for caution when linking Foucault’s concepts to the study of borders and frontiers today. While analytics like biopolitics, discipline and neoliberalism offer all manner of insights, we need to avoid the trap which sees Foucault’s toolbox as something ready-made for any given situation. The challenge of understanding the emergent requires the development of new theoretical tools, not to mention the sharpening of older, well-used implements. With this end in mind the chapter has proposed the idea of the humanitarian border as a way of registering an event within the genealogy of the frontier, but also, although I have not developed it here, within the genealogy of citizenship.
What I have presented previously is only a very cursory overview of certain features of the humanitarianization of borders, most notably its inscription within regimes of knowledge, and its constitutive relationship to politics. In future research it would be interesting to undertake a fuller mapping of the humanitarian border in relation to certain trajectories of government. While we saw how themes of biopolitical and neoliberal government are pertinent in understanding the contemporary management of spaces like the detention center, it would seem especially relevant to consider the salience of pastoralism. Pastoral power has received far less attention within studies of governmentality than, say, discipline or liberal government (but see Dean 1999; Golder 2007; Hindess 1996; Lippert 2004). But here again, I suspect, it will be important to revise our concepts in the light of emergent practices and rationalities. For the ways in which NGOs and humanitarians engage in the governance of migrants and refugees today have changed quite significantly from the kinds of networks of care, self-examination and salvation which Foucault identified with pastoralism. For instance, and to take but one example, the pastoral care of migrants, whether in situations of sanctuary or detention, is not organized as a life-encompassing, permanent activity as it was for the church, or later, in a secular version, the welfare state. Instead, it is a temporary and ad hoc intervention. Just as Foucault’s notion of neo-liberalism was intended to register important transformations within the genealogy of liberal government, it may prove useful to think in terms of the neo-pastoral when we try to make better sense of the phenomenon of humanitarian government at/of borders, and of many other situations as well.
williamwalters.net/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/2011-Foucau...
9. The »ideal« of dark tendencies is the person without world-views.
29. In the background of the modern world’s conceptions, elaborated by a vast rational apparatus, there work manias which are generated by demonic forces.
58. Amalgamation most extremely contrasts with unity.
137. The case when someone ignores essentiality involves not only that the most important thing starts missing but that there can be found something else in its place.
138. Sticking to the only-human leads not to remaining in the human sphere but to becoming sub-human. For persisting in something is to loose it: to loose that which was intended to be retained.
307. Those forces that manipulate the world, so that they can work undisturbed, want to accomplish two things: first and foremost that their existence be questioned, and if this does not work, they would at least like to appear undefeatable.
309. Disintegration can also be seen on the surface. The act of disintegration, however, is forever under the surface which makes it even more difficult to notice it.
310. The path leading to chaos is not yet chaotic, only in its ultimate phase. For, though a chaos-creating force is creating chaos in its course, it necessarily gets structured into dark order of things.
314. That which is in opposition to what transcends life, ultimately, is in opposition to what belongs to the domain of life - for life gets life from what transcends life.
315. As the forces of modernity first annihilate the connection with the supernatural and ruin man’s relationship with nature and only then destroy nature, in the same way they destroy the connection with what transcends life first and only then annihilate life itself.
317. First, only he who maintains his principles is considered a fool (though he is not), then it comes true that only the fool maintains his principles...
318. Those things which are usually referred to as superstitions are in fact innocent and harmless superstitions. The harming and harmful superstitions appear in totally different forms such as evolutionism, antihierarchical views, beliefs in the equality of mankind and as all those phenomena which, philosophically speaking, belong to the realm of humanism.
328. Modernity is the way to conformity - the way to conformity forever in the direction of the lowest.
329. Kali-yuga is characterised mainly by the passionate clinging to the continuous deterioration and disintegration of consciousness.
331. »Being devoured«: this is the fundamental word for what the rule of darkness realises; being devoured, which is followed by annihilation.
332. Kali-yuga is not merely a state but a threatening and devouring throat.
333. The disintegrating forces of darkness are living forces, living forces that bring death.
335. The forces of darkness can gain power in the world only because they have already gained power in the soul.
341. Kali-yuga is present in the consciousness, in the strict sense of the word, in the human psyche, in the spiritual manifestations and deeds of man, just as it is present in the surrounding world, in buildings, in music, in the different manifestations of artistic trends and in the very processes of nature. Wherever man directs his attention, be it inward or outward, he is everywhere surrounded and ruled by a world which is under the aegis of antitraditionality - that is being cut off from God, heaven, transcendence, superiority and the essence.
344. Modernity is not a stiffened, static reality, but a dynamic process, which is continuously working to make itself darker and darker.
361. Today’s man has gradually built a denatured world for himself: he has already been cut off from the supernatural, and now he is about to take leave of the natural.
364. The specific blindnesses of the dark age as a rule cloak themselves in rationalism.
366. A machine is demonic for it contributes to the emergence of a considerable alienation between producer, production and product - and this is always accompanied by an inner alienation.
375. The forces of darkness and the forces of light in a way want the same in the present age: to make the kali-yuga progress to its end. But whereas the forces of darkness tend to annihilate the true values as well, the forces of light tend to maintain the true values in the course of kali-yuga so as to serve in the building up of a future golden age.
376. One has to accommodate himself to the modern world so that his powers will not wear him out - but not in the sense of bending and assimilating to it, but as a kind of acclimatisation; for he who gets acclimatised will not »serve« the climate but resists the climate.
377. Despite all its losing track, deterioration and dissipation, today’s world and the tendencies operating in it show one direction: the direction of nothingness.
381. The postmodern state, in which everything can be manifested without any real consequence, and in which everything will be free, but nothing will matter, must be accomplished before everything falls apart in postmodernity. Without this, the final disintegration will not come about, since there would always be left certain positive remnants.
404. As light magnetises certain insects, so spiritual darkness attracts the overwhelming majority of people.
427. Everything that is against the supernatural also turns, sooner or later, against the natural.
488. Liberalism not only represents the view according to which every man is equal (to one another), but it also does its best to abolish quality in order to make every men equal.
528. Modern culture is the culture of anti-spirituality and anti-traditionality. Consequently, it can only be considered as pseudo-culture, or rather, counter-culture. This term denotes counter-cultivation, that is, the cultivation of man and the world in such a way and to such a degree that they are continually becoming more fit to receive the dark instead of the light.
529. Counter-culture does not simply mean being a poor hand at culture or that man’s world is inundated with cheap things instead of higher values. The real meaning of counter-culture is that man and his world turn in a completely different direction to the one they ought to, since instead of dominating and cultivating the light, he dominates and cultivates the dark.
531. That which is called the Enlightenment today was, unambiguously, darkening; and exactly that which was dark in it resulted in it being called »Enlightenment«: the denial of the spirit.
533. Turning towards the earth clearly reveals darkening and decay. But how degenerated this [materialistic] view has become is really shown by the fact that it is called »Enlightenment« instead of »Endarkenment«.
[The contemporary manifestations of these kinds of processes at the time were similarly criticised by Plato, according to whom this attitude originated in »grievous ignorance which, however, appears to be the greatest discretion.« (Laws 886B).]
538. The bulk of negative processes and tendencies, be they communism, environmental pollution or economic crises, might be suppressed and reversed. However, there is one process which cannot be held back, and there is not even a wish to hold it back, namely, the rapidly increasing »not-anything-like-ness« or »not-any-kind-of-ness«.
738. Each world that has lost its origin-awareness is characterized by annihilation.
773. Since the return to the origin is only possible from well-ordered states, anti-traditional forces and powers primarily attack the internal and external order of man. This way they create such counter-conditions from which the return to the origin becomes impossible, or almost impossible.
The Soul of America
Posted by Ravi Zacharias on July 2, 2016
Years ago, Francis Schaeffer and C. Everett Koop penned their book, Whatever Happened to the Human Race? It was a book that warned of the decisions that were being made within a culture stepping into new and terrifying terrain. They saw clearly where we were headed. We are now there.
I narrow that title down to what is happening on the home front here in America.
Listening to the blistering political rhetoric, I am asked all over the world, “What has happened in America?” The question should go deeper. Whatever happened to the American soul? We are truly at the cliff’s precipitous edge and the fall could be long and deadly. Why? We have a deep crisis of the soul that is killing us morally and we have no recourse. We have no recourse because the only cure has been disparaged and mocked by the elite and the powerful. And those very ideologies are now presiding over the slaughter of our citizens while the abundance of speeches is inversely proportional to the wisdom they contain and Reason bleeds to death before our eyes.
These may be strong words but I am staggered by all that is happening around us while the powerful fiddle and bodies litter the floors of offices, airports, and even restaurants. How many families will be shattered and offered up at the altar of our foolishness?
Let me connect some dots to trace where the real killing is happening. Dare I say a kind of genocide stares us in the face? Genocide is defined as the mass killing of a particular group of people. I have started to ask myself whether genocide is the first step towards mass murder or has a kind of mass murder already taken place before we experience genocide and the mangled bodies? I propose to you that multiple killings have preceded the horrors with which we now live. Those killings prepared the ground for the literal burial of our own people.
Three killings in particular are as real as the carnage we see when suicide vests are detonated: the death of morality, the death of truth, and the death of reason. With such tragic exterminations, we now find ourselves in ever-present danger, constantly lectured to by those who have all the bodyguards they and their families need while the rest of us are sitting ducks for evil people whose rights are protected more than those of their slaughtered victims. Why is this happening? We are at war but not only with an enemy. We are at war within our own culture, and whether we will ever win over the enemy depends on whether we win this war within our own souls.
At first, how I connect these dots may seem far-fetched, but they are indeed connected. Some time ago Robert Shapiro, the well-known lawyer of the famed O.J. Simpson trial, was being interviewed by Megyn Kelly of Fox News. She asked if justice had been served in that case. In a mind-stupefying, pathetic answer, he said, “There is legal justice and moral justice. Legal justice was served.” Maybe it was rightly called the trial of the century: We have entered the twenty-first century having amputated law from morality. Welcome to the uncivil civilization legalizing murder. That an intelligent, educated, supposedly legal scholar can make a statement like that and think he has defended a noble cause is fatal to our culture. Maybe that’s why Shakespeare described Satan as “the prince of lawyers.” If that’s what legal theory espouses we are in great peril. I have no doubt many an honorable lawyer cringed at that response but probably none was shocked. This is where law has drifted and come unhinged from any moral moorings. When justice is decapitated and something can be legal but immoral, we know we have already killed the heart of what it means to be human. The morality of the beast is now normal. Is it any wonder that Nazi judges felt they were doing the “right thing” by upholding their legal prerogative that resulted in the death of millions? Our society is being dragged towards the morgue because the law has held the gun to the heart of morality.
Ironically, there was something in his response to be applauded. At least he granted there was such a thing as moral justice. So that leads to a deeper question: Should not Morality and Truth be inextricably bound together? That is at the heart of all judgments. What is the truth when a person is killed? But now, I dare say, not only does morality not matter, the truth doesn’t matter either. That has also been buried. If you want a snapshot of our times, here it is: Four brave Americans serving their country murdered by a bunch of hate-filled thugs, whose ideology we are not allowed to identify, received and presided over by a litany of lies, their bodies draped in the national flag, while assurance is given to the bereaved that the culprits will be hunted down, including the one because of whom they were killed. If that scenario doesn’t drive us to our knees, Lord have mercy!
We are in the graveyard of a culture when a most somber moment cannot compel the conscience to tell the truth. Oh, that the victims could have sat up for just a moment and stared down that heinous lie! But it was not to be. One day it will be so as their blood cries out from the ground. As Muggeridge said, “The lie is stuck like a fish bone in the throat of the handheld microphone…. Truth has died, not God.” The noble thing to have done when that blunder was made was to admit a failure for whatever reason and ask for pardon, but not to bury the dead with a lie! As if it is not dark enough for a handful to tell a lie, even worse, in our culture today the lie is no longer a posture to be shunned. We celebrate power over truth, enshrouding the lie with our flag. That is a form of national murder. You see, a blunder is a momentary reality. Upholding a lie is a character flaw, sending that lie into eternity.
The death of morality, the death of truth; then we come to the last, the death of reason. Aristotle reminded us that the first law of logic is identity. We must identify what we are talking about. A particular identifiable characteristic is indispensable to the referent. We must identify the characteristics of the thing we define. That is necessary to understanding the thing and to resisting contradiction. But as destroyers enter our lands and desire to pillage and kill, we are led by rhetoric that kills the first law of logic, the law of identity. We are told that identifying the enemy is not that important; strange that the same logic is not employed to all other local inimical ideologies but only seems to apply to Islam. Honest Muslims themselves wish to call it for what it is but our clever linguistic sleight of hand seems to restrict us from such identity—and so we bury our dead without identifying why the killer killed them. First, we try to mitigate our peril by this incredible new coinage, “radicalized,” that conveniently shifts the blame from the active shooter to the remote controller. Now we don’t even wish to identify what controls the remote controller. Propaganda that kills identity is deadly to the soul of a culture.
We are sliding into the future with evil stalking us but no morality, no truth, and no reason to guide us. America may be flirting with a self-inflicted mortal wound. Or it could well be a killing that is designed by a postmodern ideology masquerading as political correctness. When liberalism, whose legitimate child is relativism, has played itself out it will be a Pyrrhic victory to find ourselves in the hands of those whose identity is no longer in doubt. And when they are in control, the very means they used to hide their identity will be silenced as well. They will preside over the last rites of politically correct enforcers and a “free press” that abused freedom and celebrated the lie ‘til they themselves were silenced, buried by the truth they never wanted to expose.
There always has been, and is now more than ever, only one hope for rescue. If we abide in God’s truth revealed in his Son, then we shall know the truth and the truth will set us free. That is why I say again and again that we must dispense with our verbal arsenal that speaks only in terms of right and left. We have forgotten there is an up and a down. May God help us! We need His transforming power to change our thinking and to give us a hunger for what is true. True freedom is not in doing whatever we wish but in doing what we ought. That has been buried in America. And only one who knows the way out of the grave can give us a second chance to live: Jesus, the way, the truth, and the life that sets us free from within first, before we learn to deal with the lies around us.
As my prayer for this July 4th, I think of the great hymn by Isaac Watts prayed often in moments of drastic transition. I have added a fourth verse for our times.
Our God, our Help in ages past,
Our Hope for years to come,
Our Shelter from the stormy blast,
And our eternal Home!
Under the shadow of Thy throne
Thy saints have dwelt secure;
Sufficient is Thine arm alone,
And our defense is sure.
Before the hills in order stood
Or earth received her frame,
From everlasting Thou art God,
To endless years the same.
We need thee now as ne’er before,
We mourn the wisdom gone;
Transform our land forevermore—
Redemption through your Son.
A Monumento a Isaac Arriaga sits in Parque Juegos Morelia adjacent to Morelia's aqueducto.
Arriaga who died in 1921 built bridges between democratic liberalism and radical Jacobinism that incubated the Mexican revolution.
BIO:
Isaac Arriaga Ledesma was born 01 June, 1890 in Puruándiro, Michoacán. He studied at the Colegio de San Nicolás Morelia where he participated with some members of his generation in the edition of the literary magazine Flor de Loto.
As a medical student he joined the Constitutionalist Army reaching the rank of colonel in 1917.
Arriaga participated in the founding of the Michoacán Socialist Party, which supported the candidacy of General Francisco J. Mújica for governor of the State of Michoacán.
He later became a federal deputy for the District of Uruapan. During the government of General Mújica, from 1920 to 1921, he served as president of the Local Agrarian Commission and as a professor of National History at the Colegio de San Nicolás.
He died on May 12, 1921 during a confrontation between Catholics and trade unionists.
The monument was placed here in 1984.
Our Daily Challenge:
GREAT & small is the topic for January 1st, 2023
*********************
Conservatism is the Anvil and Liberalism is the Hammer.
What they forge working together is...
Democracy
and
'A More Perfect Union'.
~ Rand
in these days Europe remembers the August days in former Czechoslovakia, when the Soviets and their allies (including DDR, East Germany) occupied this country to destroy all efforts of a liberal and human socialism, the so called Prague Spring with Alexander Dubcek.
time to remember Dubcek, the great and liberal Vaclav Havel, and also Jan Palach, the 20y old student from Melnik, who burned himself on Wenzels place in January 1969 to protest against the soviet occupation.
twenty years later the iron curtain began to fall down, and in 1990 I had the chance for my first visit in Prague and Bohemia. the begin of my deep love for this city and this country, with which my family is connected in several ways
the photos of this first visit are blurred, shots from diapositives,. but I like them as paintings of this exciting time, full of hope for democracy and liberalism in Europe. time to remember all this. and one can imagine the Prague during the socialist time, lots of renovated buildings, but also multiple decay of historic buildings.
during all my visits there I could watch the transformation to a renovated, colourful, vibrant, capitalistic and nowadays often overcrowded city. but I am still in love with Prague...
Italian Revolutionary Giuseppe Garibaldi's Brazilian wife and comrade-in-arms Anita Garibaldi died in 1849. The beautiful, open and kind Anita I met used a humourous and efficient technique to link herself to the romanticist and liberalist historical figure, by stating the obvious, namely that she was NOT her.
in these days Europe remembers the August days in former Czechoslovakia, when the Soviets and their allies (including DDR, East Germany) occupied this country to destroy all efforts of a liberal and human socialism, the so called Prague Spring with Alexander Dubcek.
time to remember Dubcek, the great and liberal Vaclav Havel, and also Jan Palach, the 20y old student from Melnik, who burned himself on Wenzels place in January 1969 to protest against the soviet occupation.
twenty years later the iron curtain began to fall down, and in 1990 I had the chance for my first visit in Prague and Bohemia. the begin of my deep love for this city and this country, with which my family is connected in several ways
the photos of this first visit are blurred, shots from diapositives,. but I like them as paintings of this exciting time, full of hope for democracy and liberalism in Europe. time to remember all this. and one can imagine the Prague during the socialist time, lots of renovated buildings, but also multiple decay of historic buildings.
during all my visits there I could watch the transformation to a renovated, colourful, vibrant, capitalistic and nowadays often overcrowded city. but I am still in love with Prague...
A spiteful, hateful, vicious, callous and mean harpy. Good riddance, Thatcher. Even Hell doesn't want you. Hope your "bastard sons" will follow you soon.
..........................................................
Margaret Thatcher was the most divisive and destructive Prime Minister of modern times.
Mass Unemployment, factory closures, communities destroyed – this is her legacy. She was a fighter and her enemy was the British working class. Her victories were aided by the politically corrupt leaders of the Labour Party and of many Trades Unions. It is because of policies begun by her that we are in this mess today.
Other prime ministers have followed her path, notably Tony Blair. She was the organ grinder, he was the monkey.
Remember she called Mandela a terrorist and took tea with the torturer and murderer Pinochet.
How should we honour her? Let’s privatise her funeral. Put it out to competitive tender and accept the cheapest bid. It’s what she would have wanted."
Ken Loach (09/04/2013)
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Portuguese
A Praça de D. Pedro IV, mais conhecida por Rossio (na grafia antiga Rocio), é uma praça da Baixa de Lisboa, tem constituído um dos centros nevrálgicos da cidade.
No período romano aqui existiu um hipódromo.
Esta zona baixa da cidade, antes do século XII, era navegável. Era chamada Valverde, devido a um afluente do rio Tejo. O imundo caneiro do Rossio foi coberto ainda na Lisboa de quatrocentos. Era uma praça irregularmente esguelhada mas foi sempre um espaço amplo onde se realizavam feiras e mercados.
English
Rossio Square is the popular name of the Pedro IV Square (Portuguese: Praça de D. Pedro IV) in the city of Lisbon, in Portugal. It is located in the Pombaline Downtown of Lisbon and has been one of its main squares since the Middle Ages. It has been the setting of popular revolts and celebrations, bullfights and executions, and is now a preferred meeting place of Lisbon natives and tourists alike.
The current name of the Rossio pays homage to Pedro IV, King of Portugal as well as first Emperor of Brasil (as Pedro I). The Column of Pedro IV is in the middle of the square.
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Portuguese
Other information about Dom Pedro IV
Dom Pedro I (do Brasil) ou Dom Pedro IV (de Portugal) (Queluz, 12 de outubro de 1798 — Queluz, 24 de setembro de 1834), alcunhado o Libertador, foi o fundador e primeiro soberano do Império do Brasil. Como rei D. Pedro IV, reinou em Portugal, onde também ficou conhecido como o Libertador, o Liberal e o Rei Soldado. Nascido em Lisboa, D. Pedro foi a quarta criança do rei Dom João VI de Portugal e da rainha Carlota Joaquina, e assim membro da Casa de Bragança. Quando seu país foi invadido por tropas francesas em 1807, foi com sua família para o Brasil.
A deflagração da Revolução Liberal de 1820 no Porto, com a rápida adesão de Lisboa e do resto do país, obrigou o pai de D. Pedro a retornar a Portugal em abril de 1821, deixando-o para governar o Brasil como regente. Teve de lidar com as ameaças de revolucionários e com a insubordinação de tropas portuguesas, as quais foram, no entanto, todas subjugadas. A tentativa do governo português de retirar a autonomia política que o Brasil gozava desde 1808 e tornar o país que havia sido elevado à condição de reino unido a Portugal novamente em uma colônia ultramarina foi recebida com descontentamento geral. Pedro I escolheu o lado brasileiro e declarou a Independência do Brasil de Portugal em 7 de setembro de 1822. Em 12 de outubro foi aclamado imperador brasileiro e, em março de 1824, já havia derrotado todos os exércitos leais a Portugal. Poucos meses depois, Pedro I esmagou a Confederação do Equador, principal reação contra a tendência absolutista e a política centralizadora de seu governo.
Uma rebelião separatista na província sulista da Cisplatina no início de 1826, e a tentativa subsequente de sua anexação pela Províncias Unidas do Rio da Prata (futura Argentina) levaram o império à Guerra da Cisplatina. Em março de 1826, Pedro I se tornou brevemente rei de Portugal com o título de Pedro IV antes de abdicar em favor de sua filha mais velha, Maria II. A situação piorou em 1828 quando a guerra do sul resultou na perda da Cisplatina. Nesse mesmo ano, em Lisboa, o trono de Maria II foi usurpado pelo príncipe Dom Miguel I, irmão mais novo de Pedro I. O relacionamento sexual escandaloso e concorrente com uma cortesã maculou a reputação do imperador. Outras dificuldades surgiram no parlamento brasileiro, onde o conflito sobre se o governo e suas políticas seriam escolhidos pelo monarca ou pela legislatura dominaram os debates políticos de 1826 a 1831. Incapaz de lidar com os problemas do Brasil e de Portugal ao mesmo tempo, em 7 de abril de 1831, Pedro I abdicou em favor de seu filho Dom Pedro II e partiu para a Europa.
Dom Pedro invadiu Portugal à frente de um exército em julho de 1834. Frente ao que parecia inicialmente uma guerra civil nacional, logo se envolveu num conflito em escala muito maior que abrangeu toda a península Ibérica numa luta entre os defensores do liberalismo e aqueles que procuravam o retorno ao absolutismo. Dom Pedro morreu de tuberculose em 24 de setembro de 1834, apenas poucos meses após ele e os liberais terem emergido vitoriosos.
English
Other information about Dom Pedro IV
Dom Pedro I (English: Peter I; 12 October 1798 – 24 September 1834), nicknamed "the Liberator", was the founder and first ruler of the Empire of Brazil. As King Dom Pedro IV, he reigned briefly over Portugal, where he also became known as "the Liberator" as well as "the Soldier King". Born in Lisbon, Pedro I was the fourth child of King Dom João VI of Portugal and Queen Carlota Joaquina, and thus a member of the House of Braganza. When their country was invaded by French troops in 1807, he and his family fled to Portugal's largest and wealthiest colony, Brazil.
The outbreak of the Liberal Revolution of 1820 in Lisbon compelled Pedro I's father to return to Portugal in April 1821, leaving him to rule Brazil as regent. He had to deal with threats from revolutionaries and insubordination by Portuguese troops, all of which he subdued. The Portuguese government's threat to revoke the political autonomy that Brazil had enjoyed since 1808 was met with widespread discontent in Brazil. Pedro I chose the Brazilian side and declared Brazil's independence from Portugal on 7 September 1822. On 12 October, he was acclaimed Brazilian emperor and by March 1824 had defeated all armies loyal to Portugal. A few months later, Pedro I crushed the short-lived Confederation of the Equator, a failed secession attempt by provincial rebels in Brazil's northeast.
A secessionist rebellion in the southern province of Cisplatina in early 1825, and the subsequent attempt by the United Provinces of the Río de la Plata to annex it, led the Empire into the Cisplatine War. In March 1826, Pedro I briefly became king of Portugal before abdicating in favor of his eldest daughter, Dona Maria II. The situation worsened in 1828 when the war in the south resulted in Brazil's loss of Cisplatina. During the same year in Lisbon, Maria II's throne was usurped by Prince Dom Miguel, Pedro I's younger brother. The Emperor's concurrent and scandalous sexual affair with a female courtier tarnished his reputation. Other difficulties arose in the Brazilian parliament, where a struggle over whether the government would be chosen by the monarch or by the legislature dominated political debates from 1826 to 1831. Unable to deal with problems in both Brazil and Portugal simultaneously, on 7 April 1831 Pedro I abdicated in favor of his son Dom Pedro II, and sailed for Europe.
Pedro I invaded Portugal at the head of an army in July 1832. Faced at first with what seemed a national civil war, he soon became involved in a wider conflict that enveloped the Iberian Peninsula in a struggle between proponents of Liberalism and those seeking a return to Absolutism. Pedro I died of tuberculosis on 24 September 1834, just a few months after he and the liberals had emerged victorious. He was hailed by contemporaries and by posterity as a key figure who helped spread the liberal ideals that allowed Brazil and Portugal to move from Absolutist regimes to representative forms of government.
Wikipedia
in these days Europe remembers the August days in former Czechoslovakia, when the Soviets and their allies (including DDR, East Germany) occupied this country to destroy all efforts of a liberal and human socialism, the so called Prague Spring with Alexander Dubcek.
time to remember Dubcek, the great and liberal Vaclav Havel, and also Jan Palach, the 20y old student from Melnik, who burned himself on Wenzels place in January 1969 to protest against the soviet occupation.
twenty years later the iron curtain began to fall down, and in 1990 I had the chance for my first visit in Prague and Bohemia. the begin of my deep love for this city and this country, with which my family is connected in several ways
the photos of this first visit are blurred, shots from diapositives,. but I like them as paintings of this exciting time, full of hope for democracy and liberalism in Europe. time to remember all this. and one can imagine the Prague during the socialist time, lots of renovated buildings, but also multiple decay of historic buildings.
during all my visits there I could watch the transformation to a renovated, colourful, vibrant, capitalistic and nowadays often overcrowded city. but I am still in love with Prague...
Robert F. Kennedy was an American politician and lawyer who served as the 64th U.S. Attorney General from January 1961 to September 1964, and as United States Senator for New York from January 1965 until his assassination in June 1968. Kennedy was a member of the Democratic Party and is often seen as an icon of modern American liberalism. He is buried at Arlington National Cemetery in Arlington, Virginia.
Wednesday, September 28, and Wall Street remains barricaded to the public and tourists alike. Occupy Wall Street has effectively shut down the main strip of the financial district. Photos from Zuccotti Park, September 28 2011.
Good Magazine: The (Un)Official Occupy Wall Street Photographer's 15 Favorite Frames
The Occupy Wall Street Creative Commons Project
Day 1 September 17 Photos - Preoccupation and Occupation Begins
Day 2 September 18 Photos - People settle in; cardboard sign menage begins
Day 3 September 19 Photos - Community forms; protest signs
Day 7 September 23 Photos - First rain, protest signs, life
Day 8 September 24 Photos - Pepper spray day, Zuni Tikka, people
Day 21 October 6 Photos - Naomi Klein
Day 23 October 8 - Faces of OWS
Day 28 October 13 - Tom Morello of RATM
Day 31 - protesting Chihuahua and The Daily Show
Day 36 - Parents and Kids Day and quite a crowd
Day 40 - protesting hotties, Reverend Billy and tents
Day 43 Photos - Snow storm at OWS of the first NYC winter snowfall
Day 47 - Solidarity with Occupy Oakland
Day 52 November 7 - Jonathan Lethem, Lynn Nottage and Jennifer Egan
Day 53 November 8 - David Crosby and Graham Nash play OWS
Day 57 November 12 - Former NJ Gov. Jim McGreevey
Day 60 November 15 - Police evict protesters from Zuccotti
Occupy Colorado Springs Colorado on November 20
Do you want to see the Occupy Wall Street series laid out thematically? Click here
The error of textualism
(A.W. Tozer)
"The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned." 1 Corinthians 2:14
"But the Comforter, the Holy Spirit, whom the Father will send in My name--He will teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I have said to you." John 14:26
"When He, the Spirit of truth comes--He will guide you into all truth." John 16:13
The doctrine of the inability of the human mind to understand divine teaching and the need for divine illumination, is so fully developed in the New Testament, that it is nothing short of astonishing that we should have gone so far astray concerning the whole issue.
Evangelicalism has stood aloof from Liberalism in self-conscious superiority, and has on its own part fallen into the error of textualism--which is simply orthodoxy without the Holy Spirit.
Everywhere among Conservatives we find people who are Bible-taught, but not Spirit-taught. They conceive truth to be something which they can grasp with the mind. If a man holds to the fundamentals of the Christian faith--then he is thought to possess divine truth.
But that is an incorrect assumption. The Bible is a supernatural book--and can be understood only by supernatural aid!
Conservative Christians in this day are stumbling over this truth. We need to re-examine the whole thing. We need to learn that truth consists not in correct doctrine--but in correct doctrine plus the inward enlightenment of the Holy Spirit. A re-preachment of this vital truth could result in a fresh breath from God upon a stale and suffocating orthodoxy.
Most Christians see Bible knowledge as something to be stored away in the mind, along with an inert mass of other facts.
The modern scientist has lost God, amid the wonders of His world.
And we Christians are in real danger of losing God, amid the wonders of His Word!
Scripture truths must be experienced--before we can really know them.
"Lord, I do believe in the authority of the Scriptures, and thank You for that foundation of truth. But I need to remember that even the inspired text is not alive--until the Holy Spirit takes it and enlightens the recipients. May the Spirit indeed take what I teach and embed it in the hearts and minds of my hearers. Amen."
Born in the City of London, 21 February, 1801, the eldest of six children, three boys and three girls; died at Edgbaston, Birmingham, 11 August, 1890.
His father was John Newman, a banker, his mother Jemima Fourdrinier, of a Huguenot family settled in London as engravers and paper-makers. His French pedigree is undoubted. It accounts for his religious training, a modified Calvinism, which he received at his mother's knees; and perhaps it helped towards the "lucid concision" of his phrase when dealing with abstruse subjects. His brother Francis William, also a writer, but wanting in literary charm, turned from the English Church to Deism; Charles Robert, the second son, was very erratic, and professed Atheism. One sister, Mary, died young; Jemima has a place in the cardinal's biography during the crisis of his Anglican career; and to a daughter of Harriet, Anne Mozley, we are indebted for his "Letters and Correspondence" down to 1845, which contains a sequel from his own hand to the "Apologia."
A classic from the day it was completed, the "Apologia" will ever be the chief authority for Newman's early thoughts, and for his judgment on the great religious revival known as the Oxford Movement, of which he was the guide, the philosopher, and the martyr. His immense correspondence, the larger portion of which still awaits publication, cannot essentially change our estimate of one who, though subtle to a degree bordering on refinement, was also impulsive and open with his friends, as well as bold in his confidences to the public. From all that is thus known of him we may infer that Newman's greatness consisted in the union of originality, amounting to genius of the first rank, with a deep spiritual temper, the whole manifesting itself in language of perfect poise and rhythm, in energy such as often has created sects or Churches, and in a personality no less winning than sensitive. Among the literary stars of his time Newman is distinguished by the pure Christian radiance that shines in his life and writings. He is the one Englishman of that era who upheld the ancient creed with a knowledge that only theologians possess, a Shakespearean force of style, and a fervour worthy of the saints. It is this unique combination that raises him above lay preachers de vanitate mundi like Thackeray, and which gives him a place apart from Tennyson and Browning. In comparison with him Keble is a light of the sixth magnitude, Pusey but a devout professor, Liddon a less eloquent Lacordaire. Newman occupies in the nineteenth century a position recalling that of Bishop Butler in the eighteenth. As Butler was the Christian champion against Deism, so Newman is the Catholic apologist in an epoch of Agnosticism, and amid the theories of evolution. He is, moreover, a poet, and his "Dream of Gerontius" far excels the meditative verse of modern singers by its happy shadowing forth in symbol and dramatic scenes of the world behind the veil.
He was brought up from a child to take great delight in reading the Bible; but he had no formed religious convictions until he was fifteen. He used to wish the Arabian tales were true; his mind ran on unknown influences; he thought life possibly a dream, himself an angel, and that his fellow-angels might be deceiving him with the semblance of a material world. He was "very superstitious" and would cross himself on going into the dark. At fifteen he underwent "conversion", though not quite as Evangelicals practise it; from works of the school of Calvin he gained definite dogmatic ideas; and as he rested "in the thought of two and two only absolute and luminously self-evident beings, myself and my Creator." In other words, personality became the primal truth in his philosophy; not matter, law, reason, or the experience of the senses. Henceforth, Newman was a Christian mystic, and such he remained. From the writings of Thomas Scott of Aston Sandford, "to whom, humanly speaking", he says, "I almost owe my soul", he learned the doctrine of the Trinity, supporting each verse of the Athanasian Creed with texts from Scripture. Scott's aphorisms were constantly on his lips for years, "Holiness rather than peace", and "Growth is the only evidence of life." Law's "Serious Call" had on the youth a Catholic or ascetic influence; he was born to be a missionary; thought it was God's will that he should lead a single life; was enamoured of quotations from the Fathers given in Milner's "Church History", and, reading Newton on the Prophecies, felt convinced that the pope was Antichrist. He had been at school at Ealing near London from the age of seven. Always thoughtful, shy, and affectionate, he took no part in boys' games, began to exercise his pen early, read the Waverley Novels, imitated Gibbon and Johnson, matriculated at Trinity College, Oxford, December, 1816, and in 1818 won a scholarship of 60 pounds tenable for nine years. In 1819 his father's bank suspended payment, but soon discharged its liabilities in full. Working too hard for his degree, Newman broke down, and gained in 1821 only third-class honors. But his powers could not be hidden. Oriel was then first in reputation and intellect among the Oxford Colleges, and of Oriel he was elected a fellow, 12 April, 1822. He ever felt this to be "the turning point in his life, and of all days most memorable."
In 1821 he had given up the intention of studying for the Bar, and resolved to take orders. As tutor of Oriel, he considered that he had a cure of souls; he was ordained on 13 June, 1824; and at Pusey's suggestion became curate of St. Clement's, Oxford, where he spent two years in parochial activity. And here the views in which he had been brought up disappointed him; Calvinism was not a key to the phenomena of human nature as they occur in the world. It would not work. He wrote articles on Cicero, etc., and his first "Essay on Miracles", which takes a strictly Protestant attitude, to the prejudice of those alleged outside Scripture. But he also fell under the influence of Whateley, afterwards Anglican Archbishop of Dublin, who, in 1825, made him his vice-principal at St. Mary's Hall. Whateley stimulated him by discussion, taught him the notion of Christianity as a social and sovereign organism distinct from the State, but led him in the direction of "liberal" ideas and nominalistic logic. To Whateley's once famous book on that subject Newman contributed. From Hawkins, whom his casting vote made Provost of Oriel, he gained the Catholic doctrines of tradition and baptismal regeneration, as well as a certain precision of terms which, long afterwards, gave rise to Kingsley's misunderstanding of Newman's methods in writing. By another Oxford clergyman he was taught to believe in the Apostolic succession. And Butler's "Analogy", read in 1823, made an era in his religious opinions. It is probably not too much to say that this deep and searching book became Newman's guide in life, and gave rise not only to the "Essay on Development" but to the "Grammar of Assent." In particular it offered a rejective account of ethics and conscience which confirmed his earliest beliefs in a lawgiver and judge intimately present to the soul. On another line it suggested the sacramental system, or the "Economy", of which the Alexandrians Clement and St. Athanasius are exponents. To sum up, at this formative period the sources whence Newman derived his principles as well as his doctrines were Anglican and Greek, not Roman or German. His Calvinism dropped away; in time he withdrew from the Bible Society. He was growing fiercely anti-Erastian; and Whateley saw the elements of a fresh party in the Church gathering round one whom Oriel had chosen for his intellectual promise, but whom Oxford was to know as a critic and antagonist of the "March of Mind."
His college in 1828 made him Vicar of St. Mary's (which was also the university church), and in its pulpit he delivered the "Parochial Sermons", without eloquence or gesture, for he had no popular gifts, but with a thrilling earnestness and a knowledge of human nature seldom equalled. When published, it was said of them that they "beat all other sermons out of the market as Scott's tales beat all other stories." They were not controversial; and there is little in them to which Catholic theology would object. Their chastened style, fertility of illustration, and short sharp energy, have lost nothing by age. In tone they are severe and often melancholy, as if the utterance of an isolated spirit. Though gracious and even tenderhearted, Newman's peculiar temper included deep reserve. He had not in his composition, as he says, a grain of conviviality. He was always the Oxford scholar, no democrat, suspicious of popular movements; but keenly interested in political studies as bearing on the fortunes of the Church. This disposition was intensified by his friendship with Keble, whose "Christian Year" came out in 1827, and with R. Hurrell Froude, a man of impetuous thought and self-denying practice. In 1832 he quarrelled with Dr. Hawkins, who would not endure the pastoral idea which Newman cherished of his college work. He resigned his tutorship, went on a long voyage round the Mediterranean with Froude, and came back to Oxford, where on 14 July, 1833, Keble preached the Assize sermon on "National Apostasy." That day, the anniversary of the French Revolution, gave birth to the Oxford Movement.
Newman's voyage to the coasts of North Africa, Italy, Western Greece, and Sicily (December, 1832-July, 1833) was a romantic episode, of which his diaries have preserved the incidents and the colour. In Rome he saw Wiseman at the English College; the city, as mother of religion to his native land, laid a spell on him never more to be undone. He felt called to some high mission; and when fever took him at Leonforte in Sicily (where he was wandering alone) he cried out, "I shall not die, I have not sinned against the light." But during the earlier stages of that journey it was not clear, even to the leader himself, in what direction they were moving — away from the Revolution, certainly. Reform was in the air; ten Irish bishoprics had been suppressed; disestablishment might not be far off. There was need of resistance to the enemies without, and of a second, but a Catholic, reformation within. The primitive Church must somehow be restored in England. He took his motto from the Iliad: "They shall know the difference now." Achilles went down into battle, fought for eight years, won victory upon victory, but was defeated by his own weapons when "Tract 90" appeared, and retired to his tent at Littlemore, a broken champion. Nevertheless, he had done a lasting work, greater than Laud's and likely to overthrow Cranmer's in the end. He had resuscitated the Fathers, brought into relief the sacramental system, paved the way for an astonishing revival of long-forgotten ritual, and given the clergy a hold upon thousands at the moment when Erastian principles were on the eve of triumph. "It was soon after 1830", says Pattison grimly, "that the Tracts desolated Oxford life." Newman's position was designated the Via Media. The English Church, he maintained, lay at an equal distance from Rome and Geneva. It was Catholic in origin and doctrine; it anathematized as heresies the peculiar tenets whether of Calvin or Luther; it could not but protest against "Roman corruptions", which were excrescences on primitive truth. Hence England stood by the Fathers, whose teaching the Prayer Book handed down; it appealed to antiquity, and its norm was the undivided Church.
Meanwhile, Oxford was shaken like Medicean Florence by a new Savonarola, who made disciples on every hand; who stirred up sleepy Conservatives when Hampden, a commonplace don, subjected Christian verities to the dissolving influence of Nominalism; and who multiplied books and lectures dealing with all religious parties at once. "The Prophetic Office" was a formal apology of the Laudian type; the obscure, but often beautiful "Treatise on Justification" made an effort "to show that there is little difference but what is verbal in the various views, found whether among Catholic or Protestant divines" on this subject. Döllinger called it "the greatest masterpiece in theology that England had produced in a hundred years", and it contains the true answer to Puritanism. The "University Sermons", profound as their theme, aimed at determining the powers and limits of reason, the methods of revelation, the possibilities of a real theology. Newman wrote so much that his hand almost failed him. Among a crowd of admirers only one perhaps, Hurrell Froude, could meet him in thought on fairly equal terms, and Froude passed away at Dartington in 1836. The pioneer went his road alone. He made a bad party-leader, being liable to sudden gusts and personal resolutions which ended in catastrophe. But from 1839, when he reigned at Oxford without a rival, he was already faltering. In his own language, he had seen a ghost; the shadow of Rome overclouding his Anglican compromise. Two names are associated with a change so momentous — Wiseman and Ward. The "Apologia" does full justice to Wiseman; it scarcely mentions Ward. Those who were looking on might have predicted a collision between the Tractarians and Protestant England, which had forgotten the Caroline divines. This came about on occasion of "Tract 90" — in itself the least interesting of all Newman's publications. The tract was intended to keep stragglers from Rome by distinguishing the corruptions against which the Thirty-Nine Articles were directed, from the doctrines of Trent which they did not assail. A furious and universal agitation broke out in consequence (Feb., 1841), Newman was denounced as a traitor, a Guy Fawkes at Oxford; the University intervened with academic maladroitness and called the tract "an evasion." Dr. Bagot, Bishop of Oxford, mildly censured it, but required that the tracts should cease. For three years condemnations from the bench of bishops were scattered broadcast. To a mind constituted like Newman's, imbued with Ignatian ideas of episcopacy, and unwilling to perceive that they did not avail in the English Establishment, this was an ex cathedra judgment against him. He stopped the tracts, resigned his editorship of "The British Critic", by and by gave up St. Mary's, and retired at Littlemore into lay communion. Nothing is clearer than that, if he had held on quietly, he would have won the day. "Tract 90" does not go so far as many Anglican attempts at reconciliation have gone since. The bishops did not dream of coercing him into submission. But he had lost faith in himself.
From 1841 Newman was on his death-bed as regarded the Anglican Church. He and some friends lived together at Littlemore in monastic seclusion, under a hard rule which did not improve his delicate health. In February, 1843, he retracted in a local newspaper his severe language towards Rome; in September he resigned his living. With immense labour he composed the "Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine", in which the apparent variations of dogma, formerly objected by him against the Catholic Church, were explained on a theory of evolution, curiously anticipating on certain points the great work of Darwin. It has many most original passages, but remains a fragment. On 9 October, 1845, during a period of excited action at Oxford, Newman was received into the Church by Father Dominic, an Italian Passionist, three days after Renan had broken with Saint-Sulpice and Catholicism. The event, although long in prospect, irritated and distressed his countrymen, who did not forgive it until many years had gone by. Its importance was felt; its causes were not known. Hence an estrangement which only the exquisite candour of Newman's self-delineation in the "Apologia" could entirely heal.
His conversion divides a life of almost ninety years into equal parts — the first more dramatic and its perspective ascertained; the second as yet imperfectly told, but spent for a quarter of a century sub luce maligna, under suspicion from one side or another, his plans thwarted, his motives misconstrued. Called by Wiseman to Oscott, near Birmingham, in 1846, he proceeded in October to Rome, and was there ordained by Cardinal Fransoni. The pope approved of his scheme for establishing in England the Oratory of St. Philip Neri; in 1847 he came back, and, besides setting up the London house, took mission work in Birmingham. Thence he moved out to Edgbaston, where the community still resides. A large school was added in 1859. The spacious Renaissance church, consecrated in 1909, is a memorial of the forty years during which Newman made his home in that place. After his "Sermons to Mixed Congregations", which exceed in vigour and irony all other published by him, the Oratorian recluse did not strive to gain a footing in the capital of the Midlands. He always felt "paucorum hominum sum"; his charm was not for the multitude. As a Catholic he began enthusiastically. His "Lectures on Anglican Difficulties" were heard in London by large audiences; "Loss and Gain", though not much of a story, abounds in happy strokes and personal touches; "Callista" recalls his voyage in the Mediterranean by many delightful pages; the sermon at the Synod of Oscott entitled "The Second Spring" has a rare an delicate beauty. It is said that Macaulay knew it by heart. "When Newman made up his mind to join the Church of Rome", observes R. H. Hutton, "his genius bloomed out with a force and freedom such as it never displayed in the Anglican communion." And again, "In irony, in humour, in eloquence, in imaginative force, the writings of the later and, as we may call it, emancipated portion of his career far surpass the writings of his theological apprenticeship." But English Catholic literature also gained a persuasive voice and a classic dignity of which hitherto there had been no example.
During the interval between 1854 and 1860 Newman had passed from the convert's golden fervours into a state which resembled criticism of prevailing methods in church government and education. His friends included some of a type known to history as "Liberal Catholics." Of Montalembert and Lacordaire he wrote in 1864: "In their general line of thought and conduct I enthusiastically concur and consider them to be before their age." He speaks of "the unselfish aims, the thwarted projects, the unrequited toils, the grand and tender resignation of Lacordaire." That moving description might be applied to Newman himself. He was intent on the problems of the time and not alarmed at Darwin's "Origin of Species." He had been made aware by German scholars, like Acton, of the views entertained at Munich; and he was keenly sensitive to the difference between North and South in debatable questions of policy or discipline. He looked beyond the immediate future; in a lecture at Dublin on "A Form of Infidelity of the Day" he seems to have anticipated what is now termed "Modernism", condemning it as the ruin of dogma. It is distressing to imagine what Newman's horror would have been, had his intuition availed to tell him that, in little more than half a century, a "form of infidelity" so much like what he had predicted would claim him as its originator; on the other hand, he would surely have taken comfort, could he also have foreseen that the soundness of his faith was to be so vindicated as it has been by Bishop O'Dwyer, of Limerick, and above all, the vindication so approved and confirmed as it is in Pius X's letter of 10 March, 1908, to that bishop. In another lecture, on "Christianity and Scientific Investigation", he provides for a concordat which would spare the world a second case of Galileo. He held that Christian theology was a deductive science, but physics and the like were inductive; therefore collision between them need not, and in fact did not really occur. He resisted in principle the notion that historical evidence could do away with the necessity of faith as regarded creeds and definitions. He deprecated the intrusions of amateurs into divinity; but he was anxious that laymen should take their part in the movement of intellect. This led him to encourage J. M. Capes in founding the "Rambler", and H. Wilberforce in editing the "Weekly Register." But likewise it brought him face to face with a strong reaction from the earlier liberal policy of Pius IX. This new movement, powerful especially in France, was eagerly taken up by Ward and Manning, who now influenced Wiseman as he sank under a fatal disease. Their quarrel with J.H.N. (as he was familiarly called) did not break out in open war; but much embittered correspondence is left which proves that, while no point of faith divided the parties, their dissensions threw back English Catholic education for thirty years.
For twenty years Newman lay under imputations at Rome, which misconstrued his teaching and his character. This, which has been called the ostracism of a saintly genius, undoubtedly was due to his former friends, Ward and Manning. In February, 1878, Pius IX died; and, by a strange conjuncture, in that same month Newman returned to Oxford as Honorary Fellow of Trinity College, "dear to him from undergraduate days." The event provoked Catholics to emulation. Moreover, the new pope, Leo XIII, had also lived in exile from the Curia since 1846, and the Virgilian sentiment, "Haud ignara mali", would come home to him. The Duke of Norfolk and other English peers approached Cardinal Manning, who submitted their strong representation to the Holy See. Pope Leo, it is alleged, was already considering how he might distinguish the aged Oratorian. He intimated, accordingly, in February, 1879, his intention of bestowing on Newman the cardinal's hat. The message affected him to tears, and he exclaimed that the cloud was lifted from him forever. By singular ill-fortune, Manning understood certain delicate phrases in Newman's reply as declining the purple; he allowed that statement to appear in "The Times", much to everyone's confusion. However, the end was come. After a hazardous journey, and in broken health, Newman arrived in Rome. He was created Cardinal-Deacon of the Title of St. George, on 12 May, 1879. His biglietto speech, equal to the occasion in grace and wisdom, declared that he had been the life-long enemy of Liberalism, or "the doctrine that there is no truth in religion, but that one creed is as good as another", and that Christianity is "but a sentiment and a taste, not an objective fact, not miraculous."
Hitherto, in modern times, no simple priest, without duties in the Roman Curia, had been raised to the Sacred College. Newman's elevation, hailed by the English nation and by Catholics everywhere with unexampled enthusiasm, was rightly compared to that of Bessarion after the Council of Florence. It broke down the wall of partition between Rome and England. To the many addresses which poured in upon him the cardinal replied with such point and felicity as often made his words gems of literature. He had revised all his writings, the last of which dealt somewhat tentatively with Scripture problems. Now his hand would serve him no more, but his mind kept its clearness always. In "The Dream of Gerontius" (1865), which had been nearly a lost masterpiece, he anticipated his dying hours, threw into concentrated, almost Dantean, verse and imagery his own beliefs as suggested by the Offices of Requiem, and looked forward to his final pilgrimage, "alone with the Alone." Death came with little suffering, on 11 August, 1890. His funeral was a great public event. He lies in the same grave with Ambrose St. John, whom he called his "life under God for thirty-two years." His device as cardinal, taken from St. Francis de Sales, was Cor ad cor loquitor (Heart speaketh to heart); it reveals the secret of his eloquence, unaffected, graceful, tender, and penetrating. On his epitaph we read: Ex umbris et imaginibus in veritatem (From shadows and symbols goes the truth); it is the doctrine of the Economy, which goes back to Plato's "Republic" and which passed thence by way of Christian Alexandria into the philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas, the poetry of the Florentine, and the schools of Oxford. John Henry Newman thus continues in modern literature the Catholic tradition of East and West, sealing it with a martyr's faith and suffering, steadfast in loyalty to the truth, while discerning with a prophet's vision the task of the future.
in these days Europe remembers the August days in former Czechoslovakia, when the Soviets and their allies (including DDR, East Germany) occupied this country to destroy all efforts of a liberal and human socialism, the so called Prague Spring with Alexander Dubcek.
time to remember Dubcek, the great and liberal Vaclav Havel, and also Jan Palach, the 20y old student from Melnik, who burned himself on Wenzels place in January 1969 to protest against the soviet occupation.
twenty years later the iron curtain began to fall down, and in 1990 I had the chance for my first visit in Prague and Bohemia. the begin of my deep love for this city and this country, with which my family is connected in several ways
the photos of this first visit are blurred, shots from diapositives,. but I like them as paintings of this exciting time, full of hope for democracy and liberalism in Europe. time to remember all this. and one can imagine the Prague during the socialist time, lots of renovated buildings, but also multiple decay of historic buildings.
during all my visits there I could watch the transformation to a renovated, colourful, vibrant, capitalistic and nowadays often overcrowded city. but I am still in love with Prague...
in these days Europe remembers the August days in former Czechoslovakia, when the Soviets and their allies (including DDR, East Germany) occupied this country to destroy all efforts of a liberal and human socialism, the so called Prague Spring with Alexander Dubcek.
time to remember Dubcek, the great and liberal Vaclav Havel, and also Jan Palach, the 20y old student from Melnik, who burned himself on Wenzels place in January 1969 to protest against the soviet occupation.
twenty years later the iron curtain began to fall down, and in 1990 I had the chance for my first visit in Prague and Bohemia. the begin of my deep love for this city and this country, with which my family is connected in several ways
the photos of this first visit are blurred, shots from diapositives,. but I like them as paintings of this exciting time, full of hope for democracy and liberalism in Europe. time to remember all this. and one can imagine the Prague during the socialist time, lots of renovated buildings, but also multiple decay of historic buildings.
during all my visits there I could watch the transformation to a renovated, colourful, vibrant, capitalistic and nowadays often overcrowded city. but I am still in love with Prague...
American Mirro-Krome postcard by H.S. Crocker Co. Inc., San Francisco, Calif., no. HSC-306. Henry Fonda in the TV series The Deputy (1959-1961). Caption: Henry Fonda keeps himself busy alternating between Broadway plays and his own television series, The Deputy, filmed by Revue Studios. When time permits, Henry also stars in motion pictures, where he earned his reputation as a top-flight star.
The American Western series The Deputy (1959-1961) was situated in Silver City, Arizona Territories in 1880. Henry Fonda starred as Simon Fry, the chief marshal. Fonda's character was fully integrated into the plot in only six of the episodes of the first season and thirteen in season two. In all other episodes, he appeared only briefly, generally at the start of the episode and again at the close. Fonda did narrate most episodes. Fonda worked for ten weeks on season one, for example, shooting all of his scenes during that time, which left the rest of the year free for film and theatre work. Allen Case tried hard as the title character, Clay McCord, a storekeeper in Silver City. He is an expert shot but refuses to use his gun because he believes they are the major cause of frontier violence. However, he is persuaded many times to be the Deputy to help keep order when Chief Marshal Simon Fry is out of town. The series is well- known for the substantial differences in quality between what the series producers (and Fonda himself) came to call the "Fonda" and "Non- Fonda" episodes.
Blue-eyed American actor Henry Fonda (1905-1982) exemplified not only integrity and strength but an ideal of the common man fighting against social injustice and oppression. He is most remembered for his roles as Abe Lincoln in Young Mr. Lincoln (1939), Tom Joad in The Grapes of Wrath (1940), for which he received an Academy Award Nomination, and more recently, Norman Thayer in On Golden Pond (1981), for which he received an Oscar for Best Actor in 1982. Notably, he also played against character as the villain 'Frank' in Sergio Leone's classic Spaghetti Western Once upon a time in the West (1968). Fonda is considered one of Hollywood's old-time legends and his lifelong career spanned almost 50 years.
Henry Jaynes Fonda was born in Grand Island, Nebraska in 1905. His parents were Elma Herberta (Jaynes) and William Brace Fonda, who worked in advertising and printing and was the owner of the W. B. Fonda Printing Company in Omaha, Nebraska. His distant ancestors were Italians who had fled their country around 1400 and moved to Holland, presumably because of political or religious persecution. In the early1600's, they crossed the Atlantic and were among the early Dutch settlers in America. They established a still-thriving small town in upstate New York named Fonda, named after patriarch Douw Fonda, who was later killed by Indians. In 1919, young Henry was a first-hand witness to the Omaha race riots and the brutal lynching of Will Brown. This enraged the 14 years old Fonda and he kept a keen awareness of prejudice for the rest of his life. Following graduation from high school in 1923, Henry got a part-time job in Minneapolis with the Northwestern Bell Telephone Company which allowed him at first to pursue journalistic studies at the University of Minnesota. In 1925, having returned to Omaha, Henry reevaluated his options and came to the conclusion that journalism was not his forte, after all. For a while, he tried his hand at several temporary jobs, including as a mechanic and a window dresser. At age 20, Fonda started his acting career at the Omaha Community Playhouse, when his mother's friend Dodie Brando (mother of Marlon Brando) recommended that he try out for a juvenile part in 'You and I', in which he was cast as Ricky. Then he received the lead in Merton of the Movies and realized the beauty of acting as a profession. It allowed him to deflect attention from his own tongue-tied personality and create stage characters relying on someone else's scripted words. The play and its star received fairly good notices in the local press. It ran for a week, and for the rest of the repertory season, Henry advanced to the assistant director which enabled him to design and paint sets as well as act. A casual trip to New York, however, had already made him set his sights on Broadway. In 1926, he moved to the Cape Cod University Players, where he met his future wife Margaret Sullavan. His first professional role was in 'The Jest', by Sem Benelli. James Stewart joined the Players a few months after Fonda left, but he would become his closest lifelong friend. In 1928, Fonda went east to New York to be with Margaret Sullavan, and to expand his theatrical career on Broadway. His first Broadway role was a small one in 'A Game of Love and Death' with Alice Brady and Claude Rains. Henry played leads opposite Margaret Sullavan, who became the first of his five wives in 1931. They broke up in 1933. In 1934, he got a break of sorts, when he was given the chance to present a comedy sketch with Imogene Coca in the Broadway revue New Faces. That year, he also hired Leland Hayward as his personal management agent and this was to pay off handsomely. Major Broadway roles followed, including 'New Faces of America' and 'The Farmer Takes a Wife'. The following year he married Frances Seymour Brokaw with whom he had two children: Jane Fonda and Peter Fonda, also to become screen stars.
The 29-year old Henry Fonda was persuaded by Leland Hayward to become a Hollywood actor, despite initial misgivings and reluctance on Henry's part. Independent producer Walter Wanger, whose growing stock company was birthed at United Artists, needed a star for The Farmer Takes a Wife (Victor Fleming, 1935) opposite Janet Gaynor. I.S. Mowis at IMDb: “With both first-choice actors Gary Cooper and Joel McCrea otherwise engaged, Henry was the next available option. After all, he had just completed a successful run on Broadway in the stage version. The cheesy publicity tag line for the picture was "you'll be fonder of Fonda", but the film was an undeniable hit.” Wanger, realizing he had a good thing going, next cast Henry in a succession of A-grade pictures which capitalized on his image as the sincere, unaffected country boy. Pick of the bunch were the Technicolor outdoor Western The Trail of the Lonesome Pine (Henry Hathaway, 1936) with Sylvia Sidney, and the gritty Depression-era drama You Only Live Once (Fritz Lang, 1937) with Henry as a back-to-the-wall good guy forced into becoming a fugitive from the law by circumstance). Then followed the screwball comedy The Moon's Our Home (William A. Seiter, 1936) with ex-wife Margaret Sullavan, the excellent pre-civil war-era romantic drama Jezebel (William Wyler, 1938) featuring Bette Davis, and the Western Jesse James ( Henry King, 1939) starring Tyrone Power. Fonda rarely featured in comedy, except for a couple of good turns opposite Barbara Stanwyck and Gene Tierney - with both he shared excellent on-screen chemistry - in The Mad Miss Manton (Leigh Jason, 1938), The Lady Eve (Preston Sturges, 1941) and the successful Rings on Her Fingers (Rouben Mamoulian, 1942). Henry gave his best screen performance to date in Young Mr. Lincoln (John Ford, 1939), a fictionalized account of the early life of the American president as a young lawyer facing his greatest court case. Henry made two more films with director John Ford: the pioneering drama Drums Along the Mohawk (1939) with Claudette Colbert, and The Grapes of Wrath (1940), an adaptation of John Steinbeck's novel about an Oklahoma family who moved west during the Dust Bowl. In his career-defining role as Tom Joad, Fonda played the archetypal grassroots American trying to stand up against oppression. His relationship with Ford would end on the set of Mister Roberts (John Ford, Mervyn LeRoy, 1955) when he objected to Ford's direction of the film. Ford punched Fonda and had to be replaced.
The Grapes of Wrath (John Ford, 1940) set the tone for Henry Fonda’s subsequent career. In this vein, he gave a totally convincing, though historically inaccurate, portrayal in the titular role of The Return of Frank James (Fritz Lang, 1940), a rare example of a sequel improving upon the original. He projected integrity and quiet authority whether he played lawman Wyatt Earp in My Darling Clementine (John Ford, 1946) or a reluctant posse member in The Ox-Bow Incident (William A. Wellman, 1943). In between these two films, Fonda enlisted in the Navy to fight in World War II, saying, and served in the Navy for three years. He then starred in The Fugitive (John Ford, 1947), and Fort Apache (John Ford, 1948), as a rigid Army colonel, along with John Wayne and Shirley Temple in her first adult role. In the following years, he did not appear in many films. Fonda was one of the most active, and most vocal, liberal Democrats in Hollywood. During the 1930s, he had been a founding member of the Hollywood Democratic Committee, formed in support of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal agenda. In 1947, in the middle of the McCarthy witch hunt, he moved to New York, not returning to Hollywood until 1955. His son Peter Fonda writes in his autobiography Don't Tell Dad: A Memoir (1999) that he believes that Henry's liberalism caused him to be gray-listed during the early 1950s. Fonda returned to Broadway to play the title role in Mister Roberts for which he won the Tony Award as the best dramatic actor. In 1979, he won a second special Tony and was nominated for a Tony Award Clarence Darrow (1975). Later, he played a juror committed to the ideal of total justice in 12 Angry Men (Sidney Lumet, 1957) which he also produced, and a nightclub musician wrongly accused of murder in The Wrong Man (Alfred Hitchcock, 1956). During the next decade, he played in The Longest Day (Ken Annakin, Andrew Marton a.o., 1962), How the West Was Won (John Ford, Henry Hathaway, George Marshall, 1962) and as a poker-playing grifter in the Western comedy A Big Hand for the Little Lady (Fielder Cook, 1966) with Joanne Woodward. A big hit was the family comedy Yours, Mine and Ours (Melvillle Shavelson, 1968), in which he co-starred with Lucille Ball. The same year, just to confound those who would typecast him, he gave a chilling performance as one of the coldest, meanest stone killers ever to roam the West, in Sergio Leone's Western epic C'era una volta il West/Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) opposite Charles Bronson and Claudia Cardinale. With James Stewart, he teamed up in Firecreek (Vincent McEveety, 1968), where Fonda again played the heavy, and the Western comedy The Cheyenne Social Club (Gene Kelly, 1970). Despite his old feud with John Ford, Fonda spoke glowingly of the director in Peter Bogdanovich's documentary Directed by John Ford (1971). Fonda had refused to participate until he learned that Ford had insisted on casting Fonda as the lead in the film version of Mr. Roberts (1955), reviving Fonda's film career after concentrating on the stage for years. Illness curtailed Fonda’s work in the 1970s. In 1976, Fonda returned in the World War II blockbuster Midway (Jack Smight, 1976) with Charlton Heston. Fonda finished the 1970s in a number of disaster films with all-star casts: the Italian killer octopus thriller Tentacoli/Tentacles (Ovidio G. Assonitis, 1977), Rollercoaster (James Goldstone, 1977) with Richard Widmark, the killer bee action film The Swarm (Irwin Allen, 1978), the global disaster film Meteor (Ronald Neame, 1979), with Sean Connery, and the Canadian production City on Fire (Alvin Rakoff, 1979), which also featured Shelley Winters and Ava Gardner. His final screen role was as an octogenarian in On Golden Pond (Mark Rydell, 1981), in which he was joined by Katharine Hepburn and his daughter Jane. It finally won him an Oscar on the heels of an earlier Honorary Academy Award. Too ill to attend the ceremony, Henry Fonda died soon after at the age of 77, having left a lasting legacy matched by few of his peers. His later wives were Susan Blanchard (1950-1956), Leonarda Franchetti (1957-1961) and Shirlee Fonda (1965- till his death in 1982). With Blanchard, he had a daughter, Amy Fishman (1953). His grandchildren are the actors Bridget Fonda, Justin Fonda, Vanessa Vadim, and Troy Garity.
Sources: Laurence Dang (IMDb), I.S. Mowis (IMDb), Wikipedia, and IMDb.
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EUbabel. The shocking occult symbolism of the European Union.
peuplesobservateursblog.wordpress.com/2017/09/23/togo-all...
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Expertise: US politics and foreign policy, society and history; Commentator for a large number of media organisations.
Willem Post is specialised in American politics and foreign policy. He is the author of five books, one is called 'Keerpunt. Amerika voor, op en na 11 september' (Turning Point. The US before, during and after 9/11) published in 2002. In 2000, Mr. Post wrote a handbook on the presidency and a book about President John F. Kennedy and liberalism. His last book is about 'Jeb Bush' cadidate for President in the year 2016.
Since the mid-eighties, he has frequently appeared on Dutch television and other media as an analyst and commentator on the United States, for instance during the US-elections, the terrorist-attacks of 9/11 and the war in Iraq. He is an experienced lecturer on American foreign and security policy, having lectured at many universities and training institutes. He has written hundreds of articles for Dutch newspapers and journals.
Bush is responsible for the horrific U.S.-U.K. bombing of Baghdad, dubbed “Shock and Awe.” In rapid succession, “coalition forces” dropped 3,000 bombs, including many that weighed 2,000 pounds, on Baghdad in what The New York Times called “almost biblical power.”
In what came to be called “Operation Iraqi Freedom,” 173,000 troops from the United States and the United Kingdom invaded Iraq. During the eight-year war, about 300,000 Iraqis and 4,600 Americans were killed. The United States spent $815 billion on the war, not counting indirect costs. It plunged the country into a civil war and millions of Iraqi refugees remain displaced. Two decades later, not one of the officials responsible has been brought to justice.
The consequences of the BUSH-CHENEY administration:
1.Exacerbated terrorism: While the US avoided a direct attack after 9/11, the terrorism landscape worsened, with more countries targeted and a new generation of militants, including those who trained in Iraq, emerging.
2.Failed democracy promotion: Attempts to install democracy through military force, notably in Iraq, proved costly and unsuccessful.
3. Bolstered Iran's position: Diverting resources to Iraq for a non-existent weapons program inadvertently strengthened Iran's geopolitical standing in the region.
4. Over-reliance on military force: A major critique points to an excessive dependence on military solutions over diplomatic engagement, disregarding empirical evidence, and failing to address long-standing policy inconsistencies.
5.Damage to US credibility: The Iraq War in particular significantly damaged US credibility as a champion of democracy and liberalism in the Middle East, making regional democracy movements wary of US support.
6. Rise of ISIS: The 2011 withdrawal of US troops from Iraq created a power vacuum that ISIS exploited, seizing significant territory in Iraq and Syria, according to Reuters.
In essence to this date endless problems and numerous deaths have ensued because of the total destabilization of the area thanks to this president.
Anti Bush protest
(circa 2003 )
ManHatTan
Photography’s new conscience
The esoterist sees things, not as they appear according to a certain perspective, but as they are: he takes account of what is essential and consequently invariable under the veil of different religious formulations, while necessarily taking his own starting point in a given formulation.
This at least is the position in principle and the justification for esoterism; in fact it is far from always being consistent with itself, inasmuch as intermediary solutions are humanly inevitable.
Everything which, in metaphysics or in spirituality, is universally true, becomes "esoteric" in so far as it does not agree, or does not seem to agree, with a given formalistic system or "exoterism"; yet every truth is present by right in every religion, given that every religion is made of truth.
This amounts to saying that esoterism is possible and even necessary; the whole question is to know at what level and in what context it is manifested, for relative and limited truth has its rights, as does the total truth; it has these rights in the context assigned to it by the nature of things, which is that of psychological and moral opportuneness and of traditional equilibrium.
The paradox of esoterism is that on the one hand "men do not light a candle and put it under a bushel", while on the other hand "give not what is sacred to dogs"; between these two expressions lies the "light that shineth in the darkness, but the darkness comprehended it not". There are fluctuations here which no one can prevent and which are the ransom of contingency.
Exoterism is a precarious thing by reason of its limits or its exclusions; there arrives a moment in history when all kinds of experience oblige it to modify its claims to exclusiveness, and it is then driven to a choice: escape from these limitations by the upward path, in esoterism, or by the downward path, in a worldly and suicidal liberalism. As one might have expected, the civilizationist exoterism of the West has chosen the downward path, while combining this incidentally with a few esoteric notions which in such conditions remain inoperative.
Fallen man, and thus the average man, is as it were poisoned by the passional element, either grossly or subtly; from this results an obscuring of the Intellect and the necessity of a Revelation coming from the outside. Remove the passional element from the soul and the intelligence (remove "the rust from the mirror" or "from the heart") and the Intellect will be released; it will reveal from within what religion reveals from without.
[This release is strictly impossible-we must insist upon It-without the cooperation of a religion, an orthodoxy, a traditional esoterism with all that this implies.]
This brings us to an important point: in order to make itself understood by souls impregnated with passion, religion must itself adopt a so to speak passional language, whence dogmatism, which excludes, and moralism, which schematizes; if the average man or collective man were not passional, Revelation would speak the language of the Intellect and there would be no exoterism, nor for that matter esoterism considered as an occult complement.
There are here three possibilities: firstly, men dominate the passional element, everyone lives spiritually by his inward Revelation; this is the golden age, in which everyone is born an initiate.
Second possibility: men are affected by the passional element to the point of forgetting certain aspects of the Truth, whence the necessity (or the opportuneness) of Revelations that while being outward are metaphysical in spirit, such as the Upanishads.
[Such a Revelation has a function that is both conservative and preventive, it expresses the Truth in view of the risk of its being forgotten; It consequently also has the aim of protecting the "pure" from contamination by the "impure", of recalling the Truth to those who run the risk of going astray by carelessness.]
Thirdly: the majority of men are dominated by passions, whence the formalistic, exclusive and combative religions, which communicate to them on the one hand the means of channelling the passional element with a view to salvation, and on the other hand the means of overcoming it in view of the total Truth, and of thereby transcending the religious formalism which veils it while suggesting it in an indirect manner. Religious revelation is both a veil of light and a light veiled.
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Frithjof Schuon: Understanding Esoterism (from Esoterism as Principle and as Way)
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Beatus de Facundus illuminated manuscript - Illustration for Revelation 1:1-3
1 The revelation from Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show his servants what must soon take place. He made it known by sending his angel to his servant John, 2 who testifies to everything he saw—that is, the word of God and the testimony of Jesus Christ. 3 Blessed is the one who reads aloud the words of this prophecy, and blessed are those who hear it and take to heart what is written in it, because the time is near.
Sir Thomas Brisbane:
Sir Thomas Makdougall Brisbane (1773-1860), governor, was born on 23 July 1773 at Brisbane House, near Largs, Ayrshire, son of a family of ancient Scottish lineage. He was educated by tutors and attended both the University of Edinburgh and the English Academy, Kensington. In 1789 he was commissioned an ensign in the 38th Regiment, which next year he joined in Ireland; there he struck up a long and profitable friendship with a fellow subaltern, Arthur Wellesley. From 1793 to 1798 he served in Flanders as a captain, from 1795 to 1799 in the West Indies as a major, and from 1800 to 1803 he commanded the 69th Regiment in Jamaica as a lieutenant-colonel, earning high praise from the governor, Sir George Nugent. From 1803 to 1805 he served in England, but when the 69th was ordered to India went on half-pay in Scotland because of his health.
He then was able to indulge his interest in astronomy, which he developed after nearly being involved in a shipwreck in 1795, and in 1808 he built at Brisbane House the second observatory in Scotland. In 1810 he was promoted colonel and elected a fellow of the Royal Society of London, and in 1812 at Wellington's request he was promoted brigadier-general. He commanded a brigade which was heavily engaged in the battles of the Peninsular war from Vittoria to Toulouse, and continued to practise his astronomy so that in Wellington's words, he 'kept the time of the army'. In 1815 he was created a K.C.B., received the thanks of parliament, and commanded a brigade in the American war. From 1815 to 1818 he commanded a division in the army of occupation in France and in 1817 he was created a K.C.H. (G.C.H., 1831). He returned to England in 1818 and next year married Anna Maria, daughter and heiress of Sir Henry Hay Makdougall of Makerstoun, Scotland, whose surname he added to his own by letters patent on 14 August 1826. In 1815 he applied for appointment as governor of New South Wales, but the post was not then vacant; in November 1820 on Wellington's advice Brisbane, then in command of the Munster district in Ireland, was appointed. He arrived in the colony on 7 November 1821 and took over from Governor Lachlan Macquarie on 1 December.
Brisbane's policies for the colony were usually sensible answers to pressing problems, based on Commissioner John Thomas Bigge's report and the instructions derived from it, modified by his own impressions. Though he was on good terms with Macquarie he condemned the latter's 'system' and told Earl Bathurst later that he had changed New South Wales in so many ways that if Macquarie had returned 'he would not have recognised the place'.
When Brisbane arrived 340,000 acres (137,593 ha) of promised grants had still to be located and there were many confused permissive occupancies and nebulous promises. Lands were occupied and transferred without legal title, and boundary disputes seemed never ending. Proper survey was essential for a workable policy of alienation to be evolved, and the Ripon regulations of 1831 were made to a large extent possible by the practical development of the policies which Brisbane had implemented.
In 1822 he issued tickets-of-occupation which enabled land to be immediately occupied without a preliminary survey and graziers to be given security against trespass without the land being permanently alienated. Additional assistant surveyors were appointed to reduce arrears in the surveying and granting of land, but Brisbane promised land only to those with the inclination and ability to use it productively, forbade the acceptance of chits signed by irresponsible persons as valid titles, and gave tickets-of-occupation only when extra stock had actually been obtained. He granted land to sons of established settlers only if their fathers' properties had been considerably improved, and to immigrants in proportion to their capital. He was reluctant to make grants to his newly-appointed officials, even though this subjected him 'to a most unpleasant feeling'. In order to promote settlement of the colony by settlers who really wanted to improve the land and to deter speculators with fictitious capital, he insisted that grantees should maintain one convict labourer, free of expense to the Crown, for every 100 acres (40 ha) they were given, and he maintained this rule against criticism from the Colonial Office that it would hamper settlement. Brisbane insisted that although the regulation had been temporarily unpopular genuine settlers did not oppose it, for convict servants were coming to be looked on as a boon. It would help to control the intense demand for land, though even that check would not be sufficient. 'Not a cow calves in the colony but her owner applies for an additional grant in consequence of the increase in his stock', he wrote. 'Every person to whom a grant is made receives it as the payment of a debt; everyone to whom one is refused turns my implacable enemy'. He asked the British government 'to fix an invariable proportion of land to be cultivated in every grant' and to appoint a Commission of Escheat, for without it, since a judgment by Barron Field, the 'clearing and cultivating clauses' in the grants had become 'a dead letter'. The instructions on the disposal of crown lands which were sent from London in January 1825 owed so much to Brisbane's advice that he found 'great satisfaction' in noticing 'the very prominent similarity' between them and the practice he had been following in New South Wales.
Acting on one of Bigge's suggestions Brisbane in 1824 had begun selling crown lands, at 5s. an acre. 'While the system of free grants exists, there is little chance of extensive improvement taking place generally in the colony, as the improver of land can never enter the market in competition with the individual who gets his land for nothing', Brisbane told Bathurst. Between May and December 1825 more than 500,000 acres (202,345 ha) were sold. In land policy Brisbane had recognized the need to encourage men of capital, though at the same time opposing over-lavish land grants. Seeing the need for consolidation rather than expansion, and for more accurate surveys of the settled areas, he gave less encouragement to land exploration than either his predecessors or successors, but he continued, as instructed, to organize coastal surveys.
Brisbane received from Bathurst full instructions on convict affairs, derived from Bigge's report. These were based on the belief that Macquarie had been too lenient and too extravagant, and Brisbane conscientiously carried them out. He rigidly adhered to the rules against the premature granting of tickets-of-leave. He reduced the number of road-gangs, whose members often indulged in dissipation and crime, and the numbers employed on public works in Sydney, and organized in their place gangs to clear land for settlers in return for payment to the government; this greatly speeded up the rate of clearing. He ordered convict mechanics to be hired instead of being assigned; this brought in revenue and made for a more efficient distribution of labour. He established new centres of secondary punishment as Bigge had recommended, first at Moreton Bay and later at Bathurst's suggestion on Norfolk Island, and he sent educated convicts to be confined first at Bathurst and later at Wellington valley, but he opposed excessive corporal punishment, reprieved many prisoners sentenced to death and was criticized by Bathurst for his improvidence in granting pardons.
Brisbane set up an agricultural training college and was the first patron of the New South Wales Agricultural Society, founded in 1822, which among other activities, financed the importation of livestock. On Bathurst's instructions, he drastically reduced the assistance given to new settlers and so, by making it virtually impracticable to begin farming without capital, helped to improve production. He conducted experiments in growing Virginian tobacco, Georgian cotton, Brazilian coffee and New Zealand flax, but unfortunately without much success.
Brisbane looked forward to getting the 'Colony on to its own Resources' and regarded the achievement of economy in government expenditure as one of his major successes. In 1822, on the advice of Frederick Goulburn, colonial secretary, and William Wemyss, deputy commissary general, he initiated currency reforms by which commissariat payments were to be made in dollars at a fixed value of 5s. or about one-eighth above their intrinsic value. This attempt to set up a dollar standard was intended both to reduce expenditure and to provide the colony with a coinage which would prevent a repetition of the issue of store receipts as practised by the former commissary, Frederick Drennan, and it would discourage imports by depreciating the local currency. But the system was not a success and after the terms on which the dollars would be received had been modified the dollar standard was replaced by a sterling exchange standard on instructions sent from London in July 1825. In 1823 all commissariat supplies were called by tender, though the introduction of price competition hurt small farmers and favoured the larger ones; when only three month's grain was bought by tender, instead of a year's at a fixed price, a minor depression occurred, but this was partly due to the suddenness of the change.
Brisbane was devout and broadminded in religious matters, and prepared to support any sect that did not threaten the state. He encouraged Wesleyan societies, advocated and gave financial aid to the Roman Catholics, but opposed what he regarded as extravagant demands by the Presbyterians, considering them wealthy enough to build their own church. He supported Bible and tract societies. He attempted to encourage education by appointing a director-general of all government public schools, but this was quashed by the Colonial Office. He believed that clergy, like government officials, should not indulge in private trade, which of course made him unpopular with Samuel Marsden. His policy towards Aboriginals was ambivalent. On one occasion he ordered some to be shot; on another he imposed martial law beyond the Blue Mountains because of 'the aggressions of the Native Blacks'. However, he favoured compensating them for lost land, and in 1825 granted the London Missionary Society 10,000 acres (4047 ha) as an Aboriginal reserve.
Like other governors, Brisbane found the emancipist-exclusive quarrel a major difficulty, and the success of many of his policies was vitiated because some of his officials ignored him and favoured the exclusives. Brisbane himself did not have great faith in the future of a colony based on emancipists; but though he preferred the large-scale immigration of free settlers, especially those with capital, his cautious liberalism was to the emancipists' tastes. Unlike the exclusives, they gave him a warm farewell. Brisbane appears to have believed, as he said at a public meeting just before he left, that free institutions could be safely established in New South Wales. In 1824 he did not apply any censorship when William Charles Wentworth's Australian began publication, and ended control of the Gazette by government officials. He ordered the holding of Courts of Quarter Sessions at which there would be trial by jury, an experiment which Chief Justice (Sir) Francis Forbes reported to have been very successful; they were abolished by the Act of 1828, but not before the exclusives had grossly misused them at Parramatta in their vendetta against Henry Grattan Douglass. The Legislative Council set up by the New South Wales Act of 1823, which began meeting in August 1824, operated calmly under his rule and began the process of reducing the powers of the governor from the autocracy of the past.
At first Brisbane had too few men to do the work of government; by 1824 he found himself with a number of departmental heads appointed independently of him, varying in ability, at odds with each other and the government. He thought Judge Barron Field and Judge-Advocate (Sir) John Wylde responsible for much of the party feeling in the colony, and was heartily glad to see them go in 1824, but John Oxley, Saxe Bannister and Frederick Goulburn were also sources of trouble. Men like George Druitt, John Jamison, Marsden, John Dunmore Lang, the Macarthurs and the Blaxlands frequently made vicious misrepresentations in London about Brisbane's administration. They gave the governor much to contend with and, though he 'evinced a forbearance amounting to Stoicism', in the end he felt compelled to remove some 'exclusive' magistrates for grossly improper behaviour. It was partly to counter their misrepresentations that he sent Dr Douglass to London in February 1824, but his patronage of Douglass, who was in trouble with the War Office, in the end contributed to his recall. Brisbane did not find Goulburn easy to work with and in January 1824 asked for an assistant-secretary. Goulburn refused to carry out some of Brisbane's instructions; he suppressed letters or answered them without reference to the governor; on 19 April 1824 he even claimed that the governor's proclamations and orders were invalid unless they went through his department. Such conduct Brisbane clearly could not countenance and he protested to the Colonial Office; the reply in December was the recall of both governor and secretary, and in November 1825 Brisbane departed.
Brisbane did not concern himself with all the details of his administration; but a governor could no longer attend to everything. The colony had expanded in size in recent years, and Macquarie had ruined his health and peace of mind by a concern with every administrative detail and petty squabble as Governor (Sir) Ralph Darling was soon to do also. Brisbane had worked well with Lieutenant-Governors William Sorell and (Sir) George Arthur in Van Diemen's Land, which was still under his jurisdiction, and he had no trouble there. Unfriendly contemporaries, Marsden, Archdeacon Thomas Scott and the Macarthurs, found Brisbane amiable, impartial but weak. His enemies accused him of a lack of interest in the colony, but this was untrue. Judge Forbes, whom he found 'a great blessing', praised his work; an emancipist address on his departure spoke of 'a mild, an unpartial, and a firm administration'; but soon afterwards John Dunmore Lang was to make what became the standard comment on his governorship; 'a man of the best intentions, but disinclined to business, and deficient in energy'. Of the quality of his intentions there is little doubt: highly patriotic, and regarding New South Wales as being of considerable moral, political and strategic value to the United Kingdom, he was genuinely concerned in its future progress. The stock criticisms, that he was weak and lacked interest in administrative detail, either because he was lazy or more concerned with 'star-gazing', are very misleading. 'In place of passing my time in the Observatory or shooting Parrots, I am seldom employed in either. And Altho' I rise oftener at 5 o'clock in the Morning than after, I cannot get thro' the various and arduous duties of my Government', he wrote. Brisbane had been a very respected and successful soldier, as indicated by Nugent's admiration and Wellington's occasional recorded praise and continued championship. Brisbane's dispatches are permeated with bitter realism about the greed and duplicity of leading colonists, and his policies for the colony were usually sensible. He was ready to delegate work to subordinates who were too often untrustworthy, but he was extremely diligent in the duties which he undertook himself as pertinent to his office. Sensitive, respectful to others, and never vindictive, he was rather out of his element when surrounded by the arrogance of the New South Wales magistracy, the disloyalty and factiousness of officials and the explosive rifts in colonial society. At the same time a more forceful man, living in Sydney not Parramatta, who ignored his wife and infant family (two of whom were born in the colony and a third on the voyage home), would probably have had more success in overcoming his difficulties. It was an unhappy period in Brisbane's life and, as Wellington commented on his recall, 'there are many brave men not fit to be governors of colonies'.
His astronomical activities had continued in Australia and indeed were probably a reason for his seeking the appointment. He built an observatory at Parramatta and made the first observations of stars in the southern hemisphere since Lacaille's in 1751-52 of which he published an account. 'Science' was 'not allowed to flag'. When he departed he left his astronomical instruments and 349 volumes of his scientific library to the colony, as he wanted his name to be associated with 'the furtherance of Science'; but he had had to leave most of his observatory work to Christian Rümker. There is little reference to astronomy in his letters after 1823, but he kept up his interest and in 1828 reported on the subject to the Royal Society, London. His astronomical achievements indeed brought him as much fame as his military and vice-regal career. When in 1823 Oxford University made him a D.C.L. he wrote that 'no Roman General ever felt prouder of the Corona Triumphatus … than I do on this occasion'. In 1826 he built another observatory at Makerstoun. Later he became president of the Edinburgh Astronomical Institution and did much to make the Edinburgh Royal Observatory highly efficient. In 1832 he was elected president of the Royal Society of Edinburgh in succession to Sir Walter Scott. In 1836 he was created a baronet, in 1837 awarded a G.C.B. and in 1841 promoted general. In 1826 he had been given command of the 34th Regiment; in 1836 he was offered the command of the troops in the North American colonies, but refused on grounds of ill health, as he did in 1838 when offered the Indian command. In 1858, when he was 'the oldest officer in the Army' he twice sought a field-marshal's baton; but though asked for without emolument it was refused. Much of his later life was occupied in paternal works at Largs. He improved its drainage, endowed a parish school and the Largs Brisbane Academy. Predeceased by his four children, he died on 27 January 1860, after enjoying locally great popularity and respect. The city of Brisbane, Queensland’s capital since 1859, was founded as a convict settlement in 1824, and it and its river were named for the governor at the suggestion of the explorer Oxley, the first European to survey the area. Brisbane himself visited the new settlement that year. It was declared a town in 1834 and opened for free settlement in 1839.
Source: Australian Dictionary of Biography.
377. Despite all its losing track, deterioration and dissipation, today’s world and the tendencies operating in it show one direction: the direction of nothingness.
538. The bulk of negative processes and tendencies, be they communism, environmental pollution or economic crises, might be suppressed and reversed. However, there is one process which cannot be held back, and there is not even a wish to hold it back, namely, the rapidly increasing »not-any-kind-of-ness«.
696. When man turns more and more to the quantitative world rather than God, then he practically turns to nothing. By losing spirit man kept his soul, which still had some spiritual properties. After this he kept only the body, which still has some psychological properties; and slowly he will come to the nothing, which will only have some somatic properties.
328. Modernity is the way to conformity - the way to conformity forever in the direction of the lowest.
329. Kali-yuga is characterised mainly by the passionate clinging to the continuous deterioration and disintegration of consciousness.
331. »Being devoured«: this is the fundamental word for what the rule of darkness realises; being devoured, which is followed by annihilation.
332. Kali yuga is not merely a state but a threatening and devouring throat.
333. The disintegrating forces of darkness are living forces, living forces that bring death.
335. The forces of darkness can gain power in the world only because they have already gained power in the soul.
427. Everything that is against the supernatural also turns, sooner or later, against the natural.
488. Liberalism not only represents the view according to which every man is equal (to one another), but it also does its best to abolish quality in order to make every men equal.
528. Modern culture is the culture of anti-spirituality and anti-traditionality. Consequently, it can only be considered as pseudo-culture, or rather, counter-culture. This term denotes counter-cultivation, that is, the cultivation of man and the world in such a way and to such a degree that they are continually becoming more fit to receive the dark instead of the light.
531. That which is called the Enlightenment today was, unambiguously, darkening; and exactly that which was dark in it resulted in it being called »Enlightenment«: the denial of the spirit.
533. Turning towards the earth clearly reveals darkening and decay. But how degenerated this [materialistic] view has become is really shown by the fact that it is called »Enlightenment« instead of »Endarkenment«.
[The contemporary manifestations of these kinds of processes at the time were similarly criticised by Plato, according to whom this attitude originated in »grievous ignorance which, however, appears to be the greatest discretion.« (Laws 886B).]
738. Each world that has lost its origin-awareness is characterized by annihilation.
British postcard in the Film Partners Series, London, no. P 193. Photo: Paramount. Henry Fonda and Sylvia Sidney in The Trail of the Lonesome Pine (Henry Hathaway, 1936).
Blue-eyed American actor Henry Fonda (1905-1982) exemplified not only integrity and strength but an ideal of the common man fighting against social injustice and oppression. He is most remembered for his roles as Abe Lincoln in Young Mr. Lincoln (1939), Tom Joad in The Grapes of Wrath (1940), for which he received an Academy Award Nomination, and more recently, Norman Thayer in On Golden Pond (1981), for which he received an Oscar for Best Actor in 1982. Notably, he also played against character as the villain 'Frank' in Sergio Leone's classic Spaghetti Western Once upon a time in the West (1968). Fonda is considered one of Hollywood's old-time legends and his lifelong career spanned almost 50 years.
Henry Jaynes Fonda was born in Grand Island, Nebraska in 1905. His parents were Elma Herberta (Jaynes) and William Brace Fonda, who worked in advertising and printing and was the owner of the W. B. Fonda Printing Company in Omaha, Nebraska. His distant ancestors were Italians who had fled their country around 1400 and moved to Holland, presumably because of political or religious persecution. In the early1600's, they crossed the Atlantic and were among the early Dutch settlers in America. They established a still-thriving small town in upstate New York named Fonda, named after patriarch Douw Fonda, who was later killed by Indians. In 1919, young Henry was a first-hand witness to the Omaha race riots and the brutal lynching of Will Brown. This enraged the 14 years old Fonda and he kept a keen awareness of prejudice for the rest of his life. Following graduation from high school in 1923, Henry got a part-time job in Minneapolis with the Northwestern Bell Telephone Company which allowed him at first to pursue journalistic studies at the University of Minnesota. In 1925, having returned to Omaha, Henry reevaluated his options and came to the conclusion that journalism was not his forte, after all. For a while, he tried his hand at several temporary jobs, including as a mechanic and a window dresser. At age 20, Fonda started his acting career at the Omaha Community Playhouse, when his mother's friend Dodie Brando (mother of Marlon Brando) recommended that he try out for a juvenile part in You and I, in which he was cast as Ricky. Then he received the lead in Merton of the Movies and realized the beauty of acting as a profession. It allowed him to deflect attention from his own tongue-tied personality and create stage characters relying on someone else's scripted words. The play and its star received fairly good notices in the local press. It ran for a week, and for the rest of the repertory season, Henry advanced to assistant director which enabled him to design and paint sets as well as act. A casual trip to New York, however, had already made him set his sights on Broadway. In 1926, he moved to the Cape Cod University Players, where he met his future wife Margaret Sullavan. His first professional role was in The Jest, by Sem Benelli. James Stewart joined the Players a few months after Fonda left, but he would become his closest lifelong friend. In 1928, Fonda went east to New York to be with Margaret Sullavan, and to expand his theatrical career on Broadway. His first Broadway role was a small one in A Game of Love and Death with Alice Brady and Claude Rains. Henry played leads opposite Margaret Sullavan, who became the first of his five wives in 1931. They broke up in 1933. In 1934, he got a break of sorts, when he was given the chance to present a comedy sketch with Imogene Coca in the Broadway revue New Faces. That year, he also hired Leland Hayward as his personal management agent and this was to pay off handsomely. Major Broadway roles followed, including New Faces of America and The Farmer Takes a Wife. The following year he married Frances Seymour Brokaw with whom he had two children: Jane Fonda and Peter Fonda, also to become screen stars.
The 29-year old Henry Fonda was persuaded by Leland Hayward to become a Hollywood actor, despite initial misgivings and reluctance on Henry's part. Independent producer Walter Wanger, whose growing stock company was birthed at United Artists, needed a star for The Farmer Takes a Wife (Victor Fleming, 1935) opposite Janet Gaynor. I.S. Mowis at IMDb: “With both first choice actors Gary Cooper and Joel McCrea otherwise engaged, Henry was the next available option. After all, he had just completed a successful run on Broadway in the stage version. The cheesy publicity tag line for the picture was "you'll be fonder of Fonda", but the film was an undeniable hit.” Wanger, realizing he had a good thing going, next cast Henry in a succession of A-grade pictures which capitalized on his image as the sincere, unaffected country boy. Pick of the bunch were the Technicolor outdoor Western The Trail of the Lonesome Pine (Henry Hathaway, 1936) with Sylvia Sidney, and the gritty Depression-era drama You Only Live Once (Fritz Lang, 1937) with Henry as a back-to-the-wall good guy forced into becoming a fugitive from the law by circumstance). Then followed the screwball comedy The Moon's Our Home (William A. Seiter, 1936) with ex-wife Margaret Sullavan, the excellent pre-civil war-era romantic drama Jezebel (William Wyler, 1938) featuring Bette Davis, and the Western Jesse James ( Henry King, 1939) starring Tyrone Power. Fonda rarely featured in comedy, except for a couple of good turns opposite Barbara Stanwyck and Gene Tierney - with both he shared an excellent on-screen chemistry - in The Mad Miss Manton (Leigh Jason, 1938), The Lady Eve (Preston Sturges, 1941) and the successful Rings on Her Fingers (Rouben Mamoulian, 1942). Henry gave his best screen performance to date in Young Mr. Lincoln (John Ford, 1939), a fictionalized account of the early life of the American president as a young lawyer facing his greatest court case. Henry made two more films with director John Ford: the pioneering drama Drums Along the Mohawk (1939) with Claudette Colbert, and The Grapes of Wrath (1940), an adaptation of John Steinbeck's novel about an Oklahoma family who moved west during the Dust Bowl. In his career-defining role as Tom Joad, Fonda played the archetypal grassroots American trying to stand up against oppression. His relationship with Ford would end on the set of Mister Roberts (John Ford, Mervyn LeRoy, 1955) when he objected to Ford's direction of the film. Ford punched Fonda and had to be replaced.
The Grapes of Wrath (John Ford, 1940) set the tone for Henry Fonda’s subsequent career. In this vein, he gave a totally convincing, though historically inaccurate, portrayal in the titular role of The Return of Frank James (Fritz Lang, 1940), a rare example of a sequel improving upon the original. He projected integrity and quiet authority whether he played lawman Wyatt Earp in My Darling Clementine (John Ford, 1946) or a reluctant posse member in The Ox-Bow Incident (William A. Wellman, 1943). In between these two films, Fonda enlisted in the Navy to fight in World War II, saying, and served in the Navy for three years. He then starred in The Fugitive (John Ford, 1947), and Fort Apache (John Ford, 1948), as a rigid Army colonel, along with John Wayne and Shirley Temple in her first adult role. The following years, he did not appear in many films. Fonda was one of the most active, and most vocal, liberal Democrats in Hollywood. During the 1930s, he had been a founding member of the Hollywood Democratic Committee, formed in support of President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal agenda. In 1947, in the middle of the McCarthy witch hunt, he moved to New York, not returning to Hollywood until 1955. His son Peter Fonda writes in his autobiography Don't Tell Dad: A Memoir (1999) that he believes that Henry's liberalism caused him to be gray-listed during the early 1950s. Fonda returned to Broadway to play the title role in Mister Roberts for which he won the Tony Award as best dramatic actor. In 1979, he won a second special Tony, and was nominated for a Tony Award Clarence Darrow (1975). Later he played a juror committed to the ideal of total justice in 12 Angry Men (Sidney Lumet, 1957) which he also produced, and a nightclub musician wrongly accused of murder in The Wrong Man (Alfred Hitchcock, 1956). During the next decade, he played in The Longest Day (Ken Annakin, Andrew Marton a.o., 1962), How the West Was Won (John Ford, Henry Hathaway, George Marshall, 1962) and as a poker-playing grifter in the Western comedy A Big Hand for the Little Lady (Fielder Cook, 1966) with Joanne Woodward. A big hit was the family comedy Yours, Mine and Ours (Melvillle Shavelson, 1968), in which he co-starred with Lucille Ball. The same year, just to confound those who would typecast him, he gave a chilling performance as one of the coldest, meanest stone killers ever to roam the West, in Sergio Leone's Western epic C'era una volta il West/Once Upon a Time in the West (1968) opposite Charles Bronson and Claudia Cardinale. With James Stewart, he teamed up in Firecreek (Vincent McEveety, 1968), where Fonda again played the heavy, and the Western omedy The Cheyenne Social Club (Gene Kelly, 1970). Despite his old feud with John Ford, Fonda spoke glowingly of the director in Peter Bogdanovich's documentary Directed by John Ford (1971). Fonda had refused to participate until he learned that Ford had insisted on casting Fonda as the lead in the film version of Mr. Roberts (1955), reviving Fonda's film career after concentrating on the stage for years. Illness curtailed Fonda’s work in the 1970s. In 1976, Fonda returned in the World War II blockbuster Midway (Jack Smight, 1976) with Charlton Heston. Fonda finished the 1970s in a number of disaster films wilth all-star casts: the Italian killer octopus thriller Tentacoli/Tentacles (Ovidio G. Assonitis, 1977), Rollercoaster (James Goldstone, 1977) with Richard Widmark, the killer bee action film The Swarm (Irwin Allen, 1978), the global disaster film Meteor (Ronald Neame, 1979), with Sean Connery, and the Canadian production City on Fire (Alvin Rakoff, 1979), which also featured Shelley Winters and Ava Gardner. His final screen role was as an octogenarian in On Golden Pond (Mark Rydell, 1981), in which he was joined by Katharine Hepburn and his daughter Jane. It finally won him an Oscar on the heels of an earlier Honorary Academy Award. Too ill to attend the ceremony, Henry Fonda died soon after at the age of 77, having left a lasting legacy matched by few of his peers. His later wives were Susan Blanchard (1950-1956), Leonarda Franchetti (1957-1961) and Shirlee Fonda (1965- till his death in 1982). With Blanchard he had a daughter, Amy Fishman (1953). His grandchildren are the actors Bridget Fonda, Justin Fonda, Vanessa Vadim and Troy Garity.
Sources: Laurence Dang (IMDb), I.S. Mowis (IMDb), Wikipedia, and IMDb.
in these days Europe remembers the August days in former Czechoslovakia, when the Soviets and their allies (including DDR, East Germany) occupied this country to destroy all efforts of a liberal and human socialism, the so called Prague Spring with Alexander Dubcek.
time to remember Dubcek, the great and liberal Vaclav Havel, and also Jan Palach, the 20y old student from Melnik, who burned himself on Wenzels place in January 1969 to protest against the soviet occupation.
twenty years later the iron curtain began to fall down, and in 1990 I had the chance for my first visit in Prague and Bohemia. the begin of my deep love for this city and this country, with which my family is connected in several ways
the photos of this first visit are blurred, shots from diapositives,. but I like them as paintings of this exciting time, full of hope for democracy and liberalism in Europe. time to remember all this. and one can imagine the Prague during the socialist time, lots of renovated buildings, but also multiple decay of historic buildings.
during all my visits there I could watch the transformation to a renovated, colourful, vibrant, capitalistic and nowadays often overcrowded city. but I am still in love with Prague...
344. Modernity is not a stiffened, static reality, but a dynamic process, which is continuously working to make itself darker and darker.
361. Today’s man has gradually built a denatured world for himself: he has already been cut off from the supernatural, and now he is about to take leave of the natural.
366. A machine is demonic for it contributes to the emergence of a considerable alienation between producer, production and product - and this is always accompanied by an inner alienation.
9. The »ideal« of dark tendencies is the person without world-views.
29. In the background of the modern world’s conceptions, elaborated by a vast rational apparatus, there work manias which are generated by demonic forces.
58. Amalgamation most extremely contrasts with unity.
137. The case when someone ignores essentiality involves not only that the most important thing starts missing but that there can be found something else in its place.
138. Sticking to the only-human leads not to remaining in the human sphere but to becoming sub-human. For persisting in something is to loose it: to loose that which was intended to be retained.
307. Those forces that manipulate the world, so that they can work undisturbed, want to accomplish two things: first and foremost that their existence be questioned, and if this does not work, they would at least like to appear undefeatable.
309. Disintegration can also be seen on the surface. The act of disintegration, however, is forever under the surface which makes it even more difficult to notice it.
310. The path leading to chaos is not yet chaotic, only in its ultimate phase. For, though a chaos-creating force is creating chaos in its course, it necessarily gets structured into dark order of things.
314. That which is in opposition to what transcends life, ultimately, is in opposition to what belongs to the domain of life - for life gets life from what transcends life.
315. As the forces of modernity first annihilate the connection with the supernatural and ruin man’s relationship with nature and only then destroy nature, in the same way they destroy the connection with what transcends life first and only then annihilate life itself.
317. First, only he who maintains his principles is considered a fool (though he is not), then it comes true that only the fool maintains his principles...
318. Those things which are usually referred to as superstitions are in fact innocent and harmless superstitions. The harming and harmful superstitions appear in totally different forms such as evolutionism, antihierarchical views, beliefs in the equality of mankind and as all those phenomena which, philosophically speaking, belong to the realm of humanism.
328. Modernity is the way to conformity - the way to conformity forever in the direction of the lowest.
329. Kali-yuga is characterised mainly by the passionate clinging to the continuous deterioration and disintegration of consciousness.
331. »Being devoured«: this is the fundamental word for what the rule of darkness realises; being devoured, which is followed by annihilation.
332. Kali-yuga is not merely a state but a threatening and devouring throat.
333. The disintegrating forces of darkness are living forces, living forces that bring death.
335. The forces of darkness can gain power in the world only because they have already gained power in the soul.
341. Kali-yuga is present in the consciousness, in the strict sense of the word, in the human psyche, in the spiritual manifestations and deeds of man, just as it is present in the surrounding world, in buildings, in music, in the different manifestations of artistic trends and in the very processes of nature. Wherever man directs his attention, be it inward or outward, he is everywhere surrounded and ruled by a world which is under the aegis of antitraditionality - that is being cut off from God, heaven, transcendence, superiority and the essence.
344. Modernity is not a stiffened, static reality, but a dynamic process, which is continuously working to make itself darker and darker.
361. Today’s man has gradually built a denatured world for himself: he has already been cut off from the supernatural, and now he is about to take leave of the natural.
364. The specific blindnesses of the dark age as a rule cloak themselves in rationalism.
366. A machine is demonic for it contributes to the emergence of a considerable alienation between producer, production and product - and this is always accompanied by an inner alienation.
375. The forces of darkness and the forces of light in a way want the same in the present age: to make the kali-yuga progress to its end. But whereas the forces of darkness tend to annihilate the true values as well, the forces of light tend to maintain the true values in the course of kali-yuga so as to serve in the building up of a future golden age.
376. One has to accommodate himself to the modern world so that his powers will not wear him out - but not in the sense of bending and assimilating to it, but as a kind of acclimatisation; for he who gets acclimatised will not »serve« the climate but resists the climate.
377. Despite all its losing track, deterioration and dissipation, today’s world and the tendencies operating in it show one direction: the direction of nothingness.
381. The postmodern state, in which everything can be manifested without any real consequence, and in which everything will be free, but nothing will matter, must be accomplished before everything falls apart in postmodernity. Without this, the final disintegration will not come about, since there would always be left certain positive remnants.
404. As light magnetises certain insects, so spiritual darkness attracts the overwhelming majority of people.
427. Everything that is against the supernatural also turns, sooner or later, against the natural.
488. Liberalism not only represents the view according to which every man is equal (to one another), but it also does its best to abolish quality in order to make every men equal.
528. Modern culture is the culture of anti-spirituality and anti-traditionality. Consequently, it can only be considered as pseudo-culture, or rather, counter-culture. This term denotes counter-cultivation, that is, the cultivation of man and the world in such a way and to such a degree that they are continually becoming more fit to receive the dark instead of the light.
529. Counter-culture does not simply mean being a poor hand at culture or that man’s world is inundated with cheap things instead of higher values. The real meaning of counter-culture is that man and his world turn in a completely different direction to the one they ought to, since instead of dominating and cultivating the light, he dominates and cultivates the dark.
531. That which is called the Enlightenment today was, unambiguously, darkening; and exactly that which was dark in it resulted in it being called »Enlightenment«: the denial of the spirit.
533. Turning towards the earth clearly reveals darkening and decay. But how degenerated this [materialistic] view has become is really shown by the fact that it is called »Enlightenment« instead of »Endarkenment«.
[The contemporary manifestations of these kinds of processes at the time were similarly criticised by Plato, according to whom this attitude originated in »grievous ignorance which, however, appears to be the greatest discretion.« (Laws 886B).]
538. The bulk of negative processes and tendencies, be they communism, environmental pollution or economic crises, might be suppressed and reversed. However, there is one process which cannot be held back, and there is not even a wish to hold it back, namely, the rapidly increasing »not-anything-like-ness« or »not-any-kind-of-ness«.
738. Each world that has lost its origin-awareness is characterized by annihilation.
773. Since the return to the origin is only possible from well-ordered states, anti-traditional forces and powers primarily attack the internal and external order of man. This way they create such counter-conditions from which the return to the origin becomes impossible, or almost impossible.
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Metaphysical aphorisms by András László
www.tradicio.org/english/solumipsum.htm
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Painting by Tadeus Brzozowski