The barbarians around us
tear apart our best powers,
before they can be cultivated
and only the firm, deep insight into this
fate can save us, and prevent us at least
from perishing in an unworthy manner.
We have to seek what is excellent, and
hold to it as we can, to strengthen and
heal ourselves …
Holderlin from a letter to his half-brother
Karl Gok 4 June 1799.
What Israel’s genocidal slaughter has done, over and above the cruel and devastating destruction of Gaza and its people, is to rip apart the façade of the West’s championing of its secular ‘Holy Trinity’ of Human rights, Democracy and International law, thus unveiling, in a new and stark way, for all to see, the triple monsters of US hegemony, a revived Western militarism and the European superiority-complex vis a vis the rest of the world.
(The original meaning of ‘apocalypse’ is ‘the unveiling’. One of those rare moments in history – often a traumatic event – when we are challenged to re-evaluate everything in our lives; ourselves, our country, our planet, in fact, everything. It’s the moment when we open our hearts to see ‘that’ which we prefer to keep hidden).
The Zionist genocidal war on Gaza is an apocalyptic event.
Now is the time to set things right
Now is the time we should unite
We don’t need revolutions
We just need to open our eyes
Revolution is no solution we ought to realize
Now is the time to set things right
Now is the time to see the light …
Take a look around
What a mess we’re living in
God created love
And man
He created sin. (1976 Jimmy James & The Vagabonds)
I had thought of calling this ‘Edgar’s Gazan Prayer’ or ‘Prayer for Gaza’. But the more I reflected on it, it’s really ‘Edgar’s Prayer for the West’ or even better ‘Edgar’s Prayer for All of Us’.
“I am both Astonished and Outraged by the fact that those who represent the descendants of a people who were persecuted for centuries for religious or racial reasons …
That the descendants of the people who are today the decision-makers of the State of Israel, that they could not only Colonize an entire people, partly Drive them out of their land and seek to Expel them for good …
But also, after the massacre of 7 October 2023, engage in a real Massive Slaughter on the Populations of Gaza and continue, incessantly, hitting Civilians, Women, and Children.
And to see the Silence of the world. The Silence of the United States, protectors of Israel. The Silence of (most) of the Arab states. The Silence of the European states, who claim to be defenders of Culture, Humanity, Human Rights.
We are living through a Horrible Tragedy, and, powerless as we are in the face of this thing that is unleashing …
I say: Bear Witness! Keep Bearing Witness.
Because, the only thing that remains if we cannot resist concretely, is to Testify.
To Testify!
Let’s Resist in our Minds. Let’s not be Fooled. Let’s not Forget. Let’s have the Courage to face things Head-on.”
Edgar Morin, philosopher and sociologist, now 102 years young, is one of France’s most revered intellectual figures. He was a Jewish WW2 resistance fighter, who fought as a lieutenant in De Gaulle’s ‘Fighting France’. A true polymath, he has contributed to such diverse fields as media studies, politics, visual anthropology, ecology, education and systems biology.
In 1814, Ivan Krylov, the Russian poet and fabulist, wrote a fable entitled “The Inquisitive Man”, which tells of a man who goes to a museum and notices all sorts of tiny things, but fails to notice an elephant. The phrase became proverbial. In his novel ‘Demons’, Dostoevsky wrote: “Belinsky was just like Krylov’s Inquisitive Man, who didn’t notice the elephant in the museum …”
When partners can’t agree
Their dealings come to naught
And trouble is their labor’s only fruit.
____________
Once Crawfish, Swan and Pike
Set out to pull a loaded cart,
And all together settled in the traces;
They pulled with all their might, but still the cart refused to budge!
The load it seemed was not too much for them:
Yet Crawfish scrambled backwards,
Swan strained up skywards, Pike pulled toward the sea.
Who’s guilty here and who is right is
not for us to say-
But anyway the cart’s still there today.
‘But the new barbarian is no uncouth Desert-dweller; he does not emerge From fir forests; factories bred him; Corporate companies, college towns Mothered his mind, and many journals Backed his beliefs. He was born here. The Bravura of revolvers in vogue now And the cult of death are quite at home Inside the city’. WH Auden 1947
These words apply today to Main Stream Media journalists? Their journalism? Ruined. A journalism riddled with illusions, refusing ‘the tasks of time’. Auden writes:
‘Yet the noble despair of the poets Is nothing of the sort; it is silly To refuse the tasks of time And, overlooking our lives, Cry – “Miserable wicked me, How interesting I am.”
We would rather be ruined than changed,
We would rather die in our dread
Than climb the cross of the moment
And let our illusions die’.
25 January 2024: Epiphany III in the Christian calendar & the Feast of the Conversion of St Paul
I never imagined that I would ever end up writing these words, on the day when ‘Christians’ celebrate the conversion of Saul of Tarsus, who became Paul the Apostle:
For weeks before Christmas last year, we have been witnessing the dying embers of Christendom,
Extinguished on floods of innocent Palestinian blood – a few Christians among them, but mostly Muslims,
At the hands of a brutal and deranged racist Jewish Zionist regime.
Meanwhile, the majority of our religious, political and civic leaders, in the West, are busy in their virtual and fantasy world, playing at being expert landscape architects and artists,
as they re-arrange the destruction and debris of Gaza, still dotted with corpses, into a new and even more horrific edifice.
I am reminded of the German saying, ‘Man kann sich auch zu Tode siegen’, more popularly translated as ‘You can drive yourself victoriously into your own grave.
Christendom, alas, will soon be joining Zionism in the grave they are building from the ruins and rubble of Gaza.
In the words of St Paul, ‘Let us make every effort to do what leads to peace and to mutual edification’. Romans 14:19.
‘Search for nothing any more, nothing except truth.
Be very still, and try and get at the truth.
And the first question to ask yourself is:
How great a liar am I ?
(D H Lawrence)
“Deceiver, dissembler
Your trousers are alight
From what pole or gallows
Shall they dangle in the night?”
What infernal serpent
Has lent you his forked tongue?
From what pit of foul deceit
Are all these whoppers sprung?
(Anonymous in the spirit of William Blake)
“Those who chant ‘from the river to the sea’ are either useful idiots” “Those people who rip down posters of hostages reveal them even to have no humanity. Those who chant ‘from the river to the sea’ are either useful idiots, who do not understand what they are saying, or worse people who wish to wipe the Jewish state from the map,” UK’s premier liar said.
The Fugitive Stag 