Sorry I haven't been around

Submitted by LaFeminista on Wed, 04/13/2016 - 1:57am

We have been getting involved in the "Nuit Debout" movement here in France.

Fed up of the same old political elite, fed up of the same inequality and fed up of the same failure to serve the people.

Does that sound familiar, well I hope so. Even if Bernie loses against the onslaught of the establishment this type of mass movement can change things. If not this movement, then the next one, so many people, so pissed off and I include many of those polluted by the hateful machinations of the extreme right.

The only way in my opinion after so many years of being ground down is to take to the streets again and again. They will send the riot police [CRS here] to stir up trouble so that the elite can cry faux tears about the incivility of the unwashed masses. Oh my god you used the wrong "tone" when speaking to your betters.

In could be another "68" and as I said, if not this time the next. Austerity has shown for 8 years just how meaningless young lives are to those that have everything. The hypocrisy when they complain that the young want free stuff since that is exactly what they had under the great social programs of the past. We cant afford it, they cry, we can't afford you, we retort.

A revolution is what we need in the west, a revolution against greed and selfishness, a revolution against we got ours so fuck you. The tragedy is that so many brilliant minds are thrown on the scrap heap before they even have a chance to prove their worth because we just cant afford to feed the rich and the poor alike and we all know who gets the crumbs.

Fuck the system and fuck their lackeys.

It's time to restore democracy.

Fight for your rights.

I would normally have put this on TOP but why would I, now it has become yet another mouthpiece of the elite.

Tags:

democracy

Vote

Comments

Submitted by Cali Scribe on Wed, 04/13/2016 - 2:08am

Best of luck to my brothers and sisters

across The Pond; maybe Europeans can show us Americans a thing or two.

Submitted by riverlover on Wed, 04/13/2016 - 4:21am

Aux barricades!

Enjouex les nuits debout!

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Hey! my dear friends or soon-to-be's, JtC could use the donations to keep this site functioning for those of us who can still see the life preserver or flotsam in the water.

Submitted by UntimelyRippd on Wed, 04/13/2016 - 8:31am

One of my all-time favorite paintings:

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The earth is a multibillion-year-old sphere.
The Nazis killed millions of Jews.
On 9/11/01 a Boeing 757 (AA77) flew into the Pentagon.
AGCC is happening.
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Submitted by hecate on Wed, 04/13/2016 - 10:45am

that one

has guns. Guns are over. So I prefer the new Marianne:

Submitted by NonnyO on Wed, 04/13/2016 - 10:56am

Eugène Delacroix is the artist

The painting is Liberty Leading the People (1830), now at the Louvre-Lens, Paris.

It's one of my favorites, too, and one of the few iconic images I remember instantly from Art History classes (AH is my minor).

If you like Delacroix, go to the Wiki page about him.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eug%C3%A8ne_Delacroix
Lots of thumbnail images of some of his most famous works (there are others, but I think this one is the most famous). He combines stark realism with a majestic style, and one can become repulsed by the war images..., or take lessons on what not to do with/to one's fellow human beings. Yet other paintings depict languid women (nude, of course), there's a tender scene of a mother and father with their newborn in The Natchez (at MOMA, NYC).

Yes, I do like multiple art styles and artists, multiple media formats, from the Paleolithic to the present....

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I believe in an America where the separation of church and state is absolute ..., where no church or church school is granted any public funds or political preference. — President John F. Kennedy, Houston, TX, 12 September 1960

Submitted by UntimelyRippd on Wed, 04/13/2016 - 11:49am

I first came across this painting while flipping through

an art book, prepping for a high school quiz competition. I thought it was "awesome", in the way that teenagers started to use that word a few years later.

2 years later, I walked into a room in the Louvre (odd twist of memory, I would have sworn it was at Versailles, but I find no evidence that the painting was ever on display there) and discovered that it was literally awesome -- it's fucking enormous, more than 10' x 8', and standing in front of it, it is overwhelming. The figures are very nearly life-sized.

There are some folks who now argue that the painting was a huge snark. If so, that is very sad, and represents an enormous failure on the part of Delacroix. For example

But who is this woman standing on a pile of bodies towards whom all eyes are drawn, especially our own? What is she doing half nude in the middle of a firefight? Her feet and chest are bare. Her tunic, though simple, is sculpted by the wind. Her figure. The way she marches towards us but her face remains in profile and most importantly the divine halo of light emerging from the dust behind her. All these are derived from Greek sculptures of goddesses. She is Liberty. But not like other painters before Delacroix have imagined her. This usually positive allegory is normally portrayed as beautiful, angelic, divine and not often amongst the people. But this rendition is dirty, nude and tanned by the sun, and takes more from the common courtesan than the Greek goddess. She is amongst the people, armed to the teeth with a very masculine posture. Those around her are no better, with dirty feet, dark fingernails sometimes even taking macabre faces. We see a delinquent youth, dangerous and threatening strangers. We are not witnesses to a great movement or ideal but a caricature of everything that is foul in a mistaken people.

This interpretation rests on the assertion that Delacroix loathed the common people, and that he represented them faithfully because he thought they were repulsive, and wanted to represent that repulsiveness (contrast, for example, with Van Gogh's sympathetic portrayal of ordinary folk in paintings like The Potato Eaters). If correct, the joke was on him -- his painting inspires those of us who believe in empowering the common citizenry, even if they baffle us with their self-destructive political choices and their fascination with the Kardashians.

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Submitted by NonnyO on Wed, 04/13/2016 - 12:31pm

Interesting! I've never read that kind of interpretation.

In fact, I no longer remember what the art history teacher or text said about Delacroix.

The AH prof did his doctorate on Gothic architecture, so he featured a lot of buildings in his lectures, and I came to appreciate the difference between Romanesque (as seen in The Lion in Winter - Hepburn's autobio tells of the producer looking for Romanesque castles for filming because Gothic hadn't been built at that moment in time), and Gothic like the magnificent cathedrals.

In my genealogy research, I have ancestors who were married or baptized in Nidaros Cathedral..., which was started to be built waaaay early, added to through the centuries..., and it has a Sheela-Na-Gig in one place of the exterior! That's like a pagan Celtic symbol! Who added her? Was an Irish slave who knew how to carve stone brought back to Trondheim at some point and made her? North and west of Trondheim, up theTrondheimsfjord through the Skarnsundet and going north, there is a little stone church about 800 years old. It also has an old pagan carving in the foundation reminiscent of a Sheela-Na-Gig. It sets up a whole lot of question marks in my mind..., because there are certain periods of early history when I can't tell the difference between Scandinavian artifacts and Hiberno-Celtic art and sculpture without knowing where the artifacts were found. In some of the stave kirkes there are lovely carvings in wood with the wild flowery style reminiscent of something one might see in the Book of Kells. The Vikings founded many coastal cities in Ireland, and took slaves, so it stands to reason they may have brought some back to Norway with them instead of selling them in slave markets bound for Byzantium or Normandy or wherever. But..., did the Vikings bring their artisans to Ireland (and other areas) to teach them the styles they used (e.g., runestones), or did the Irish Celts teach the Vikings their art styles? I don't know.

There are certain imponderables I'll never know the answers to! Frustrating! ;-D

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Submitted by Portlaw on Wed, 04/13/2016 - 6:18am

All best!

Submitted by stevej on Wed, 04/13/2016 - 6:51am

A mass movement

is the only thing that can change things systemically. A different arrangement of deck chairs just won't cut it this time.

I really do think that what is building will not be contained by national boundaries.

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“To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize.” -Voltaire

Submitted by LaFeminista on Wed, 04/13/2016 - 10:23am

Need to throw the deck chairs overboard

Submitted by stevej on Wed, 04/13/2016 - 10:33am

Along with the attendants :) n/t

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“To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize.” -Voltaire

Submitted by Alison Wunderland on Wed, 04/13/2016 - 6:53am

Aux armes, citoyens, Formez vos bataillons,

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SIxOl1EraXA]

Fuck Yeah! Where they actually know how to have a Revolution.

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Submitted by LapsedLawyer on Wed, 04/13/2016 - 8:49am

Once upon a time this country did too....

We now smother that memory in fireworks, burgers, hot dogs, french(!) fries, potato salad, lousy marching music, crappy cloying "patriotic" songs, and forget what the f**k actually happened.

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"Our society is run by insane people for insane objectives. I think we're being run by maniacs for maniacal ends and I think I'm liable to be put away as insane for expressing that. That's what's insane about it."
-- John Lennon

Submitted by LaFeminista on Wed, 04/13/2016 - 10:24am

sad is it not

Submitted by NonnyO on Wed, 04/13/2016 - 11:13am

One of our most iconic images, if not THE most iconic...

... was a gift from France. Who can forget the resolute lady in the harbor: The Statue of Liberty?

France helped us during the Revolutionary War. One of my ancestors whose honorable discharge after six+ years of being enlisted was signed by G. Washington at Newburgh while the troops were waiting with Washington for the ship to come from France with the signed Treaty of Paris, along with the money France loaned us to pay off the troops. Before that there was Lafayette. Without France's help, we might not have won the Revolutionary War and become a nation!

Seriously, when Dumbya started criticizing France in despicable terms after 9/11 because they had the good sense to pause and want to know what the UN inspectors found before engaging in an illegal and unconstitutional war, I lost it.

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Submitted by UntimelyRippd on Wed, 04/13/2016 - 11:53am

And, apocryphally, the figure of Lady Liberty was inspired

by the Delacroix painting we have discussed a few comments to the north.

It is, as we used to say on the quiz team, "A seamless web".

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Submitted by gulfgal98 on Wed, 04/13/2016 - 12:37pm

The Lafayette Land Grant

The United States government gave General Lafayette a large tract of land in what is now my hometown of Tallahassee, Florida. Although General Lafayette himself never visited the land, his impact upon Tallahassee is seen every where including Frenchtown, Lafayette Oaks subdivision, Lake Lafayette, and Lafayette Street.

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Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?

“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy

Submitted by eyo on Wed, 04/13/2016 - 7:07am

Solidarity "Standing Nights"

Thanks you made me look and searching for Nuit Debout found this good article plus another interesting place to read called openDemocracy. « Nuit Debout » : citizens are back in the squares in Paris
Selected some quotes and there is more in the article, we all have much in common I think. Merci LaFeminista.

The lack of alternative in party politics

The absence of alternatives on the parties’ side makes the panorama very favourable to the rise of an “indignados”/Occupy-style movement. French progressives have denounced the succession of neoliberal reforms conducted by the Socialist Party government. The labour rights reform is just another episode that has included a wide set of laws proposed by the social-liberal minister of economy, Macron, or the long debate on the expulsion from French nationality of bi-national citizens associated with terror attacks. Five years ago, it was precisely this lack of a political alternative between the socialist and the popular parties that led thousands of people to occupy the Plaza del Sol in Madrid and then the squares of each and every city and town across Spain. They denounced a “democracy without choice”.
[...]
In this scenario, to occupy a square and propose to change politics from below is the only option left to disappointed progressive citizens. To challenge the centrality of representative democracy and to empower citizens for local solutions is indeed the main purposes of the “Standing Nights”. Citizens on the square maintain their distance with all political parties, heavily denounce the Socialist Party’s “treason” and strongly oppose the Front National, notably by welcoming migrants and refugees into their “Standing Nights”.

Right on!

Peace

Submitted by LaFeminista on Wed, 04/13/2016 - 10:26am

\\\voting for different colors of the same old crap, there is

only one choice left, force them to do what is right or kick them out.

Submitted by defaultcitizen on Wed, 04/13/2016 - 8:15am

!adelante!

“...Resentment is very well defined by Scheler as an autointoxication – the evil secretion, in a sealed vessel, of prolonged impotence. Rebellion, on the contrary, breaks the seal and allows the whole being to come into play. It liberates stagnant waters and turns them into a raging torrent.” -Albert Camus in The Rebel

Rage on, mi reina

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defaultcitizen

Submitted by Cassiodorus on Wed, 04/13/2016 - 10:47am

You may have noticed --

all of my diaries have been removed from Daily Kos and placed in an archive...

https://cassiodorusblog.wordpress.com/about/

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"To watch the leader of the most powerful nation on earth endorse and finance a genocide prompts not a passing kind of disgust or anger, but a severance." -- Omar el Akkad

Submitted by LaFeminista on Wed, 04/13/2016 - 11:36am

Did you do it? If so well done

I have too many over there to bother

Submitted by Cassiodorus on Wed, 04/13/2016 - 2:11pm

Thank you.

Yeah it's my quiet little fuck you to Markos and his friend Hillary.

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"To watch the leader of the most powerful nation on earth endorse and finance a genocide prompts not a passing kind of disgust or anger, but a severance." -- Omar el Akkad

Submitted by Lenzabi on Wed, 04/13/2016 - 1:30pm

Corporatism

Corporatism, the combination of fascism and corporate interests has been around a looooong time. But now it is attempting via the Multi-Nationals and their tentacles all over to rob the people of rights, social programs, and enslave all, even the self serving sycophants who run governments. How can you tell your nation is falling under such? Laws passed that favor the corporations and wealthy over the masses. defunding, or cut backs on social services spending. folowing also de-regulation of corporations so that they can pollute/flout safety of work and products on the market, that they lobby or bribe all nations' politicians, that they get the passing of "free-trade" agreements, lifting of taxes on themselves and the owning elites, as well as the lifting or lowering of tariffs.

Books in Science fiction I read had such concepts of corporate take over from governments until the world was ruled by competing corporations,,,Dystopia is happening, and people are waking up to fight it, but their propaganda tools through news papers, magazines and TV kept many asleep. This is why they wish to destroy Net Neutrality, to stem the ability of us all to share information, contact each other to form protests and also pester our public officials to do the right thing that they seem not wishing to do when we do not bother them.

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So long, and thanks for all the fish

Submitted by gendjinn on Wed, 04/13/2016 - 1:32pm