Iliad Book 23 - Read by Dr. Stanley Lombardo

The Iliad Book 23 (62-107)

Read by Dr. Stanley Lombardo

A reading of Iliad Book 23, Lines 62-107 in Greek, by Dr. Stanley Lombardo, University of Kansas. Achilles is visited in a dream by the dead Patroclus. This is a particularly beautiful reading by Dr. Lombardo of a beautiful and emotional passage. To read along in Greek: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/t...

Dr. Lombardo's translation of this passage:

When sleep finally took him, unknotting his heart
And enveloping his shining limbs—so fatigued
From chasing Hector to windy Ilion—
Patroclus' sad spirit came, with his same form
And with his beautiful eyes and his voice
And wearing the same clothes. He stood
Above Achilles' head, and said to him:
"You're asleep and have forgotten me, Achilles.
You never neglected me when I was alive,
But now, when I am dead! Bury me quickly
So I may pass through Hades' gates.
For the spirits keep me at a distance, the phantoms
Of men outworn, and will not yet allow me
To join them beyond the river. I wander
Aimlessly through Hades' wide-doored house.
And give me your hand, for never again
Will I come back from Hades, once you burn me
In my share of fire. Never more in life
Shall we sit apart from our companions and talk.
The fate I was born to has swallowed me,
And it is your destiny, though you are like the gods,
Achilles, to die beneath the wall of Troy.
And one more thing, Achilles. Do not lay my bones
Apart from yours, but let them be together,
Just as we were reared together in your house
After Menoetius brought me, still a boy,
From Opoeis to your land because I had killed
Amphidamas' son on that day we played dice
And I foolishly became angry. I didn't mean to,
Peleus took me into his house then and reared me
With kindness, and he named me your comrade.
So let one coffer enfold the bones of us both,
The two-handled gold one your mother gave you."
And Achilles answered him, saying:
"Why have you come to me here, dear heart,
With all these instructions? I promise you
I will do everything just as you ask.
But come closer. Let us give in to grief,
However briefly, in each other's arms."
Saying this, Achilles reached out with his hands
But could not touch him. His spirit vanished like smoke,
Gone under the earth, with a last, shrill cry.
Awestruck, Achilles leapt up, clapping
His palms together, and said lamenting:
"Ah, so there is something in Death's house,
A phantom spirit, although not in a body.
All night long poor Patroclus' spirit
Stood over me, weeping and wailing,
And giving me detailed instructions
About everything. He looked so like himself."
(Full book: http://www.amazon.com/Iliad-Homer/dp/...)

Insouciance Rules The West

Paul Craig Roberts

Ex: http://www.paulcraigroberts.org

Europe is being overrun by refugees from Washington’s, and Israel’s, hegemonic policies in the Middle East and North Africa that are resulting in the slaughter of massive numbers of civilians. The inflows are so heavy that European governments are squabbling among themselves about who is to take the refugees. Hungary is considering constructing a fence, like the US and Israel, to keep out the undesirables. Everywhere in the Western media there are reports deploring the influx of migrants; yet nowhere is there any reference to the cause of the problem.

The European governments and their insouciant populations are themselves responsible for their immigrant problems. For 14 years Europe has supported Washington’s aggressive militarism that has murdered and dislocated millions of peoples who never lifted a finger against Washington. The destruction of entire countries such as Iraq, Libya, and Afghanistan, and now Syria and Yemen, and the continuing US slaughter of Pakistani civilians with the full complicity of the corrupt and traitorous Pakistani government, produced a refugee problem that the moronic Europeans brought upon themselves.

Europe deserves the problem, but it is not enough punishment for their crimes against humanity in support of Washington’s world hegemony.

In the Western world insouciance rules governments as well as peoples, and most likely also everywhere else in the world. It remains to be seen whether Russia and China have any clearer grasp of the reality that confronts them.

Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, Director of the US Defense Intelligence Agency until his retirement in August 2014, has confirmed that the Obama regime disregarded his advice and made a willful decision to support the jihadists who now comprise ISIS. ( https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/officials-islamic-state-arose-from-us-support-for-al-qaeda-in-iraq-a37c9a60be4 ) Here we have an American government so insouciant, and with nothing but tunnel vision, empowering the various elements that comprise Washington’s excuse for the “war on terror” and the destruction of several countries. Just as the idiot Europeans produce their own refugee problems, the idiot Americans produce their own terrorist problems. It is mindless. And there is no end to it.

Consider the insanity of the Obama regime’s policy toward the Soviet Union. Kissinger and Brzezinski, two of the left-wing’s most hated bogymen, are astonished at the total unawareness of Washington and the EU of the consequences of their aggression and false accusations toward Russia. Kissinger says that America’s foreign policy is in the hands of “ahistorical people,” who do not comprehend that “we should not engage in international conflicts if, at the beginning, we cannot describe an end.” Kissinger criticizes Washington and the EU for their misconception that the West could act in Ukraine in ways inconsistent with Russian interests and receive a pass from the Russian government.

As for the Idiotic claim that Putin is responsible for the Ukrainian tragedy, Kissinger says:

“It is not conceivable that Putin spends sixty billion euros on turning a summer resort into a winter Olympic village in order to start a military crisis the week after a concluding Olympic ceremony that depicted Russia as a part of Western civilization.” ( http://sputniknews.com/world/20150819/1025918194/us-russia-policy-history-kissinger.html )

Don’t expect the low-grade morons who comprise the Western media to notice anything as obvious as the meaning Kissinger’s observation.

Brzezinski has joined Kissinger in stating unequivocally that “Russia must be reassured that Ukraine will never become a NATO member.” ( http://sputniknews.com/politics/20150630/1024022244.html )

Kissinger is correct that Americans and their leaders are ahistorical. The US operates on the basis of a priori theories that justify American preconceptions and desires. This is a prescription for war, disaster, and the demise of humanity.

Even American commentators whom one would consider to be intelligent are ahistorical. Writing on OpEdNews (8-18-15) William Bike says that Ronald Reagan advocated the destruction of the Soviet Union. Reagan did no such thing. Reagan was respectful of the Soviet leadership and worked with Gorbachev to end the Cold War. Reagan never spoke about winning the Cold War, only about bringing it to an end. The Soviet Union collapsed as a consequence of Gorbachev being arrested by hardline communists, opposed to Gorbachev’s policies, who launched a coup. The coup failed, but it took down the Soviet government. Reagan had nothing to do with it and was no longer in office.

Some ahistorical Americans cannot tell the difference between the war criminals Clinton, Bush, Cheney, and Obama, and Jimmy Carter, who spent his life doing, and trying to do, good deeds. No sooner do we hear that the 90-year old former president has cancer than Matt Peppe regals us on CounterPunch about “Jimmy Carter’s Blood-Drenched Legacy” (8-18-15). Peppe describes Carter as just another hypocrite who professed human rights but had a “penchant for bloodshed.” What Peppe means is that Carter did not stop bloodshed initiated by foreigners abroad. In other words Carter failed as a global policeman. Peppe’s criticism of Carter, of course, is the stale and false neoconservative criticism of Carter.

Peppe, like so many others, shows an astonishing ignorance of the constraints existing policies institutionalized in government exercise over presidents. In American politics, interest groups are more powerful than the elected politicians. Look around you. The federal agencies created to oversea the wellbeing of the national forests, public lands, air and water are staffed with the executives of the very polluting and clear-cutting industries that the agencies are supposed to be regulating. Read CounterPunch editor Jeffrey St. Clair’s book, Born Under A Bad Sky, to understand that those who are supposed to be regulated are in fact doing the regulating, and in their interests. The public interest is nowhere in the picture.

Look away from the environment to economic policy. The same financial executives who caused the ongoing financial crisis resulting in enormous ongoing public subsidies to the private banking system, now into the eight year, are the ones who run the US Treasury and Federal Reserve.

Without a strong movement behind him, from whose ranks a president can staff an administration committed to major changes, the president is in effect a captive of the private interests who finance political campaigns. Reagan is the only president of our time who had even a semblance of a movement behind him, and the “Reaganites” in his administration were counterbalanced by the Bush Establishment Republicans.

During the 1930s, President Franklin D. Roosevelt had a movement behind him consisting of New Dealers. Consequently, Roosevelt was able to achieve a number of overdue reforms such as Social Security.

Nevertheless, Roosevelt did not see himself as being in charge. In The Age of Acquiescence (2015), Steve Fraser quotes President Roosevelt telling Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau at the end of 1934 that “the people I have called the ‘money changers in the Temple’ are still in absolute control. It will take many years and possibly several revolutions to eliminate them.”

Eight decades later as Nomi Prins has made clear in All The Presidents’ Bankers (2014), the money changers are still in control. Nothing less than fire and the sword can dislodge them.

Yet, and it will forever be the case, America has commentators who really believe that a president can change things but refuses to do so because he prefers the way that they are.

Unless there is a major disaster, such as the Great Depression, or a lessor challenge, such as stagflation for which solutions were scarce, a president without a movement is outgunned by powerful private interest groups, and sometimes even if he has a movement.

Private interests were empowered by the Republican Supreme Court’s decision that the purchase of the US government by corporate money is the constitutionally protected exercise of free speech.

To be completely clear, the US Supreme Court has ruled that organized interest groups have the right to control the US government.

Under this Supreme Court ruling, how can the United States pretend to be a democracy?

How can Washington justify its genocidal murders as “bringing democracy” to the decimated?

Unless the world wakes up and realizes that total evil has the reins in the West, humanity has no future.

 

Dr. Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. Roberts' latest books are The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West and How America Was Lost.

Jan Marejko: Résister?

Résister?

Jan Marejko

Philosophe, écrivain, journaliste

 

Ex: http://www.lesobservateurs.ch 

Autour de moi des amis dépriment. Ils voient l’Europe et l’Occident incapables de résister. Incapables de résister à l’Islam, incapables de résister à Poutine, incapables de résister au mariage gay. Partout règne le sentiment que nous sommes emportés par un boueux tsunami qui renverse toutes les frontières. Frontières entre pays. Frontières entre les sexes. Frontières entre le bien et le mal. Et partout j’entends comme un cri plaintif : pourquoi n’arrivons-nous plus à résister ?

Mais dans le fond, faut-il résister ? Pourquoi ne pas se laisser emporter par ce boueux tsunami ? Et puis résister, cela servirait-il à quelque chose ? A quoi bon s’agiter ?

Ou alors, faut-il résister en s’élançant vers un nouveau monde, en laissant derrière soi le vieux monde, l’obscurité, l’ennui des dimanches sans fin, ces propos qui s’allongent dans une infinie insignifiance. Courir avec des camarades vers un nouveau monde, quelle joie !  Ce serait une rupture profonde avec le quotidien, une Révolution pour tout dire. Comme on y a cru ! Et comme on s’est trompé ! Du quotidien, de l’histoire, de la lourdeur des jours, on ne se dégage pas facilement.

Nonobstant, le mythe de la révolution a fasciné pendant deux siècles. Aujourd’hui, au 21^e siècle, nous assistons au chant du cygne de ce mythe. Lors du Printemps arabe et à Maïdan on aura psalmodié les dernières strophes de ce chant. Il a été entonné avec d’autant plus de ferveur que, dans le fond, on n’y croyait plus. Aujourd’hui, nous savons qu’une révolution, c’est des lendemains qui tuent, enferment, exterminent.

La modernité aura oscillé entre la gestion du quotidien et de fervents élans vers une terre promise pour échapper à cette gestion. Or, il est impossible d’échapper à cette gestion de cette manière, car toute révolution produit une réaction qui produit elle-même une nouvelle révolution et ainsi de suite à l’infini. Ce n’est pas ainsi qu’on sort du cours des choses, de la prose de l’histoire.

Première conclusion : la révolution s’inscrit elle-même dans ces eaux boueuses de l’histoire qui ne conduisent finalement nulle part. Elle aura été le miroir aux alouettes de ceux qui ont cru qu’on pouvait avoir le beurre et l’argent du beurre. On ne peut pas à la fois s’élancer vers une terre promise et, en même temps, améliorer la gestion de sa petite vie.  C’est l’un ou l’autre. Il faut choisir.

Les révolutionnaires lisaient avec passion les journaux. Ils voulaient voir l’actualité nous amener vers cet autre monde auquel nous aspirons. Ils se trompaient. L’actualité est finalement un triste manège qui tourne en rond, « revolves around itself », dirait-on en anglais pour mieux marquer que révolution (revolve) renvoie à un cycle ou un cercle. Il n’y a et il n’y aura jamais coïncidence entre l’autre monde auquel nous aspirons et la roue du quotidien. Cette  roue continuera à tourner. Quoi qu’il arrive ici-bas, ce ne sera jamais un prélude à de lumineux lendemains. Telle est la leçon à tirer de deux siècles d’espoirs révolutionnaires. Ils étaient creux, ces espoirs, et n’ont rien produit. Pire ! Ils ont produit des horreurs.

Deuxième conclusion : ce n’est pas en devenant révolutionnaire qu’on résiste. Toute révolution ne fait que laisser encore plus le champ libre au boueux tsunami de l’histoire.

Alors comment résiste-t-on ? Faudrait-il renoncer à tout engagement et suivre Platon hors de la caverne du monde par le suicide ou la méditation ?

Ce ne serait pas une mauvaise chose que la méditation, au moins dans un premier temps. Ne sommes-nous pas tous fatigués et exaspérés par ces plans de redressement pour la croissance, la paix dans le monde, un meilleur climat ?  Au lieu d’un énième programme de changement, osons la retenue, un temps d’arrêt, une inspiration, qui mettraient quelque chose du ciel dans nos actions. Car ce qui est déprimant, dans nos efforts, aujourd’hui, est qu’ils sont désespérément horizontaux, proviennent de nos bas horizons et nous y ramènent.

La première forme de résistance consiste donc à ne pas répondre, lorsqu’on nous demande ce que nous proposons pour l’avenir. Fermons nos visages devant tous ceux qui nous invitent, sourire aux lèvres, évidemment, à participer à cette grande course pour le progrès qui s’achève dans le néant. Alors, peut-être, la chance nous sera-t-elle donnée d’accueillir un souffle venu d’ailleurs et qui gonflerait enfin nos voiles pour sortir du port de nos petites concoctions intellectuelles.

C’est par là que commence la résistance : le silence, le recueillement, la méditation. J’entends déjà des commentaires sarcastiques. « Comme il est nase ce type ! Il ne nous dit pas quoi faire ! » En fait, l’abruti, c’est celui qui attend qu’on lui dise ce qu’il faut faire.

Ne nous laissons donc pas impressionner ! La plupart de ceux qui ont changé le monde ont paru ridicules, insignifiants, incapables d’énoncer un programme. Le Christ devant Ponce Pilate, est resté muet. Il n’a rien expliqué, rien proposé, et ses disciples étaient très déçus par son impuissance devant les gladiateurs qui le fouettaient ou le ridiculisaient. Qu’il ait existé ou non, qu’il ait été fils de Dieu ou non, force est d’admettre qu’il a radicalement changé l’ordre des choses romaines et même humaines. A méditer !

Jan Marejko, 21 août 2015

La situation en Ukraine à la fin août 2015

 

Xavier Moreau est un analyste installé en Russie depuis 14 ans. Il est l’auteur de la « Nouvelle Grande Russie » et l’un des intervenants principaux du site d’analyses politico-stratégiques stratpol.com.

- Source : Bertrand Riviere