Bastille Day: I've got new dreams ...

On this date in 1789, Parisians stormed the Bastille kick-starting the French Revolution that would give bloody birth to the modern republic. The prison held a store of arms that the people wanted for self-defense, fearing an impending crack down by the royal troops. Because of its history as a place of internment for political writers and intelectuals, the destruction of the Bastille became a rallying point of the revolution, and to this day the event is celebrated by Francophiles around the world. Painter Jean-Pierre Houël famously captured the storming in his work Prise de la Bastille, at left.

The power of the moment lay not in the actual significance of the prison when it was seized, as it only held 7 inmates of no particular political importance, but in the symbolism of the structure. The Bastille had become representative of the oppressive rule of the old aristocracy, and tearing it down was a metaphorical act of defiance against their power. It stood as an abstraction for the old social structures that kept the new, blossoming political ideas of the age from seeing the light of day.

Prisons are very powerful symbols for the inhibition of both social and personal development. When political States form, they erect an entire apparatus of social control meant to preserve the power of the status quo. Societies are living things, however, and they continue to evolve until the old laws become restrictive, holding back the full potential for growth. That's when a society is ripe for revolution.

People are much the same; we can become trapped in old ideas. A mental system we've created to survive a certain age or period of life becomes rigid and confining as we continue to grow into new circumstances. We can either keep those old systems in place and make ourselves misearable, or try to break free of them and embrace change in all its scary beauty.

These threshold moments can be messy and intimidating, as we stand in the doorway to our future deliberating whether to step forward. We just need to recognize them for what they are, screw our courage to the sticking place, and take that first step into the next phase of our lives. Once we do, the trepidation will fall away and we'll feel the exhiliration of new possibilities.

Local Chicago punkers Naked Raygun penned a deceptively simple song about these life-changing moments. Repeating the mantra-like lyrics will help steel us to do what's necessary to achieve our true potential, individually and as a society.

New Dreams by Naked Raygun

I got new dreams
I say I got new dreams
I got new dreams and I'm gonna make 'em real
I got new dreams and I'm gonna make 'em real
I got new dreams and I'm gonna make 'em real
I got new dreams and I'm gonna make 'em
Woh-ay-oh, Way-oh-ay

[repeat]

French Disclose Evidence of Unidentified Flying Woks

In case you've fallen into a false sense of security, here's news of the threat of flying cookware:

France's space agency puts its secret UFO archive on the Web
Associated Press

... the January 1981 case of the saucer-shaped object that a witness said he saw land in Trans-en-Provence, a village inland from the French Riviera.

Some 2.5 meters (8 feet) across, the zinc-colored object made a whistling noise as it landed. The witness later drew a picture: It resembled a wok with a lid and legs.

"The machine stayed a few seconds on the ground and then left very quickly but it left marks that were analyzed and allowed us to determine that the ground had been heated up, that the object must have weighed several hundred kilos (pounds), and that surrounding plants underwent biological changes," Patenet said.

"So something really happened. It really defies analysis." ...

Read the full article

No details on how the surrounding plant life was altered, but I'm hoping they were cooked until tender and had a nice ginger and garlic bite.

Troubling news ... and the attempts to suppress it

My friend Agnes Varnum posted a link to the following story on the Re:New Media blog ...

France bans citizen journalists from reporting violence
by Peter Sayer, IDG News Service

The French Constitutional Council has approved a law that criminalizes the filming or broadcasting of acts of violence by people other than professional journalists. The law could lead to the imprisonment of eyewitnesses who film acts of police violence, or operators of Web sites publishing the images, one French civil liberties group warned on Tuesday. ...

(Click here to go to the original Re:New Media post, which includes a link to the full article)

The article describes the possible implications of this law for those citizens who attempt to record and thus prevent police brutality.

Over the past couple months, on two separate occasions, I've been prevented from recording public meetings here in Chicago because I didn't have press "credentials." I don't know what US or Illinois law says specifically about this, but it raises some interesting quesitons if it is actually legal to prohibit the public from performing acts of witness. What justification can there be for this except to limit coverage to those who are in some sense "state sanctioned"?

In my particular case, I was prevented from video taping a Cook County Board hearing at which protestors were testifying against the proposed across-the-board service cuts that threatened public health and safety. Camera crews from the local news outlets had free reign to tape and interview anyone they wanted.

Who would you trust more to present an unfiltered version of events -- a Fox News affiliate or a community activist? What qualifies as "legitimate press" in an environment where mainstream media is increasingly controlled by fewer and fewer entities, most mega-corporations who lobby and fund our elected representatives? Are we gradually being led down the path to state-controlled media?