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Stephane Hessel, Best-Selling French Author, Father Of The Occupy Movement, Dead At 95

LE MONDE, AFP, FRANCE 24, LIBERATION (France)

Worldcrunch

PARIS Stephane Hessel, the French best-selling author, Resistance figure and diplomat died last night at age 95.

He is mostly known however, for his rights activism – his tireless combat for the disenfranchised and illegal immigrants, writes France 24 and is considered the father of the Occupy movement.

His 32-page essay, Indignez-Vous! (Time for Outrage!), published in 2010, sold over 2.1 million copies in France and more than a 3.5 million copies worldwide, according to Le Monde. It was translated in 34 languages and has been lauded for inspiring the global Indignados and Occupy anti-austerity movements.

In an interview with the AFP in March 2012, Hessel said: “The amazing success is still a surprise for me, but it is explained by an historical moment. Societies are lost, asking themselves how to make it through and searching a meaning to the human adventure.”

Time for Outrage! urges youths to emulate the wartime spirit of resistance to the Nazis by rejecting the "insolent, selfish" power of money and markets and by defending the social "values of modern democracy."

“The reasons for outrage today maybe less clear than during Nazi times,” he wrote, “But look around and you will find them.”

Stephane Hesse on Occupy Wall Street:

Hessel was born to a Jewish family in Berlin in 1917, and moved to France when he was seven. His parents were Franz and Helen Hessel, who along with writer Henri-Pierre Roché inspired François Truffaut’s film, “Jules and Jim.”

He was naturalized French in 1939, as WWII was starting, and in 1941, he joined the Resistance movement spearheaded by Charles De Gaulle in London. In 1944 he captured by the Gestapo and deported to the Buchenwald concentration camp, where he was tortured but escaped death by exchanging his identity with a prisoner who had died of typhus.

After the war ended, he participated in editing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights with Eleanor Roosevelt and went on to hold various posts at the UN.

In 2011, Hessel was added by Foreign Policy magazine to its list of top global thinkers "for bringing the spirit of the French Resistance to a global society that has lost its heart."

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Society

What's Spoiling The Kids: The Big Tech v. Bad Parenting Debate

Without an extended family network, modern parents have sought to raise happy kids in a "hostile" world. It's a tall order, when youngsters absorb the fears (and devices) around them like a sponge.

Image of a kid wearing a blue striped sweater, using an ipad.

Children exposed to technology at a very young age are prominent today.

Julián de Zubiría Samper

-Analysis-

BOGOTÁ — A 2021 report from the United States (the Youth Risk Behavior Survey) found that 42% of the country's high-school students persistently felt sad and 22% had thought about suicide. In other words, almost half of the country's young people are living in despair and a fifth of them have thought about killing themselves.

Such chilling figures are unprecedented in history. Many have suggested that this might be the result of the COVID-19 pandemic, but sadly, we can see depression has deeper causes, and the pandemic merely illustrated its complexity.

I have written before on possible links between severe depression and the time young people spend on social media. But this is just one aspect of the problem. Today, young people suffer frequent and intense emotional crises, and not just for all the hours spent staring at a screen. Another, possibly more important cause may lie in changes to the family composition and authority patterns at home.

Firstly: Families today have fewer members, who communicate less among themselves.

Young people marry at a later age, have fewer children and many opt for personal projects and pets instead of having children. Families are more diverse and flexible. In many countries, the number of children per woman is close to or less than one (Singapore, Taiwan, South Korea, Hong Kong among others).

In Colombia, women have on average 1.9 children, compared to 7.6 in 1970. Worldwide, women aged 15 to 49 years have on average 2.4 children, or half the average figure for 1970. The changes are much more pronounced in cities and among middle and upper-income groups.

Of further concern today is the decline in communication time at home, notably between parents and children. This is difficult to quantify, but reasons may include fewer household members, pervasive use of screens, mothers going to work, microwave ovens that have eliminated family cooking and meals and, thanks to new technologies, an increase in time spent on work, even at home. Our society is addicted to work and devotes little time to minors.

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