Dear Nettimers,
I read the use of the word SILENCE in this thread of emails (starting
with Andrew) has having multiple meanings and never detected any
accusatory tone or intentions. Perhaps, Bergman's film The Silence might
help unpacking the other layers of intent in this vibrant thread.
*Felix* wrote on the 21st: “We can speak "truth to power" all day long.
Millions are marching against the war in Gaza. But, simply, arguments
don't count… But it's more than that, power doesn't speak anymore, it
doesn’t need argumentative justification, not even dishonest one. Has
Trump ever made a single argument? No. Contemporary power counts. By
that, I don't mean that it's obsessed with money -- sure it is, but that
is no news -- but the dominant way of understanding reality has shifted.”
/“understanding how reality has shifted”/ is really essential and how
the exercise of power has shifted also is really critical. How to
utilize advanced communication networks to further political goals and
social justice necessitates building durable practice based networks.
And, a theoretical framework and vision that can sustain these networks.
*Masha Gessen* said (after receiving the Hannah Arendt Prize for
Political Thought): “In June 2003, British politician Oona King wrote an
article for the *Guardian* describing her trip to Israel-Palestine. On
her first day in the Gaza Strip, a helicopter attack killed a woman and
her child and injured dozens more. King wrote, “The original founders of
the Jewish state could surely not imagine the irony facing Israel today:
in escaping the ashes of the Holocaust, they have incarcerated another
people in a hell similar in its nature—though not its extent—to the
Warsaw ghetto.” The comparison, of course, was controversial.”… anything
that happens in the present is, by definition, imaginable. We can see
it. Even small children separated from their parents at the US border
and placed in detention are imaginable once we see pictures of them on
our screens and hear their voices in audio recordings…We are not any
smarter, kinder, wiser, or more moral than people who lived ninety years
ago. We are just as likely to needlessly give up our political power and
to remain willfully ignorant of darkness as it’s dawning. But we know
something they didn’t know: we know that the Holocaust is possible.”
Not just the Holocaust is possible but also a nuclear armageddon fuelled
by egos and political goals that each day become more and more obscure -
with the only visible objectives being TO WIN at any cost. Meanwhile all
the celebrated goals pertaining to social justice and a sustainable
environment: the health of the planet and people’s souls, evaporates.
Best for the Holidays and New Year
Allan
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