« For the time being, the "transatlantic partnership" is going well and the "Europe" of artifices is defeating deep Europe. Driven after the war by the best intentions of the world, free from a peace won by nuclear deterrence and the balance of the two blocs, the beautiful project was soon hostage to a naïve idea: that a Court of Justice and a free market can make a people, as a single currency a reflex of solidarity and directives, a sense of belonging. From where came a Spanish inn where the English language is law, entirely acquired from the forces of the market, which we see re-feudalizing national spaces, putting the public authorities, or what is left of them, under the control of private financial empires and voracious lobbies. »
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Régis Debray
What is left of the West? |
Régis Debray
What is left of the West?
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« The Constitution is the encompass of the American, like the Koran of the Muslim, the Torah of the Jew; as are the Holocaust and Auschwitz for all of us In the West. Whether it is the "Wall of Lamentations," the tomb of Lincoln or Kennededy; the black stone of Mecca or the mosque of Al-Quod: in no civilization - and the Chinese itself, a society without theology, does not escape the rule - the place of the sacred cannot remain vacant for long. The place of the forbidden: random occupant, necessary occupation. If we do not know of a society devoid of a cement that both its members among themselves and at a value recognized by them; or, if what a historical community sanctifies, (the moral thing translating the vital thing, and the preservation of supreme values, the instinct for the preservation of life), is that and only that that makes it exist as an identifiable and lasting community, it is not surprising that all Euro-Atlantic societies communed in and through the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948.p.99-100 , »
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Régis Debray
The Emprise |
Régis Debray
The Emprise
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« 1919, Treaty of Versailles. For the first time in two centuries, the French text of an international agreement makes more law. President Wilson demands an English version. French ceases to be the language of diplomacy. 1920, founded in New York, by Duchamp and Man ray, of the limited company, a place to exhibit "modern" art. "The most intelligent and embarrassing man of this early part of the 20th century (André Breton on Duchamp) moved to the United States in 1915. The urinal by R.Mutt, the famous ready-made, was exhibited in New York in 1917. (behind a screen). 1925, Metro Goldwyn Mayer buys the shares of the Commercial Credit of France of the limited company gaumont. Confirmation of the transfer of the dream factory from Paris to Hollywood. 1926, Charles Pathé gives kodak (USA) the monopoly of the manufacture of the virgin film, which he had snatched from Georges Eastman before the war. 1927, Warner Bros. produced the first talking film. The Jazz Singer. "If it works," said the producer, "the whole world will speak English. (The sound image did not arrive in France until 1930.) 1943, creation of the Allied Military Government of Occupied Territories (Amgot). Confounding liberation and occupation, President Roosevelt signed a plan for the administration of liberated France giving the Allied Supreme Command all authority over the entire territory and providing for a currency printed in the United States and distributed by the American administration to the population. Plan foiled in the spring of 1944 by de Gaulle, with the support on the spot of General Eisenhower. 1946, signing of the Blum-Byrnes agreement. Vichy had banned American films. A fraction of the French debt erased, in return for which the United States, under the aegis of a perceptive maxim, trade follows the film, demands the abandonment of the quota for American productions and a severe reduction of exclusivity for French films (from seven to four weeks). In response, a committee will be created to defend French cinema (Jean Marais and Simone Signoret), and the national film centre will come to the rescue of French films, their production having dropped by half. In Germany, after the war, the distribution of American films was not regulated. 1946, in parallel with the Marshall Plan, the United States launched the Fullbright programme "for the intellectual reconstruction of Europe". 1948, promulgation of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, "the moral man of our time". Voted by the United Nations General Assembly in Paris, at the Chaillot Palace, but drafted in Lake Success in 1947, under the aegis of the great Eleanore Roosevelt, widow of the president, it represents in two ways, by its character of universality, a considerable advance on the declaration of 1789. It is the individual as such, whether stateless, refugee, migrant or asylum seeker, who becomes the subject of imprescriptible rights and the principles set out, although not obligatory, are imposed on all countries. »
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Régis Debray
Civilization |
Régis Debray
Civilization
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