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HomeMy WebLinkAboutThe Citizen, 2017-08-17, Page 16PAGE 16. THE CITIZEN, THURSDAY, AUGUST 17, 2017. Sponsored Content Synopsis of Warner Bros. Harry Potter and The Order of the Phoenix This synopsis of the movie of J.K. Rowling's book has 47 remarkable parallels with Blyth events in the 19th, 20th and 21st centuries. See if you can spot them! Many reviewers cited this as the first overtly political episode for fans coming of age, just like Harry Potter, who is notified, by 'The Ministry', of his expulsion from Hogwarts for, clearly justified, use of magic against deadly Dementors. Friends from The Order of the Phoenix arrive, tell him that Dumbledore arranged an appeal hearing, and take him to their London headquarter's. Hermione protests that 'The Ministry' is being unfair to him. Harry answers, "There's a lot of that going around at the moment." Harry is shown the craven Daily Prophet newspaper. Subservient to a fearful, corrupt Ministry, it takes no time to check facts, and harms him by printing the foul propaganda of those who control 'The Ministry' and use anti -Harry whisper campaigns to induce the fickle members of the community to let all discourse with him go quiet in the land. Harry must be careful whose toes he steps on in a small town of magic. He's a threat to the plans of the power of one "who cannot be named" - one whose servile cronies intimidate and infiltrate a complicit Ministry populated by the venal, the constrained and those in denial. At an appeal hearing of dirty tricks, to prevent or dismiss evidence, Harry is ably served by Dumbledore who says that, rather than scapegoating Harry, 'The Ministry' should find what really happened and prevent it from happening again. He admits he is suggesting that someone, in 'The Ministry' itself, might have, illegally, usurped authority, adding that "there is someone who might be behind the attacks" - the one "who cannot be named" Charges are dropped but 'The Ministry's' publicly accessible reports, and it's subsequent actions, criminally, misrepresent what occurred at the hearing. Advocacy items, printed as 'news', make Harry look bad, and the corrupt look good. A Hogwarts student tells Harry he regrets doubting him, because "the newspaper's stories don't add up!" and it denied Harry, the courtesy of delaying publication for a short while, to check facts, perhaps citing "a duty to print, in a timely manner, news that the community has a right to know". Yet, it failed to report the crimes of a sociopathic law - unto -itself "out there" self-regulating and dreaming, outlawed, of future predations on a community not alerted. At a Hogwarts' assembly, Dolores Umbridge of The Ministry', cited as new Professor of 'Defence Against The Dark Arts', takes over the podium, as politicos often do. [see Note: below]. She delivers a manipulative address of undisguised meaning (The flip side of what The Citizen reported an Ontario Tourism rep, did in Blyth, in April). She feigns sincerity, calls Hogwarts an Historic School, cites local progress, but stresses tradition in the running of things. Ron Weasley remarks "What a load of waffle! What does it mean?" Hermione replies "It means The Ministry is interfering at Hogwarts!" [Note: Recent references to politicos, in our world, on the internet > "That doesn't even take into account swarms of lower -level politicos, businessmen and billionaires caught up in investigations around the region." - Raymond Colitt, Bloomberg.com -18 July 2017]. Umbridge, catering to those who 'The Ministry' really represents, dumbs down curricula, banishes texts and theoreticalizes teaching of Defence Against Dark Arts. Hermione says "it's so we can't defend ourselves from attacks by them." Students are warned - "Study hard and be rewarded. Fail to do so and the consequences may be severe." Regression gets ever crueler, sociopathic and illegal. Umbridges' magic, tortures Harry, as he writes false, prescribed lines - "I must not tell lies". Umbridge's ruthlessness gains her the post of High Inquisitor, "to address the seriously failing standards of education at Hogwarts" caused by her and appointed 'ad hoc' officers of 'The Ministry - subject to legislated standards, procedures and conduct, but actually sheltered by them. Hermione knows The Ministry' is centralizing power, while professing otherwise, denying students an education on how to protect oneself in life and setting them up to be exploited. She declares "We must educate ourselves," perhaps sensing that 'single tear' government precedes a 'final solution' government 'with no tears' or pity at all. 'The Ministry' justifies regression, claiming "security has been, and will remain, the top priority." Sirius Black, Harry's godfather, a marginalized outsider, is made a scapegoat to distract eyes from ministry intrigues and incompetence which ignores disappearance of community members by the power of "one who cannot be named" - using the Dark Arts. 'The Ministry' is desperate to limit community exposure to skills and egalitarian ways of Sirius which could prevent entrenchment of a system in which the disenfranchised are blamed and the powerful worshipped. They fear his knowledge that community is that 'transcendent space' where citizens must prevail, not elitist systems. He seems to have escaped being rendered impotent by miseducation and propaganda. He's not conditioned to, reflexively, obey economic, political and academic elites. His, is a service-oriented world, much like our own, with material needs, provided, increasingly, and anonymously, by pitiless, unfeeling digits, algorithms, robots and emerging nano technologies. Despite canny market-based claims and cynical propaganda in the Muggle world, there is evidence, especially in the Weasley household, that Sirius and The Order of The Phoenix know that a meaningful majority of technologies are the indisputable heritage of all citizens whose past labours and financial support created those technologies and from whom ownership has been appropriated, trick by political trick, century after century. Luna Lovegood, a student and seer, like Harry, marginalized as odd outsider 'Loony', tells Harry "others know you are telling the truth about 'you -know -who' being out there" and "the newspaper and The Ministry' are conspiring against you." A meeting to enlist Harry as a teacher of Defence Against The Dark Arts is organized by Hermione and success is assured by the timely appearance of The Room of Requirement'. A practical, community space, it appears at Hogwarts when there is need, and is always fully equipped for that need. Harry exclaims. "That's brilliant. It's like Hogwarts wants us to fight back." In our world, some buildings seem to want us to fight back - against misinformation, marginalization, withholding of critical information - calculated to harm and impoverish citizens and against lack of access to justice for most citizens and other erosions of their rights; against the disappearance of people by vile, parochial, Dark Magic and to regain stolen community space especially for youth and for that precious, 'transcendent' space which informs and educates them about how they have been, and still are being, betrayed by space -pilfering, elitist systems. Some buildings don't get all dressed up for elites. Acclaimed writer John Ralston Saul, concludes that "our universities, our governments, our bureaucracies, our business communities and other institutions, have been rendered increasingly incapable of thinking properly, captured by narrow, neoliberal rationalism." He states that our elites are too frightened to make decisions that are not in line with the ideology of 'neoliberal', corporate, capitalist globalization, and, it's agenda for the future. Ray Storey, a frequent contributor to The Citizen, concurs. He writes that "Most councils of Huron County are disfunctional"; that "the municipalities have failed to properly train councillors, employees and agents"; that "most do not obey" and that "bobble -headed councillors" act "Without researching, the legality, causes or effects" of their actions. Crystal Taylor seems to have intuited this as told in Denny Scott's article on page one of the Feb. 9th, 2017 Citizen - Blyth 140th rental fee offends volunteer. It describes how Crystal fought back by speaking out to express an insight of poignant, timely truth about the nonsensical answers that will almost always be given, now, by politicians as John Ralston Saul, and other independent scholars, researchers and thinkers warn. Theft of community 'space' is by design, as is inducing community -debt -slavery for dubious projects and infrastructure work, benefitting only corporate interests, at taxpayer expense. "All levels of government and corporations, together, are using economic troubles to push more of the same: tax cuts, the sale of public assets, service cuts, and more privatization through public-private partnerships (P3s) which are about giving private investors and financiers high returns with low risks, at the long-term expense of the public." See https://www.policyalternatives.ca/publications/monitor/problem-public- private-partnerships See youtube > 1 Why public private partnerships are a scam - David Hall > 2The failure of private -public -partnerships in healthcare in the UK and how not to replicate it in Canada. 3There are many more to be found on youtube. In 2014 Ontario's auditor general concluded that public -private -partnerships are inferior to the traditional procurement of public infrastructure. Victims, worldwide, agree. Most tragic, are "virtual privatizations" of precious assets, by councils, without citizens knowing the real terms and implications. As Auspex foresaw in The Tome of Protest and ResistanceTM, foolish answers, for now, will be accepted by most without struggle, unlike the bravehearts - Ray Storey, Crystal Taylor, Ted Johns, also in The Citizen, or Janet Amos in the Goderich Signal Star. Like The Ministry' - our current political, economic, academic and media metrics -managers, all in moral and mental servitude to money, dish up a debilitating, disciplinary diet of shock and awe news, narcotic, individualist propaganda and gratuitous spectacle, while they stalk communities for easy, unearned profits. (See > Michael Hudson - youtube) A 15 year study by canadian Professor John McMurtry concludes "the global corporate experiment has failed." Ralston Saul, and others, agree, warning that efforts are intense to distract eyes from the corporate intrigues and incompetence presiding over the continuing disappearance of, not just inconvenient community members, but also both types of space where citizens, not elitist systems, must prevail so the much - abused ideal of community can persist. All is falling victim to the 'unseen', 'secretive' practices of the Dark Arts. Meanwhile, at 'The Ministry', they react to defiant student self -education. Submission to an Inquisition is now required. Ever more punitive by-laws and fees discourage students from exercising their rights. The bureacracy appeals to the slithering side of human nature by dividing and conquering with spy -and -snitch programs. In this movie, volunteers, who help usurp precious, community space, are rewarded with extra credits, fancy citations, and glittering medals pinned on the chest with pomp, ceremony and lush media coverage. Hermione, becomes radicalized and blurts out "who cares!" to the question, 'what if we get caught conducting these classes'? She exclaims that "breaking (unjust) rules is exciting." Harry tells his students "hard work is important - believing in oneself is just as important." Later, fearing evil is overtaking his mind, his godfather, Sirius Black, assures him that "We all have light and dark inside us. What matters is who we choose to be." Sirius', for instance, has a cousin, who chose to be a deranged, lethal 'death eater'. This is a good place to end, and not reveal how the story line begins to resolve itself. We know the struggle against evil must continue. He,"who cannot be named" told Harry he's no winner, he's a "weak loser". Harry knows his foe is a megalomaniac, feared, not loved. He replies "You're the one who's weak. I feel sorry for you.You'll never know love and friendship I have known." Dumbledore tells Harry his foe is fighting to reify his delusion that he must own and control, the physical and transcendent 'space' which The Order of the Phoenix knows the community needs to flourish and survive. He adds that, "in the struggle against him, you have an advantage by having something worth fighting for." In the July 13, 2017 Citizen, I postulated 're -energized' original goals for a Queen St. 'stakeholder' and her Plantagenet partners (the 7th mention of their prescence in Blyth in six years.) Their descent from Royal 'Thrones', known in 2011, was alluded to, strongly, in 2004, with appeals to council to appreciate the potential, "if (it) thinks about it", for "the village and Thresher's Campground" in an "outsized umbrella project" and quoted here from pg. 64 of the 2004 Tome of Protest and ResistanceTM (TPR) > "I expect that you will come to know who Laura's partners were in her project, (wheelchair accessible gallery, studio and related facilities and production) and her partners' coprojects, (a unique museum, long-term educational project and related production)" A July 27, 2017 Citizen, report, like one in 2013 for 14/19inc., proved the accuracy of 'the foreseen' described on pg. 22 of the 2004TPR. But some may be surprised, that the 'Festival of Thrones', will not use the community's Thresher site as envisioned in 1999 for a Medieval Faire with Jousting and Birds of Prey etc., by descendants of hundreds of real knights (incl.Templars), 27 British Kings, several being Plantagenets, with a 'stakeholder' of Blyth, (and family), as partners. Next week: Plantagenets Respond. © 2017 Usgirls Edging All rights reserved The Tome of Protest and ResistanceTM