"The further a society drifts from truth the more it will hate those who speak it." George Orwell You know, I was with the leaders of the opposition movement in Leipzig on the afternoon of November 9, 1989. And they said that perhaps within a year there would be free passage back and forth across the Berlin Wall. In a few hours, the Berlin Wall didn't exist. What happens is, in all these movements, this was true in Prague as well, is that the foot soldiers of the elite, the blue uniformed police, the mechanisms of control, finally don't want to impede the movement. And at that point, the power elite is left defenceless. Chris Hedges "I want to be very clear in calling upon the [...] authorities to refrain from any violence against peaceful protesters. The people [...] have rights that are universal. That includes the right to peaceful assembly and association, the right to free speech, and the ability to determine their own destiny. These are human rights. And the United States will stand up for them everywhere." "You might be able to lift the limitations of conforming to any centralised representational form of government, originally invented because there was no way for everybody's voice to be heard. You might be able to give everybody unhindered, untested access to knowledge, because a computer would do the day to day work for which we once qualified the select few, in an educational system originally designed for a world where only the few could be taught. You might end the regimentation of people living and working in vast, unmanageable cities, uniting them instead in an electronic community where the Himalayas and Manhattan are only split seconds apart You might, with that and much more, break the mold that has held us back since the beginning. In a future world that we would describe as balanced anarchy and they will describe as an open society, tolerant of every view; aware that there is no single, privileged way of doing things; above all, able to do away with the greatest tragedy of our era: The centuries old waste of human talent that we couldn't or wouldn't use. Utopia? Why? If, as I've said all along, the universe is, at any time, what you say it is, then say ... ". James Burke We know how the world ends and it has nothing to do with Earth, except that it gets wiped out too. Really? How does it end? While we're experimenting with new fuels, a Tralfamadorian test pilot panics, presses the wrong button, and the whole universe disappears. But you have to stop him. If you know this, can't you keep the pilot from pressing ...
He has always pressed it, and he always will.
SchlachtHof Fuenf We are here to help each other get through this thing, whatever it is. Mark Vonnegut, 2004
As a single leaf turns not yellow but with the silent knowledge of the whole tree, The Prophet (Khalil Gibran) The Second Coming by W.B. Yeats
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
Surely some revelation is at hand; "If fascism ever comes to America, it will come draped in the American flag" Huey Long |