What comes to mind in Ireland
What is black? An absence of light,
the cassocks of parish priests,
dark peat in an Irish bog.
What is brown? A leather belt,
decaying plants, veins of iron in stones,
the layered bark of a log.
What is grey? Lowering clouds,
skies threatening rain over windswept water,
the speckled muzzle of an old dog.
What is silver? A crucifix round a neck,
handcuffs and shackles, thirty shiny coins,
a flash of light through heavy fog.
Feature Image: Daniele Idini
Last week, the Russia-Ukraine-NATO tensions reached a crescendo when Russia decided to recognize both Luhansk and Donetsk as independent states. Shortly after that, Putin proceeded to launch a full-scale invasion of the Ukraine.
The day the news broke I felt great sadness.
You see, although I’ve never been to either Russia or Ukraine, I have met a great deal of Ukrainians and Russians on my travels and I have a great many friends in that region of the world. Through them, I have been able to learn about both countries’ culture, language, history and incredible natural beauty. It is that personal connection I have to the people that brought me great pain when learning of Russia’s invasion.
Frank Armstrong recalls his travels through Ukraine in 2015 with words and images, at a time when the drumbeat of war was already evident.https://t.co/gky3z3ajZN@broadsheet_ie @BowesChay @MattChristmas @WhistleIRL @danieleidiniph1 @j_reilly33 @danwadewriter @KevinHIpoet1967
— CassandraVoices (@VoicesCassandra) March 5, 2022
What we often forget is that no matter what geopolitical games are being played at the highest levels, it is the innocent civilians on the ground who are most affected by war. People’s lives are disrupted, families are torn apart and, yes, people die. Whether “enemies”, “allies”, civilians or military personnel, people die. That is the nature of war.
As I sat down at my desk, struggling to concentrate on the work in front of me, I began to think of my friends in Ukraine who have endured so much over the last few years. I began to think of the young men, guns and ammunition in hand, ready to risk their lives for their country, ready to die at the request of their leaders. And I began to ponder the true significance of this war and how it relates to the overarching globalist agenda.
This led me to contemplate the nature of freedom and what it means to be free.
Most people would agree that there is another war being waged on virtually all humanity and that is the war on freedom. The problem is that you could ask ten different people to define “freedom” and receive ten different answers.
The yogi would say that freedom is not something to be attained, rather, it is our natural state. Freedom, for the yogi, is the very nature of the Self, something that can never be taken away. The problem is that it’s veiled by ignorance. For the yogi, spiritual practice is a way to remove such ignorance, and shatter the illusion that we are not free.
The monotheist would disagree with the yogi, claiming that freedom comes when evil has been defeated, and that siding with God is the first step to nullifying such evil. This dualistic position sees “evil” as originating from some greater power. Therefore, devotion to God is the only path to complete freedom.
At this point, the Buddhist might decide to chime in, arguing that, in fact, there is no independent self and therefore there is nothing that can attain “freedom”, and no “god” that can grant it. Rather, he might say, we should focus our efforts on removing suffering and aligning our actions and thoughts with the teachings of the Noble Eightfold Path (the Buddha himself taught that we should identify the nutriments that feed our suffering and make an effort to remove them).
The lawyer might define freedom as the absence of legal and political restraints; he may see freedom as a right that enables one to be exempt from the arbitrary exercise of authority in the performance of certain actions.
The philosopher, on the other hand, might see freedom as being synonymous with free will – the ability to make spontaneous choices that are not predetermined or fixed by nature in some way. And he may question whether such a thing even exists at all.
Do you see the problem?
Fighting for freedom is difficult when everyone has a different take on what freedom is and what it means for the individual.
So how should we go about answering the question “What is freedom?”
It seems to me that when tackling such a philosophical question, we must start by defining what we are talking about. When we speak of being free, are we talking about being free from some unpleasant reality or some inconvenient truth? Or are we talking about total and utter freedom?
Most of us want to be free from pain, free from unhappy experiences and negative emotions while still clinging to our ideologies, beliefs and identities. But therein lies a problem, for, “freedom” implies the absence of any defining boundaries, including those created by our own psychological sentiments.
Therefore, we can’t probe the nature of freedom without asking the fundamental question: do we really want to be free? It would appear that being free from something is different to being completely free.
Freedom, by its very definition, requires no ideology, revelation, stimulus or special knowledge. Perhaps we could describe freedom as an inalienable right, bestowed unto each of us by virtue of being born into this world. Thought about in this way, freedom becomes our source of power.
Striving to be free from something is a reaction to an unpleasant situation, such as an authoritarian leader, a debilitating illness, a toxic relationship or a war. Dare I say, this desire is built into us. It’s part of our evolutionary makeup, it’s a survival mechanism. Being free from negative influences brings temporary relief, which is good in itself, but it’s not freedom.
Therefore freedom cannot come from reacting to your environment. That is instinct, that is self-preservation, even desperation. Freedom, it stands to reason, must come from action that is entirely self-initiatory, without deliberation or cerebration.
In a previous essay, I wrote about the conversations between philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti and quantum theorist David Bohm, two men who thought an awful lot about the concept of freedom. I will lean on their insights once again here to help us probe deeper into the nature of freedom and how it relates to the mind. Here is a short extract from one of their many enlightening conversations (emphasis added)[1]:
K: I have been watching for many years people attempting to become free from certain things. This is the root of it, you understand? This psychological accumulation which becomes psychological knowledge. And so it divides, and all kinds of things happen around it and within it. And yet the mind refuses to let go.
DB: Yes.
K: Why? Is that because there is safety or security in it?
DB: That is part of it, but I think in some way that knowledge has taken on the significance of the absolute, instead of being relative.
K: I understand all that, but you are not answering my question. I am an ordinary man, I realize all this, and the limited significance of knowledge at different levels, but deeper down inside one, this accumulated knowledge is very destructive.
DB: The knowledge deceives the mind, so that the person is not normally aware that it is destructive. Once this process gets started, the mind is not in a state where it is able to look at it because it is avoiding the question. There is a tremendous defensive mechanism or escape from looking at the whole issue.
K: Why?
DB: Because it seems that something extremely precious might be at stake.
K: One is strangely intelligent, capable or skilled in other directions but here, where the root is of all this trouble, why don’t we comprehend what is happening? What prevents the mind from doing this?
DB: Once importance has been given to knowledge, there is a mechanical process that resists intelligence.
At the beginning of their exchange, Krishnamurti makes the observation that knowledge itself can block us from attaining freedom (he goes so far as to call it “destructive”). Why? Because it distracts, it fragments, it fractures.
Knowledge, which is nothing more than information, can influence our thinking and manipulate our actions. That is the entire premise of psychological warfare.
Bohm’s next statement is supremely important, “I think that knowledge has taken on the significance of the absolute instead of being relative”. Bohm notes that knowledge is given too much stake in modern society, an incredible statement for a physicist to make. But he is right, knowledge is seen as a vehicle for greater and greater achievement. Knowledge fuels technology, progress, and material gain.
Looking deeply at our present world, it’s clear that we do not live in a society that is conducive to freedom. Knowledge, which is binding, is put above freedom. Knowledge is “sold” to us as a way of getting a good job, progressing up the corporate ladder, earning a higher salary and effecting lasting change in the world.
But knowledge does not bring freedom because knowledge can be controlled, twisted, contrived and manipulated.
Krishnamurti, too, was critical of this quest for knowledge and condemned competitive education systems for engendering fear. He also noted that knowledge was necessary for accumulating memory, which forms the basis for thought.
While Krishnamurti recognized the necessity of thought (and therefore knowledge) at certain levels, he was very clear that when thought begins to project itself psychologically as the future or the past, this creates fear which in turn dulls the mind, leading to inaction.
And as we discovered, attaining freedom requires action (even the Yogi would somewhat agree with us on this point, as he would remind us that spiritual practice is necessary for lifting the veil of ignorance).
Krishnamurti then asks Bohm why people cannot see the tremendous destructive potential of knowledge. According to Bohm, the answer is simple: because knowledge deceives.
Again, think about psychological warfare, think about how knowledge causes people to do things that undermine their own physical and mental health. Think about how knowledge can compel people to follow bloodthirsty tyrants, how it can compel people to kill their neighbouring brothers and sisters.
'A state of emergency is the best friend of the would-be-dictator' Andrew Linnane wonders whether our response to Covid-19 is undermining our democracy.https://t.co/op953eTx5p@broadsheet_ie @amandaknox @IlsaCarter1 @VillageMagIRE @PaulGilgunn @AliceHarrisonBL @liamherrick
— CassandraVoices (@VoicesCassandra) November 14, 2020
Bohm goes on to state that within the mind is a strong defensive mechanism, which often leads one to neglect the potentially destructive nature of one’s accumulated beliefs. Bohm’s insights ring true, for, as we have seen, all throughout history people have been willing to sacrifice everything in defence of their chosen ideology. The nature of the mind is such that it always wants to be right.
Perhaps this defensive mechanism is driven by fear – the same fear that causes people to deny unwanted realities (or brand them as “conspiracy theories”).
When Krishnamurti asks Bohm why this is, he responds, “Because it seems that something extremely precious might be at stake”. Perhaps it is this seemingly “extremely precious” thing that becomes a shackle, preventing one from being completely and utterly free. And perhaps this seemingly “extremely precious” thing is our conditioning, our programming, our political allegiances, our self-identity.
Krishnamurti then asks why, as human beings, we can be so skilled and capable in so many areas and yet hopelessly clueless when it comes to discerning the destructive potential of our own psychological accumulations.
Bohm’s answer is thought-provoking. He says the importance we give to knowledge initiates a mechanical process that resists intelligence. Mechanical processes are machine-like, devoid of emotion, devoid of deep insight and most importantly, reactionary.
But it’s Bohm’s use of the word “intelligence” here that is most interesting. After all, Bohm always chose his words extremely carefully. He was not one to use a word without being absolutely clear about its meaning.
As it turns out, the origin of the word ‘intelligence’ is the Latin ‘intelligere’ which means ‘to read between’. In other words, intelligence refers to one’s strength of discernment, one’s ability to “read between the lines”.
Is it the cultivation of intelligence that leads to freedom? Perhaps.
If we take that to be so, then it stands to reason that freedom is a state of mind – one free from the boundaries of belief, ideology and fear.k
Freedom is the ability to doubt and question everything without any form of dependence, conformity, authority or tradition.
Feature Image: Rosa Parks being fingerprinted by Lieutenant D.H. Lackey on February 22, 1956, when she was arrested again, along with 73 other people, after a grand jury indicted 113 African Americans for organizing the Montgomery bus boycott.
References
[1] Jiddu Krishnamurti & David Bohm. The Ending of Time. Chapter 11: “The Ending of Psychological Knowledge”
So where do we go from here? Better still how do we even begin to unravel the pain, sorrow and hardship, Afghans have endured over decades?
Do we start with the American invasion twenty years ago? Its objective was to end terrorism as part of the ‘War on Terror’ after the September 11 attacks.
"The US government is the guardian of the wealth and material comfort to which we have become accustomed, and most of us, including myself, are, in the final analysis, unwilling to countenance the alternative. That is what was scary about September 11."https://t.co/mK2fn8nZXE
— CassandraVoices (@VoicesCassandra) September 11, 2021
Can we usefully employ a time line of American and NATO interference in the internal affairs of the Afghan people, and a prelude to the invasion of Iraq? Or should we look to events before 2001?
If we cannot ignore the transgressions of the Taliban while in power, surely we cannot ignore how they came to power in the first place? So let us assess the period prior to the rise of the Taliban.
Bloodless Coup
After three Anglo-Afghan Wars between 1839 and 1919, a monarchy continued to rule Afghanistan, until a bloodless coup was led by General and former Prime minister Mohammed Daoud Khan on July 17, 1973.
Born into the Royal family, he deposed the King and inaugurated a one-party political system, with himself as supreme leader and President of the Republic of Afghanistan.
Economic reforms were promised but failed to materialise as events on the ground became unstable. As President, Khan purged the Soviet-aligned Peoples Democratic Party of Afghanistan. One of its leaders was assassinated and several of its officials arrested.
Many went into hiding before a military coup on April 28, 1978 deposed Daoud Khan. He and his family were killed and a secular Communist government was established.
Cold War
With Afghanistan now led by a secular, pro-Soviet government at the height of a Cold War between U.S. capitalism and Soviet communist ideologies, the stage was set for a proxy war, financed by the United States to destabilise the country and trapping Soviet troops in a Vietnam-type quagmire of military entanglement.
Historians have claimed that the Central Intelligence Agency set out to recruit, arm, finance and train Islamic fundamentalists. These jihadists were adherents to the Wahabbi strain of Islam practiced in Saudi Arabia. This radicalised the indigenous population providing the impetus for an armed opposition against the government of Afghanistan. While opposition to the Communist government was already established, it was about to be financed by America, Saudi Arabia, and others. Pakistan was already a haven for the Afghan opposition.
Under Operation Cyclone the Central Intelligence Agency of America financed and armed the Afghan opposition between 1979 and 1989
The civil war that erupted was between the secular government of Afghanistan who had invited the Soviet Army into Afghanistan to help store order, and the so-called mujihadeen, led by among others, Ahmad Shah Massoud, and considered by Rober D. Kaplan to be one of the greatest guerrilla leaders of the twentieth century; joined later by Saudi Arabian, Osama Bin Laden, the so-called Arab-Afghanis what went on to form Al-Qaeda (the base).
The protagonists were ready, the stage was set, and the actors employed, armed and financed, before the war began in earnest, culminating in the collapse of Mohammad NajiBullah’s Soviet-aligned regime in April 1992
The mujahideen trained and financed by the American government had succeeded in destroying the secular government, before a government led by the Taliban (meaning ‘students’ or ‘truth seekers’) eventually seized Kabul in 1996.
From that point on human rights were repressed and women especially were forced to conform to a strict interpretation of Islamic law.
America had won the proxy war. But their surrogate army repressed women and arguably de-evolved human rights by a hundred years. Yet the American administration remained full of self-congratulatory smugness in the wake of victory against a Cold War foe.
Then began the systemic misrule of Afghanistan by the reactionary forces of Islam, the Taliban, supported by Pakistan.
Within the mujahideen an internal struggle began between the so-called Northern Alliance forces and the Taliban. This struggle ended with the American-led invasion of 2001.
Pakistan and its Inter-Services Intelligence agency ISI played a major role on behalf of America during the mujahideen revolt and harbored its leaders. Many of those who fought with the mujahideen were not Afghans but Islamic extremists, mostly from other Arab countries.
In the wake of September 11th, amidst claims of Al-Qaeda Islamic militants training in Afghanistan, and the country a hotbed for fundamentalist Islamists, America blamed Bin Laden and others for the September 11 attacks on the Twin Towers.
Although nearly all those accused of perpetrating the atrocity were Saudi Arabian, and the only planes allowed to leave America in the immediate aftermath of the attacks contained Osama bin Laden’s wealthy family, America duly attacked Afghanistan. This occurred despite claims the Taliban had offered to help America hold those responsible to account.
The Taliban had been part of the mujahideen front which took control of Afghanistan. The Taliban now controlled 90% of the country, while various warlords and drugs gangs involved in the Northern Alliance controlled the countries northeast corner.
The former puppets of American imperialism the mujahideen, now the Taliban, went from Washington’s brave fighters for freedom to the terrorists who needed to be rooted out and destroyed, when America and its allies bombed parts of Afghanistan back to the stone age.
A twenty-year invasion and occupation, costing an estimated two trillion dollars alongside countless Allied and Afghan deaths has finally ended. Thus American troops withdrew in a humiliating retreat on August 31st, 2021.
What next?
I asked at the beginning of this piece, What next for Afghanistan? Well, I fear more violence destabilisation death, and destruction?=.
The Taliban now claim they want to pursue national reconciliation with the Northern Alliance, but who would benefit from the disruption of this initiative?
The new Sino-Soviet cooperation in rebuilding an economic supply line through a revitalised economic Eurasia – the Belt and Road Initiative – may become the real target of American, and European, sanctions.
There may be no U.S. or NATO boots on the ground any longer but the economic cooperation policies pursued by China and Russia to include vast investment in infrastructure projects throughout Eurasia, including Afghanistan, may yet give rise to a new proxy war aimed at destabilising the Taliban government. In reality it will be yet another war against Russian, and now Chinese economic cooperation in the region. A continuation of the age old Great Game.
The War on Terror is nothing more than a capitalist-imperialist attack on democracy and the freedom of sovereign nations, led by those who claim to cherish democracy and freedom yet continually bomb, invade, sanction, murder, displace and maim millions in the name of humanitarian intervention.
I fear Afghanistan will not see peace and stability any time soon, and expect the Northern Alliance and even Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan (or ISIS-K) to be used and directed by America to disrupt China’s Belt and Road Initiative.
Self-defence, blood lust, ethnic cleansing, disproportionate response, mowing the lawn, genocide, death from the sky. It’s up to you however you wish to describe the unparalleled violence unleashed on Gaza.
I describe it as shooting or in this case bombing Palestinians in a barrel. Let’s have a brief resume of what’s happened.
The district of Sheikh Jarrah is in East Jerusalem, which was the proposed capital of a Palestinian state. The signing of the Oslo Agreement in 1993 led to further Israeli expansion into the West Bank. Since then areas like Silwan and Sheikh Jarrah have been systematically targeted by the illegal Jewish Settler movement, which uses Israeli courts to award Zionist Jews the homes and land currently occupied by Palestinians.
Fra Huges traces the origins of the conflagration in Gaza, and calls on the international community to confront Zionist aggression.https://t.co/DjSTTgG2XO#Palestine #Palestineunderattak@broadsheet_ie @BowesChay @paddycosgrave @IrishPalestine @electfrahughes @danieleidiniph1
— CassandraVoices (@VoicesCassandra) May 19, 2021
If you take nothing else from this article please remember the Occupation is illegal under international law, therefore every decision taken by the Occupation army, the illegal settlers. Yet the Apartheid Israeli judiciary routinely sends Palestinian including young children to prison on extracted false confessions, many made under duress, under physical threat.
In some cases children are handed false confessions written in Hebrew, which they cannot understand, and are told these are official release forms. The kids sign them thinking they are going home but in reality, these are confessions that will condemn them to jail.
Add to this ‘Administrative Detention’, Imprisonment without trial, and we have the flawed corrupt Apartheid regimes conveyor belt to jail. All of this is illegal.
As a result many Human Rights organisations describe Israel as an apartheid state. This is because Zionism, a political ideology is inherently Apartheid.
Corruption Charges
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is now facing corruption charges. A former Israeli Knesset member during a CNN interview accused him of inciting the current round of violence by continuing Israel’s expansionist, illegal land grabs in the Occupied West Bank, and also through the attacks on people at prayer, men, women and children at the Al-Aqsa mosque, towards the end of the holy month of Ramadan.
Is seems conceivable that the leader of the seventh largest military force on Earth would engineer a state of conflict between Israel and a people without an army, air force or navy, to protect themselves. All they have is local militias, composed of the fathers and sons, mothers and daughters of the local community.
But if an Israeli Knesset member says exactly that, then it must carry some weight.
The Dust Settles
So, where are we now and who won and who lost?
As the bloodletting ends, as it must, the dead are buried and the dust settles over the destroyed building, like a shroud over Gaza.
The reality is, everything will be the same and yet everything has changed utterly.
I have always been sceptical when I heard claims following previous attacks on Gaza that the resistance has won.
I genuinely thought it was just bravado for the masses. When we see the death toll, the numbers injured and the devastating damage to civilian homes, hospitals and the infrastructure, I have to ask how have they possibly won?
The loss of life alone is unimaginable in such a small environment. Twenty-five miles by six miles, that is the size of the Ards Peninsula in Northern Ireland, with the equivalent of the entire two million population of Northern Ireland squeezed into it.
Thus far, the destruction in Gaza is an incredible scale.
The targeting and killing of whole families is a war crime in itself.
The systematic destruction of all roads leading to the main hospitals in Gaza, preventing ambulances and victims from accessing acute services is another war crime. The wanton destruction of family homes, farms, places of worship and work are too.
The Resistance has Won
The latest Blitzkrieg on Gaza is just another Zionists war on civilians that will never be forgotten. Israel claims its aims were to degrade the military capabilities of Hamas and other resistance groups in Gaza. It cites rockets fired from Gaza as the pretext.
Under international law, however, with Israel illegally occupying the West Bank and enjoying control air, sea and land borders around Gaza, the Palestinians have a right to resist the Occupation, by any means necessary, including armed resistance.
Then this David versus Goliath battle is one of the Palestinian David with rocks and rockets legally resisting an illegal Goliath occupation, which uses gunboats, tanks, artillery shells, drones and F16, F35 jets to bomb and murder Gazans at will, and without any recourse to the rules of war.
The reality is that Israel will only end the bloodshed once it has expended the armaments supplied to it by America France Britain and the EU.
Yet Israel has failed again in its stated objective to destroy the ability of the resistance in Gaza to challenge the Occupation. It did not have the courage to commit ground troops as the cost in Israeli soldiers lives was deemed potentially to be too high.
The resistance groups retain both the ability, and the will, to continue to resist the illegal Occupation and siege by any and all means necessary.
The attacks on Gaza are a proxy threat to other nations in the region. We will do the same ‘to you’ is the message from Israel. Indeed, Israel routinely bombs Syria in another example of its illegal war crimes, while their military leaders have stated on numerous occasions that they will bomb Gaza back into the stone age.
I know, it’s hard to believe, but the resistance has won! Gaza may have been levelled: the suffering of the dead, the injured and the dying is unfathomable.
But while Gaza has been destroyed, the spirit of resistance embodied in the people has survived. This provides the impetus to continue demands for equality, peace, freedom and justice for Palestinians and Palestine survives, not just in Gaza but in East Jerusalem, in Sheikh Jarrah, in the West Bank, in Al-Aqsa and across historic Palestine, which Zionists call Israel.
Netanyahu has only succeeded in uniting Israelis in their demand for his prosecution for corruption and united Palestinians for the first time in a generation in their defence of Al-Aqsa, East Jerusalem, Sheikh Jarrah and Gaza. A new generation of resistance has been born, united and unified from the river to the sea.
Did Netanyahu help create the conditions that made this latest attack on Gaza inescapable? Is the shedding of blood in Gaza simply a political gambit aimed at a domestic audience?
Is it a case of: he or she who kills the most Palestinians getting the most votes?
Alas, history certainly bears that perspective out to be true.
Moving Forward
What Gaza needs is financial support, rebuilding materials, medicine, hope and solidarity in equal measures.
What it will get is another 50,000 or more refugees, many of whom were previously refugees from the Israeli murder and bombing campaigns of 2014/2009/1967/1948.
This further degrades Palestinian civil society’s ability to respond to the damage to lives, homes, infrastructure and the economy.
Egypt is complicit in the siege. It will not help Gaza or Palestine. The humanitarian catastrophe will continue apace
Israel sells Gaza water, gas, oil and electricity. It makes a profit from all of these utilities. The profits of Occupation.
And yet the spirit of Resistance has prevailed once again. But the price of resisting the continued illegal Zionist Israel occupation of Palestine is a continued loss of liberty and life for Palestinians.
The continues loss of life, homes, farms, workplaces, mosques, schools, hospitals, clinics, the loss of innocence in the young, their hopes dashed for the future, and their dreams of a life free from violent occupation, imprisonment, death from the skies. This is a psychological trauma seemingly without end.
When the bombs stop flying in the east the people stop protesting in the West. Will you stand with Palestine. Or simply melt away like snow on a ditch until the next murderous bombing raids occur?
Peace needs you now. Palestinians need you now. The future generations being born into captivity need you now.
What will you do to help end the madness of a rogue Apartheid state and bring peace to the people of the Middle East and West Asia? It is in your hands
Feature Image: Destroyed house in Gaza City, December 2012.