The Declaration of Independence

 The Want, Will, and Hopes of the People

 

IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776

 

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

 

hen in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:
For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:
For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:
For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:
For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:
For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:
For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies
For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:
For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.


He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.



In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.



Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.


New Hampshire:
Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton
Massachusetts:
John Hancock, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry
Rhode Island:
Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery
Connecticut:
Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott
New York:
William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris
New Jersey:
Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark
Pennsylvania:
Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross
Delaware:
Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean
Maryland:
Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton
Virginia:
George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton
North Carolina:
William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn
South Carolina:
Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton
Georgia:
Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton

Possibly May

March of the "How-Ab-Original" Waters

Cold Naked Full Moon

Syncopathic Sambaholics

It's reigning rain!

What's your drop? 

500, 100, 50, 0

The Adventures of Tim e-Travel & Count Down

 

 

 

 

MDXVII

The Ninety-five Theses, Martin Luther, 1517

Disputatio pro declaratione virtutis indulgentiarum are a list of propositions for an academic disputation written in 1517 by Martin Luther, professor of moral theology at the University of Wittenberg, Germany, that started the Reformation, a schism in the Catholic Church which profoundly changed Europe.

 

MCMXVII

 

 

 

Октя́брьская револю́ция, October Revolution, 1917

Red October, the October Uprising or the Bolshevik Revolution, was a revolution in Russia led by the Bolsheviks which was instrumental in the larger Russian Revolution of 1917. It took place with an armed insurrection in Petrograd on the 25th of October (7 November, New Style) 1917.

 

-

 

The Balfour Declaration, Arthur Balfour

  

was a single paragraph in a letter dated 2 November 1917 from the United Kingdom's Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour to Lord Walter Rothschild, a leader of the British Jewish community, for transmission to the Zionist Federation of Great Britain and Ireland.

MCMLXVII

Ernesto Guevara, * 1928  -  † 1967

 was an Argentine Marxist revolutionary, physician, author, guerrilla leader, diplomat, and military theorist.

 -

 

 

John Coltrane,  *1926  -  † 1967

 was an American jazz saxophonist and composer. Working in the bebop and hard bop idioms early in his career, Coltrane helped pioneer the use of modes in jazz and was later at the forefront of free jazz.

MMXVII

 

Donald Trump, 45th U.S. President

in office since January 20, 2017. Before entering politics, he was a businessman and television personality.

Suns of EquiSoulsCity

Hate Golden Parachutes?

You'll Hate 'Golden Earrings' More!  (Except For One! Which?)

Cover Ups

BeatlesJuice!

 

... it's better than the original...

Georgeous Day

DiverCity

Cathédrale de la Sainte-Trinité de Paris (Orthodoxe Russe)

More or Less Exactly the Samism

George Orwell

What is Fascism?

TRIBUNE

1944

Of all the unanswered questions of our time, perhaps the most important is: ‘What is Fascism?’

One of the social survey organizations in America recently asked this question of a hundred different people, and got answers ranging from ‘pure democracy’ to ‘pure diabolism’. In this country if you ask the average thinking person to define Fascism, he usually answers by pointing to the German and Italian régimes. But this is very unsatisfactory, because even the major Fascist states differ from one another a good deal in structure and ideology.

It is not easy, for instance, to fit Germany and Japan into the same framework, and it is even harder with some of the small states which are describable as Fascist. It is usually assumed, for instance, that Fascism is inherently warlike, that it thrives in an atmosphere of war hysteria and can only solve its economic problems by means of war preparation or foreign conquests. But clearly this is not true of, say, Portugal or the various South American dictatorships. Or again, antisemitism is supposed to be one of the distinguishing marks of Fascism; but some Fascist movements are not antisemitic. Learned controversies, reverberating for years on end in American magazines, have not even been able to determine whether or not Fascism is a form of capitalism. But still, when we apply the term ‘Fascism’ to Germany or Japan or Mussolini's Italy, we know broadly what we mean. It is in internal politics that this word has lost the last vestige of meaning. For if you examine the press you will find that there is almost no set of people — certainly no political party or organized body of any kind — which has not been denounced as Fascist during the past ten years. Here I am not speaking of the verbal use of the term ‘Fascist’. I am speaking of what I have seen in print. I have seen the words ‘Fascist in sympathy’, or ‘of Fascist tendency’, or just plain ‘Fascist’, applied in all seriousness to the following bodies of people:

Conservatives: All Conservatives, appeasers or anti-appeasers, are held to be subjectively pro-Fascist. British rule in India and the Colonies is held to be indistinguishable from Nazism. Organizations of what one might call a patriotic and traditional type are labelled crypto-Fascist or ‘Fascist-minded’. Examples are the Boy Scouts, the Metropolitan Police, M.I.5, the British Legion. Key phrase: ‘The public schools are breeding-grounds of Fascism’.

Socialists: Defenders of old-style capitalism (example, Sir Ernest Benn) maintain that Socialism and Fascism are the same thing. Some Catholic journalists maintain that Socialists have been the principal collaborators in the Nazi-occupied countries. The same accusation is made from a different angle by the Communist party during its ultra-Left phases. In the period 1930-35 the Daily Worker habitually referred to the Labour Party as the Labour Fascists. This is echoed by other Left extremists such as Anarchists. Some Indian Nationalists consider the British trade unions to be Fascist organizations.

Communists: A considerable school of thought (examples, Rauschning, Peter Drucker, James Burnham, F. A. Voigt) refuses to recognize a difference between the Nazi and Soviet régimes, and holds that all Fascists and Communists are aiming at approximately the same thing and are even to some extent the same people. Leaders in The Times (pre-war) have referred to the U.S.S.R. as a ‘Fascist country’. Again from a different angle this is echoed by Anarchists and Trotskyists.

Trotskyists: Communists charge the Trotskyists proper, i.e. Trotsky's own organization, with being a crypto-Fascist organization in Nazi pay. This was widely believed on the Left during the Popular Front period. In their ultra-Right phases the Communists tend to apply the same accusation to all factions to the Left of themselves, e.g. Common Wealth or the I.L.P.

Catholics: Outside its own ranks, the Catholic Church is almost universally regarded as pro-Fascist, both objectively and subjectively;

War resisters: Pacifists and others who are anti-war are frequently accused not only of making things easier for the Axis, but of becoming tinged with pro-Fascist feeling.

Supporters of the war: War resisters usually base their case on the claim that British imperialism is worse than Nazism, and tend to apply the term ‘Fascist’ to anyone who wishes for a military victory. The supporters of the People's Convention came near to claiming that willingness to resist a Nazi invasion was a sign of Fascist sympathies. The Home Guard was denounced as a Fascist organization as soon as it appeared. In addition, the whole of the Left tends to equate militarism with Fascism. Politically conscious private soldiers nearly always refer to their officers as ‘Fascist-minded’ or ‘natural Fascists’. Battle-schools, spit and polish, saluting of officers are all considered conducive to Fascism. Before the war, joining the Territorials was regarded as a sign of Fascist tendencies. Conscription and a professional army are both denounced as Fascist phenomena.

Nationalists: Nationalism is universally regarded as inherently Fascist, but this is held only to apply to such national movements as the speaker happens to disapprove of. Arab nationalism, Polish nationalism, Finnish nationalism, the Indian Congress Party, the Muslim League, Zionism, and the I.R.A. are all described as Fascist but not by the same people.

* * *

It will be seen that, as used, the word ‘Fascism’ is almost entirely meaningless. In conversation, of course, it is used even more wildly than in print. I have heard it applied to farmers, shopkeepers, Social Credit, corporal punishment, fox-hunting, bull-fighting, the 1922 Committee, the 1941 Committee, Kipling, Gandhi, Chiang Kai-Shek, homosexuality, Priestley's broadcasts, Youth Hostels, astrology, women, dogs and I do not know what else.

Yet underneath all this mess there does lie a kind of buried meaning. To begin with, it is clear that there are very great differences, some of them easy to point out and not easy to explain away, between the régimes called Fascist and those called democratic. Secondly, if ‘Fascist’ means ‘in sympathy with Hitler’, some of the accusations I have listed above are obviously very much more justified than others. Thirdly, even the people who recklessly fling the word ‘Fascist’ in every direction attach at any rate an emotional significance to it. By ‘Fascism’ they mean, roughly speaking, something cruel, unscrupulous, arrogant, obscurantist, anti-liberal and anti-working-class. Except for the relatively small number of Fascist sympathizers, almost any English person would accept ‘bully’ as a synonym for ‘Fascist’. That is about as near to a definition as this much-abused word has come.

But Fascism is also a political and economic system. Why, then, cannot we have a clear and generally accepted definition of it? Alas! we shall not get one — not yet, anyway. To say why would take too long, but basically it is because it is impossible to define Fascism satisfactorily without making admissions which neither the Fascists themselves, nor the Conservatives, nor Socialists of any colour, are willing to make. All one can do for the moment is to use the word with a certain amount of circumspection and not, as is usually done, degrade it to the level of a swearword.

1944

THE END

LullaBye a Bernie

Sarah Vaughan

Mel Tormé

Amy Winehouse

Ella Fitzgerald

Stan Getz

WordSWordsworthy!

The French Revolution as It Appeared to Enthusiasts at Its Commencement 

 

By William Wordsworth

 

Oh! pleasant exercise of hope and joy!

For mighty were the auxiliars which then stood

Upon our side, we who were strong in love!

Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,

But to be young was very heaven!—Oh! times,

In which the meagre, stale, forbidding ways

Of custom, law, and statute, took at once

The attraction of a country in romance!

When Reason seemed the most to assert her rights,

When most intent on making of herself

A prime Enchantress—to assist the work

Which then was going forward in her name!

Not favoured spots alone, but the whole earth,

The beauty wore of promise, that which sets

(As at some moment might not be unfelt

Among the bowers of paradise itself )

The budding rose above the rose full blown.

What temper at the prospect did not wake

To happiness unthought of? The inert

Were roused, and lively natures rapt away!

They who had fed their childhood upon dreams,

The playfellows of fancy, who had made

All powers of swiftness, subtilty, and strength

Their ministers,—who in lordly wise had stirred

Among the grandest objects of the sense,

And dealt with whatsoever they found there

As if they had within some lurking right

To wield it;—they, too, who, of gentle mood,

Had watched all gentle motions, and to these

Had fitted their own thoughts, schemers more wild,

And in the region of their peaceful selves;—

Now was it that both found, the meek and lofty

Did both find, helpers to their heart's desire,

And stuff at hand, plastic as they could wish;

Were called upon to exercise their skill,

Not in Utopia, subterranean fields,

Or some secreted island, Heaven knows where!

But in the very world, which is the world

Of all of us,—the place where in the end

We find our happiness, or not at all!

 

 

 

Monanarchic Take 5ive

Let's Play Favorites

Reign of Kindo

Kings of Convenience

Queen

 

Duke Ellington

Prince

Shock & Awe

I remember when, back in the day when I was alive and studying Modern Languages, one of my projects was a closer look at the use of the  English language in the press.   

Not only did I find extremely biased language (not surprising) but also language designed to confuse.  

That's not so bad in a headline, ambiguity or a 'catchy' phrase, whose purpose is to draw in the reader, to incite curiosity for a story.   

There has been a deterioration in that respect, because there was a time, not v long ago, when headlines were more interesting and smarter.  

What usually tended to happen would be that the better the headline:

1. The more humor there was in it;

2. The less important the story was, and;

3. The more it tended to have a wordplay in it.

Now there's a hook, it seems, but it's all pure baiting now, and usually leads to nothing because there is usually no story to begin with.  Especially when it comes to internet headlines.

I wonder about 'the press' as opposed to 'the media'.    Newspapers.  They hardly sell anymore. Owning a newspaper isn't economically profitable.  One wonders, then, why magnates own papers.  Average ppl stopped buying them long ago.  More and more I  tend to think they now exist as a way for sold out politicians and gov'ts to justify some action or other.  I think papers have turned into an indirect tool of power as opposed to a check on power.  

I think the mechanism now is for a gov't or a department / agency of the state to 'leak' a story or piece of news, real or fake,  that they for some reason need ppl to get behind. 

The journalist then writes it, hiding the source (protected), and the same gov't source then uses the story s/he leaked as a reason to act. 

"We must do X because ______ paper broke the story that ________ has been involved in _______ against our interests." 

It's clear that there's no public trust in the media anymore, written  or watched.  The less trust or respect there is for the 4th estate, the more desperate it becomes, the more the 'stories' become non-stories, because it's obvious that the real stories, the actual news, aren't being delivered anymore. 

It was always a little like this but now it's huge.

Every now and then there's your lone journalist still doing his work.

I believe there are some activities which are linked to a vocation. 

1. The clergy

2. Medicine

3. Teaching

4. Politics

5. Journalism

"Un journaliste aujourd'hui c'est soit un chômeur soit une pute."  (A journalist today is either unemployed or a whore .)  Alain Soral

There are v few v good any of the above, anyway.   Excellence is rare by definition.

Donald Trump doesn't end up being the GOP candidate for POTUS for no reason.   

And even if Bernie Sanders ends up having to swallow Hillary Clinton's nomination (typo domination) filled with irregularities, he probably never dreamed he'd be this popular among US citizens.  

Both of them have been surprised by Events.  

I think they decided to run only to stir things up a little, and didn't imagine that in so doing, they would open up the space for real discussion about the topics which actually matter to ppl, right or wrong, in the country and in the world, and even more so, they didn't think that they'd open up the space that shows to everyone who bothers to look that there is lip service payed to democracy, especially in Democratic Party primaries.  It simply doesn't exist.   The Emperor is naked.   There are many reports of fraud in the Democratic Party's primaries.  

It's almost like when, in Sci-Fi films, as Zizek says, a character pushes a button he thinks anodyne, harmless, and suddenly the entire room s/he's in starts to collapse.  

 

Bernie Sanders is the natural candidate to oppose Trump.  In my mind, only Bernie Sanders has a chance to win against Trump-- that is, without cheating.

Hillary Clinton is under federal criminal investigation.   How can the Democratic Party -- and President BarrackObama!--- support her?!?!?   

Can we imagine what would be said if Bernie Sanders or and especially if Donald Trump were under federal criminal investigation, and became the nominee?  I don't think any TV channel or newspaper would be as cool about that as they are now with  Hillary Clinton!

I've got to take my hat off to the US electorate for its capacity to surprise the world.

 

Such are the incoherences, inconsistencies, and contradictions in this late, high stage of capitalism in the USA, that voters made this election one of the most interesting things in politics in recent history.    Thanks, USA!  Without irony, this is very exciting.

(And it makes Lenin ever more relevant, incidentally, especially his 1917 essay Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism.  This book makes him seem like a time traveller. Like Dr Who. Some ppl believe in palm reading, in clairvoyants, etc, and reading this book one either draws the conclusion Lenin was a prophet / psychic, or one decides, instead, that there is method in this capitalistic madness; it's not random, 'crazy', or unpredictable.)

If I were Bernie Sanders, now would be the time I'd say 'Fuck off' to Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party and the Establishment, and I'd go over to Trump and say "Do you really want to do something exceptional? Do you want to Make Politics Matter Again? Let's work together now."  

Political Shock & Awe.  

Show everyone what Hillary Clinton represents, and since Barrack Obama has backed her, shame on him, he represents the sHame thing she does now.

The stranglehold internationalized finance has on the economy, on countries, on sovereignty, on peoples' aspirations.

At the very least, if  I were Sanders, I'd remind ppl, over and over again, of Hillary Clinton's personal involvement in the overthrow of at least one democratically and legitimately elected gov't in the Americas, in 2010--- Honduras.