In Millennial Eyes 2: The Inversion

Video from inside Turkish Parliament shows chaos after the #TurkishCoup perpetrators detonate a bomb. pic.twitter.com/kJyS4AJmXq

— Mr Red Ghost (@Mr_Ghostly) July 16, 2016

Photos showing damage to the Turkish Parliament after a bombing during the coup attempt. pic.twitter.com/6BWHPuNNdS

— Mr Red Ghost (@Mr_Ghostly) July 16, 2016

There's also the possibility of false flag coup in Turkey in order for Erdogan to completely overtake.

Nazi strategy btw.

— Mike Klengenburg (@petpanther0) July 15, 2016

The next three posts on the blog (on the economy, politics, and war) deal with discrepancies between perception, hard reality and the history that emerges from both. I will discuss the way the gaps between the contemporary framing of events and actual events created distorted narratives around the economics of the Great Recession (poverty recast as prosperity - 21 July 2016); the revolutionary origins of modern politics (violence underpins order and ideological ideals - 28 July 2016); and drone warfare (war presented as peace - 5 August 2016).

I wrote these posts before the tragic events in Nice, France on 14 July 2016 and Turkey on 15 July 2016. In particular, the second post on politics considers the historic impact of the Terror during the French Revolution; no comparison to the Bastille Day attack in Nice and no disrespect to those killed or injured is intended.

These posts explore my blog's hypothesis that Millennial media unhappily combine an Age of Reason with an Age of Faith. Cold, hard facts become matters of opinion, and vice versa, in competing cultures of truth. The posts will consider why attempts to reassert rationalism or sanity lead to opposite results, horrible outcomes, and an inversion of meaning.

Photos after the 14 July 2016 truck terror attack in Nice, France. Images Source: Time.

In Millennial Eyes 1: I Remember the French Revolution

Screenshot from Assassin's Creed Unity (2014). Image Source: ABC News.

In Millennial Eyes is a new series on this blog which explores how historic events are depicted and discussed from Millennial perspectives. 14 July is Bastille Day in France. One Millennial depiction of the French Revolution is the 2014 video game, Assassin's Creed Unity, developed by Ubisoft Montreal. Neo-history emerges from the game's virtual reality combat.

The location of the Assassin's Creed Unity developer, Ubisoft, in Montreal is interesting, because if you ever wanted to know what France would have been like had there been no French Revolution - or at least, a different kind of revolution - you need to go to Quebec. Like many former colonies, Quebec, originally known as New France or Canada, and later Lower Canada, followed a real path of 'alternate history' compared to that of her mother country. One glance at the map of New France in 1750 (below), compared to the map of Lower Canada in 1791 (below the jump), tells you what a devastating loss France and the French people suffered in North America in this period. Voltaire (1694-1778) famously quipped that losing New France was no great loss. In Candide (1759), he asked what use France had for a "few acres of snow (quelques arpents de neige)?" It was a lot more than that! New France once extended west to Saskatchewan, and south through the American Great Lake states, down to Texas and Lousiana. French Canada struggles with that loss to this day.

New France in 1750. Image Source: J. F. Lepage/Wiki. After the Battle of the Plains of Abraham and other British victories over the French during the Annus Mirabilis of 1759, New France became British under the Treaty of Paris in 1763.

After the Treaty of Paris in 1763, Canada (light pink) came under British control. Under the 1774 Quebec Act, the British placated the French population by maintaining their civil code laws and Catholic religion; the Quebec Act angered settlers in the Thirteen Colonies who had moved into Canadian territory over the Appalachians. This was one of the causes of the American War of Independence (1775-1783). Image Source: US Department of State via Wiki.

Image Source: pinterest.

Quebec's provincial motto, present on all post-1978 automobile licence plates, is Je me souviens, which means, I remember. The motto carries a mixed message. The architect of Quebec's provincial parliament building, Eugène-Étienne Taché (1836-1912), invented the motto in 1883 to express the greatness of New France and Lower Canada's founding role in Canada. Taché's provincial legislature displays the motto alongside statues of figures whose work collectively came to express a dual French-English historical meaning. Wiki:

"[The original statues] included founders (Jacques Cartier, Samuel de Champlain and de Maisonneuve), clerics (de Laval, de Brébeuf, Marquette and Olier), military men (de Frontenac, Wolfe, de Montcalm and de Lévis), Amerindians, French governors (D'Argenson, de Tracy, de Callières, de Montmagny, d'Aillesbout, de Vaudreuil) and, in the words of Taché, 'some English governors the most sympathetic to our nationality' (Murray, Dorchester, Prevost and Bagot) and Lord Elgin, who was given a special place for he was seen as an important player in obtaining 'responsible government.'"

The Amerindian statue group by Louis-Philippe Hébert (1850-1917) outside Quebec's National Assembly (provincial parliament) building commemorates Quebec's native peoples in the establishment of New France and Quebec as a Canadian province (click to enlarge). Image Source (August 2013) © Paul Gorbould via flickr.

In 1978, when the motto was revived by Quebec separatists, Taché's granddaughter controversially informed the Montreal Star that the motto's whole verse confirmed a dual memory: Je me souviens/ Que né sous le lys/ Je croîs sous la rose. ("I remember/ That born under the lily/ I grow under the rose.") In this view, Quebec is the child of France and England.

Time and Politics 20: Brexit

The statue of Winston Churchill at Westminster. Image Sources: The Atlantic and The Telegraph.

Although the blog is on a break, Brexit is a momentous historical event. It made me think of a quotation* from the Younger Pitt: "Depend on it, Mr. Burke ... we shall go on as we are to the Day of Judgement."

Perhaps. Although the UK will not leave the EU for two years, Irish and Scottish support for the European Union may lead to the reunification of Ireland, the separation of Scotland, and the break-up of the United Kingdom. Because the campaign became so dark, ugly and tragic, culminating with MP Jo Cox's murder, I will not comment at length on the arguments for one side or the other. I can see both points of view, because the Brexit debate confirms trends I have observed here while researching posts on the economy and the cultural impact of technological change.

Blog's Sixth Birthday

Gopuram of a south Indian temple. Image Source: pinterest.

Today is the blog's sixth birthday! Thank you very much to everyone who has stopped here to read my posts. Over the past year, these were the most popular posts:

• Post-Apocalypse Rehab
• The New Age of William Butler Yeats
• Colour of the Year: Marsala
• You've Come a Long Way, Baby
• Forever: Maybe Not the Word You Want?
• True Detective: Time is a Flat Circle

I will be away from the blog until Bastille Day, 14 July 2016.


See this blog's Best Posts, now updated, here.

The Tornado

A tornado in Colorado, USA (7 May 2016). Image Source: Tori O'Shea.

This blog is skeptical of conspiracy theories because they are not consistent with the way reality is created. Conspiracy theories about current events - for example, regarding the disastrous situation in Syria - are examples of modern urban folklore, which impose exactly the same superstitious, deterministic logic onto the world that an established religion would. Many of today's orthodoxies are nominally secular, but they are no less based in blind faith. Actors on the international scene do try to impose strategic control on the world's hot spots; the media come to these hot spots with spin, preconceived ideas and even false flag agendas. However, the notion that anyone - governments, politicians, banks, shadowy cabals, unseen actors, evil establishments - controls the reality that ensues from fluid conditions is incorrect.

Pilgrim Timekeepers

A pilgrim walking the Camino, or Way of St. James. Image Source: Tailored Spain.

If you want to know why tax season is in spring and its subsequent meaning for May, read on. As Catholic pilgrims prepare now for Pentecost on 15 May 2016, the blog returns to France's Chartres cathedral to note how places which attract pilgrims become centres of spirituality and memory. Pilgrimage routes have endured worldwide for thousands of years. One famous European route is the Spanish Camino de Santiago or the Way of St. James. In 2014, 200,000 people undertook that journey, and the road is on the UNESCO World Heritage List. 'Walking the Camino' is a huge event, even for atheists. For the faithful and secular alike, it is a modern walking holiday, attracting its share of business and crime.

In 2012, The Guardian asked why atheists participated in old Christian pilgrimages. Image Source: Guardian.

Infosec and the Totalitarian Principle

The Intercept: "New Study Shows Mass Surveillance Breeds Meekness, Fear and Self-Censorship" (28 April 2016). Image Source: The Intercept (Hat tip: Edward Snowden).

On 26 April 2016, the political commentator Fareed Zakaria, host of CNN's main foreign affairs programme, GPS, debated ex-NSA contractor Edward Snowden for NYU Wagner's Debates of the Century, on whether the American government should have access to privately-held technology and private data. Debates of the Century:

"Some people believe the recent dispute between the FBI and Apple over a locked iPhone marks the return of what privacy advocates called the 'crypto wars' of the 1990s, when federal authorities tried and failed to mandate government access to most forms of electronic communication. Although the FBI managed to decrypt the iPhone at issue without the company’s help, Apple and others are racing to build devices and messaging services that no one but their owners can unlock. The legal question remains unresolved in Congress, where competing bills have been introduced, and in dozens of cases pending in state and federal courts.

Law enforcement agencies believe their vital mission requires compulsory access, under valid court order, to any device or communications stream. Leading technology companies (backed by some other U.S. government voices) say they cannot meet law enforcement demands without undermining customer security and privacy against hackers and foreign adversaries. Edward Snowden and Fareed Zakaria disagree on which course better serves society at large. Should companies be required to break into their own encrypted products, and should they be allowed to sell encryption that no one can break?" 

Hasty Exit

Image Source: Canada News.

If anything symbolized the current worldwide fortunes of the oil industry, it might be that for the past three days, Fort McMurray, Alberta, Canada's centre of oil production, has been burning. The oil sands are just north and south of the city. A wildfire, possibly human-started, possibly started by lightning, has engulfed the city and almost 90,000 people have fled on the one highway out of town. In two days, one third of Canada's oil production has stopped, removing one million barrels of oil per day from the market; this has created fears about a global oil shortage and prices have jumped. In the video below, 'Hasty Exit,' Jared Sabovitch awoke from a night shift around 2:30 p.m., having heard or received no order to evacuate, he looked out his window, and saw patches of fire on his lawn. Then he looked behind the house and saw a wall of fire engulfing his neighbourhood. He left his house in minutes. You have all the time in the world, but all it takes is one bad afternoon, and then you have no time left at all.

Image Source: Edmonton Journal.