Month: March 2011

Here We Go Again . . .

So we’re into another war again – this time in Libya. This just goes to prove, as my grandfather used to say, “The only lesson we learn from history is that we never learn any lessons from history”.

We have to go to war, we’re told, to get rid of yet another tyrannical despot and his ugly regime because they’re murdering any civilian who protests against them.

Yes, it’s taken our so-called politicians just 40 years or so to discover that Colonel Gadaffi is no different from most other African rulers – completely corrupt, stashing away billions of foreign aid dollars, living like lords amidst the poverty of millions, and torturing and killing anyone who dares oppose them.

In fact, as usual, we’re not really going to war, we’re just sending our young men and women off in hugely expensive aircraft with a payload of hugely expensive weapons to obliterate Gadaffi and his cronies together with any number of unfortunate civilians who happen to get in the way.

Rather like killing ants by pouring boiling water on them.

Well, if it takes the murder of innocent civilians, torture of enemies and even organised genocide of any group of people that cause trouble to the ruling clique, to get attacked with Western cruise missiles, then why aren’t we dishing out the same treatment to Israel?

Perhaps the systematic murder of young children and the dropping of white phosphorous bombs onto civilian populations cramped into ghettos, the poisoning of their water supplies, the denial of basic amenities like water and electricity to them, the bulldozing of their houses whether or not they’re inside at the time, and the use of bodily organs extracted from their dead bodies in a sick and illegal bodily organs trade doesn’t count.

After all, these victims are only Palestinians, right? And aren’t they “terrorists” by definition?

But let’s get back to the attack on Libya.

Strange that, although the United Kingdom, as a country, is broke, we can still afford any number of foreign wars, and the Libya war is only the latest in a very long line of foreign wars going back to the mid seventeenth century.

Foreign wars are absolutely essential for the banking elite if they are to remain astride our backs like the ugly, blood-sucking parasites they are.

It’s these bloody, foreign wars that help keep governments constantly in need of more funds, which the banking system is only too happy to provide – at a price.

That price, ultimately, is the destruction of the cream of humanity, and especially the Anglo-Celtic peoples, and the enslavement of what is left. What good will all the liberal platitudes and high moral arguments of our corrupt politicians be then?

The life of the average Libyan dissident will seem like paradise compared to the horror of the brave new world that the banking elite have planned for us.

Toxic Assets

Lines from JRR Tolkien

I Sit Beside The Fire And Think . . .

JRR Tolkien

I sit beside the fire and think of all that I have seen,
Of meadow flowers and butterflies in summers that have been;

Of yellow leaves and gossamer in autumns that there were,
With morning mist and silver sun and wind upon my hair.

I sit beside the fire and think of how the world will be
When winter comes without a spring that I shall ever see.

For still there are so many things that I have never seen:
In every wood in every spring there is a different green.

I sit beside the fire and think of people long ago,
And people who will see a world that I shall never know.

But all the while I sit and think of times there were before,
I listen for returning feet and voices at the door.

 

Popular Sayings No. 1 – Black Sheep

This is the first in a series that examines how popular sayings came about in Anglo-Celtic culture. We start with “Black Sheep”.

From the time when the wool trade became established as the backbone of the English economy in the Middle Ages, black sheep were considered less valuable than white ones, because their wool could not be easily dyed.

Since most domestic sheep range in colour from white to light brown, black sheep have always been in the minority. By the eighteenth century, a ‘black sheep’ had come to mean a person out of favour, someone oddly different and therefore a renegade.

The idea of the ‘odd one out’ in a flock is still current when the least successful or admirable member of a family is referred to as ‘the black sheep of the family’.

A Couple of Seasonal Rhymes

The month of March seems to have sparked poets into writing their verse over the years. Perhaps it’s the hint of spring in the air that does it.

The year’s at the spring,
And days at the morn;
Morning’s at seven;
The hillside’s dew pearled;
The lark’s on the wing,
The snail’s on the thorn;
God’s in his heaven –
All’s right with the world.

Robert Browning

Drink nettle tea in March and
Mugwort tea in May
And cowslip wine in June to
Send decline away.

The first was snow and sleet,
The next was cold and wet.
The third was such a freeze
The bird’s nest stuck to trees.

 

A Word About Lent

The name Lent derives from the Old English word for spring, Lencten.

The forty days before Easter are known as Lent. It’s a time when some people give up something they enjoy, such as chocolate or alcohol.

March 7th (2011)
Collop Monday. A day for using up meat before Lent. (A collop is a slice of meat or bread).

March 8th (2011)
Shrove Tuesday – Pancake Day. A time for using up foodstuffs forbidden during Lent, notably eggs and milk. Hence the tradition of making pancakes.

Shrovetide – Saturday, Sunday and Monday preceding Lent.

Shrove Tuesday

Pit pat the pan’s hot
And I be come a-shroving,
Cast the net before the ash,
Something is better nor nothing.
A piece of bread, a piece of cheese,
A piece of Apple dumpling;
Up with the kettle and down with the pan,
Give me a penny, and I’ll be gone!
Give me another for my little brother,
And we’ll run home to father and mother.

A thundery Shrove Tuesday means a year of crops and plenty, but lots of wind.

Shrovetide

Shrove Tuesday, Shrove Tuesday
When Jack went to plough,
His mother made pancakes, she didn’t know how,
She tipped them, she tossed them,
She made them so black,
She put so much pepper she poisoned poor Jack.

Please I’ve come a-shroving
For a piece of pancake or a little yuckle of cheese
Of your own making.
If you don’t give me some, if you don’t give me none,
I’ll rattle your door and away I’ll run.

Ash Wednesday

This falls on 9th March this year. It is the first day of Lent, and can fall on any date between 4th February and 10th March. It takes its name from the custom of making a cross on the forehead of church goers on this day, a reminder that “dust thou art and unto dust shalt thou return” (according to Genesis 3:19).

“Where the wind is on Ash Wednesday, it will stay all Lent.”

The marble season starts today and lasts through until Good Friday.