Thoughts. ..

This morning's early wander was an opportunity to think about thoughts ... how busy lives cause them to race along without pause for reflection, joining forces to become ideas, finding comfort in familiar patterns and imagining evidence for their validity ... a concept and trap known to psychology as confirmation bias ... ideas, of course, lead to stories and beliefs, since language plays such a key role in our lives ... the trigger for this particular thought stream the reflection on recent return to radio, previously rejected along with television in an attempt to clear the mind of clutter and conditioning ... strangely, even though radio sets offer many channels, this one, bought for its ability to play CDs, stays tuned to BBC Radio 4 ... a sophisticated service offering lots of interesting information along with dramas and comedy along with "News" ... and it is the latter that comes under scrutiny as the latest versions of current affairs invite us to believe that the Benighted States and its implausible President is still a civilised country, despite all the evidence to the contrary ... a longer view might assemble historical facts to suggest, having shaken off the yoke of the British Empire, it steadily applied the lessons it learned from the erstwhile master ... timing military interventions in both major wars of the last century to allow the combatants to weaken themselves and then throw decisive force behind the likely victor. .. emerging as the strongest Empire, having sent a chilling warning to the world by destroying the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, along with hundreds of thousands of their inhabitants ... war crimes indeed, though winners get to write the history books and choose the language to be used ... further military adventures followed in the 20th century and into the 21st, all aimed to maintain economic ascendancy. .. gradually, as is the way with Empires, degenerating, though not passing the baton gracefully ... the BBC, meanwhile, offers ostensibly unbiased coverage, though certain basic assumptions go unchallenged ... its reputation for honesty enabling the smuggling of deception undetected ...

Anyway, the post is not meant to revisit the old stories, rather to reflect on the perspective achieved along the pilgrim ways, free from the daily dose of propaganda. .. which mostly led to the view that all the world really is a stage and cartoon characters in positions of power are possibly there to challenge our credulity and maybe invite us to look inside and see if there is any residual rubbish to clear out before we project it outwards yet again ...

Gala ...

July sees the annual gathering of socialists of various persuasions plus thousands of local folks from the surrounding area parading behind banners from their now defunct pit villages ... the Durham Miners' Gala, the Big Meeting, running on nostalgia and enthusiastic leftists from around the country ... attendance estimates vary between 100,000 and 200,000, which is a big variation, though even the lower figure is impressive enough ... the star of the show, Jeremy Corbyn, takes the tributes on the balcony of the County Hotel as the parade winds its way patiently through the streets, taking over 4 hours for the last banners to reach the racecourse and the speeches along with light rain ... plenty of tub thumping and rabble rousing from the platform, including a direct hit on the duplicity of J.C.'s disloyal deputy, TWatson, promoting the Big Lie drama of alleged anti-semitism, at the behest of its creators, Mossad, cleverly conflating anti-Zionism and anti-semitism in order to undermine Corbyn, a well known opponent of war crimes against Palestinians ... TWatson and others on the payroll as shown in the declared parliamentary records ... liberal sensitivities of public figures scared of being labelled anti-semitic harbour the plotters, prominent anti-Zionist Jews like Noam Chomsky are rarely heard in mainstream media or characterised as "self-hating Jews" ... and so the story runs on, along with the lie that Iran is destabilising the region, when some years ago the Pentagon plan to destabilise the Middle East was approved and has rolled out remorselessly ever since as the Benighted States and loyal allies, the Disunited Kingdom, Israel, Saudi Arabia and others have removed stable (not to say liberal or democratic) governments in Iraq, Libya and, maybe soon, Syria ... the economic war on Iran is well underway, along with gunboat diplomacy in the Gulf and threats of military intervention ...

Readers bemused by this diatribe need not fear that equanimity has been compromised by Saturday's day out with the comrades ... a cool head is still needed and old loyalties no longer hold ... polarised politics don't serve, Brexit is not the question, war is not the answer and neither is a centrally planned economy ... looking at the level of alcohol consumption and junk food at the Gala, despite the fine words, the vanguard of the revolution are in no condition to bring down capitalism any time soon ... still, capitalism is destroying itself through its inherent contradictions anyway ... all we need is a viable alternative which transcends the polarities ...

Proposals on a postcard please ...