Escalations of a declining civilization
There are so many ugly, disgusting things happening in the world, I don't even try to maintain a list of these (like Stallman does [1]). Instead, since the Spanish Puppeteers incident—which is about the time I started to feel I should maybe at least voice my reprobation at the most despicable cases—I decided to record those which would escalate one step further from the previous display of tyranny/injustice/oppression/subjugation/enslavement that paces the final days of our civilization. It is, seemingly, doomed for a big financial/societal collapse. It could take years, decades, I might die before the world I was born in does, but we are clearly in a free-falling phase. In most cases, the incidents illustrate the Ora 25 principle of humanity having surrendered to citizenships, to technical slaves, to people who obey rules and legislation more than humanity and dignity. I also only stick to cases afflicting anonymous people rather than, say, political dissidents, independent journalists or famous public figures, who are more prone to catalyze a strong and brutal reaction. In this way, we are all concerned by the sequence of events below since in each case, we could have been the actor of its dystopic development. It starts pretty meekly but I think we'd all agree the escalation is obvious. Things recorded below were not imaginable in my teenage, they would not have been accepted in my father's time. Nowadays, instead, they just prepare us for the next step, bringing everybody higher on the scale of injustice, terror and cruelty, so that there is neither rebellion nor even surprise when it comes to the final blow.
Nous autres, civilisations, nous savons maintenant que nous sommes mortelles.
Paul Valery
Spanish Puppeteers jailed for a play featuring a fictitious terrorist organization
Two Spanish artists performing a puppet show for the Madrid carnival, bringing on stage the wrongdoings and abuse of justice, saw their show turn into instant reality by being themselves arrested and jailed without bail for apology of terrorism. The said apology was a highly educated declination in the cryptic Basque language of diametrically-opposed terrorist organizations (so clearly not apologizing for anything). Also weighting in their case, apparently, was a puppet judge being hanged. To me who was born with Brassens' tune l'hécatombe already a nation's favourite, this is a clear proof that things are indeed changing and that we are stepping into the 25th hour.
Moi, j'bichais car je les adore
Sous la forme de macchabées
French police forcefully securing a 72-year-old woman protesting the cutting down of trees
Policing originally meant the regulation and control of a community following the policy of the place. We imagine things like, you won't win anything by stealing from me, since the police will look for you to restore my goods. Or someone is there to interpose themselves if a brute bullies a victim. We used to imagine the police as protecting the weak and the innocent. In the 25th hour, however, police means the arbitrary and non-debatable right of the famous monopoly of violence, to remind those at the bottom of the hierarchy that there are people above. This is achieved by enforcing whatever trifle will serve for that purpose. Latest illustration to date is an old woman displacing a barrier while protesting the cutting down by the council of trees in her street. This was met with a surreal police intervention that sent the granny on the floor, brutally handcuffed with no consideration whatsoever for her great age, her fragility or the innocuousness of her motive [2]. We are now all at risk of being shoved to the floor for the slightest misconduct, such as raising one's voice, taking a picture of something which we are not supposed to or putting a plastic bottle in the paper box. In the near future, that'll come to the point where this is justified by not saying thank you or speaking clearly enough to a police request.
American police detains, abuses and jails a man driving his wife in labour to the hospital
Our next escalation in the 25th hour involves as offenders a couple rushing to the hospital with the woman in advanced labour [3]. The offence itself is a slightly delayed response to the order of stopping their car from a police car following them, for the time it took them to consider if this was the best thing to do given the situation. They even were in contact with other police force, by phone, from within the car, to make the best decision... after all, the safety of a newborn is at stake, as opposed to a road-police inspection for possible speeding. But there is not an additional minute in the 25th hour. Obedience must be total and immediate. Following the phone-police instructions and referring themselves to the road-police, they have been greeted with guns pointed at them. Following the clarification, we all imagine this scene where the police opens the road and escort the precious and sacred convoy up to the hospital doors. In this case, however, the technical slaves decided to honour the occasion and the breach of regulations by jailing the father, who spent the first hours of his child's life behind bars.
A dog dies after being disposed of as hand-luggage in a plane
A United Airline flight attendant insisted for a dog to be placed in the overhead locker despite the protest of the owner who wanted to keep it by her side in the suitable bag intended for this purpose [4]. The dog died (certainly from stress and suffocation). This is the typical illustration of treating living beings as objects which should follow, against common sense and humanity, the company's administrative procedures. I once flew with Tizon in a plane (of Lufthansa) and he was very badly behaved at the take-off (barking a lot, despite some drug that we gave him, also intended for this purpose of travelling pets, to tranquilise him). He was extremely stressed. After take-off, he kept quiet and fell asleep. I can imagine how his heart would have burst if instead of me petting him through the net, we had confined him in a black and tight locker, banging against the rest of the luggage. Of course, it was extremely disagreeable to have a dog bark like this in a plane. The stewardess even came and shared with me a distressed Sir, please!. There was little I could do. Killing the dog is an option our declining and psychopath society could now envision to preserve the peace of mind of the technical slaves.
A girl gets detained 15 days in the USA after unknowingly crossing the frontier during her jogging on the Canadian border
Not only one should not purposefully do anything wrong in the 25th hour, one should not even commit a sincere mistake, however unimportant, inconsequential or trivial it is. Consequences can, in stark contrast to the futility of the offence, be arbitrarily tough. Here's our example: a French jogger inadvertently crossed the Canadian/US border during her morning exercise [5]. She would have never known if it was not for the US police arresting her for failing to provide an ID (she was jogging). As she turned out to be illegally on the territory, having only a visa for Canada, she ended up being detained in conditions similar to her having damaged federal properties or molested people to force her way in, when she merely crossed a line through the beach that you only see on a map. Her detention lasted for 15 days and she is now forbidden to enter the United States. In a normal world, she would have been courteously accompanied back with a friendly salutation from the neighbouring nation, maybe with a local gift, a postcard, a cookie. In the 25th hour of technical slaves, she spent weeks in the anguish of imagining to which extent this could further escalate.
US police shoot a pet during a home inspection and harm a little girl standing nearby
In the 25th hour, police is a further threat in situations where you are already in danger. Penetrating a family home to respond to some distress call, a police officer opened fire on the family dog as the latter barked at him, a familiar experience to every visitor of a household with dogs. Not only this insane reaction brings us well into the 25th hour in absence of aggravating circumstances, this further happened with children surrounding the pet [6]. Just before the policeman started to shoot randomly in the dark, unconcerned for the safety of the children all around, you can hear him laugh about something. The reported reason for the shooting was that the dog attacked (you can hear him bark) but so violent was the attack and so controlled was the shooting that the dog ended up not even harmed in the process. Only the child suffered from this technical slave's self-defense.
Parce que les gens y nous aiment pas! C'est con!
Parce que nous on est là pour les protéger hein?
Vous avez remarqué les gens?
Plus y a de flics autour d'eux, plus y z'ont peur!
Coluche.
Brutal repression of the Yellow-Vest movement opens a new era of controlling demonstrations
French people are known worldwide for their tendency to oppose reforms by social unrest, and by a generous extension, to revolt against injustice and to resist oppression. That what makes them so special in the eye of Bernanos, and following his gaze, in mine as well. The French revolution is one overhype illustration of the noble expression of this nation in supporting civil and human rights. Its long tradition of demonstration is meeting with a drastic change in the 25th hour: eye removal. The police is using order-maintaining tools of the military scale, including hand grenades, explosives and a civilized-looking non-lethal weapon: rubber bullet guns, or so-called LBD, which stands for lanceur de balles de défense (defense-bullet guns). In Newspeak, defence is war and these self-defence mechanisms are actually used to pop-out people's eyes in offensive, deterring and, clearly, inhumanly cruel fashion. There are no fatal casualties so far but these will come, and many people have been already badly mutilated for life. In most if not all cases, this was only for being there in the street, walking peacefully as a form of protest, which is a basic democratic right. This inspired someone to make this humorous reply to a twitter question: - What would you do if you would be immortal for one day? - Demonstrate.
Australian police arrests pregnant woman at home and in pyjamas for a facebook post
In Australia, a pregnant woman has been arrested in the type of conditions that make people don't believe you when you tell them the story [7]. We see her patronized by the police, which fakes rightful obedience to a legal system and to be dealing with hysteric hostility (when witnesses to the scene are incredibly calm). This happens in front of her children, at home, in her pyjamas, probably causing irremediable damage to the most vulnerable people as defined by everybody's intuition of what humanity is (a woman, a pregnant woman, a crying and begging pregnant woman, a crying and begging pregnant woman abducted from her home, a crying and begging pregnant woman abducted from her home in her sleeping clothes—there seems to be no end to this progression—but also children, babies, fetuses even...) But the technical slave has no humanity, he has warrants instead. What makes this the escalating step is that the offence itself is a facebook post. What could be more harmless and futile than expressing one's opinion or mood on a social media? I haven't read the post and do not need to, it is irrelevant whatever the context. The questioning starts for me at what type of offence would justify such an arrest... like, if she was suspected of a deadly assault the previous night or to prepare a massive terror attack, would I be as shocked as I am now? She's still at home in her pyjamas... and pregnant, with an ultrasound in the coming hour. Even in the most extreme cases, I would imagine it is possible to show some consideration, if not for her, at least for her baby, her children. But again, we're speaking of a facebook post. One should not, in the 25th hour, stray in the slightest from the established rules, even if those are supposedly for our own safety in the first place. And we also know that it does not matter if you were not even aware of the rules or offering to repay the "offence", as was the case in this case. In the 25th hour, human beings must be jailed, including defenceless women (interestingly, Gheorghiu's novel has a scene depicting this, with Traian's wife).
A baby is disembarked from a plane with his mum for not tolerating the mask
This is one tick further, because there is not even non-compliance in the case of this mom, who couldn't control, in a plane, her baby suffocating behind a mask due to his asthma. This has been readily identified by the 25th-hour citizens as a terrorist attack that endangered the entire crew and passengers, prompting cancelling of the flight in mid-air and disembarking of those found at fault, despite their best attempts to fit in the model of our new society, with the mum chucking the mask into the baby's face in a desperate attempt to minimize his crime. The police was obediently waiting for them. One is not yet exactly expecting that they are sent directly to jail, or beaten-up, or separated, but this is the route which we are taking, as the doomsday clock keeps ticking. This is not even the first time but seems to be already common. In the 25th hour, it of course does not matter if you resist or not, if you are compliant or not, if you support or even are part of the tyranny or not: you can become the victim at any moment. Being a child, a toddler or a baby does not atone for your sins. As soon as you're not a human being anymore, it does not matter in which stage or state you are. You are a potential enemy of the state, of society, of the rest of the World, and can be abused, removed with full approval from everybody else.
