There is this "strange" word which has dominated the world for four centuries, starting with the year 1609. What is more, it has been used almost "intact" in all languages. 

The word is the ancient Greek word "tele" ["te" pronounced: "tea", as in 'tea-party", and "le" pronounced as in "Lexington", with the accent on "tea"]. It is an adverb which means: "far off" or "at a distance". The word is at least 3,000 years old, as it is found in the works of Homer. As an adverb, it is not used by the modern Greeks. 

 

Here is the beginning of the trajectory of the word through these centuries:

 

– Tele-scope [tele + scopein (to watch, in Greek). Year 1609, Galileo.]

 

– Tele-graph [tele + graphein (to write, in Greek). Year 1792 in France.]

 

– Tele-phone [tele + phoni (voice, in Greek). Year 1796.]

 

– Tele-gram [tele + graphema (written text, in Greek). Year 1852.]

 

– and so on , and on. [There are more than 70 entries in the dictionaries for the word "tele", as a prefix].

 

– Tele-vision [tele + vision. Year 1907] and Tele-x, being the last ones, alphabetically.

 

{Note: The most "amusing" entry is: tel(e)-evangelist [tele + euaggelion (good tiding, in Greek. Year 1973). For example, the "good tiding" that Obama, Cameron, et al, rabid opponents of chemical weapons, did not (yet) add a few more thousand corpses in Syria to those amassed by them in Afghanistan, Africa, etc.} 

Most of the above words, in the dictionary, are terms coined to describe a human invention. It seems that man has always had the passion (or need) to strive to communicate or to act from a distance. Hence, the above long list for "tele", as a prefix. However, the "tele" prefix did not make it in the family of inventions lately; the internet, the mobile, the drone, etc. 

So, is the successful inventions by "sapiens", that enable him to communicate or to act from a distance, good or bad? 

As with all matters of technology, it can have positive or a negative aspects, depending on who uses it. 

To linger on the negative aspects of the internet, the mobile telephones, the drones, etc. is redundant. However, it is not far-fetched to say that by now there is a new species on this planet; the "tele-man"!

 

 

Teleman 

Georg Philipp Telemann was born in 1681, four years before the birth of Johann Sebastian Bach and of Georg Friedrich Handel, both born in 1685. By coincidence (?) all three have bequeathed us the ultimate musical offerings in human history. 

In 1700 the 19-year-old Telemann, on his way to law school, "having renounced a musical career by maternal command" (wife of a clergyman), passing through the hometown of the then 15-year-old Handel, "who was already famous", struck up a friendship with the boy and later admitted that Handel "… nearly overthrew all my resolutions". [Herbert Weinstock, "Handel", Greenwood Press, 1959, p.16]. 

"[I]n June 1722, the post of cantor at St. Thomas's church in Leipzig became vacant. The [town] council was looking for a … successor … It did not, however, think of Bach in the first place, but entered into negotiations with Telemann [41 years old], who was at that time regarded as the leading German composer. … [Telemann was self-taught!] The negotiations were broken off because Telemann could not obtain his release from Hamburg …" [Albert Schweitzer, "J.S.Bach", Dover Publications, 1966, p.111]. 

That was a very brief portrait of a "Telemann" of three centuries ago. 

[Parenthesis: It seems "blasphemous", at least, to write about music while in Syria, Afghanistan, Egypt, Algeria, Palestine, etc blood is shed, or while in Greece people are in extremely deep misery.

 

Here are two reasons for committing this "sin": 

1. The folk music of all peoples, has tremendous quality and beauty, due to a musical history of thousands of years behind it. However, from a certain point in the cultural evolutionary process the "production" of music turned into an "art". So, a few centuries ago Bach and Handel, using the tools of this art, composed music that is a treasure in the history of humanity. This treasure was usurped by the world elites and was used as an instrument to separate the highbrow culture of the elites from the lowbrow vulgarity of the "ordinary" people, because they (the elites) were the only ones that could … "understand" the music of Bach and Handel.

 

Here is the opinion of some important persons about this treasure:

 

– Beethoven: "Handel is the greatest of us all".

 

– Mozart: "When he [Handel], chooses, he strikes like a thunderbolt".

 

 – Einstein: "… Handel, .., stands as little below Bach as Bach is below him".

 

Equally important and revealing, concerning this treasure, is the opinion of Tara Clancy, a writer and performer in New York, as recorded in the Op-Ed page of the July 11, 2013 issue of the International Herald Tribune, the Global Edition of the New York times. She writes: 

"At 20, my mother had hardly been outside Brooklyn, and when she did finally leave a year later, it was only because she married a cop from Queens … by the time I was 2, they had divorced, and to make a little extra money afterward, she decided to take on a weekend job cleaning apartments. 

The very first place she cleaned was a Manhattan duplex … And it turned out to be her last housekeeping job. Over the course of a year she would go from being the cleaning lady to the secretary to the girlfriend of the multimillionaire who owned it. 

(Like my mom, he was divorced …) … she and I spent every weekend with him … for the next 22 years. 

For me the effects of our bridging the class divide are significant, … My 2-year-old son, who has never met my mother's ex, nevertheless reaps the benefits of both sides of my mother's life. She likes to play him Vivaldi during dinner." (Emphasis, added.) 

In a "pareconish" vision the cultural empowerment of people is a must and becomes possible through job complexes, through freedom from "the class divide", through adequate free time, and through elimination of elitism. Thus, ordinary people will be able to approach and inherit this cultural treasure. 

A society that has such a vision does not spill blood, does not use chemical weapons or drones. 

 

2. Noam Chomsky's various references, in his work, to Wilhelm von Humboldt has been an educational resource for me. Humboldt was born in 1769, 10 years after the death of Handel. 

Humboldt wrote: "The true end of man, or that which is prescribed by the eternal and immutable dictates of reason, and not suggested by vague and transient desires, is the highest and most harmonious development of his powers to a complete and consistent whole." [Wilhelm von Humboldt, "The Limits of State Action", Cambridge University Press, 1969, p. 16.]  

The means to reach this end, according to Humboldt is Bildung; the German word for education and culture. Furthermore, by Bildung he basically means self-education. Also, he thinks that history is part of this self-education. 

So, is the music of Bach, Handel and Tillmann part of that Bildung? I think it is, and it belongs to all humans. 

Again, in a pareconish society Bildung is the foundation of its vision and what is important, it offers a multitude of opportunities to acquire that. End of the Parenthesis] 

Finally, to get an idea of the Music of Telemann (who was, and, maybe still. is considered a "shallow composer"), the reader is urged to listen, for example, to Telemann's "Suite in A minor for flute and string orchestra".

 

 

Bulletin from Athens

 

Most of what is recorded below is the "handiwork" (as ordered by the occupiers of Greece) of an Oxford-educated Greek gentleman, with SS-style hirsute preferences, named Stournaras who tells us (Greeks) that as a Minister he is taking care of us and the economy of our country. To comprehend the efficiency, ability and "kindness" of this Oxonian here are two examples: 

1. I and hundreds of thousands of fellow Greeks received a letter by Master Stournaras's tax people at 11 a.m. which ordered us to pay (for the umpteenth time in a year) taxes for the houses we live in, by 2:30 p.m. of the same day. Otherwise, a fine will be imposed on us by the "kind" Oxonian. 

2. People who own a SUV, which by now they are trying to get rid of for about $5.000, are ordered to pay an annual tax of $5,500.  

By now it is more than obvious that the occupiers have decided that Greece, as a geographical region, should undergo a "structural rearrangement". The last two words do not constitute a term of economics. 

The occupiers: US Anglo-Saxons, Communist (!!!) Chinese, and the Russians. 

 

– Education: the Greek educational system is being destroyed. Education will be available only for the 1/3 of the population who collaborate with the occupiers, vote for their "proxies", and are economically protected by the occupiers. The 2/3 of ordinary Greeks will get the education imposed by the international corporate elites, i. e. the technical skills of the prole. 

– Health: What is happening to the educational system is repeated in the health system. The rather "strange" difference is that the person chosen to become "Minister of Health" is a man, named Adonis Georgiadis, who was a deputy in the Greek parliament for a party whose leader does not like Jews, likes national socialism, hates communism, etc. Georgiadis is owner of a bookstore at Exarcheia, the anarchist hub in Athens. His bookstore was attacked repeatedly, because of his political orientation. Greeks cannot yet believe that he was chosen to deal with the health system of Greece. 

– Nazis: A few days ego (on September 12 ) the Nazis attacked a team of 15 people who were pasting posters for a Festival of the Communist Youth of Greece. The group of Nazis, about 40 or 50 of them, bearing all kinds of clubs and crowbars, wounded 9 of the 15. The wooden clubs were "improved" with protruding nails. On the basis of the head-wounds with stitches shown on the TV-news and the testimony of wounded people, my estimate is that the Nazis were instructed not to hit people with the nails on the head but on body muscles, as there were cases with wounds that the nails penetrated up to 2 inches in the flesh. The people that plan the Nazi provocations have their own schedule. 

– Russians et al: I had to spend the last two months on the island of Paros. The town of Naousa is the place preferred by most of the tourists, from all over the world, who visit the island. Some Russians entered a jewelry store, ignored the Greek lady, owner of the store, pulled the drawers and trays with the jewelry and handled it at their will. The lady managed to drive them out of the shop. The behavior of the Russians is not unexpected. Last year, again on the island of Paros, in a conversation with a Frenchman I met irony, contempt, and denigration of the Greeks. Most world media did a good job for that. Do not forget the US "Vanity Fair" [see my ZNet Commentary of Sept. 26, 2010, "Thackeray's Greeks?], the German "Bild", etc. 

The house that I stay in Paros, belongs in a group of 9 houses. Three of them belong to Greeks, one belongs to an American lady, one belongs to a German, one belongs to a Swiss, and three belong to Britons. What these people think of the Greeks, after living with them for many years, I am not so sure. 

– Water: The Greek government is trying to privatize the water supply system of Salonika. I feel that they are testing the soil to see if they can privatize the water in Athens. If they try that, they will be in trouble. 

– Trains: The Greek trains are in line for privatization. The private entities who are candidates for the "transaction": the trains of the German state, the trains of the French state, and other socially very conscious entities. Again, this was not unexpected. The train is anathema for the "asphalt nations" and the "societies of the car", yet the car in Greece is in trouble. 

Last night I stopped writing this article. 

This is after this morning of September 17, 2013: 

– The Nazis killed a 34-year-old man of the Greek Left. The young man from a working-class family, besides working as a laborer was, also, a US-style "rapper" [if I use the term correctly] with the name of "Killah P" [Killer of the Past]. The killer was arrested by a policewoman. Her male colleagues, present at the scene, did not act. The killer and his wife [repeat: his wife] are Nazis. 

At this point it is not clear whether the killer followed the schedule of the "leaders" or killed for his own satisfaction.

 

This minute (9 p.m. Sept. 17) there is reaction by the Greeks against the Nazis in many Greek cities and towns. 

Also, there is a rather queer development. For the first time most Greeks became aware of a person by the name of Chrysanthos Lazaridis, the right-hand of the … Prime Minister of Greece. 

A minute ago it was announced that there is no Greek lawyer willing to defend the killer. 

People, whether Nazis or crypto-Nazis, should take into account that the Greek Left during the Second World War defeated Hitler, their mentor. 

Here I stop writing this article.

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