Anti-Wage-Slavery, Pro-Freedom Quotations Of The Week 403-405

For most men [sic] life is a search for the proper manila envelope in which to get themselves filed. Clifton Fadiman










The third role of the penal system: to make the proletariat see the non-proletarianized people as marginal, dangerous, immoral, a menace to society as a whole, the dregs of the population, trash, the mob. For the bourgeoisie it is a matter of imposing on the proletariat by means of penal legislation, of prisons, but also of newspapers, of “literature,” certain allegedly universal moral categories, which function as an ideological barrier between them and the non-proletarianized people. All the literary, journalistic, medical, sociological and anthropological rhetoric about criminals... play this role.
Michel Foucault


I don’t pay my love to a country for my freedom; instead, I give my hatred to the country that takes away any part of my freedom.
Dan Dillinham,
Letters, Harper’s,
April, 1992

Anti-Wage-Slavery, Pro-Freedom Quotation Of The Week 402

Certainly, my teenage self had been totally consumed with escaping. If I had written any book then, it would have been titled Getting Out - and most of my friends felt the same. Our dreams of escape from the neighborhood kept us from focusing on our probable fates as lifetime factory workers who rebelled only on weekends, or homemakers who played pinochle, went bowling, and sometimes got a beating on Saturday nights. Our imaginations rarely went beyond the two escape routes we knew: sports (if we were boys) and show business (if we were girls). In fact, we could point to two local celebrities to show that we also had a chance: a guy who had gone to a university for a year or two on a football scholarship before coming back to the neighborhood as a factory foreman, and singer Teresa Brewer, who had won the Ted Mack Amateur Hour while still in high school and never come back. Mostly, though, we were responding to the media. Sports and show business were the only places we saw people like us who seemed to be enjoying life and not worrying about next week's paycheck.
Gloria Steinem,

The Revolution From Within

Anti-Wage-Slavery, Pro-Freedom Quotations Of The Week 399-401

LONDON — Tens of thousands of Irish children were sexually, physically and emotionally abused by nuns, priests and others over 60 years in a network of church-run residential schools meant to care for the poor, the vulnerable and the unwanted, according to a report released in Dublin on Wednesday.

…Punching, flogging, assault and bodily attacks, hitting with the hand, kicking, ear pulling, hair pulling, head shaving, beating on the soles of the feet, burning, scalding, stabbing, severe beatings with or without clothes, being made to kneel and stand in fixed positions for lengthy periods, made to sleep outside overnight, being forced into cold or excessively hot baths and showers, hosed down with cold water before being beaten, beaten while hanging from hooks on the wall, being set upon by dogs, being restrained in order to be beaten, physical assaults by more than one person, and having objects thrown at them.”
Some of the schools operated essentially as workhouses.
Report Details Abuses in Irish Reformatories
By SARAH LYALL New York Times
Published: May 20, 2009


An Irish Airman Foresees His Death
by W. B. Yeats

I know that I shall meet my fate
Somewhere among the clouds above;
Those that I fight I do not hate,
Those that I guard I do not love;
My country is Kiltartan Cross,
My countrymen Kiltartan's poor,
No likely end could bring them loss
Or leave them happier than before.
Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,
Nor public men, nor cheering crowds,
A lonely impulse of delight
Drove to this tumult in the clouds;
I balanced all, brought all to mind,
The years to come seemed waste of breath,
A waste of breath the years behind
In balance with this life, this death.


It is unbearable to contemplate the desperation that drives men to stare at the sun, holding their eyelids apart so that the direct sunrays would burn blind spots on to their corneas, but clearly the medical officers thought it the only way the lesions they observed could have been produced. Morale in the Western Desert was a serious problem for all fighting men, but particularly for those who thought their lives were being thrown away while their loved ones were left unprotected at home. It was Montgomery who would point out that men are capable of extraordinary feats of endurance and courage if they are convinced that they are highly valued. If their living conditions are unbearable, if they do not get sufficient food and rest, if they are not convinced that they will be taken care of if wounded or ill, their motivation suffers. If they are treated as a rabble by commanding officers who understand nothing of their background and make no attempt to put them in the picture they will be more prepared to kill him than to die for him.
Germaine Greer,
Daddy We Hardly Knew You

Anti-Wage-Slavery, Pro-Freedom Quotations Of The Week 397-398

A healthy society satisfies needs first; it does not indulge in satisfying the wants of a few before it satisfies the needs of many.

Matthew Fox

AA

AA

AA

AA

AA

AA

AAAAA

AAA

AAA

AAA

AAA

AAA

AAA

AAA

Knowing what is wrong with society is not the same as being able to change it. To change the world we need to know how the few maintain their power over the many and how this hold can be broken.The
capitalist class is so small in numbers that they would drown if we all spat at them at the same time. It sounds so simple. However, accomplishing such a feat would require:
a) agreement about who should be spit on;
b) agreement about who should not be spit on;
c) agreement that spitting is the preferred action;
and d) sufficient numbers to organize and participate in the spitting.

The people in power are determined to prevent this level of clarity and organization. By keeping the majority confused and divided so they don’t
know who are their enemies, who are their friends, what should be done, and who should do it, the status quo can be maintained.
Susan Rosenthal

Power And Powerlessness