Just watched a video

Yanis Varoufakis on Iran Nuclear Deal Demise, US Trade Negotiations, Europe’s Far Right & Capitalism

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c5Cm52JqWeU

And I made these comments about it:

I like the uncompromising statement of the true situation regarding Kurds/Iran/Syria etc.

We have acted and are acting shamelessly in the most wicked manner.

We always have and still are and I deplore it to the utmost.

But here's the point:  it doesn't matter what I think or want.

Or what you think or want.

Because my country is not me.  And your country is not you.

And it is not me and a thousand of my friends or people like me.  And yours is not you or thousand of your friends or people like you.

Nor in the millions.

Our countries are NOT the people any more - if they ever were.

Maybe they never were.  Always the people simply the prey of overlords.

But in the modern world with our much vaunted Democracy we THINK our countries are US.

That's what we THINK.

But listen to this man and look around.

Countries are simply the leaders and their actions. 

Nothing more.  The people very rarely even get a mention.

Today. In the 21st Century.  With our Democracies.  With the Internet and instant world wide ubiquitous communications.

Still thousands and millions of people are killed and tormented, displaced, destroyed by the whims and machinations of the smallest possible handful.

Why? How?

Because we never say STOP! 

And even those who pretend to speak for us:  like this man now - happily continue the myth that these 'leaders'  (manipulators, really) are US,  are the NATION.

Do you see what I mean?   WE haven't deserted the Kurds.  WE didn't/don't support DAESH.
WE didn't want to destroy Libya.  

WE do nothing but watch the sick drama unfold.

WE don't want to continually act outside of International Law.

WE don't want to  invade foreign countries murdering men, woman and children indiscriminately.

But our manipulators do.   And they do it.

And it won't stop until WE the people pick up ourselves and adopt the stance we fondly assume we already have: Rulers of our own Nation.

And frankly that's what it is going to take and frankly I don't see much hope of it ever happening.

So we just better get used to being part of a vicious criminal conspiracy to rape, pillage and plunder the world with no concern for anyone or anything.


p.s.  'deal with Saudi Arabia' ....  what a joke.  Immediately after taking office Trump was embracing them publicly.  After during his campaign maligning them and promising to do something about them..

Trump was an innocent.  Obviously.  After taking office he was quickly inducted into their own world view or joint delusion or whatever it is.  Whatever it is it is not aligned with anything we believe or  reason on.  It has its own logic, its own morality, its own aims and they're not divulged to us.  Why not?  Clearly because it is in their interests that we don't know.

And why are we not fed a digestible rationale, cover story instead of the laughable outright lies we're fed?  Again clearly it can only be because we simply don't matter to them.  'Them', whoever they are.

I don't know who they are.   But they induct new Presidents,  they direct everything, they destroy everything and they are not US.

But the world today is ours as never ever before in history.  But we need to step up and claim it.

eating/not eating

I just didn't eat for 5 days.  Just drank coffee, oxo, cocoa.

No problem.  Felt great.  Don't even know why I did it.   Not at top level consciousness.

Maybe underneath there was an attempt to do it to lose weight.  Which I could well do to lose.

But which doesn't seem to have happened.

But on the top,  right in my normal consciousness,  I wasn't even doing it deliberately.  I never set out to do it.  I just didn't feel like eating.  It seemed unnecessary.  Even ridiculous.  Even distasteful.  Good word in this context for food should be tasty shouldn't it? But contemplating it there was no attraction towards the taste of it.  It didn't seem to be tasty. Hence 'distasteful'.

Just had a slice of pizza.  My youngest boy's lunch box pizz he didn't eat.

And I may have some more food.  It is in the balance.  There is something subtly saying 'do' in my mind and something subtly arguing 'don't'.

Hmm.

Very strange. And all the drama made about it sometimes.  Just googled it and saw numerous youtube vids about people who have done it or something similar.  And media posts.  All kinds of drama.

For me, my experience, it was nothing.  Nothing special at all. 

A general feeling, as I said, of being 'better'  for it.

Milestones of Death

It seems the dead in Syria now outnumber the number of dead the USA (or the UK) had during the whole of the Second World War.

Greater than 400,000.


That's a milestone, eh?  Will there be celebrations?

Where next?

And all this, remember,  in the course of illegal occupation of the country, illegal attack on the country.

Isn't it time that Australia got up in the UN and protested illegal attacks upon a sovereign state - seeing as the narrative is always so loaded with high principled attacks on transgressions of international norms, UN policy, etc.?

Or are we fully in accord with it all?

I think I jest. I vaguely believe we've frequently pronounced we're fully in accord with it all.  I can easily, too sickeningly easily, imagine such as Bishop or Dutton saying it..

In which case shouldn't our school curriculum have courses on the need and utility of duplicity and hypocrisy?  From primary school onward?

Ratty Hair Chic

Ah..

I now find that the 'ratty hair' of the women in the French drama I've been watching is quite deliberate.  It is their fashion, their style.

Fancy that.

French Cuisine..

I've never really been to France, just zoomed through it on the railway.  So I don't know how they carry on there but I've always believed they're big on food.

Big on sauces, fancy dishes, strange foods (snails?) and so on.

So it's a surprise to me to see in this totally  French espionage thriller - 'The Bureau- - that whenever they eat in their canteen they always seem to eat the same things - either steak and chips (French Fries, to them, I guess) or what looks like maybe crumbed veal (or fish?) and green beans.

Very prosaic.

And the French 'chic' I've always heard about.  The women frequently seem to have fairly ratty hair, uncombed and looking even unwashed, which I don't suppose it really is - so is that their 'chic' - to look scruffy?

going downhill...

 Ah... series 3, episode 6, at around 46 minutes.  All so unconvincing.  Seems amateurish.  Something wrong.....

end of the series, maybe, everyone lost interest? going to other jobs? giving 2ic's a chance?

now they've got the boss and the daesh man standing up face to face talking in a ruin, backs to rows of pillars offering a view to all outsiders and plenty of cover for outsiders to creep up on them - no attempt whatever to find a sheltered position they can talk quietly in and watch all approaches - something  you'd think second nature to such people...

now they've got a virtual realtime warning of danger coming when we've been told there's 13minute delay in their phone watching thing....

yep... it's got ridiculous...  after I thought it was so great....

ah well, you get that....

The Bureau - consistency

Series 2, Episode 8,  around 19 minutes in.

A scene with Guillame's daughter and 'the mule',  the black woman that makes occasional appearances.

Classic.  Funny,  touching, real. 

Consistent with the high standard of the series..

The Bureau - inconsistency..

Much as I admire 'The Bureau'  it doesn't seem entirely consistent.

The boss visits his female spy to question her about having ever seen any Americans in Tehran when she was there. 

This because the  Irani they want to 'turn' is working for the CIA they now believe.

She says there are no Americans in Tehran.  Relationships so bad between the two countries I guess.

But why would top level spy agencies necessarily use their own countrymen for all their machinations?

That's ludicrous isn't it?  Unworkable.

zest

my zest has gone.

Once I did things 'full on' - head down,  straight at it,  no doubts, no uncertainties...   straight into the task knowing without even thinking about it that it was what I had to do, what I wanted to do.

And the lights were on.  The world was bright.

Now it is all dim.  No zest.  I make myself do things because I feel I should but even as I feel I should I feel a strong sense of pointlessness.  That in the long run it doesn't matter - as, of course, nothing does, quite logically.   And that erodes the feeling of 'should'. 

So there's no even a pointed dramatic sense to the feeling of 'should'.  It's a just a dull, vague knowledge.

Horrible.

The Bureau

Just found this French t.v. series - The Bureau. 

I like it.  I think it is the best such I've ever seen.

Spy drama.  The Bureau is the French Intelligence Agency.

They get around like no such I've seen - to Syria and Iran..

And they get around to those places and weave those people into their story in a way no such I've ever seen does.

And I fancy it is because France knows Algeria, Iran, Syria, Muslims, Islam, terrorism etc..  in a way that no other t.v. series producing country that I know of does.

And France is more 'grown up' anyway.  Isn't French the language of diplomacy?    They have, I think, a long history of concerning themselves with international diplomacy.

Big things about it please me - the acting, the actors,  the plots,  the scenes - but little things, too.

The head of the bureau just visited this suspect psychologist woman and planted a mic under her desk.  What pleases me is the thought that she'll certainly find it - she sweeps the room frequently, her and the hero when he used to visit and he's the total expert so I guess it'd be a good sweep, the last word in detection.

And the plot writers are not that dumb.  Unless this is the first time.

So the idea is that she'll find it but then what?  The boss is going to know immediately if she removes it.....  significant.  

And if she doesn't move it I guess there'll be a change in her behaviour because she is going to have to do business in a different way.  Significant.

And not only her but those she associates with - she's a spy for the CIA - they can no longer meet and talk in her office.  And they will necessarily have to consider the possibility that she's been compromised and suspicion is falling on themselves...

It deals always with this kind of subtlety and I like it.

There's constant discovery and measure and counter measure...  gaining of information and understandings, suspicions, conjectures arising from it...

Makes things like Longmire look crude.    Well they are crude.  Virtually everything except this is crude. 

That's it, that's what I like:  I think it sophisticated.  I like the sophistication.