Yes. Summed up in a few words by Georg Trakl, the sad soul that is V Zelenski. As a priest, I see them as his lament, beyond ‘A-cry-for-Help’, even.

The saddest of images? A comedian or clown beyond redemption, maybe? Or, at least, indifferent to salvation.

The front-man in a ‘bad play, staged on graves, corpses’.

The coloured pictures which life paints,
I see them gloomily only by twilights,
Like frizzy distorted shadows, cloudy and cold,
Hardly born, already defeated by death.
And since the mask fell from everything,
I see only fear, desperation, disgrace and plagues,
Mankind’s heroless tragedy,
A bad play, staged on graves, corpses …

A comedian who speaks his role,
Coerced, full of desperation – boredom!

(From Georg Trakl’s Confiteor ‘I Confess’)

UCLA Verdi La Forza Del Destino – La vergine degli Angeli https://youtu.be/GCFFbUBgbBQ via @YouTube

And maybe absorb Baudelaire’s ‘Hymn’ before listening a second time?

To the all dear, to the all beautiful,
who fills my heart with clarity,
to the angel, to the immortal idol,
All hail, in immortality!
She flows through my reality,
air, mixed with the salt sea-swell:
into my soul’s ecstasy,
pours the essence of the eternal;
Ever-fresh sachet, that scents
the dear corner’s atmospheric light,
hidden smoke, of the burning censer,
in the secret paths of night.
How, incorruptible love,
to express your endless verities?
Grain of musk, unseen, above,
in the depths of my infinities!
To the all dear, to the all beautiful,
who is my joy, my health, my sanity,
to the angel, to the immortal idol,
All hail in immortality!

AN INTELLIGENT SALESMAN’S GUIDE TO THE ARMAMENTS INDUSTRY

The purchasers of armaments are Governments. The success of the business, therefore, depends upon persuading Governments to buy.

No Government wishes to spend money. Taxation is unpopular. But every Government will spend money on armaments if convinced that the expenditure is necessary for national defence.

Therefore the first things an armament firm must do is to convince Governments that its articles are indispensable for this purpose.

An armament firm produces a new type of death-dealing instrument and submits it to a Government. The instrument is costly. The Government knows that no rival Power possesses it, and turns it down. 

The armament firm is not discouraged. It knows that it has only to get one Government to buy the new type of death-dealer and immediately all governments will buy. Any War Minister who neglected to order the latest weapons in use would betray the sacred cause of national defence.

So the armament firm seeks out some Government which is nervous about the arms of some rival nation. “Take this new invention,” says the firm, “and you need fear your rival no longer.”

Or the firm seeks out some small nation just launching out in armaments expenditure, with a Government or ruler who will take pride in possessing the first of a new type of armament.

It does not matter how insignificant the Government is: once get the new invention on the market and no Government will dare to be without it.

But sometimes there is a difficulty. The Governments of small nations cannot afford to buy. So comes the second principle of armament selling: Governments must be lent money if necessary. That involves a close relationship with the banks.

It will be convenient, therefore, if armament directors happen to be bank directors; perhaps the armament firm will run a bank itself to facilitate the loan. The loan will be made on conditions that orders are placed with the firm. 

The next necessity in the technique of armament salesmanship is the use of Press influence. The heavy sale of armaments depends upon the state of tension in international relations. Therefore public psychology must be kept nervous. This not only involves making the Press of your own country suspicious of other countries: the Press of other countries must be nervous of the intentions of your country. 

Armament salesmanship therefore requires close connection with the Press. Own newspapers if you can. Some of your directors should certainly also be directors of newspapers. Don’t be too squeamish about the truth of your stories. Publicity knows no morals. Good business depends upon war scares. Foment them!

Fenner Brockway. The Bloody Traffic. London: Victor Gollancz, 1933. 28-31.

COURAGE (D H Lawrence)

What make People Unsatisfied is that they Accept Lies.

If People had Courage and refused Lies, and found out what they really felt and really meant and acted on it,

They would distil the essential oil out of every experience and like hazel nuts in autumn,
at last be sweet and sound.

And the young among the old would be as in the Hazel Woods of September nutting, gathering nuts of ripe experience.

As it is, all that the old can offer is sour, bitter fruits, cankered by lies.

Trenches, trenches – You could lose your way! Of old Europe A scrap remains, Where in clouds of smoke, Towns burn … Now the ridge of the Crimea Grows dark. And I am leading a flock Of my own mourners.

(Sitting in the sled, setting out on the way of all the earth .. From The Instruction of Vladimir Monomakh for His Children – a quote to open an epic poem by Anna Akhmatova). The section ends with these words …

Already the distant thunder rumbles … And that which we call music Because we have no better name.

Can it save us?

War is no longer an instrument of foreign policy in ‘The West.’ War has become a national disease in most European countries. Its most popular variant is the virus popularly known as Russophobia. A virus far more dangerous than Covid19. Our leaders are not asleep in the valley, they are asleep in The Abyss. There is no beauty there, just horror.

Asleep in the Valley by Rimbaud

A small green valley where a slow stream flows
And leaves long strands of silver on the bright
Grass; from the mountaintop stream the Sun’s
Rays; they fill the hollow full of light.

A soldier, very young, lies open-mouthed,
A pillow made of fern beneath his head,
Asleep; stretched in the heavy undergrowth,
Pale in his warm, green, sun-soaked bed.

His feet among the flowers, he sleeps. His smile
Is like an infant’s – gentle, without guile.
Ah, Nature, keep him warm; he may catch cold.

The humming insects don’t disturb his rest;
He sleeps in sunlight, one hand on his breast;
At peace. In his side there are two red holes.

Arthur Rimbaud 1854 – 1891

After researching the causes of the current civil war in Ukraine, I have read, studied, collated etc hundreds and hundreds of articles, millions of words, to try and understand the true source(s) of why our world is now at the beginning of a Global Economic War, a war that the USA (and sadly our own UK Government/Parliament with the support of minority parties like Plaid Cymru) is using to destroy Ukraine and the economy of the EU in the process. 

I know that most people are too busy nowadays to ‘really find out more’ about why Europe is at war in 2023. It saddens me that our Main Stream Media is now nothing more than the Propaganda Outlet for our warmongering leaders and their supporters. 

At root this conflict is a spiritual one.

It’s about integrity, honesty and a just sharing of our global resources. Ukraine is stage one of the USA’s GLOBAL DOLLAR WAR, or in New Testament terms MAMMON’s REVENGE – ie. in secular terms it’s all about ‘money, material wealth, or any entity that promises wealth, and is associated with the greedy pursuit of gain’. Whether you are religious or not, a Christian or not, the New Testament’s teaching about Mammon is as relevant today as it was 2,000 years ago.

(The Worship of Mammon by Evelyn de Morgan 1909)

If I had to destroy most of my 2022 Ukraine Conflict Library, these few articles by the late Robert Parry – 2017, 2015, and 2 from February and March 2014 (Yes! Almost nine years ago) – would be in my Top Ten to keep.  

Knowing how you care for our children and children’s children and the latter’s children’s future, then please consider reading Robert’s words of wisdom and then maybe even sharing it with family and friends. 

Robert writes, ultimately, about one family’s spirituality. 

A family, supposedly of great intellect, scholarly prowess and political insight. 

One family’s vision for our world. 

A family so powerful that it has already – without you realizing it – moulded the way you view the world of 2022 and 2023, and probably the way you view me in sharing this with you! 

That’s why I’ve attached photographs of them. This is a real family that has been working for decades to shape and fashion our very personal world in their own image. 

The world of real families here in the UK: in Wales, in England, Scotland and Ireland, whatever one’s political leanings or none.

Finally, I don’t believe that WWIII is imminent. Europe 2023 is, tragically, a belated continuation of WWII. 

Unfinished business. 

The problem is that most humans are only rational some of the time. 

And some small percentage of us – most of our leaders most of the time – often reach a state of complete irrationality most of the time!

Or, in the words of Chilton Williamson Jr., ‘History is not fate but it is logical, even when the human actors do not themselves behave logically on occasion, or even much of the time’. 

The USA KAGAN FAMILY BUSINESS …and us! – yrapiorwerth@gmail.com – Gmail (google.com) RobertParry’s articles

Featuring the brothers Kagan and wives Victoria and Kim

And all that day, another day:
Thin husks I had known as men,
Dry casques of departed locusts
speaking a shell of speech…
Propped between chairs and table…
Words like the locust-shells, moved by no inner being,
A dryness calling for death.

The Muse fled down the road,

The narrow, steep, autumnal road,

And her dusky feet

Were sprinkled with drops of dew.

For a long time I pleaded with her

To wait for the winter with me,

But she said: “It’s like a tomb here,

How can you still manage to breathe?”

I wanted to give her a dove,

The whitest of all doves,

But the bird itself flew

After my slender guest.

Following her with my eyes, I fell silent,

I loved her alone,

And sunrise stood in the sky

Like a gateway to her land.

Anna Akhmatova 15 December 1915

What can we say? EXCELLENT. FANTASTIC. LOVED IT. Liked everything about it. Big fans of David Bradley and Ron Perlman down the years. Decades! Also liked the feature about how it was made. Watch it and enjoy. Not a Christmas film but a film for the Christmas season.

It is a stop-motion animated musical fantasy film directed by del Toro and Mark Gustafson with a screenplay by del Toro and Patrick McHale from a story by del Toro and Matthew Robbins. Based on Gris Grimly’s design from his 2002 edition of the 1883 Italian novel The Adventures of Pinocchio by Carlo Collodi, it reimagines the story in 1930s Fascist Italy as “a story of love and disobedience as Pinocchio struggles to live up to his father’s expectations, learning the true meaning of life.”