The Old Familiar Script

For a government, an empire, to have the power
to destroy another (smaller) government,
but have no interest in what replaces
what they destroy, beyond wanting it
to be a weaker, vainer, version
of the destroying government is a familiar script.

from the Boer War of 1900, when the British
opened the first concentration camp, which indirectly
led to state sponsored apartheid (1948 - 1994)
through to the USA in its Anti-Communist zeal
knowing more what it did not want from, Iran,
from the 1951 onward, when elected Prime Minister
of Mohamed Mossadegh ousted British Petroleum 
by fiat, the British cried 'foul' and blocked Iranian oil.

MI6 and the CIA did not want Iranian autonomy,
and overthrew his government, which was caught
between different cold war and anti-cold war influences.
The Americans backed a weaker Shah, and a form of rule
they surely knew could not last, and instructed him badly
on how to make his regime more sustainable with the people.

Will the next leaders of Iran be a tougher bunch of thugs
than the last lot? And the lot before them? 
Tougher than the present day lethal Israeli and American weaponry
presently razing Iran's ability to form a government to the ground?

The new Iranian government will have to be tough to withstand all that.

And Iran's necessary toughness will be a problem
for all future anti-communist tough guys,
who with their short term memory media,
have no sense of history, or of how
long term government takes to be rebuilt
with the co-operation of the citizen.

Photograph Of The Day

Amy Kierstead, The Eye of the Forest, a photograph possibly taken in 2023.

 

Truth, Power, And Deference

Who is there to tell the UK Royal family
and all the other world heads of state
who lead top down hierarchies
'Respect the staff who are paid far less
than you are, to advise you how to be
the wise leader than you might not be
without them: their relative modesty,
and wisdom,  should be your lesson
in how far different fortunes can fall and rise'?

I don't know who can cut through
the many P. R. inspired false presentations
of Noblesse Oblige, but whoever's job it is,
I wish then courage to speak truth to power. 

Rueful Predictions

I am sure that I have used the line
'given a choice of dictator' recently,
when WW3 seemed to be at a safer distance
than it is now that it seems we have one less dictator,
and the world body politic is feeding on the political corpse
of yet another collapsing dictatorship,
enriching themselves further, hoping
to both exploit the political vacuum
that the death of the Ayatollah leaves behind,
whilst distancing themselves from causing it.

I predict a rise in in the value in shares
in high powered arms industries linked
to remote controlled artificial intelligence,
and a rise in predictions of a new artifice of peace
supported by an increase in hostage-taking politics.   

In Beckett We Trust.....

With so many states and empires in the world,
including the old and emerging superpowers,
fail in their duties towards their citizens
and in the wars so many declare on each other
in pursuit of covering up older failures with new,
the wisest advice that the citizens of the world
can reassure each other, and their government,
with is to quote Samuel Beckett to each other

'Ever tried. Ever failed. No matter. Try again. Fail again. Fail better.'.  

When Metaphors 'Get Political'.....

When is a swamp not a swamp?
When it is a tempting metaphor,
dangled before a public who see politics
as recently made corrupt, where their reaction
is to scan the media for the political simile,
sold to them by the party of their choice,
who can persuade them to see politics
as cleansed by some newly clean slate
that is harder to make dirty again than the last one.

On The Nature Of The Soil We Are Grounded In

A mother planted a garden to feed her children
through the seasons, so her family were self reliant
for as long as her children were dependent on her. 

This garden was not like the one in The Bible,
it had no tree of the knowledge of good and evil
planted at the centre of it, to draw it to the children's attention.
The mother, herself, was the source of all wisdom.
She was never to be lightly asked the serious questions
about life outside the garden, or inside Mother herself, 
where such queries were left to multiply, unanswered.

The children grew up well nourished but ignorant,
their living so well reinforced their collective ignorance,
if they sought life outside of who they were dependent on
it was there to be found - but how to tell good from evil,
assuming they existed? Mother was no guide to them....

She forbade her children from asking her
how she too was caught between good and evil,
like the children would be when they left,
to raise their own vegetables on their own patch,
when they left her.....

The nature of good and evil lived on,
unobserved, on in the soil of the garden.....