Tag: George Orwell

Stanley Cohen: 2016 Person of the Year

Stanley Cohen was a bright silver lining in 2016 — and now in 2017. By simply being himself he bestows hope to the most fiendishly exploited  and he always buoys the spirits of his worldwide supporters.

I flip the calendar back to 2015 and remember when Stanley spent 11/12ths of 2015 in the Canaan PA prison ‘campus’ — down in the northeast corner of Pennsylvania. Imprisoned without cause. His voice temporarily muffled, but he witnessed Prison America firsthand. And so his full-throated voice is back and he’s upped the volume 🙂 Certainly made my 2016 — and not just mine. Click More on Stanley for more on Stanley.

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Trumped up charges raised over the years by a convenient and expedient arm of federal government (IRS) repeatedly found nothing. Investigators found no basis for charges because none exist. So they sent him to Canaan (aIn’t the promised land) anyway.

Wait a minute you may say, this is America.

Read about Kalief Browder. Then discover how he died.

Did the IRS find Stanley Cohen’s secret rumored lucre?

No.

It’s what happens when you speak up for the über disenfranchised on this planet. People such as Palestinians.

See my blog category Palestine for complete details.

How does Israel get away with the longest occupation in modern history? You can stay up to date on that question by following Stanley Cohen on Twitter. He’s eloquent, he’s prolific, he’s been at it for 50 years.

A quick unrelated aside. Does white phosphorous demonstrate characteristic trails?  On Gaza for instance.

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Distinctive white-phosphorus trails in Gaza

Fortunately, Stanley’s Twitter-feed nourishes the humane soul daily. Click Caged but Undaunted. #UpTheRebels

Stanley Cohen is a dedicated, determined and honest human-rights attorney, a man of integrity — that rare endangered specie of homo sapiens known as Menschen. No vested interest has ever owned Mr. Cohen and none ever will. Truth guides him, honesty defines him.

Few even know that Stanley Cohen exists. Electoral results confirm insatiable ignorance.   

We teeter at the edge of impending dystopia. Thinking critically is passé. Unthinking is the more modern way. I find it curious that George Orwell is the antithesis of Orwellian, but in proper NewSpeak fashion, his very name now defines it.

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Oddly timely that my favorite  NewSpeak website is no longer available.

 

What is Winston Smith’s job. Where does he work? What does he do?

Winston Smith works as a clerk in the Records Department of the Ministry of Truth, where his job is to rewrite historical documents so they match the constantly changing current party line.

— Wikipedia

“To hear the simplistic denial of those who scream out with naiveté “give Trump a chance” as they condemn others engaged in selfless protest against a certain political and social tsunami in the making, is to ignore his life-time public embrace of policies that tens of millions reject as not just destructive, but evil per se. They are not mistaken. — Caged but Undaunted 

Thanks for reading.

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Source

I Would Prefer Not To

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I am just another person who has not yet read Moby Dick, but it’s still on my list.

Watching reality TV resembles a Philip K. Dick dystopia, it keeps getting closer to its total eclipse of reality.

Name a television show broadcast in the timeframe 1969 to the present. I probably have not seen it. I did not watch the white Bronco, nor the endlessly falling towers. Wait a generation, then tune in to the Simpson impact and the meaning behind those Twins.

So here is my advice for any unsuspecting reader: ignore top news stories. Innumerable conjectures extrapolate scant evidence into innumerable dead-ends. Wild-ass propaganda flourishes as every opportunity for a story blossoms, petals drop and the wind takes them all.

Study themes completely unrelated to the:

…major news story we are now following. We will continue to track this story as information becomes available. Stay tuned to WWTF for complete coverage of (FILL IN THE BLANK), our top news story.” 

Thus creating an urge or crave to keep listening, keep watching, keep supporting our sponsors. The band drones on.

I would prefer not to

One afternoon in 1971 I was discussing George Orwell with Dr. William R. Siddall, then head of the Geography Dept. at Kansas State. He had not read Orwell’s “Politics and the English Language” but I piqued his interest with my personal gleaning. It became required reading for the entire staff.

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Reread the good stuff with an open, but not gaping, mind.

When I graduated Bill Siddall suggested that I read widely. So I did. A solid memory.

Goethe suggested that Western Civilization might have taken its direction upon a Homeric turn rather than a Christian model.  Daniel Mendelsohn wrote “Englishing the Iliad” for the New Yorker. I took a plunge.

“The decline of the West” by Hans Günther:

Goethe had a premonition of this decline of the West: even in October 1801 he remarked in conversation with the Countess von Egloffstein, that spiritual emptiness and lack of character were spreading — as if he had foreseen what today characterises the most celebrated literature of the Free West. It may be that Goethe had even foreseen, in the distant future, the coming of an age in which writers would make great profits by the portrayal of sex and crime for the masses.”

from Goethe and the Indo-European religiosity

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Alternate history, geography, language, sentients…

I now return you to your normally scheduled program, in progress.

Thanks for reading.

 

 

 

George Orwell and Stanley Cohen

The William Kunstler of our time, defender of the super-underdog, has been in prison since January 5, 2015. Human rights attorneys are a rare breed. Perhaps an endangered species.

Q.What do lawyers and sperm have in common?
A: A one in a million shot at being human.

-Stephen Fry

So Stanley Cohen is one in a million.

I follow Caged but Undaunted under the byline Marion Heads on WordPress. It maintains focus on the downtrodden, where the exploited live on the edge of existence. The views expressed on the blog are indeed undaunted, opinions often missing in what could be spirited spontaneous political discourse. What does a prison serve? What is the purpose of a jailer? To prevent escape. Pure and unexpurgated arguments should flow with freedom and abandon: you can tell when an author’s thoughts tether to a strict follow-the-line agenda or protocol.

First letters of STANLEY L. COHEN covered by the cage. The freed bird over the last letter. Send a letter to the caged: http://freestanleycohen.xs2.net
Send a letter to the caged: http://freestanleycohen.xs2.net

There are three words most associated with Stanley Cohen: Up the Rebels. His editorial on Prison America is as forcefully expressed as it is true. It’s the pulse of the USA in 2015. The prison-industrial complex beats to its tune. Much there is to know but the last thing the planet needs.

George Orwell as a soldier in Burma knew he was a tool of empire. He knew the imperious every day spent there, but he lived to tell us what happens to the human soul when twisted and contorted. His short stories “A Hanging” and “To Shoot an Elephant” reflect endless empire, endless war. Orwell chose the title 1984 as the simple inversion of the year of publication: 1948. The empire was in the state of dissolution. At a time of personal privation following his British Empire years he informs his readers of being  Down and Out in Paris and London. It is a memoir of the time he worked on the other side of an exclusive restaurant’s swinging doors. Orwell is synonymous with a vision of how the present may know a future.

Stanley Cohen is now in prison, his speech muted. Until January 5th his voice was available on Twitter. Hope we hear from him soon. Defending the disenfranchised is the bulwark of fair and decent society, though it’s safer to join with the tyranny of a majority.  While writing this post coverage of the events in Paris encompass news media. And as a small but vocal voice I continue to write about daily life in Palestine and Israel, where such deaths administered by agents of civil authority are hourly occurrences. Were I to sport a keffiyeh in the local supermarket would I draw attention? Or to wear a Palestinian flag?

Richard Leiby published an article in 2002 on ‘Behind the News in Israel‘. It provides perspective from a dozen years ago.

Thanks for reading.