things that cannot be said
things that (can and) cannot be said
john cusack and arundhati roy (originally just on their pages)
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nov 2015 – roy, cusack, ellsberg to see snowden
all 4: http://linkis.com/www.outlookindia.com/G4gb7
1\ things that can and cannot be said:
http://linkis.com/www.outlookindia.com/vV5dY
AR – the United States is unable to understand how irrelevant it is, actually. And how wicked…. Your short-term gains are the rest of the world’s long-term disasters—for everybody, including yourselves. And, I’m sorry, I’ve been saying you and the United States or America, when I actually mean the US government. There’s a difference. Big one.
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2\ we brought you the promise of the future
in 65 – Within weeks, the campaign called Rolling Thunder was announced. American jets began to bomb South Vietnam. Something like 175,000 marines were deployed in that small country on the other side of the world, 8,000 miles away from Washington, DC. The war would go on for eight more years. (According to the testimonies in the recently published book about the Vietnam War Kill Anything that Moves by Nick Turse, what the US army did in Vietnam as it moved from village to village with orders to “kill anything that moves”—which included women, children and livestock—was just as vicious, though on a much larger scale, as anything ISIS is doing now. It had the added benefit of being backed up by the most powerful air force in the world.)
ay. 61.
By the end of the Vietnam war, three million Vietnamese people and 58,000 US troops had been killed and enough bombs had been dropped to cover the whole of Vietnam in several inches of steel.
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3\ things that cannot be said:
http://www.outlookindia.com/article/things-that-can-and-cannot-be-said-contd-/295810
ar – the revolution cannot be funded. It’s not the imagination of trusts and foundations that’s going to bring real change.
[..]
JC: So the term human rights can take the oxygen out of justice?
AR: Human rights takes history out of justice.
[..]
now if the “human rights” NGOs make a noise, or even whisper too loudly…this government will shut them down.
[..]
JC: Is Modi going to succeed long-term?
AR: It’s hard to say. There’s no real opposition, you know? He has an absolute majority and a government that he completely controls, and he himself—and I think this is true of most people with murky pasts—doesn’t trust any of his own people, so he’s become this person who has to interface directly with people. The government is secondary. Public institutions are being peopled by his acolytes, school and university syllabi are being revamped, history is being rewritten in absurd ways. It’s very dangerous, all of it. And a large section of young people, students, the IT crowd, the educated middle class and, of course, Big Business, are with him—the Hindu right-wing is with him. He’s lowering the bar of public discourse—saying things like, “Oh, Hindus discovered plastic surgery in the Vedas because how else would we have had an elephant-headed god.”
[..]
Anyway, then the cop says to me, “You know, Arundhati, I’ve told my seniors that however many police we put into this area, into the forest, we can’t win this battle with force—the only way we can win it is to put a TV in every tribal person’s house because these tribals don’t understand greed.” His point was that watching TV would teach them greed.
[..]
JC – She can disarm you at any time with her friendly hustler’s grin but her eyes see things and love things so fiercely, it’s frightening at times.
[..]
JC – The meeting between these two living symbols of American conscience was historic. It needed to happen. Seeing Ed and Dan together, trading stories, exchanging notes, was both heartwarming and deeply inspiring, and the conversation with Roy and the two former President’s Men was extraordinary. It had depth, insight, wit, generosity and a lightness of touch not possible in a formal, structured interview. Aware that we were being watched and monitored by forces greater than ourselves, we talked. Maybe one day the NSA will give us the minutes of our meeting. What was remarkable was how much agreement there was in the room. It wasn’t just what was said, but the way it was said, not just the text, but the subtext, the warmth, and laughter that was so exhilarating. But that’s another story.
[..]
Roy listened to all this without saying very much. In The End of Imagination, the essay she wrote after India’s 1998 nuclear tests, she had gotten herself into serious trouble when she declared, “If it is anti-national to protest against nuclear weapons, then I secede. I declare myself a mobile republic.” Dan, who is writing a book on the nuclear arms race, told me it was one of the finest things he’s ever read on the subject. “Wouldn’t you say,” Roy said for the record, or to anybody willing to listen, “that nuclear weapons are the inevitable, toxic corollary of the idea of the Great Nation?”
[..]
AR: And—I might as well say it now that I’m in the Red Square—to capitalism. Every time I say the word capitalism, everyone just assumes….
JC: You must be a Marxist.
AR: I have plenty of Marxism in me, I do…but Russia and China had their bloody revolutions and even while they were Communist, they had the same idea about generating wealth—tear it out of the bowels of the earth. And now they have come out with the same idea in the end…you know, capitalism. But capitalism will fail, too. We need a new imagination. Until then, we’re all just out here….
we need a new imagination..t
nothing to date (ever since that day) has gotten to the root of problem.. aka: to the itch-in-the-soul (imagination) of 8bn people in sync
ie: need means (nonjudgmental expo labeling) to undo hierarchical listening – so we can hear what’s already on each heart as global detox in order to org around legit needs
legit freedom will only happen if it’s all of us.. and in order to be all of us.. has to be sans any form of measuring, accounting, people telling other people what to do
how we gather in a space is huge.. need to try spaces of permission where people have nothing to prove to facil curiosity over decision making.. because the finite set of choices of decision making is unmooring us.. keeping us from us..
ie: imagine if we listen to the itch-in-8b-souls 1st thing everyday & use that data to connect us (tech as it could be.. ai as augmenting interconnectedness)
the thing we’ve not yet tried/seen: the unconditional part of left to own devices ness
[‘in an undisturbed ecosystem ..the individual left to its own devices.. serves the whole’ –dana meadows]
there’s a legit use of tech (nonjudgmental exponential labeling) to facil the seeming chaos of a global detox leap/dance
ie: whatever for a year.. a legit sabbatical ish transition
otherwise we’ll keep perpetuating the same song.. the whac-a-mole-ing ness of sea world.. of not-us ness.. of part\ial ness.. perpetuating survival triage.. for (blank)’s sake..
[..]
JC – Suddenly she turned to me and thanked me formally for organising the meeting with Edward Snowden. “He presents himself as this cool systems man, but it’s only passion that could make him do what he did. He’s not just a systems man. That’s what I needed to know.”
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4\ what shall we love
http://www.outlookindia.com/article/what-shall-we-love/295799
What the two of them clearly had in common was a strong, almost corporeal sense of moral righteousness—of right and wrong. A sense of righteousness that was obviously at work not just when they decided to blow the whistle on what they thought to be morally unacceptable, but also when they signed up for their jobs—Dan to save his country from Communism, Ed to save it from Islamist terrorism. What they did when they grew disillusioned was so electrifying, so dramatic, that they have come to be identified by that single act of moral courage.
[..]
The refugees fleeing from wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria to Europe are refugees of the Lifestyle Wars. But the thousands of people in countries like India who are being jailed and killed by those same Lifestyle Wars, the millions who are being driven off their lands and farms, exiled from everything they have ever known—their language, their history, the landscape that formed them—are not. As long as their misery is contained within the arbitrarily drawn borders of their ‘own’ country, they are not considered refugees. But theyarerefugees. And certainly, in terms of numbers, such people are the great majority in the world today. Unfortunately in imaginations that are locked down into a grid of countries and borders, in minds that are shrink-wrapped in flags, they don’t make the cut.
[..]
We’re told, often enough, that as a species we are poised on the edge of the abyss. It’s possible that our puffed-up, prideful intelligence has outstripped our instinct for survival and the road back to safety has already been washed away. In which case there’s nothing much to be done. If there is something to be done, then one thing is for sure: those who created the problem will not be the ones who come up with a solution.
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interview w Cenk
@TheYoungTurks
Watch the full John Cusack interview here: youtu.be/c47vpCMjj48 youtu.be/zB-iQig1sq4?a
how much evil do you have to do in order to do good – roy
people go to great links to rationalize/legitimize… an incredible trick/feat
7 min – pretty clear obama has cemented/left in place most grevious policies of bush admin.. presidents have become ceo of this enormous operation/empire.. flow of foundations/moneys.. so you hope.. whoever enters the whitehouse will pull back on the foreign criminality and focus on rebuilding country here…
8 min – on murder being murder – exercising violence for a political aim – terrorism..
9 min – *the system’s not going to go away.. so we hope who goes in there will restrain.. for private gain and not wrap selves in flag and excuse it..
*why not – why say that..?
12 min – let’s go deeper.. why is it so important that the person they killed w/o due process an american citizen..
18 min – cenk: for me it was literal.. they told me things i couldn’t say
19 min – if you have principles you don’t have to always remember so much what you said or what your position was because it’s always going to be at least consistent.. in line.. w some pretty obvious truths..
22 min – cenk: what we’re trying to do with the young turks.. create a nother way
23 min – if you want hillary to be more progressive.. make more noise.. she has all that money.. momentum.. that makes it easier for her to be more progressive..
24 min – arundhati’s – capitalism a ghost story – mlk – made forbidden connections.. as a result.. assassinated.. mlk center set up by corps.. foundations literally re writing history.. so if we’re not as outspoken as progressives…
26 min – roy: history is really a study of the future not the past…
roy: the foundations – controlled resistance… state violence .. not allowed to point out.. but if anyone resists it.. how dare they..
28 min – roy: if you’re in central india.. 4 miles in jungle.. non violence is a political tactic.. so if no audience.. can’t preach non violence to people who are being killed..
29 min – victims of state sponsored violence… told they should be ghandian.. roy: what form of non-violence would be helpfully useful if being killed
31 min – cenk: shailine protesting as non violence.. john: worked because she had a camera there.. cenk: that’s what young turks is hoping to do..if i want them to be ghandi.. then it’s my job to get a camera there
34 min – cenk: what can people do john: turn off the tv and read books.. challenge old ways of thinking..
36 min – i wondered what roy would say to ellsberg and snowden..
38 min – john talks about the convo
39 min – cenk: on the flag – getting you in the habit of bowing down to things
dan: knew that person that put – i pledge allegiance to the flag.. into the classrooms.. was a flag maker.. when you think about it.. pledging allegiance to a flag is strange.. why pledge allegiance to a symbol… i’m not against the flag.. but any blind worshipping..
41 min – cenk: most ironic thing in the world.. the flag stands for freedom.. yet curtailing capernick
45 min – history is not going to fair for this american exceptionalism..
46 min – cenk: when we claim the right to do immoral things because we’re more moral than other countries..
47 min – cenk: we can unpoison the world.. like this here. . interviewing you.. i don’t need a billion dollar company to do that
48 min – on the value of twitter curation..
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quotes from say anything:
1:26 – are you here because you need someone or you need me
1:28 – what i want to do with my life.. what i want to do for a living.. is be w your daughter.. because i’m good at it
1:34 – nobody thought we’d do this.. nobody thinks it will work.. do they – – no.. you just described every great success story
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Everything else is a distraction- https://t.co/EtMO2dDVpW
Original Tweet: https://twitter.com/johncusack/status/1545953467482755075
this too is distraction.. money won’t solve what our souls crave
Tell that to people making 7 dollars an hour https://t.co/90fLiJUNqz
Original Tweet: https://twitter.com/johncusack/status/1545972978646765569
from above (things can/can’t be said.. which links no longer work for):
the revolution cannot be funded. It’s not the imagination of trusts and foundations that’s going to bring real change.. we need a new imagination – arundhati roy
imagine if we just focused on listening to the itch-in-8b-souls.. first thing.. everyday.. and used that data to augment our interconnectedness.. we might just get to a more antifragile, healthy, thriving world.. the ecosystem we keep longing for.. what the world needs most is the energy of 8b alive people
let’s try/code money (any form of measuring/accounting) as the planned obsolescence w/ubi as temp placebo.. where legit needs are met w/o money.. till people forget about measuring..
humanity needs a leap.. to get back/to simultaneous spontaneity .. simultaneous fittingness.. everyone in sync..
band aids are killing us man.. we need a legit re\set..
ie: a nother way (org’d around legit needs)
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be you. 