Apocryphal material from the edge of the Apocalypse.
Could things get any more insane than now? Could the hopes and
dreams we held close to our hearts in the Sixties of future peace and
harmony become any less visible than now?
We stand on the eve of destruction to employ the title of a popular protest song of the Sixties by Barry McGuire.
Eve of Destruction (July 1965)
The Eastern world, it is explodin'
Violence flarin', bullets loadin'
You're old enough to kill but not for votin'
You don't believe in war, but what's that gun you're totin'?
And even the Jordan river has bodies floatin'
But you tell me
Over and over and over again, my friend
How you don't believe
We're on the eve of destruction
Don't you understand what I'm trying to say
Can't you feel the fears I'm feeling today?
If the button is pushed, there's no runnin' away
There'll be no one to save with the world in a grave
Take a look around you boy, it's bound to scare you, boy
And you tell me
Over and over and over again, my friend
How you don't believe
We're on the eve of destruction
Yeah, my blood's so mad, feels like coagulatin'
I'm sittin' here just contemplatin'
I can't twist the truth, it knows no regulation
Handful of senators don't pass legislation
And marches alone can't bring integration
When human respect is disintegratin'
This whole crazy world is just too frustratin'
And you tell me
Over and over and over again, my friend
How you don't believe
We're on the eve of destruction.
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The more things change the more they remain the same. In the Sixties
we refused to believe that real change was impossible. However,
subsequent events have proven us wrong. Our naive belief in love and
peace in truth didn’t last long. A bare half a decade later we saw those
hopes and dreams fall apart and ‘normal’ life resume. The archetypal
norms reasserted themselves and all we had left was nostalgia for what
we felt could have been but in fact never could have been.
These days all the talk is of war and the threat of war. Sides have
been taken more firmly than ever before. Diplomacy is dead and anything
resembling a purported democracy in the West is fast dying too. Those
who railed against the totalitarianism of the East are now steadily
enforcing it on the populations of the West. Freedom of speech is
transmogrifying into the control of speech in the West. More and more we
are told what to say, the views to hold and the attitudes that we MUST
have… or else. Thinking now of how free we were down decades past,
beginning arguably in the Sixties, brings the most mournful thoughts
possible to our minds.
We appear to be headed toward a full on prison planet where
everything about us is known with judgement passed upon every aspect of
our lives. We will be sold things based upon them, castigated for some
of them, punished for others and rewarded for those the state deems
good. The vast systems holding ‘big data’ about us will be able to
analyse every possible detail of our lives, using and abusing them at
will. Big Brother is arriving soon… and he is determined that you do all
he says.
Then all is lost you say. What hope is there? This is the inevitable
result of all we have seen during our lives. What can be done? The
young are totally immersed in the ‘bread and circuses’ lifestyle the
mass marketers have sold them. The West is overwhelmingly about
consuming the products provided and abandoning anything resembling
critical thinking. Next time you are in an airport concourse or anywhere
that a mass of people congregate just look at them, look at their eyes.
How much awareness of our true situation do you detect?
However, thankfully all is NOT lost. As unlikely as it may seem
there is hope for something other than lives locked within a system that
keeps you under control 24/7 and demands you conform with its needs.
Resistance against this dystopian nightmare began around two decades ago
in the name of Vladimir Putin. In the wake of 9/11 and the western
demand that all nations must now be subservient to it he said not,
that’s not happening. Not with Russia anyway. We will remain an
independent, sovereign nation determining our own future path, and will
not act as a slave nation manipulated by you.
Slowly but surely since the words of Vladimir Putin uttered in 2007
at the then Munich Security Conference other nations have begun taking
the same line. Notably among them China but also others such as India,
Saudi Arabia, Brazil and others who, being or becoming members of the
BRICS alliance have asserted that another way exists than the way the
western powers demand, of subservience to it and its institutions.
Unless you have not heard, currently the total of nations wishing to
join BRICS is fifty nine. Fifty nine nations ready, willing and
enthusiastic in presenting another way forward rather than continued
western domination.
In recent days Saudi Arabia has stated that the deal it made with
the USA fifty years ago to only use the dollar to trade in has now
expired and will not be renewed. The grip on world trade by the West
using the petrodollar has been removed. Now dedollarisation will
continue apace, freeing up myriad nations from U.S. control via its
unilateral sanctions. Thus the movement away from the draconian future
the West wishes to impose on us all will now inevitably flourish and
expand.
Here is our hope, hope even reflecting to some extent the innocent
dreams of youth in those long gone years of the Nineteen Sixties.
Russia, China and the others seek the stability and peace that benefits
trade, greater understanding and most important of all mutual
cooperation. Love may transpire also, that is open to debate. However,
cultural exchange in an atmosphere of trust where nations hold peaceful
coexistence at a premium cannot but generate greater mutual affection.
Dare we hope for greater levels of love then? We can. We should. Not
naively this time, but based on a new reality, the future that BRICS
holds for all of us.
That the forces of the West now operating in unison to destroy the
effect of the BRICS nations, to weaken them and stop them rising, must
be defeated, is obvious. Anyone who sees the reality of our common
situation must surely hope so. The alternative vision, of a prison
planet where the western warders suppress any and all resistance is just
too awful to contemplate.