War and Peace... and the Doomsday Clock...

The rulers, the legal protectors of the 1%, have initiated wars... to be servile to the interests of the 1% and also to guard their interests on a global scale...
The soviets... learned in the 1980's that "revolutions," specially fake and degenerated revolutions, cannot be exported... Their failure in Afghanistan ushered the collapse of the Soviet Union later on...
Revolutions start with the people and serve the people... not the bureaucratic elite nor the oligarchs of a nation...
So the Soviets failed... They usurped the ideals of change and of revolution and eventually their oligarchic... bureaucratic regime failed... 
Putin is attempting to revive Soviet Imperialism... But he will fail too...
The collapse of the Soviets initiated a New World order... where the "Western Democracies" reigned supreme... They were not challenged... and they began acting like they own the Global Village... 
First Afghanistan... then Iraq... then the "Arab Spring..." 
The "Western Democracies" wanted to initiate a new game... REGIME CHANGE to usher in new governance... WESTERN STYLE DEMOCRACIES...
But as the Soviets failed in exporting their degenerated ideals... So the Western Democracies failed to initiate any meaningful DEMOCRACY... NOT EVEN A SINGLE ONE...

***

The rulers, the guardians of the 1%, lied about the Weapons of Mass destruction... and invaded Iraq... 

The rulers, the protectors of the 1%, initiated the Arab Spring... which was neither Arab initiated nor it was a Spring... It was a total disaster...

So the rulers initiated wars...

Wars killed many... Wars produced the Refugee Crisis...  Also wars propagated extremism... Islamic Jehadists flourished...

The population of the Middle East and Africa became refugees and we are witnessing a Refugee Crisis on a global scale... 

The Refugee Crisis is nothing but the GLOBALIZATION of HOMELESSNESS...  the homeless whom we witness on the pavements of Western Democracies... is GLOBALIZED...

***

And now the rulers are in panic ...

In November the western democracies were rattled by the tsunami of popular revolt... ushering in a New World Order... First in the U.K. and later in the U.S.

***

Wars begat misery... Misery begat refugees... Refugees initiated a panic in the capitals of Western Democracies... the 1% did not know what to do... and they clung to RIGHT WING POPULISM... which is just modern day fascism...

Franco's Fascists had a slogan... God, Fatherland, and Family...

Modern populist... in the Western Democracies are attempting to imitate Franco... and fascism...

***

Someone today has said:

"The media should be embarrassed and humiliated and keep its mouth shut and just listen for awhile," Steve Bannon, the President's chief strategist,  said during a rare interview with The New York Times on Wednesday.            "I want you to quote this," Bannon told the Times. "The media here is the opposition party. They don't understand this country. They still do not understand why Donald Trump is the president of the United States."                                                                       ***                                                                     Who wants to silence the press...?   

I do not like the press that much... They are just the commercialized mouthpieces of the system... But to silence them is just imitating Franco's Fascists... or Pinochet's dictatorship in Chile...

***

The Doomsday Clock started in 1947 at seven minutes to midnight and has fluctuated since between 17 minutes and 3.  A team of Nobel laureates at the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has been compiling research and analysis to set the "Doomsday Clock" since 1945.                                                                                                                                                                                                   ***                                                                          The Chicago-based Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has moved the “Doomsday Clock,” a symbolic countdown to the end of the world, to two and a half minutes to midnight.                                                     It marks the first time since 1953 — after hydrogen bomb tests in the US and then Soviet Union — that humanity has been this close to global disaster.                                                                                     The group cited US President Donald Trump’s “careless rhetoric” on nuclear weapons and his views on climate change and Putin's adventures and the Refugees among other factors, including cyber threats... scientific developments, that have contributed to the darkened forecast...

   The scientists and the Clock.......................... The rulers, the guardians of the 1%...   

Do the "elected" rulers have the right to endanger the world...? Do they have the right to deny Climate Change...? Do they have the right usher in Doomsday...?
The scientists brought the minute hand closer to the doomsday... ! 
The rulers and the 1%... and the Doomsday... !!!

            Hiroshima... Nagasaki... and Chernobyl... 

***

Dystopian Literature Gets the New Bump...

Is the real world stranger than fiction?  Sales of novels like 1984, with visions of authoritarian regimes, have spiked since the inauguration. George Orwell's 1949 classic, containing themes eerily similar to "alternative facts," is currently Amazon's bestselling book... Sinclair Lewis' It Can't Happen Here has sold out for some retailers.  Aldous Huxley's Brave New World of drug-numbed masses and Ray Bradbury's anti-censorship Fahrenheit 451 have similarly surged.  Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale is being printed again... because of the demand... Totalitarian fiction probably won't move the president, who doesn't read much, but it's inspiring a new generation of readers - and countless social media posts. Rulers and the 1% should take notice of the new generation of readers...

Veni...Vedi...Vici... (I came... I saw... I conquered...)

I sit down look at the laptop... I want to post something new on the blog... 

But then I remember the Myth of Sisyphus...  I wrote about it last week on the blog... 

The Myth urges me not to write... but the urge in my mind does not 

subside... The urge, wave after wave laps the shores of my reality... I sit there and 

muse and wait for the struggle to subside... It does not... the struggle - to write, it is 

useless to write... But, then the blog wins... After all, I write for myself and in order to 

reorient myself... my being... my thinking...

***

I left at this point and went for a walk... a long two-and-a-
half hours… The sun made me warm and happy… 

There was a woman negotiating the parking meter... I noticed that she was dismayed and having difficulties... She noticed me but hesitated to talk... eventually I guess my white goatee reassured her and she asked; "Do you have change for a dollar... for the meter..."

I was very happy to help her... She thanked me over and over agin... she even said; "You are an angel..."

It was a very simple gesture on my part... but made her very happy and made me happy too... I was very happy while I continued my walk...

***

I noticed two homeless on the sidewalk... One was sleeping wrapped in a silvery waterproof wrap... and the other was attempting to get into a transparent plastic wrap... They wanted to protect themselves from the windchill... also from the rain... 

***

I wondered what people were doing in their gold gilded towers... Are homeless allowed on the 5th Avenue in New York...?

I read that eight people have as much wealth as half of the global population... Do they care about the two homeless... who were wrapping themselves in water resistant wraps...?

 The Theater of the Absurd... on a global scale...! I 

remembered my thought that were irritating me last 

week...  Refugees... are globalized homelessness...

I arrived home again... and focussed on my thoughts 

which were with me in the morning...

Since early November two books are haunting me... 1984 by Orwell and The Handmaid's Tale by Atwood...

I have read both of them few times over... Both were compulsory reading in the university curriculum... But then I read 1984 while resisting Big Brother business in the Soviet era... and I read Handmaid's Tale while observing the degeneration of Western Democracies...

I do not much appreciate Western Democracy to start with... These just give the right to "everyone" to vote... But,

1. After the election... the "democracy" is converted to the "dictatorship of the electoral majority..."

2. The immense influence of money/capital... skews the election in favour of the 1% and attributes new meaning to money/capital and introduces new dimensions for the undemocratic democracies of the Western world...

3. The rights of minorities are never an issue... they can be trampled by the electoral majority... 

4. Corruption of the elected official and the influence of money/capital... has created a swamp... which cannot be drained... unless the system is changed... to what...? I don't know... Maybe you have a better suggestion...!!!

Still, I am worried... degenerated democracies are not 

democracies at all... As "alternate facts" are not facts... 

they are just... the lies of the Big Brother...

The influence of puritanical evangelicals... in the society 

makes a mockery of the "separation of Church and 

State." That's what makes Atwood's Handmaid's Tale as 

relevant to our times as Orwell's 1984...

       

I had never imagined that after the Vietnam Anti-War, 

after Paris 1968 and the Prague Spring and Invasion of 

Czechoslovakia...After the collapse of the Soviet Union...

1984 will down upon us in 2017... and Handmaid's Tale 

will emerge as a relevant dystopia...

***

  

Set in a totalitarian, Christian fundamentalist regime called "Gilead" in which women are property, it was written in 1985 — when the Moral Majority was going strong — and I read it during the George W. Bush administration, when abstinence-only education, purity balls, and the Westboro Baptist Church were all part of the national conversation.

Margaret Atwood's popular dystopian novel The Handmaid's Tale explores a broad range of issues relating to power, gender, and religious politics. Multiple Emmy and Golden Globe award-winner Claire Danes (Temple Grandin, Homeland) gives a stirring performance of this classic in speculative fiction, one of the most powerful and widely read novels of our time. *** After a staged terrorist attack kills the President and most of Congress, the government is deposed and taken over by the oppressive and all controlling Republic of Gilead. Offred, now a Handmaid serving in the household of the enigmatic Commander and his bitter wife, can remember a time when she lived with her husband and daughter and had a job, before she lost even her own name. Despite the danger, Offred learns to navigate the intimate secrets of those who  control her every move, risking her life in breaking the rules in hopes of ending this oppression.

Will the world witness 1984 in 2017...?

I am apprehensive...

But I believe in the people...

I believe people will just use their common sense and reject the dictatorship of the electoral majority... 

1) An estimated 57.9% of eligible voters voted in 2016... in the U.S.

2) If, 50% voted to any one candidate...

3) Then, 57.9 x 50 = 28.95% of the electorate voted for the "majority"...

4) Now the U. S. has a "democracy" where 28.95%, that is less than one third... is establishing "the dictatorship of the majority..."

Orwellian Doubletalk and Modern "Alternative Facts"....

George Orwell... Author, Journalist (1903–1950)

 
George Orwell is best known for two novels, Animal Farm and Nineteen Eighty-Four...

•  Animal Farm (1945) was an anti-dictatorship satire in a pastoral setting featuring two pigs as its main protagonists - the dictator and his opponent...
• In 1949, Orwell published another masterwork, Nineteen Eighty-Four (or 1984 in later editions).                                                             The setting of 1984 is a dystopia: an imagined world that is far worse than our own, as opposed to a utopia, which is an ideal place or state.                   Other dystopian novels include Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451, and Orwell's own Animal Farm.                                                                                                                                       Suggestion... I grew up with these novels... They were part of our discussions and intellectual growth... We passionately discussed and argued about them... It was the 80's and the cafe-trottiors in Europe were saturated with the new vision of the youth... our discussions were boisterous and loud... The new ideas and the wine were just part of us... I definitely wish you read these too... Form your own book club and read and discuss... The NEW TIMES and the NEW REALITY beg for it...                                                                                                                                                   When George Orwell wrote 1984, the year that gives the book its title was still almost 40 years in the future. Some of the things Orwell imagined that would come to pass were the telescreen, a TV that observes those who are watching it, and a world consisting of three megastates rather than hundreds of countries. In the novel, the country of Eastasia apparently consists of China and its satellite nations; Eurasia is Russia ( at the time the Soviet Union); and Oceania comprises the United States, the United Kingdom, and their allies.                                                                         Another of Orwell's creations for 1984 is Newspeak, a form of English that the book's totalitarian government utilizes to discourage free thinking. Orwell believed that, without a word or words to express an idea, the idea itself was impossible to conceive and retain. Thus Newspeak has eliminated the word "bad," replacing it with the less-harsh "ungood." The author's point was that government can control us through the words.                                                                                                                                                                                 

This bleak vision of the world divided into three oppressive nations stirred up controversy among reviewers, who found this fictional future too despairing. But it looks like the future has arrived...
The doublethink and doubletalk have been transformed to the modern day "Alternative facts"...
In the novel, Orwell gave readers a glimpse into what would happen if the government controlled every detail of a person's life, down to their own private thoughts.

Alternative Facts...

Facts are facts and their cannot be the 

fact and its alternate fact...

I just feel that 1984 has arrived... 

***

1984 has arrived...

The Big Brother watches us... on the borders... 

on the city streets... they eavesdrop... their eyes are 

everywhere and their surveillance pervasive... 

Doublethought  and doublespeack of the 1984 are the 

"Alternate facts"... of the new rulers...

***

In the French Revolution when the peasants were 

demonstrating for bread because they were hungry... 

a princess told them to eat cakes...

Indeed... "Let them eat cakes..." she said...

And just the other day another lady told us that she 

has "alternative facts..."

***

At times I am full of hope... I see the people in the streets... in the squares and I become hopeful... and then I listen to the rhetoric of the rulers... their bellicose  fury depresses me... I hear their chants of "alternative facts"... and I remember my younger days in the cafe-trottoirs of Europe discussing 1984... and the rest...

After all,

"Alternative facts"... are not facts... 

It is just the doubletalk of the rich and the powerful... 

Newspeak is the language of Oceania, a totalitarian state portrayed in the novel  Nineteen Eight-four, published in 1949), by George Orwell... Newspeak... doubletalk... double thing...  was created to meet the ideological needs of the ruling Party. Newspeak is a controlled language designed to limit freedom of thought, by eliminating political concepts — free will, self-expression, personal individuality, peace, etc. — that are ideological threats to the régime of Big Brother and the Party, who classified such concepts as forms of thought crime, for contradicting the orthodoxy of the ruling party... and the ideology of the state... By the invention of "alternative facts" we have crossed  in modern 1984...

We will try... again...

 I hope... I dream ... I reach for the stars...

I am despaired... I have nightmares... stars are 

dimmed ...

Yesterday I did not want to write... Nothing to 

report... nothing for value... all was fake... all was 

hollow...

Today the sun is up... Today I hope again... 

Yesterday he ruled the space... grabbed the pussy...

Today she owned back her pussy ...

He was vulgar...

She is always nice and cultured ... 

She just wanted her pussy back ...

***

Lemmings Triumph... They Always Do...

                                                                                                            I came across the word lemmings... and I check the dictionary for an exact meaning... 

The word refers to a "small rodent, usually found in or near the Arctic in tundra bioms."
It also refers to an individual who lacks individuality and lives as an obscure part of the crowd... The person lacks originality... It, like the rodent, follows the crowd and lives happily ever after... always burrowed in the crowd... unconsciously following the daily routine and always yearning to be teacher's pet...

In this tumultuous NEW WORLD ORDER... Maybe it is not a bad thing to be just a lemming and avoid the dangers of conflicts...

***

Théâtre de l'absurde... The Theatre of the Absurd 
After all,

The World is a Stage...

 Albert Camus's philosophy that life is inherently without meaning, as illustrated in his work The Myth of Sisyphus... and that's where religion intrudes in human consciousness...
The fear of the unknown, life after death... The search for meaning, our conscious and unconscious acts in everyday life... essentially is the enactment of Camus' Myth, the curse of the First Sin... 
In search of meaning... and happiness... some will call it fulfillment... yet others our calling... and yet others devotion and salvation... and spirituality... and human aspiration to EARN MORE, to dominate and have MORE POWER, the constant struggle to become part of the Middle Class - whatever fuck that is - and continue to clime up and up and up to the One Per-Cent and MORE and MORE and MORE...
Eternally raising the bar... lifting the rock to the top of the hill... and yet see it roll back... The futility and void of meaning... the meaninglessness... the absurdity... the frivolous idleness of our actions and thoughts and wars...                                                             The rhetoric... The usurpation... killings... and the riches of the 1%... and the misery of the 99... The myth of Sisyphus...The waiting for Godot... and the Impossible Dream...

***

The Rolling Stone...

The futility of our actions... left right or the middle... with the system... opposing the status quo... Supporting the rulers or the opposition, whoever and whatever they are...

Is essential the theatre of the Absurd that we are living in...

Soon there will be a NEW WORLD ORDER... Globalization and the Tech Revolution are ushering in a new era of absurdity... New election... new leaders... and more of the same and more of the old...

We will always yearn for the GOOD OLD DAYS... We will always wait for the Godot... BUT IT WILL NEVER COME...  

It will haunt us like the IMPOSSIBLE DREAM of Man of La Mancha... as painted by Pablo Picasso and immortalized by the lyrics of Joe Darion...

To dream the impossible dream ...To fight the unbeatable foe...To bear with unbearable sorrow... To run where the brave dare not go
To right the unrightable wrong... To love pure and chaste from afar... To try when your arms are too weary... To reach the unreachable star

This is my quest
To follow that star
No matter how hopeless
No matter how far

To fight for the right
Without question or pause
To be willing to march into Hell
For a heavenly cause

And I know if I'll only be true
To this glorious quest
That my heart will lie peaceful and calm
When I'm laid to my rest

And the world will be better for this
That one man, scorned and covered with scars
Still strove with his last ounce of courage
To reach the unreachable star

                                 *** 

The term, The Theatre of the Absurd,  was coined by the critic Martin Esslin, who made it the title of a book on the subject first published in 1961 and in two later revised editions; the third and final edition appeared in 2004 (in paperback with a new foreword by the author).  In the first edition of The Theatre of the Absurd, Esslin saw the work of these playwrights - like Edward Albee, Samuel Becket, Eugene Ionesco, Harold Pinter Arthur Adamov, Vaclav Havel, to name just a few -  as giving artistic meaning to Albert Camus's philosophy that life is inherently without meaning, as illustrated in his work The Myth of Sisyphus.  One of the more popularized play will be Becket's Waiting for Godot...    The story line revolves around two seemingly homeless men waiting for someone or something named Godot. Vladimir and Estragon wait near a tree on a barren stretch of road, inhabiting a drama spun from their own consciousness. The result is a comical wordplay of poetry, dreamscapes, and nonsense, which has been interpreted as a somber summation of mankind's inexhaustible search for meaning.

After all, the World is indeed a Stage... and a 
New World Order will dawn upon us soon...

GOOD LUCK TO US ALL

***

Scene 1, Act 1...

Just 8 men own same wealth as half the world Published:  16 January 2017 Eight men own the same wealth as the 3.6 billion people who make up the poorest half of humanity, according to a new report published by Oxfam today to mark the annual meeting of political and business leaders in Davos. The men -- Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, Carlos Slim, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Amancio Ortega, Larry Ellison and Michael Bloomberg -- are collectively worth $426 billion, the anti-poverty group said on Sunday. “It is obscene for so much wealth to be held in the hands of so few when 1 in 10 people survive on less than $2 a day.  Inequality is trapping hundreds of millions in poverty; it is fracturing our societies and undermining democracy.   “Across the world, people are being left behind. Their wages are stagnating yet corporate bosses take home million dollar bonuses; their health and education services are cut while corporations and the super-rich dodge their taxes; their voices are ignored as governments sing to the tune of big business and a wealthy elite.” "Such dramatic inequality is trapping millions in poverty, fracturing our societies, and poisoning our politics," said Paul O'Brien, Oxfam America's Vice President for Policy and Campaigns.

Indeed it is obscene... and blasphemous...

No one... neither the Pope, nor the Bishops... nor the 

Anglicans... nor the all Christian leaders... hypocritical church 

goers... Evangelicals... all the people full of family values...

No one... neither the Islamic Imams... nor their bastard - ISIS...

nor mainstream Islams... nor the Islamic Radical Jihadists...

No one... The Dali Lama... Buddhists... Hindus... Sikhs... 

Absolutely no one protested... raised their voice... for the vile 

reality... that 8 men possess more than 3.6 billion people...

And God look down... and God was disgusted with his, or 

maybe her, creation...

***

They say,

North Americans are so funny that they cannot pronounce a word in their own language. They say 'ass' for 'arse'... because they think they are entitled to everything...

Ass is a synonym for Donkey. Poor Donkey!

He is a Swiss artist... Olaf Breuning...
This piece is titled; "Mr. Hand, Mrs. Ass, Mrs. Knee, Mr. Foot" produced in 2004...
Even in art the sexist division... the gender bias rules...
The are is disgustingly sexist... and the title attests to it...
It is very easy to objectify females and their body parts... 
Don't males have body parts too...?

Why strip females... and cover up the males...?

Abhorrent... Disgusting... "Pussy grabbing" ignorance...

***

Some days I hope... 

Some days I despair...

Nothing changes ... 

Sisyphus will roll the rock up ... Forever ...

Eternally ... 

Futility will rule ... always ...

But we will try ... only by chance things just may change ... for the better ... 

We will try ...