A message to the youth of today, not a corporate sponsored message or so called think tank meme's, or a neatly wrapped group of demands for the talking heads of the media and politics to voice their opinions of pro or con as they don't voice any of their own individual thoughts but work as a collective, but the individual messages from each person combined with others to bring about the changes needed.
A short but knowledgeable discussion from one of the many with world and time experience of an earlier time and troubles who grew up in the some thirty years after and still lives today and through the changes that have occurred in these times. At 94 he was a part of the resistance during World War II who lived through that to grow during the times of reconstruction after and the rise of middle class there and here. Being thirty years plus my senior, I was born at the end of, he like those who were young and old then, were a huge part of the changes, not the politics but the actual work, after WWII that spread from Europe with the U.S. help in rebuilding and reinventing the needs and ideologies to many parts of the world. Here in the U.S. I grew up during their efforts and into the workforce with all the benefits they had accomplished and we were still moving forward till some thirty to forty years ago.
He, like many of the elderly, have a message that should be heard as it looks like much of the world are starting to wake up to the once gradual tearing down, block by block, of what was not only built, by them, but stopping any movement forward for the masses by the few who've reaped great wealth,power and the ability to control the politicians of the countries, from our labors!
AIR DATE: Oct. 11, 2011
SUMMARY Stephane Hessel, a 94-year-old former French resistance fighter, is urging young people to take to the streets and show their outrage. Ray Suarez and Hessel discuss his book, "Time for Outrage", which is also titled "Indignez-Vous!" in French. Transcript
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RAY SUAREZ: It's not often that an elderly European writer can pack a room at an American college campus, but Columbia University had to find larger quarters when Frenchman Stephane Hessel visited recently.
Hessel's journey to this place was long and action-packed, son of a German Jew, raised after World War I in Paris by parents whose marriage became the basis for the movie "Jules and Jim." He joined the French resistance in World War II, escaping death in a Nazi concentration camp, a U.N. official who worked with Eleanor Roosevelt and witnessed the birth of Israel.
At 94, Hessel has suddenly returned to prominence and controversy with a book no longer than a pamphlet really, "Time For Outrage," or, in French, "Indignez-vous," telling the young to express outrage over everything, from Israel's invasion of Gaza to the excesses of capitalism in the West.
Stephane Hessel, welcome.
RAY SUAREZ: At an age when no one could blame you for just relaxing and maybe puttering in your garden, you have decided to take an argument to the people of the world, asking them to get indignant, to get angry.
About what, exactly?
STEPHANE HESSEL: About anything that they consider is contrary to the basic values for which we have been fighting all this long age along.
You see, my feeling was that certain values which came up immediately after World War II, which were raised by a great American president for whom I have the greatest admiration, Franklin Roosevelt -- he made the charter of the United Nations applicable. And I'm very, very grateful to him and to his successors because, thanks to them, we have an ethical stand on which to judge what happens.
And if something happens that goes against that ethical standard, it is good for us to feel outrage.
RAY SUAREZ: So you think we're contradicting, violating the ideals that World War II was fought around?
STEPHANE HESSEL: Indeed.
snip
STEPHANE HESSEL: I started by having a meeting in a part of France which is Savoy, in the mountains, a spot where resistance during World War II had some of its worst moments -- best and worst -- fight against the German army and finally terrible defeat.
And we stood there with comrades of my age, old resistance workers. And we had a group of 3,000 people watching and listening to us, because they wanted to recall the days of the resistance. And we told them, look, the ideas that were put up at that time are still valid.
And if these ideas for an independent trust, for a social security for all, for the fight against the (INAUDIBLE) of money and of market, and if you look around you, and you find that these values are being threatened, then do something about it. That was how it started.
And the publisher of this little book, Sylvie Crossman, a charming woman, she came to me after I had given that speech and she said: "What you said is important. Why don't we put it into a little book?" She says, "I suggest that it be called "Indignez-vous," which is interesting because it contained the word dignity.
And what we are really trying to say is that the dignity of human beings has to be defended. And when one feels that the government, whichever government, is not really doing the thing to preserve that dignity, then we should get angry, or outraged, if you want. read more>>>
Oct. 11: HBO's Bill Maher talks with Rachel Maddow about the value of the Occupy Wall Street movement to rallying liberals and the delusions of the extremely wealthy.
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