French Superheroes...

"Everybody knows that the dice are loaded
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everybody knows the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
That's how it goes
Everybody knows"

Leonard Cohen.

Spider-man went to tea at the Elysée.

Spider-man of Paris to get French citizenship after child-rescue.

One moment, he's a clandestine illegal immigrant from Mali...(that's in Africa)

Then he goes and saves a life on Youtube.

Spider-Man, a superhero.

Now, he's being fêted as a symbol of  "volonté" (will) which Macron (president of France) claims is foundational to "French identity".

Now, he's being employed by the fire-fighters of Paris, to save lives.

Spider-Man, a photo opportunity gift from God, to President Macron.

Members of the Front national, self-proclaimed "protectors" of "French identity" are raging against the announcement that Mamadou Gassama, will be rewarded with French citizenship.

Nicolas Bay (FN) s'oppose à la régularisation du héros Mamadou Gassama, sauf si...

Saving lives means nothing to them.

What will happen to his brother and other partners in precarity?

Nobody knows.

Buses came to gather up "clandestines" "lodged" in tented cities in Paris just this morning.

What will happen to them?

Nobody knows.

Mirage-Man went to tea at the Elysée...often...but now he's dead.

Le mort de Serge Dassault, un grand industriel français.

One moment, he's being sued in court for tax fraud and being threatened with a jail term.

Next moment, he's being fêted by the Elysée.

Death is great for tax-evasion!

Communiqué – HOMMAGE DU PRESIDENT DE LA REPUBLIQUE, EMMANUEL MACRON A MONSIEUR SERGE DASSAULT

Death is great for business!

Rafales, over Mali (that's in Africa).

Rafale M: €79M (flyaway cost, FY2011) The Dassault Rafale (French pronunciation: ​[ʁafal], literally meaning "gust of wind", and "burst of fire" in a more military sense) is a French twin-engine, canard delta wing, multirole fighter aircraft designed and built by Dassault Aviation.

Burst of fire on the ground in Mali.

Mirage-Man:

• tax evader
• billionaire arms dealer
• corrupt politician
• owner of Le Figaro.

Mirage-Man, a superhero.

Dassault, a symbol of "volonté" (will), of  French "air-superiority" of overseas projection.

The French are in Mali "to help destroy jihadists" aren't they?

Mali... but that's in Africa, isn't it?

Aren't the French in Mali for other business?

Surely not.

Mali : un pays riche en pétrole, en gaz et en mines d’or

Aren't the French in Mali for other business?

Surely not.

"Everybody knows that the dice are loaded
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everybody knows the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
That's how it goes
Everybody knows"

Leonard Cohen.

Footnotes:

Mali: When France ruled West Africa.

France in Mali: The longue durée of imperial blowback

The current crisis in Mali is a product of French colonialism, and their intervention will sadly create more blowback.

Postscript:

I went back and read a post from December 2016 entitled "The end of the world".

I had forgotten that Abba had already educated me on French interests in Mali.

Here is a section from the post:

One of them, Abba, from Bamako, Mali, was busy educating his friends on global politics and colonialism.

"Where do you think the French Nuclear Industry gets its uranium from?" He asked

"There aren't many uranium mines in the Massif Central."

"'What do you think the French army is doing in Mali?"

"Have you heard of Areva?"

"Did you hear that they have found oil in Senegal?"

Darkness that binds us.

"And one by one the nights between our separated cities are joined to the night that unites us."

Pablo Neruda

Alone Together.

The door slammed.

She had left.  

Alone together. 

Sole babe in arms.

A barmy night, 

Window open wide.

Gaze up at stars.

Quiet now, in awe.

Owl hoots.

Startled, 

Turns to me.

"Oooh"

With his lips.

Wonder.

Love.

Loss.

Aches.

 In my body.


Enlightenment.


"Nothing can dim the light which shines from within."

Maya Angelou.


Enlightenment

We called ourselves "enlightened".  

God, was Jesus "enlightened"?

We became fishers of men.

We caught them in our net.

They walked on water.

We sailed the boat.


Inclusion.

I think of stories of inclusion. 

I feel suspicious. 

I wonder why.  

I go and think in pictures.

Go figure.
Go wonder. 

We are forever longing for being a part of a whole.

We were whole.
Then we are born.

Conception, one, two, four, cells, subdivide and multiply.

Skin.

Illusions of separation, identification, of being apart.

Storybound, story bound, history bound, bone bound, dust bound.

Be suspicious of inclusion.

Be open to change.

Love is not to possess, it is to be open to loss.

The unenlightened?

The unenlightened?

The unenlightened?

The unenlightened?

Open education?


Refine, define, define the terms, the licence, the rights.

Who belongs, who is apart.

Fill space.

Draw lines, write words.

KNOWLEGE.

Enclose field.


EXPERT.


NOW LEDGER.


FREE DOM I NATION.


Englightenment untruth.

Post truth.

Unravel power.

Untravel story.

Unravel ego.

Post haste.

Open education resources.

Detritus.
Detritruth.

Apple for the Toothless.

A gift economy.

Uber fuck.

Hasta fascista baby.

Open education values?

Open education values?

Open education values?

Share your weaknesses, your questions, your doubts, your failures not your strengths, your your answers, your certainties, your successes.

— Simon Ensor (@sensor63) April 9, 2017

Open education values?

Open education values?

Open Educational Resources : Wonder, Yearning, Awe, Humility, Curiosity, Love. #oer17 pic.twitter.com/68vQX7t2Ov

— Simon Ensor (@sensor63) April 9, 2017

Let us not share our enlightenment.

Let us share the darkness that binds us.

Facts lie! Post truth! 

"Poetry 
melts my bones.
enters my blood.

and changes 
its composition."

Sanober Khan

"Night is purer than day; 
it is better for thinking and loving 
and dreaming.

At night everything is more
intense, more true.

The echo of words that have 
been spoken during the day
takes on a new and deeper 
meaning."

Elie Wiesel.

Great explorations.

"Le véritable voyage de découverte ne consiste pas à chercher de nouveaux paysages, mais à avoir de nouveaux yeux."

Marcel Proust.




Birthrights...

The massive, tortuously carved, ebony sideboard stood against the wall in the dining room.

It's drawers resisted a small child's curiosity.

It was flanked by a pair of lions on pedestals.

I had no idea of these objects' provenance.

To me, they were just family heirlooms.

I would later learn that the furniture was "Anglo-Indian."

Abridged histories...

I pored for hours over the collection of Ladybird histories.

I became well versed in the kings and queens.

I prided myself in my ability to recite lists of monarchs and the six wives of Henry VIII.

I had some difficulty in remembering which ones were beheaded.

Great explorations...

I knew of the great explorations of Cook, Raleigh, Livingstone

Each page of text was accompanied by a colour illustration of the deeds of a great man.

Great swathes of ocean, war, people, and civilisation appear as painted backdrop to each page.

There was Columbus.

I was somehow less interested in him.

Was it that he was Spanish?

Rare women depicted seemed weirdly sacrificial.

Joan of Arc, Marie Curie, Florence Nightingale.

I found them difficult to fathom.

Unclaimed territory.

I leaf through a Ladybird odyssey of Captain James Cook, "An adventure from history."

"One of the greatest of all the famous sailors who have set out from the shores of England to discover new lands."

I so loved "adventures from history" with their pictures on every other page.

I met Cook as a young boy.

I was left in no doubt of the acuity of his fine moral compass...

Take your telescope now and gaze with Captain Cook towards uncharted waters.

And gaze.

And gaze.

And gaze.

And raise another Union Jack.

And take your hat off.

And your crew cries: 

"Hip hip hooray. Hip hip hooray. Hip hip hooray."

Another page, another discovery.

Take your oars and row to another shore.

Seeing with new eyes.

And we reach this group of islands that...

"no one had seen before.

[I deduce the word native is a synonym of "no one", as "no one had seen" the islands before.]

Then. They bow in awe.

"Nor had the natives ever seen a white man."

A. White. Man.  Is.  Not. A. God!!

No! Not at all!

Cook is

"only a man like themselves."

But!

Be careful now!

Natives are "great thieves" (unlike you, Cook, who wouldn't steal a shilling).

Their friendship is inconstant.

Alas!

Natives become ungrateful, unfriendly even.

They bash your brains out.

Seeing with new eyes...

"New Zealand’s maritime history has struck rocks with revelations made by a University of Aotearoa professor, Professor Ika Pounamu, during a dinner speech to the Royal New Zealand Sail-Tub Club. The shock was not simply that a university professor would say something forthright about New Zealand’s colonial past to the Royal New Zealand Sail-Tub Club in Auckland on April 8.

The shock was that the professor laid bare the secret mechanisms of empire to a host audience that knew more about knots, sails and navigational signals than the secret meanings behind ‘discovery rituals’ performed by Captain James Cook."

"At the highest point of a small island in Queen Charlotte Sound, located at the top of Te Wai-Pounamu, Captain James Cook cast my ancestors as inferior savages, unworthy of political rights over their bushy and coasty lands. Through his Tahitian navigator and interpreter, Tupaia, Cook actually asked a so-called ‘old Indian man’ if it was alright to erect two wooden poles with flags so that any ships that may pass would know these sailors had been there. Upon raising the Union flag, Cook then had the cheek to claim to take possession of the southern Māoriland in the name of King George III. Cook brazenly toasted with Māori and he gave the ‘old Indian man’ – a Māori chief – the empty wine bottle, to whom he had already given a threepence coin, which was the going rate for purchasing an acre of land off natives throughout the empire, and some spike nails with the King’s arrow cut deep upon them”.

"Captain Cook was a sissily-costumed Masonic puppet, and a sly-as-a-City-of-London-Corporation-bond-trading trickster, who ‘gained consent’ of ‘the natives’ by a deceptive construction upon the circumstances based on the absence of full disclosure”.

http://snoopman.net.nz/2016/04/09/captain-cook-was-a-sissily-costumed-masonic-puppet-says-maori-historian/

I turn the pages.

I discover new eyes.

I do so love an adventure from history.

Suffer the children.

Tahitiennes in mission clothing

It had all gone quiet outside.

I sat cramped up between the toilet bowl and the wall.

I kept my head down.

I was thus invisible to anyone able to look in through the window.

I had thought it through.

This was rebellion.

I had locked myself in the toilet.

No amount of pleading or threats would change my mind.

I wouldn't go to church.

I wouldn't go to church.

I wouldn't go to church.

"You have to get them when they are young." 

The Jesuits would say.

I knew that I disbelieved young.

I had been taken to church.

I had been taught to say my prayers.

I never ever had a clue about what the point of it all was.

I had sat through hour after hour of hymn, prayer, sermon.

I successfully dropped out of Sunday School.

There were shocked silences when my brother announced to the family:

"Simon doesn't believe in God."

I must have been about eight years old.

I felt alone.

I had had enough of keeping up appearances.

I was prepared to deal with the fall-out.

I was fortunate that I had the parents that I had.

My friend feared admitting disbelief to his Jehova's Witness parents

He preferred to feign belief rather than be left alone.

Colonisation of childhood

I was thinking about the term "colonisation". 

I was thinking about the term "childhood".

According to Neil Postman literacy changed European visions of childhood.

"Literate man" was adult man and adulthood had to be earned.

"It became a symbolic, not a biological achievement. From print onward, the young would have to become adults, and they would have to do it by learning to read, by entering the world of typography, and they would do it by learning to read. And in order to accomplish that they would require education. Therefore,  European civilization reinvented schools. And by so doing made childhood a necessity."

What is the line between upbringing, education, colonisation? I wonder.

Does one beat belief into a child?

Does disbelief come from literacy?

I remembered images of Amazonian "Indians" dressed in Mission Wear.

I fell upon an article entitled:

"The Colonisation of Maori Children."

http://www.kaupapamaori.com/assets//SmithL/nga_aho_o_te_kakahu_matauranga_chpt8.pdf

How much does school disconnect?

How much does (our) literacy deny?

I read:

"Maori beliefs about children can be located within a world view in which language, landscape, time space, relationships and technology were all interconnected. Children themselves were markers of history and repositories of knowledge...Children were also known to have participated in politics and decision making of community life."

Maori culture and their relationships with their own children were fundamentally threatened by schooling.

Within what world view would we locate our beliefs about children?

What would so called "digital literacy" disconnect?

Would the destruction of Amazonian forest, and the disappearance of Amazonian peoples have anything to do with "our" literacy, "our beliefs", "our education", "our" disconnections?