In a few days, the Olympic Games, one of the grandest spectacles of the modern world, will open in Paris. The Olympics bring together some of the best, and some of the worst, features of our time. The athletes’ achievements can be astonishing. The Olympic motto “Citius, Altius, Fortius” (Faster, Higher, Stronger) captures the determination that drives them. At the same time, the Olympics have become a nexus of corruption driven by corporate money according to the motto of corporate capitalism: “More, More, More.” Bribery, drugging, and dirty politics are the inevitable result. Undesirables, like street vendors and the homeless, are swept from the streets to create a suitable setting for the dignitaries and the tourists.
The corruption is not new. Allegations of bribery and cheating had already been part of the Olympics for many years before that noteworthy day in 67 AD when the Emperor Nero was declared the winner of the Olympic chariot race even though he had been thrown from his chariot and failed to complete the race.
No doubt the judges who crowned Nero were keenly aware of his proclivity for executing those who displeased him. It didn’t really matter whether they believed that he had won the race, as long as they said that he had, and bestowed the victor’s laurels on him as required.
The modern-day successors of those Olympic officials – the media, the PR people, and the politicians – are expected to actually believe what they profess to believe. Many of them do. Others are like Nero’s judges: they pretend they do. In the end, it barely matters.
Guy Debord characterized modern capitalist society as “The Society of the Spectacle.” “The spectacle,” he said, “is the ruling order’s non-stop discourse about itself, its never-ending monologue of self-praise, its self-portrait at the stage of totalitarian domination of all aspects of life.”
That never-ending monologue of self-praise runs in its pre-determined channels quite independently of what is happening in the real world. But there is a problem: thanks to alternative sources of information and alternative media, an ever-increasing number of people no longer believe the official version. They can see all too well that the emperor has no clothes – or that he didn’t win the race. They can see that NATO is a force for war, not peace, that Israel is committing genocide with the full support of the West, that western democracy isn’t democracy at all, that things are getting worse, not better, and that our leaders have no idea what to do.
We want your memories – stories – photos!
Connexions is working on a project called “Getting the Word Out” about how activists and organizers communicated their messages in the days before the Internet, and we’d like your help. We are looking for your recollections, stories, photos, and descriptions of your work, and we’re also looking for samples of materials that you or your group produced. Can you help?
At this point, one of the things we are particularly interested in is arranging interviews with long-time organizers, to expand Connexions’ collection of oral histories. Interviews can be in person, or by phone or Zoom.
We’d also like photos from your days of political activism, whether of dramatic public protests or of the nitty-gritty of behind-the-scenes organizing work. We also welcome examples of materials your group produced, such as leaflets, posters, newsletters, etc., which we could scan and put online. (But check with us first before bringing us your archives: we only have limited space in the Connexions Archive.)
Please get in touch with us at mailroom@connexions.org or 416-988-9586.
Connexions’ ‘Getting the Word Out’ project is supported by Digital Museums Canada (DMC). DMC is managed by the Canadian Museum of History, with the financial support of the Government of Canada.
Featured articles
Dear Child
Chris Hedges
Written as a letter to a child in Gaza, this short film takes the audience on a haunting & realistic journey through Gaza today from a child’s perspective. Watch it here.
No to NATO – Yes to Peace
Speaking on the occasion of NATO's 75-anniversary assembly in Washington, Sevim Dagdelen, a left-wing member of the German Bundestag, says that for NATO, denial of its true nature is part of the essence of the organization. Western media, for their part, she says, are content “to reflect a thousand iterations of this self-image back to the public, without question and without pausing to consider whether the image adequately represents reality. In fact, 75 years of NATO is equivalent to 75 years of denial, albeit with a dramatic expansion of scale and scope in recent years. According to Dagdelen, NATO is founded on three main myths, all of which untrue, and increasingly being undermined by reality. The first is that NATO is a defensive alliance abiding by international law. The second is that NATO stands for democracy and the rule of law. The third is that NATO is a community of shared values and stands for human rights. Read more.
The foreign interference behind the foreign interference act
Yves Engler offers a critical look at the panic about ‘foreign interference’ currently gripping Canada’s political class and the corporate media. He notes, first of all, that much of the hysteria is driven by organizations closed tied to the United States, the very country whose interference in Canada greatly exceeds that of any other country. Yet the U.S. is never mentioned as being engaged in ‘foreign interference.’ Similarly, Israel, which interferes in Canadian affairs on a scale, and in ways that would not be tolerated coming from another country, is also excluded from investigation by those who claim they are exposing foreign interference. The panic around foreign interference is especially dangerous because it is leading to new legislation imposing even more restrictions on freedom of speech. Read more.
The establishment media acted as a willing tool in the demonising narrative the U.S. and British governments carefully crafted against Assange, says Jonathan Cook. Even now, as he is reunited with his family, the BBC and others are peddling the same long-discredited lies. Even some liberals and left-wingers were influenced by the steady flow of articles and tweets belittling Assange and his desperate, lonely struggle against the world’s sole superpower for the right not to be locked away for the rest of his life for doing journalism. The even sadder truth is that the media's villainous role in keeping Assange locked up will soon be erased from the record. That is because the media are the ones writing the script we tell ourselves about what is going on in the world. Read more.
After 14 years of persecution, Julian Assange will go free. We must honor the hundreds of thousands of people across the globe who made this happen. Read more.
Jeff Halper argues that there is only one positive solution to the dire and ever-worsening situation in Israel/Palestine: decolonization, which necessarily means the dismantling of Zionist structures of domination and control and their replacement by a single democratic state, in which Palestinians and Israeli Jews forge a new civil society and a shared political community. To show how this can be done, Halper uses the 10-point program of the One Democratic State Campaign as a guide for thinking through the process of decolonization to its post-colonial conclusion. Read more.
Theaters of War: How the Pentagon and CIA took Hollywood
If you’ve seen Top Gun or Transformers, you may have wondered: Does all of that military machinery on screen come with strings attached? Does the military actually get a crack at the script? Theaters of War digs deep into a vast new trove of recently released internal government documents to bring the answers to these questions into sharp focus. Traveling across America, filmmaker and media scholar Roger Stahl engages an array of other researchers, bewildered veterans, PR insiders, and industry producers willing to talk. In unsettling and riveting detail, he discovers how the military and CIA have pushed official narratives while systematically scrubbing scripts of war crimes, corruption, racism, sexual assault, coups, assassinations, and torture. Find out more.
July 14, 1789 - Demonstrators in Paris attack the hated Bastille prison, symbol of royal authority in Paris, which is known to store a large quantity of arms and ammunition. A crowd numbering perhaps one thousand people surrounds the Bastille in the morning, demanding the surrender of the prison and the release of the arms stored inside.
In the afternoon, negotiations break down and fighting begins. By late afternoon, the garrison surrenders and the people take possession. The successful insurrection becomes the flashpoint of the revolution that spreads across France.
The King, Louis XVI, meanwhile, has spent the day hunting, oblivious to events. He returns to Versailles towards evening, and writes a brief entry in his diary: “July 14: Nothing.” Then a senior courtier, the Duc de La Rochefoucauld-Liancourt, approaches him and tells him of the storming of the Bastille.
Shocked, the king exclaims: “Why – this is a revolt!”
“No, Sire.” La Rochefoucauld replies. “It is a revolution.”
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