Hybrid War/Hybrid Peace

The oldest human wars were singular
and simple. Armies aimed at each other
where the limits of the weaponry
were more than made up for, by
the enmities between the rulers
of different sides who were more alike
than either side dared recognise.

Such times now seem improbably quaint.
Modern peace, like modern war, is hybrid, and complex.

When modern states start modern wars
the front line is the civil life of the enemy state.
The weaponry is long range and can be military,
economic, or electronic, including false information.
The most concentrated of which leaders will serve up
to civil life on their own side, to disable all opposition.

What efforts should we make to sustain
our hybrid, complex. peace in the the face
of powers unable to think outside of themselves?

This remains an active, live, question.....  

The Each Way Bet

That America offers the world where the world
is be lead to believe that it could have it's cake
or communion wafer, so to speak, and eat it too.
Via the manufacture, refinement, promotion
 and use of guns to break the sixth commandment  
as part of 20th/21st century capitalist expansion
as if there was no other explanation need be offered. 

 

America Vs The World

With America in the grip of a myopia
so bracing that it does not recognise
where it's present elite mis-leadership
has sprung from, what are the countries
once supported by it to do to replace
and replenish their no absent support?

The first point for the world to observe
is that there is no golden era to look back on,
nor did any such invented era begat the world
an elite from which White America's leadership
descends from, and from which White America
can look down on all it surveys, as nothing it sees
is as good as it is today, or in the mooted hereafter. 
  

My Third Advent Card Of 2025

'Path under the Rain' or 'Landscape in Regen'
as painted in 1914 by Felix Vallotton (1865 – 1925)
a Swiss/French painter and printmaker associated
with the group of artists known as Les Nabis.

 

The Preview For The Unbelievable Afterlife

It used to be joked about Richard M. Nixon 'How can you tell he is lying? His lips move!'. I suspect that many modern leaders have gone several times better than this quaint humour.

They can tell more lies with fewer lip movements, they can lie without their lips moving, by getting proxies to tell lies for them. They can lie in their sleep by making their lies a currency all their own. There the language becomes an invisible crypto currency where we only pretend to follow the exchange rate.

How ceaselessly and infinitely these leaders might lie in his next life have yet to be proven. Who, right now, wants to witness, and echo, such an unbelievable eternity?

Mark Twain's Idea Of The Good Life

was 'friends, good books, and an easy conscience'.
Where the more all three decay the less
the individual knows what to do about it.

For books we can return to pasts that predate
electronic media, where radio was the first
step into transient media futures, and tape
could save a lot but equally deceive the listener.
But for friendships and conscience I see no future.
Friends define each other by how fixed the media are
that friends share - how well I remember friendship
being defined by quietly listening to the radio
where conversations better than I could muster
on my own ruled the airwaves - where I failed
to foresee how time evaporates friendships into the ether.

And in a political world where leaders seek obedience
without thoughtful self examination, an easy conscience
will be prone to  changes where it is right to fear
will be for the worse that it is right to fear will be irreversible.  

Inhuman Values

I have tried to understand the issues
connected with modern migration,
where certain wealthy public speakers
say 'the country is over-full already,
what the rich need is to send the poor abroad
to work hard in remittance economies,
or as pirates, to make more money for us.'.
As if money were the be all and end all
of their nation state. When money is only 
the palest representation of personhood
anyone could fantasise of as real.

But to understand the migrant issue,
I blame the arms industry for enriching itself
at the expense of human life and AI
creating an alternative government
that nobody can make any sense of.

Life Without Friends

A quiet part of me knew all along
that anyone who lives long enough,
and remains in good physical health
will outlive all their old friendships,
and often hear words that used to carry
some depth of meaning shallow out
into thoughtless repetition.

What does that quiet part of me
have to say now the moment has arrived
when all human connection lacks substance?
Nothing much with me having nobody to say it
to in person, though I can say that nothing here, online.

Hopeful Travel

What do I hope for when I am unsure
that my life is being drained of purpose
and that I can't stop it going that way?

That the time spent getting there
will be much longer than the arrival.  

Time Outside Of Time

How does time pass with nothing,
no mechanism or social calendar,
to mark it's passage into eternity?

Time passes the same way it would
with days and other markers to follow,
let life prove times passage is the same
whether it is marked by activity,
as much as when it is not.   

My Second Advent Card Of 2025

Ruined Country: Old Battlefield, Vimy, near La Folie Wood, 1918
by British landscape painter Paul Nash (1889 - 1946).

 

Like Temptation

Christmas does not just knock on the door,
but presses on the doorbell until you respond
and leaves messages for you on your answerphone
for you to respond to whoever you faintly connect with.

We can escape, to where the season of goodwill 
has no reach. A true holiday, away from it all,
would be to stay in an Islamic country,
as long as you are comfortable with
their police state/human rights record. 

Signs Of Greater Age (43)

1-The necessity of an electric under blanket in winter,
over which to make sure of a good nights sleep. Along with....

2-A 'big foot' in which your feet may rest whilst at the table
when the rest of the house is enduring the winter chills.  

2-For those with online lives that never stop
a heated mouse mat in which to warm the hands
whilst clicking forward with your life.  

Giving Tuesday

Is the day, in this digital age,
that is meant to be the counterpart
to the mass corporate temptations
of Black Friday that fuels the adverts
that the likes of YouTube could not do without.

The biggest downside of Giving Tuesday
is how much the adverts for the charities
that try to take advantage of the event
look like every advert you have ever seen,
where the gloss put on what is on display
as 'needy' undercuts the idea of giving to charity.
 . 

Picture Set Of The Month - December - Samuel Jessurun de Mesquita - Pictures Of Birds

Stork, Maguar stork, as created in 1914 
by Samuel Jessurun de Mesquita (1868 - 1944).

'Parakeets' as created in 1927 by
Samuel Jessurun de Mesquita (1868 - 1944).
 

'Heron in a Cage' as created in 1915
by Dutch artist Samuel Jessurun de Mesquita,
lest we forget, was a man who died in Auschwitz.

Galah cockatoo. or Roseate cockatoo,
as presented in this lino cut style drawing
by Samuel Jessurun de Mesquita. This is one
of many works rescued from the home of the 
ailing Samuel Jessurun de Mesquita by
his pupil M. C. Escher and others immediately
after the arrest of Mesquita, his wife and son
by the Nazi invaders of Amsterdam.