On This Day In 1884....

Lest We Forget: On this day in 1884, 13 European nations shamelessly gathered in Berlin to parcel out the African continent like famished school children (on a school trip) haphazardly dividing up a pizza. Great Britain was represented by Sir Edward Malet (Ambassador to the German Empire). The US, the emerging but reluctant superpower, had a delegate - the explorer Henry Morton Stanley.

In utter disregard and with not a single iota of conscience or concern for the culture or the families of the continent, the map was redrawn and lands claimed. What followed was the systematic scramble and undoing of Africa. Resistance was met with the brutal force of gunpowder. The Herero Massacre was the first genocide of the 20th century: tens of thousands of men, women and children were shot, starved, and tortured to death by German troops as they put down “rebellious” tribes in what is now Namibia. Tens of thousands of defenceless women and children were forced into the Kalahari desert, their wells poisoned and food supplies cut.

In Uganda, the first election fraud (in favour of Apollo Milton Obote) was masterminded by London. The British governor then, Sir Fredrick Crawford, an honest man to a fault, resigned because he was unwilling to be party to this gerrymandering. This has since become the template for regime survival. Congo and many other African nations have never recovered from this trauma that was orchestrated at Bismarck's official residence on that bleak weekend.

 

The United Colours Of Capitalism

Click to enlarge and get clearer view,
to discover which company you want
to make you the offer that you should refuse
this  seasonal bargain day    

 

The Logic Of Philanthropy

We often hear talk by the wealthy
that defends the present inequality
as 'a more efficient means
of spreading wealth that any other', 
and well we might wonder
how the logic it is based on arose.

It starts with a wealth creation
that runs well ahead of the ability
of any tax system to tax such wealth,
until eventually the powers that be
try to be more prescient
about the nations finances.

Then they find the wealth creators
propose that they are best people
to advise the writing of the rules
of the wealth they say they created
(always their wealth was made
by exploiting human resources,
and materials, they controlled
but denied all responsibility for).

The more the wealthy write the rules
that regulate the taxation of wealth
the more they exempt themselves
in the name of philanthropy.

They divide the poor into the worthy
-those who pay tax enough to support others,
and the unworthy-those who earn so little
that they cannot be taxed.

By definition the rich are always worthy,
their wealth is what tells them how fit they are
for always ruling over the lives of others.

Apocalypse When......

Human beings have written apocalyptic myths
from the later period of The Old Testament
to far into the times of The Roman Empire.

And always these writings get refreshed
by modern readers who replace the targets
the myths were once aimed at, now forgotten,
for people who are alive as they write
-people who the writers think worthy
of renewed and damning accusations.

But there surely come a point
where even fears are prone to doubt;
the old fears no longer have the energy
to sustain themselves as part of human life.

What happens when what was once
'a deep reading' of an apocalyptic text
integral to belief for one generation
loses all it's cogency for the next?

Does the text become
just a play thing,
an entertaining surface read?
How long can the fear
of end of the world
survive human indifference?  

Reason For Belief?

In something/anything that is well beyond
The State, most of what constitutes 'religion',
and all the state's leaders along with the flags,
which they use to distract everyone
from all the deals that they like to keep unknown.   

 

A Non-Conformist Writes About Diet And Choice

Meat substitutes are now being sold
by many western food manufacturers
who, whilst controlled by greenwash,
are keen to hold on to their markets.

This time their efforts are serious;
the 'meat' now grows in petri dishes
or rather their large scale equivalent,
after which it is textured and flavoured
until the consumer can't tell the difference
with what it is meant to be compared to.

with white meats the indistinctness
might well be correct; factory chickens
lead lives that are so absurdly short
and horrible that anyone seeing them
would say it was the animal farming
equivalent of the Nazi death camps.

The less the suffering the better it is,
but that still leaves the greenwash problem;
whatever we are told about the virtue
of what we eat we still have to be
propagandised into submission
to make sure that we eat it.

Thinking for ourselves
what to eat is too risky
to be allowed.

The Pain We Don't Need

Sex is where tragedy
turns most easily to farce,
which is why sexual abstinence
is partly abstaining from tragedy.

Such abstinence is less about morality,
though the reasons given for the choice
will always be presented in that framework,
and more about erring on the side of caution,
the better to abstain from unnecessary pain.

I Do Not Worship Growth

particularly where that growth is of religions
-where belief amounts to a monoculture
that denies the diversity of the past.

There ever expanding statistics
for conversions are an article of faith
within a hyper capitalistic society
where the pressure for infinite growth
also applies itself through money.

My faith is in sustaining
my long term unemployability
as the main means to self control,
one of the nine fruits of the Holy Spirit.

There my frugality means being inventive
in discovering how to live,
and accepting the fragility of others. 

Modern materialism is a blind alley
that pushes people towards a brutality
which denies the shrinkage
it always leads to, in the end.

The Mathematics Of Avoiding Single Use Items

Some may quibble at the amount of washing
and rinsing that consistent reuse involves,
but when we wash what we can
  we leave less mess behind us.  

 

The World Is A Strange Place

When the the fringes interests of Politics
produce fringe interests of their own
where lack of proof is what guarantees
the popularity of the leaders who do nothing
for the voters who once voted for them. 

Modern Semaphore

In this, the era of electronic media, semaphore 
is a long neglected means of communication.
But 63 years after it was first founded
I was surprised to learn that it provided CND
with such a forward looking means
of seeing a future that is more peaceable
than all the world's warring pasts combined. 

 

All Apologies?

I have known quite a few
who were over-generous
with their apologies;
people who said 'sorry'
at the drop of a hat, mostly
when they had no need to.

It was easy enough for me
to diagnose their 'bad nerves',
amongst other maladies.

The worst for apologies
were those who knew
they had done wrong, all along.
But they hoarded their apologies
for after they were at their most egregious.

They hoped that when said 'sorry'
for their worst then all their previous,
behaviour that was also heinous
would be absolved from all memory. 

That is when I doubt their sincerity.

The Groucho Clubcard

Every time I shop in a supermarket
I am politely asked at the checkout
'Do you have our clubcard?'
Each time I am asked I mildly regret
not having a glossy piece of plastic,
akin a donor card, to show them,
that paraphrases the Groucho Marx quote
'I would not be a member
of any club that would have me'.

The Lesser Loss

Misanthropy seems to be at it's most generous
when it celebrates the loss of companionship;
Were the former friend were still there
then they would be enduring
an unendurable suffering.

The grief of absence
seems the cleaner choice
than the half life of loss.

The Opiate Of Absolute Rulers

is the unquestioning obedience
of the citizens of their country,
which they back up with force,
and reward when the need occurs.

Such obedience never lasts long
and it always has to repromoted
to find it's place via the evolving
political paradigms of the day.

Would-be absolute rulers
who have to be voted for
have a much harder job,
keeping favour with the public
by riding the latest trends,
and massaging into submission
the opinions of whoever resisted
voting for them before,
to make them reflect their leader better.

Who knows how to escape 
such consistent misrepresentation?
Every time a route is tested
the old binding becomes the thread
on which to spool a new generation.

The Power Of Forgiveness Falls Short Again

The revolution that I'd like to see
is the revolution with no enemy,
with no scapegoats to be punished
when mistaken aims are missed. 

Such a hierarchy could never last;
it is asking too much to be given
through the power of forgiveness.

None Of The Above

When you are offered a questionnaire
to fill in before seeing the youtube video
that you have clicked on, which asks
'Which of these companies have you heard of?'
always click on the box that says
'None of the above'. Always give youtube
the smallest amount of information
you can get away with giving them. 

For The Loquacious Religious Irish

There is craic with everything,
it is how the light gets in.

The Future Is Not What It Used To Be

The market for the future
always appealed to the many,
whilst selecting the few
-those best fitted for it all along.

A long time ago
the future was driven
by different monotheisms
until The Heavenly Future
could be owned by only
the most bloodthirsty
and most triumphalist
of all the faiths.

That was the technology of war
creating ever newer choices
by which to divide peoples,
reduce peacetime economies,
and destroy once rich
and vastly varied landscapes.

Nowadays the currency of the future
is not time in Heaven,
as promised by religions.
Now the future is bonds and stocks
that are bought and traded,
at astonishing speeds across the globe.

There the bond relates to the raw energy
by which many people lead insulated lives
using materials extracted from the earth
in a fraction of the time
that the earth took to make them.

.   

So Many Unknown Soldiers

For years I have observed each Armistice Day,
when what has become an old loss
gets rewritten as a source of renewal. 
And the media of my country,
reflects a self absorbed vision
in which other countries are merely
battle grounds in which we lost soldiers.

But mine is not the only country
to make self absorption seem patriotic,
around the world there are more than eighty
monuments 'to the unknown soldier',
with America having five on it's soil
the earliest dating from the civil war.

Nor was my country one of the earlier
nations to celebrate/mourn it's losses
-Denmark was the first in 1849,
with it's statue to the brave soldier
created by Hermann Bisen
after the first Schleswigg war.

From Argentina to Zimbabwe
across every inhabited continent,
Europe, Africa, Oceania, and Asia
and North and South America,
history is measured by the deference
to the statues to the anonymous fallen
from countless wars with countless fallen
where the living are surprised at being alive.  

But my country was surely the first
to wrap it's flag so tight around a past
so closely centred around loss and death
that it's history now reads like a dementia case,
where a major part of it now solely lives
below the soil in some foreign field,
or far away, engaged in tax avoidance,
and a history where history is built on dishonesty.  

A Gripe On Reality

The older I get, the more I observe legislatures,
who when, enacting laws,
who with well reasoned cause
pretend to be progressive,
but in the laws that they pass
they end up looking crass
before being irreversibly transgressive.  

A Beggar's Gratitude

For all that they seem abject,
the thanks of a beggar,
proffered in advance
of what they receive,
are as genuine
as the thanks said casually
by the many who have that much
they can't count it,
never mind the extra
they go through life expecting. 

The biggest difference
between the gratitude of the rich
and of the thanks of the poor
is that the poor know less
about how to fake sincerity
as they seek to see
their needs met,
and to be accepted.

The Monologues Of The Deaf

are meant to sound like a conversation,
whilst disguising a lack of observation.

It's Okay

Where simplicity gets more self-deceiving
is when we believe that living 
at nearer subsistence levels,
compared with those around us,
is somehow 'preserving the planet'
when it it is still dying all around us. 

 

All The Lonely People?

If anyone tried to write
another 'Eleanor Rigby'
they simply could not, the song
would come out all wrong.

However good the tune
and tight the arrangement, 
the song could never strike the note
of near universal recognition
that the original found in it's time.

Since that song was written
loneliness has been moved on.
It has been crowded out
by websites like the one
that you are reading this on
where we are in it together,
even as each of us is alone.

Our loneliness becomes our vocation
fit to be shared with the nations
of likeminded absent souls.

Mordant Danish humourist Victor Borge
used to say about the effect of his performances
'The shortest distance between two people is a smile'.

Now people don't meet, and have little to say
when they pass each other in the street.
The shortest distance between two people
is from your screen and keyboard to mine,
something I sit down at home and wait for.

Diary Of A Lost Person

When I went online I was reminded
that the main thing that the internet
is meant to do is bring out the sense
of play for those who go onto it. 

Where did I go to play when I realised I should?
I asked Google 'Does Franz Kafka have a homepage?'
Well reader, yes he does. Find it here for some serious fun. 

Great Films of The Twentieth Century-Koyaanisqatsi

 

When A Liar Speaks

How much they convince their hearers
is less a matter of bigness, though that helps,
and more a matter of the speed with which
the high flown rhetoric passes over it's audience.

When the rhetoric is properly examined,
any listener would soon discover
how much it is arrant nonsense.

But because the message travels so fast,
over the heads of  too many people,
the collective resistance is hard to find,
where they can all be critical enough
to break down what tries to bind them.

Picture Set Of The Month - November - 'At The Tomb of The Unknown Soldier'

The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, The Arc de Triumph
in Paris, inaugurated 11th November 1920, along with
a similar memorial in Westminster Abbey, London.      

The statue Landsoldaten (The Foot Soldier)
by sculptor Herman Wilhelm Bissen is located
in Fredericia, Denmark.

'The Tomb of The Unknown Soldier,
at Westminster Abbey. The idea for the monument
dates from 1916, from Army Chaplain David Railton.
It was realised by November 1920, along with
it's French equivalent at the Arc de Triumph.
.  

 

The National War Memorial, Ottowa, Canada
which was dedicated in 1939, and in front of it
The Tomb of the Unknown Soldier inaugurated
in May 2000 and kept guard over ever since.
  

Arlington USA, one of five monuments
'to the unknown soldier' in America,
this memorial was completed Nov 11th 1921.
.