Tears for Years over Eons of Blood

Cry. Suffer. Violence. Cry all time. People suffer. No one cares. Just make money & go go go like a UFO!

Violence carves up the news. Violence renders history. Mutilates art. Destroys life. New wars break out as yet more bloody reruns of neverending dramas. Tears flow for years and years then dry up as deserts fill with sand and dust. Years of tears. The biggest desert, however, is the ocean, and it is full of salt.

Recently watched HBO dramas The Pacific and Band of Brothers on Netflix about American units in the Second World War. Was appalled by the savagery of high intensity combat. These shows captured the ultimate essence of violence, it’s banality and senseless destruction as well as how those contradict with the necessity for violence and survival. Grim. I felt the same watching the horrors of melee combat in films set in Ancient times such as The Gladiator and The Eagle. Felt the same grimness watching the Medieval combat within The Last Kingdom series, Braveheart, and shows set in the Crusades. First World War movies such as every version of All Quiet on the Western Front and 1917. There are amazing war films and shows set in Ancient and Medieval East Asia, in Africa, in the Americas, and many others whose titles jumble together in a carnage of memories set free with tears. The glory and the heroism itself brings tears as well as the horror of heroism.

Oh, the vastness of wars stretched out over time and place. Who remembers those where many hundreds and many thousands died in longago wars and battles so remote in the mind even history buffs must look them up? There are wars lost to history where not even the names and places are remembered. Often the tribes, cities, and civilizations of everyone and anyone who could and would are extinct. Continue reading

Ukraine/Taiwan: Be Ready Already for a New World War

Escalation towards major regional war and possible world war is in motion

Ignore the doom porn flooding the media

Be aware. Stay alert.

Ignore both blathering soothsayers and smirking pundits who all declare it’s illogical and impossible for such a little bitty border war to blow up across the world because they’re stupid enough to ignore the reality of our human minds

Tit for tat and tat for tit reactions in and over the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian War is threatening to turn a local conflict brewing with violence since late 2013 into a global conflagration. These tit for tat moves escalated today between Putin’s Russia and the Western Alliance in a rapidly developing crescendo of anger, distrust, fear, hate, ignorance, greed, and even sadness amidst conflicting interpretations of history and culture.

Remember the last four world wars: the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, the Great War alongside and followed by revolutions and civil wars around the globe, the Second World War, and, finally, the Cold War, a planet-wide conflict in which millions died. As one recalls these massive conflicts, keep in mind none of them began as world wars. Each one of them began as local wars that grew into regional wars. Multiple regional wars merged into a world war. Even World War II was a hodgepodge of interconnected local and regional conflicts with different timelines for each one. Each global conflict spawned a range of insurrections, revolutions, and civil wars as well.

The same will likely occur with Putin’s escalation of the Ukrainian border war into a global conflict. Only in today’s 21st Century the speed of our interwoven global communications and economies will rapidly accelerate the blossoming of such dark, bloody flowers. Cyberattacks and the reluctance to engage in massive kinetic combat may compel major enemy forces to use tactical battlefield nukes in combat. Such may quickly escalate to widespread EMP detonations and worldwide exchanges of strategic nuclear weapons between the primary adversaries.

There are significant local and regional conflicts that could easily spiral out of control and merge with others into a planet-wide war. These include the wars in and around Ethiopia, Eritrea, and Somalia, the fighting in Kashmir with India and Pakistan on nuclear hair triggers, Indo-China border conflicts, spreading violence in Venezuela and Colombia, the interrelated wars across the Middle East, Africa, and Central Asia, and a raft of others. Two of the most serious “others” are the Chinese-Taiwan conflict and the problem with North Korea as it keeps firing rockets and missiles to provoke attention. In the midst of these conflicts we face global climate change, a still-raging COVID pandemic, political instability, and economic turbulence. What to do?

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