From: blog@lovolution.net   
      
                                                       The White Rose   
      
                                                   by Doctress Neutopia   
      
      
   The White Rose, a film about the life of Sophie Scholl and a group of German   
   university students in Munich who became Nazi resisters is an inspiration   
   and a warning to America students who love justice and freedom. When   
   students realized that the Nazis had been killing Jews and political   
   dissenters, they took it on themselves to create a resistance movement at   
   the university. They wrote text and made fliers with their call for students   
   to overthrow the Nazis. They copied them by using a hand-cranked mimeograph   
   machine. Such activity had to be done in secrecy. These students risked   
   their lives to distribute their literature. They also wrote anti-Nazi and   
   freedom messages in the style of graffiti on the walls of the university.   
   Another tactic was they sent their resistance literature through the mail to   
   university faculty, doctors, lawyers and other people of social standing,   
   not only in Munich, but in Berlin. It was risky business buying a large   
   quantity of stamps since it could alert the Nazis to their activities.   
      
      
      
   The White Rose found out from distributing their fliers that students were   
   too afraid, apathetic or politically unconscious to even pick them up.   
   Nevertheless, Nazis were threatened by such thought and searched for the   
   group of conspirators. Even though they were up against extreme odds, they   
   continued until they were caught by a janitor who reported them to the   
   Gestapo for distributing fliers outside a lecture hall that was about to be   
   let out. For their heroic action, Sophie and others were beheaded.   
      
      
      
   Hitler's secretary, Traudi Junge, in an interview at the end of the film   
   DownFall, about the last days of the Third Reich in the bunker in Berlin,   
   said that she deeply regretted her involvement with the Nazis. After she   
   learned of the life and death of Sophie Scholl who was the same age as her,   
   she realized that making the excuse that she was too young, naïve, and   
   unaware of Hitler's plans to exterminate the Jews was no real excuse for her   
   cooperation with Hitler.   
      
      
      
   After seeing the White Rose, my partner and I went to the University of   
   Arizona with a flier I created comparing the destruction of Fallujah with   
   the destruction of Warsaw. The America and Nazi armies destroyed these   
   cities for the same reason, to crush and punish liberation uprisings.   
   Tragically, the University of Arizona was similar to the way the film   
   portrayed the university in Munich during the time of the Nazis. Everything   
   seemed controlled and sanitized. There were few places where the public   
   could officially post a flier. Most bulletin boards in such places as the   
   library said posters are removed daily. The only politically conscious flier   
   we saw was advertising the Monday Night film series latest film, a   
   documentary about Battle of Algerias. Students were not being exposed to   
   fliers that illustrated the crisis we face. Instead, students were inundated   
   with commercials. From looking at the posters, one could surmise there was   
   no visible resistance movement against the American fascists happening on   
   campus. The place appeared to be void of intelligent and wise thought.   
      
      
      
   A month before, at the annual "progressive fair," which I tabled for my   
   organization, Lovolution Village, it was discouraging to witness the student   
   body walking to classes. Very few showed any curiosity about what was going   
   on at the tables. They walked by chatting on their cell phones or listened   
   to music on their iPods as if to escape the world around them. They walked   
   by as if in a deadly trance or as if they had been programmed to not look at   
   the humanitarian literature on the tables.   
      
      
      
   The only time student groups who scheduled an outside event could officially   
   use an amplified sound system was from noon to one pm. I asked the student   
   organizer if I could speak, but she said there wasn't time because of the   
   musical acts that they had scheduled. The first music group played was on   
   stage for around 45 minutes. In my mind they were absolutely terrible. Their   
   lyrics had nothing to do with social liberation or progressive issues and it   
   had everything to do with escaping into the "tits and ass" American   
   consumerist mentality. It was insulting to the intelligent mind and spirit   
   to sit there and be entertained as if there was nothing seriously wrong with   
   what was happening in America. Even though many of us at the tables were   
   veterans of the peace movement and would have loved to voice our concerns   
   and share with the students our insights into the struggle for liberation,   
   the students had no intention of breaking the administrations rules of no   
   amplified sound after the clock struck one. The administrators said the   
   reason for one o'clock being the cut off the amp time was because it might   
   interfere with classes.   
      
      
      
   I wondered what was being said in the classes anyway. Were the professors   
   talking about how we must stop the American invasion of Iraq and disarm the   
   American military of all nuclear weapons so that we can honestly say to Iran   
   that they are not allowed to have them? Do you think the professors are   
   telling students to impeach Bush and put him and his group of murderers on   
   trial for their war crimes? It seemed apparent that their professors were   
   not steering them in this direction. Students who organized the progressive   
   fair were unprepared to lead a resistance organization to save the world   
   from the Americans.   
      
      
      
   My suspicion is that there are very few socially conscious activist   
   professors left in universities throughout the United States. The systematic   
   elimination of progressive, pacifists, and radical professors have been   
   taking place for years. I was the last futurist to graduate from the   
   University of Massachusetts before the program at the School of Education   
   was killed along with public health and the philosophy of art. Also, during   
   that time of targeted budget cuts went the plans to build a solar power   
   engineering program. So, there is no place for me to teach at a university   
   because they have eliminated Future Studies from the curriculum. What does   
   this mean for students, for America?   
      
      
      
   White Rose where are you, my lovely comrades in truth? The mountains echo   
   back to me, "their heart lies in each one of us." It's time to resurrect the   
   White Rose. Let's find creative and daring ways to stir up the campus across   
   America. Only then will programs like public health and future studies can   
   be restored, so that we can entirely transform education into a place where   
   philosophy, the wisdom of the people, reign over society. I ask any person   
   who resonates with this essay to be part of the White Rose. Start out by   
   making anti-establishment fliers and put there everywhere you can think of,   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)