12 July 1789

Today is the 216th anniversary of an important date in the life of M.Camille Desmoulins (later editor and publisher of Vieux Cordelier).

The Wikipedia article on Camille Desmoulins states that:

The sudden dismissal of Jacques Necker by King Louis XVI was the event which brought Desmoulins to fame. On July 12, 1789 he leapt on a table outside one of the cafés in the garden of the Palais Royal, and announced to the crowd the dismissal of the reformer. Apparently losing his stammer due to the excitement, he addressed the passions of the public, calling "To arms!" and adding:

"This dismissal is the tocsin of the St. Bartholomew of the patriots" (meaning that a massacre of the partisans of reform was under preparation).

Finally, Desmoulins drew two pistols from under his coat, he declared that he would not fall alive into the hands of the police who were watching his movements. He descended embraced by the crowd.

This scene was the beginning of the actual events of the Revolution. Following Desmoulins, they started rioting throughout Paris, procuring arms by force, and, on July 13, it was partly organized as the Parisian militia - which was afterwards to be the National Guard. On July 14, the major event remembered as the storming of the Bastille occurred.

Although it tempting to believe that one man started the French Revolution, it is more understandable that people were ready and willing to act. All that was needed was a spark. That spark was M.Desmoulins and his street theatre.

But to get the people to that state of readiness was years of reading books and newspapers, thousands of meetings in clubs and cafes, and a growing realisation that the old ways were no longer working. Newspapers would spring almost daily and die just as quickly.

Today, we have blogs as well for millions of people around the world to discuss and argue about what is happening around us. Again, we have people wondering what is going on. Are they open to new ideas? Some are but most are not. Although they recognise that the world is in trouble, it seems somehow remote.

Today if I did the same thing as M.Desmoulins did 216 years ago, I would be laughed at. We are not in revolutionary times.

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9 July 1789

On 9 July 1789, the National Assembly in France reconstituted itself as the National Constituent Assembly, which was to last until its dissolution in September 30, 1791.

Here the people (or the representatives thereof) were starting to take control of their lives. They were sick of their "betters" telling them what to do. The changes they wanted to make were minor in their view but radical in the view of their rulers. Into this gap of understanding, the revolution was born.

Ideas that were imperfectly realised in the USA were to blossom in France. Mistakes were certainly made. These were extraordinary days for ordinary people.

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Is the Crouching Tiger a Threat?

Robert L. Glass asks Is the crouching tiger a threat? He is concerned about the growing dominance of the Asian economies in the computing field. He points to the dominance at the educational and business level.

He summarises his concerns as follows:

• Student populations: The number of Asian students enrolling in computing courses is increasing; U.S. student enrollment is decreasing. The difference is dramatic.
• Student competition: Asian students are winning international programming contests.
• Practitioners: Asian practitioners are increasing at a rate sufficient to pass U.S. practitioner populations in 2006.
• Researchers: Asian institutional software engineering researchers are rapidly accelerating their publication productivity, to the point where they are leading the world in that category.
• Business collaboration: Asian nations are beginning to work together to make sure their advancements continue.

This is a crisis from the point of view of the white US working class as jobs continue to move off shore to Asia or to Asian immigrants in the US. The whites used to dominate the computing profession - now it is Chinese and Indian ancestries that dominate.

In my class at University last semester, I was the only white student. The class was evenly divided between the Chinese and Indians. This was not unexpected because Australian Universities aggressively market themselves in India and Chinia. Plus the students get the benefit of the white man's seal of approval. This may soon disappear as the Asian Universities become the centre of the computing field.

Unfortunately for the Australian computing industry, there has always been a strong anti-intellectual current among the white male programmers, and managers (colour and gender differentiation not needed). Years of experience was all that white male programmers needed for employment and advancement. The others needed a degree just to get a junior role.

In any discussion, the years of experience trumped any theoretical knowledge. This has mirrored the development of Capitalism itself. The practical people were always against the scientific people. Knowledge was seen as suspect even though knowledge drove the industrial revolution.

Both types of people are needed to keep the system operational. Unfornately, not many people know how Capitalism works. They keep doing the things that seem to work without understanding why they work.

I said earlier that this was a problem for the working class. For the ruling class, they are not worried by this offshoring trend because they still own the factories and control the banks. They will still make their billions no matter where the programmers are located or what ancestry they have.

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Lambs led to the Slaughter

The continuing war over the interpretation of the French Revolution continues. This time, the stumbling block is that of the importance of ordinary people in the course of the revolution. Elitism rears its ugly head in the following quote published in the June 2006 of Annals Australiasia (p.36). This quote also has its chilling reflection in today's world as governments wage a campaign of terror against their citizens:

The ploiticians guillotined one another in order to escape the guillotine themselves, but what of the anonymous hundreds who were sent to their deaths for no better reason that they were 'under suspicion' and consequently under arrest, and because Fouquier had orders, as he phrased it, to 'get heads'? Of what possible crime against the state can the seventeen-year-old hairdresser's apprentice Martin Alleaume have been guilty? Or eighty-five-year old Jacques Bardy? Or Marie Bouchard, an eighteen-year-old 'domestic servant'? Thanks to Fouquier's meticulous clerks, the names and conditions of nearly all the victims who died Danton's execution [along with M. Camille Desmoulins, editor and publisher of Le Vieux Cordelier] are filed at the Archives. And one can only stand perplexed and appalled before the record of these indiscriminate butcheries that tossed together nuns, soldiers, ex-nobles, workmen, servant girls and prostitutes, not to mention the victims without number who belonged to no particular class or category, but who seem to have been caught like sardines in the meshes of an invisible net.

Stanley Loomis, Paris in the Terror, June 1793-July 1794, Lippincott, Philadelphia and New York, 1964, p.239.

Emphasis Mine

As you can see from the quote, it is the occupation and/or the age of the victim that calls into question the original arrest. These victims may well have innocent but the way to investigate it is to uncover the legal foundations and processes used in the arrest and trial. Were the foundations solid? Was the process legal and transparent? These are the questions to be asked to determine the extent of arbitary terror.

Today, the events described here are happening all around us. Innocent people are being accused and caught up in a net of a dubious legal process. The clear intent is to inspire terror in citizens by their governments. No one will know when the knock on the door will lead to disappearance into the US gulag (or its Australian subsidary).

The strange thing is that the French Revolution was the decisive victory of Capitalism over Feudalism. And today, the Capitalist intelligensia want to deny this victory. As Capitalism calcifies into the Acien Regime of the 21st Century, the ruling class must suppress the truth of the birth of Capitalism when ordinary people did extraordinary things and imagined the impossible where a pauper could become the ruler. Station at birth was now longer a barrier to advancement and achievement. It is this example that frightens the Capitalist ruling class: they are no longer confident of competing against the ordinary people.

Let us imagine the future when ordinary people can again do extraordinary things. Let us dare to believe that we can change the world as those hairdresser apprentices, domestic servants, young women, old men did back in 1789. Let us always believe that we can change the world for the better.

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