Brussels – All you need is love

Posted on by Opher

Brussels – All you need is love

IMG_1068

It seems an age ago that we back in the sixties and there was hope.

The world was not a place of butchery and hatred where young people were willing to blow themselves to pieces.

Love was the message.

Young people trekked out across the planet exporting their smiles. Friendship and sharing were the mantra, equality and freedom was the ethos.

The only blot on the landscape was the war in Vietnam.

That world seems so innocent now. But it was love that made it possible. If you meet someone as an equal with a smile and respect you make contact.

Somehow the radicalised young Muslims have been talked into hatred. They feel ostracised from society and have grown to despise it. Gone are the days that all the world wore flares. We are fractured.

It is time to heal.

You do not cure hatred with more hate.

The Beatles have been rather neglected and denigrated of late. They were the greatest band ever because of their genius and adventurousness. They were at the forefront of the sixties culture and they had a knack of summing things up.

All You Need Is Love

Love, love, love
Love, love, love
Love, love, loveThere’s nothing you can do that can’t be done
Nothing you can sing that can’t be sung
Nothing you can say but you can learn how to play the game
It’s easyNothing you can make that can’t be made
No one you can save that can’t be saved
Nothing you can do but you can learn how to be you in time
It’s easy

All you need is love
All you need is love
All you need is love, love
Love is all you need

Love, love, love
Love, love, love
Love, love, love

All you need is love
All you need is love
All you need is love, love
Love is all you need

Nothing you can know that isn’t known
Nothing you can see that isn’t shown
Nowhere you can be that isn’t where you’re meant to be
It’s easy

All you need is love
All you need is love
All you need is love, love
Love is all you need

All you need is love (All together, now!)
All you need is love (Everybody!)
All you need is love, love
Love is all you need
Love is all you need (Love is all you need)
Love is all you need (Love is all you need)
Love is all you need (Love is all you need)
Love is all you need (Love is all you need)
Love is all you need (Love is all you need)
Love is all you need (Love is all you need)
Love is all you need (Love is all you need)
Love is all you need (Love is all you need)
Love is all you need (Love is all you need)
Love is all you need (Love is all you need)
Love is all you need (Love is all you need)
Yee-hai! (Love is all you need)
Love is all you need (Love is all you need)

My beliefs – Creationism

Posted on by Opher

My beliefs – Creationism

My beliefs – Creationism

I do not believe in creationism. I think it is brainless to take the words of a medieval document produced by a nomadic tribe over the well-researched view of scientists.

I prefer my science with a rational basis rather than an indoctrinated posture.

I believe that Creationism is the latest attempt by the religious school of thought to repudiate the theory of evolution.

There are no facts.

There are lots of things we do not know. That is what makes science so interesting. We are discovering and finding new things every day. Our tools are immense and every theory is picked over and tested to the limit. If it stands up to the tests then it has some credibility.

Because something is written in an ancient book does not, on its own, give it credibility.

For me to believe something I have to have evidence and proof. There is no evidence in Creationism. It is completely erroneous.

I believe that to teach creationism to children is fundamentally wrong. It is simply not true.

Anecdote – Wedding Number Two – The Registry Office

Posted on by Opher

Anecdote – Wedding Number Two – The Registry Office

IMG_0534

Wedding Number Two

I enjoyed Wedding Number One. It was all up in the air and interesting. Nobody quite knew what was going to happen next.

Wedding Number Two was scheduled for the next week in the morning. We were going to make the whole thing legal, bring all the family into harmonious rapport, bring world peace and solve the Vietnam War. We decided to only invited parents and brothers and sisters to this one.

Liz’s father rang up the night before and begged her to call it off. Liz’s Mum boycotted this one as well. We were off to a good start – I still had hopes for Vietnam.

As Wedding Number Three – The Pagan ceremony – was in the afternoon we brought all the food in the back of the car. Liz had diced Cheese and butter, which was in plastic bowls, and cut French Sticks into slices. They adorned the back seat.

Unfortunately the car wouldn’t go. We were pushing it up and down the road in our wedding gear. Some guy offered to fix it for a fiver so we paid him – and he did.

We set off very late and hurtled round the North Circular – at that time unbeset by Speed Cameras. I was desperate to make up time as we were three weddings late.

We got cut up by some idiot and I had to slam on the brakes. We got deluged with cheese and butter and were picking lumps out of our hair. I think nerves were a little fraught and we found ourselves having our first (but not last) blazing row. I should not have jammed the brakes on!

We arrived only two weddings late.

Liz’s Dad was looking rather pleased. He thought we weren’t coming.

But we’d missed our slot.

Fortunately an old girlfriend of mine helped us out. She was getting married in th3e next slot and had forgotten to pick up the banns. We slotted in to her space.

It was rather a sober affair. We went in with just our family (minus Liz’s Mum) and said our words, signed the certificate and went out.

My Mum tried to add a wedding atmosphere by giving my little sister a little silver horseshoe to give to us. She may even have thrown a little bit of confetti.

Wedding Two was done and dusted!

How interesting to stand back and watch the politicians promise the earth in order to gain power!

Posted on by Opher

How interesting to stand back and watch the politicians promise the earth in order to gain power!

It is quite apparent that none of the politicians, apart from possibly the Greens, are at all bothered about what is best for the country (or the planet). They are trying bribe after bribe in order to sway people to vote for them so that they can gain power.

Power, like wealth, is a terribly addictive thing.

The election brings it to the surface and it is naked for all to see; their lust for power trumps all common sense. They will try anything to gain power. They will lie, scare, misrepresent and blatantly try to buy your votes.

It is quite obscene.

It takes a certain type of psychopath to be a politician!

It’s all short-term, all ideological, all planned out to gain votes. It  does not matter what is right or wrong, best for anyone or makes sense. It’s a big psychological game!

Quite nasty really!

Our lives are pebbles in a still pond – we make waves.

Posted on by Opher

Our lives are pebbles in a still pond – we make waves.

Ripples

I believe a person’s life is like a stone thrown into a pond. It generates ripples.

Those ripples can be a force for good

Or they can be a force for evil.

We swim in the ripples we all create.

Some people’s lives barely brush the surface

While others generate huge tidal waves that sweep history along

If there are enough of us our waves build together in harmony.

I aim to make as many ripples as I can with my short life

My waves may be small but they lap out against everyone and spark other ripples

They can become as big as tsunamis and carry all before them

Our ripples build the zeitgeist in which we all are formed

All of us are moulded

Some help form the mould

Together we can change the world for the better

Here – I throw another pebble in

See the ripples spread.

Here – share my pebbles.

Poetry – Death – a poem of fulfilment wrested from each precious second.

Posted on by Opher

Poetry – Death – a poem of fulfilment wrested from each precious second.

Life is measured in seconds. I have no belief is anything after. I opened my eyes into a wondrous universe. My purpose is to make each second as full and purposeful as I possibly can. I want to wrest as much out of it, enjoy, create and experience, to squeeze the sponge of life until each drop is savoured.

Each second is precious for our life after is as our life before. That’s OK.

Death

If you live with me

You’ll never live

Far from death

Liquid torrents in my veins

The skies

The rock

The water

Stalking my dreams

My death will be unique

Fantastic and terrible

Complete

Without hope

That must drive your life

Death that is oblivion

Each second stolen

From the void

Each thought

A universe

Each day

A life

When you live with me

You live with life

That burns.

Opher 10.9.99

Poetry – Believers – A poem about religious fanaticism.

Posted on by Opher

Poetry – Believers – A poem about religious fanaticism.

 

Believers

Madmen pose with

Hardware exposed

To elevate their egos

To eternity.

Foolish fools

Believing silly rules,

Eschewing girls from schools

Inflamed with

Dreams of glory.

Endorphins rage

Through synapses

Of the brave.

Adherents ecstatic

With grave zeal

and brotherhood

Of unity;

All built on a book

Of lunacy.

Opher 4.7.2015

Everywhere I look around the world and through the depths of history I see excited young men clutching weapons in one hand and sacred books or political treaties in the other all wild-eyed and crazed; all joined by a cause; all eager to impose their vision on the world.

They butcher and torture until they themselves are numb, callous and cold and their Messianic fire has corrupted into sadistic futility.

All are assured of one thing – their cause is inevitably short-lived. We have seen the crusades, Jihads, Pol Pot, Hitler, Rwanda, and a thousand other massacres, genocides and causes as religions and regimes rise and rapidly fall.

It does not stop the fanaticism. Fascism and the adrenaline of brotherhood of war is a powerful aphrodisiac. It fires the belly and confounds the senses. The crazed believers are prepared to lay down their lives for their pointless cause.  They are easy to recruit and indoctrinate – point and they will go,

It all harks back to those tribal days of young men on hunting parties whose lives depended on their skills, bravery and willingness to support each other in a common aim – whether that be fighting off a ferocious wild cat or bringing down a dangerous buffalo.

Young men, befuddled by hormones, eager for status and glory, easily drawn to a cause, are always gullible.

Young women, equally befuddled, seeking father’s for the eggs they store, are attracted to the strongest. They support the craziness – always gullible.

We are so primitive. We are transparent. Our intelligence, helplessness and stupidity are our constant downfall.

Perhaps one day women will be attracted to men for their neuronal skills and compassion rather than their muscle and brute force. The world would be a different place.

Tower of London Poppies – The 1st World War 1914-1918

Posted on by Opher

Tower of London Poppies – The 1st World War 1914-1918

The sea of red poppies at the Tower of London were a powerful reminder of the senseless industrial slaughter of human beings.

10 million military personnel were butchered by high explosive.

7 million civilians were also killed in violently.

The poppy was adopted to remind us of the gruesome stupidity of war where weaponry has now reached a sophistication where a missile can be targeted from thousands of miles away and kill thousands of people, where a nuclear device can kill millions. There is nothing heroic about it
The poppy is a reminder that there are better ways. Violence is primitive behaviour.

It is also salutary to consider that the flu epidemic that followed the first World War killed between 20 and 40 million – more than were killed in both World Wars.

Perhaps we should be putting our efforts into solving the population explosion before the next virus disposes of us!

Build a better zeitgeist!

Mass Migration into Europe and the USA.

Posted on by Opher

In recent times we have seen huge numbers of desperate people trying to get into Europe and the USA.

It is clear to me that a nation does need security of its borders. We cannot just keep taking an endless stream of people. Mass migration is a huge problem.

But instead of just focusing on the problem perhaps it is necessary to look at the cause and deal with that.

What is driving these people to want to go through immense hardship to get to Europe or the USA?


It couldn’t be anything to do with:

Overpopulation?
Gross inequality?
Climate change?
Unemployment?
Lack of opportunity?
Starvation?  Droughts?
Wars?

Could it?

Perhaps the answer is to think more globally and set about solving these issues? Then there might not be desperate people risking life and limb to move halfway round the world.

D-Day and Berliners by Roy Harper.

Posted on by Opher

I think it is appropriate on this day of the commemoration of the landing of our troops in Normandy seventy five years ago to play a song that I would normally associate with the November Remembrance Day.

I hate war. I think there are many better ways. But sometimes, when we get it horribly wrong, we have to resort to it.

The extreme right-wing fascism of the Nazis was such an occasion. The Nazis with their tyrannical  brutality and racism should never have been allowed to come to power. But having achieved it they had to be crushed. Their ideas of racial supremacy, their anti-Semitism (which murdered 6 million Jews), and their desire for world domination, were repugnant to all civilised people.

My father fought in Italy against the Nazi scourge.

I, like everyone else, am both grateful and in awe of the bravery and sacrifice of the men who stormed those beaches. We all owe them a big debt. But I, like Roy, wonder at the things that lay behind it. The class system and elite still exist and exploit. The system is not fair. Nothing changed.

After that war alliances and trading partnerships were forged to prevent us ever having such a terrible war again. The United Nation, the European Union and NATO were the result. Better to Jaw Jaw than War War. They have resulted in a more unified Europe with much sharing, understanding and collaboration.

Lately this security is increasingly under threat. All these institutions – NATO, the UN and the EU are under threat. They may well be flawed. They may well be costly. There may be fraud and corruption. It might be a gravy train. But, from my perspective, the alternative is far worse. We’re throwing out the baby with the bath water.

There are fascists and racists marching on our streets again. Right-wing fascists are becoming mainstream. We think respect and liberalism, tolerance and PC are rude words. We are building walls again. We are tearing down our collaborations and institutions. We are becoming isolationist.

It seems ironic to me that the American President is one who represents these isolationist and anti-liberal values. It feels like having the KKK in charge of America. He appears to have more in common with the Nazi’s than with the allies who stormed those beaches yet he is presiding over this ceremony.

Roy put the words of Laurence Binyon to music and added his own verses. The result is chilling.

Lest we forget what those brave men fought for!

They fought against right-wing fascism!

They fought for liberty and freedom from tyranny.

They fought against racism, brutality and persecution of races or people – be that Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists or Christians.

They fought for lasting peace and security.

They fought for a better world, a fairer world.

They did not fight for walls, separation, greed, or isolation.

They shall not grow old, as we are left grow old
Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn
At the going down of the sun, and in the morning
We will remember them

They built a wall boys, it stayed up for thirty years
We’ve torn it down now, clattering round their ears
You know how it is, with spirit(s)
They just couldn’t hold us
Brothers and sisters

The world you died for, was all but a pack of lies
It had to fall down, and keep on falling
You gave us the world they promised you
And in the morning
We are the flowering
We are the flowering youth
Berliners