Who cares if you wreck the world in the process??
How to put millions in your own pocket. Insider trading. Tell all your friends. Manipulate the market
Jane Goodall quotes – Saving the planet and speaking on behalf of the animals who are being butchered.
Jane is a naturist who first caught my attention from her work with chimpanzees in Tanzania. Way back in the 60s I was captivated by her book – In the Shadow of Man. She is someone I greatly respect who has worked to support wildlife.
The least I can do is speak out for those who cannot speak for themselves.
Me too. There are millions of creatures being killed daily. If nobody speaks up for them they will continue to be slaughtered. The world is already depleted of its fantastic array of life. Soon they will be gone if we do not do something.
Only if we understand, will we care. Only if we care, will we help. Only if we help shall all be saved.
I am only a writer. The people who make the decisions are the rich and powerful. They have to be made to understand that this cannot go on.
The greatest danger to our future is apathy.
Throughout my teaching career I have strived to get my students thinking. They are the future. They need to be aware and involved.
Every individual matters. Every individual has a role to play. Every individual makes a difference.
We can all make a difference. There are millions of us who care. We have to keep making the powerful aware.
Change happens by listening and then starting a dialogue with the people who are doing something you don’t believe is right.
We have to keep telling them to stop – there are better ways.
Lasting change is a series of compromises. And compromise is all right, as long your values don’t change.
The bottom line is that the environment needs protecting.
“I don’t have any idea of who or what God is. But I do believe in some great spiritual power. I feel it particularly when I’m out in nature. It’s just something that’s bigger and stronger than what I am or what anybody is. I feel it. And it’s enough for me.”
I’m an antitheist. I do not believe in god and I think that religion is very bad for us, but I do believe in a power that exists in nature, a vibration that connects us to the universe. That is something I’m prepared to call spiritual. That is what requires protection.
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Roy Harper – Burn The World
Roy’s best single!
The times I saw Roy perform this little ditty. Another epic. Sums up the stupidity of mankind for me. We are burning the world.
Burn The World – 1990
Awareness Records 1990
Roy Harper: producer
Roy Harper: acoustic guitar, vocals and song writing.
Dave Gilmour: guitar
Tony Franklin: bass
Kevin McAlea: keyboards
Steve Broughton: percussion
Engineer: Jacqui Harper
Photography: Colin Curwood
Roy wrote ‘Burn The World’ in 1984. When he had re-signed with EMI he presented them with this twenty minute demo. They rejected it on the basis that it was not a good commercial proposition.
However the song is an amazing concept that is even more relevant today, thirty years later, when we are experiencing the impact of global warming (we are burning the world) and beginning to realise the catastrophic effects it will have.
Roy sat on the recording for six years. He hoped that he might work more on its production, as he had successfully done with other epic songs such as ‘The Lord’s Prayer’ or ‘Me And My Woman’, but that never came about. Without a music contract to a major label Roy lacked the finances to devote the time to such a project and he knew this was unlikely to happen in the near future. Yet he believed the song was important and began including it in his live sets. He continued developing the musical arrangement and received positive response from audiences. Rather than abandon the piece altogether he decided to put the song out as it was – basically a partially completed demo.
When I first heard about Roy releasing the two twenty minute tracks – the studio version and live version – I immediately said ‘That’s a single, then Roy!’ And so it was!
The live version demonstrates the way Roy was playing the guitar aided by the use of technology through the pedals, showcasing his versatility and amazing ability to produce and sustain a piece of this length, as well as Jacqui’s ability to handle the mixing desk and use the effects to the maximum. At times it sounds like a full band. Once again Roy lives up to the epithet of a one man rock ‘n’ roll band.
The song itself is written in eight distinct sections:
The incremental destruction of our planet.
Inconvenient Truth
The truth is inconvenient
The universe began by accident.
Life began by chance.
There is no meaning,
No afterlife.
The truth is inconvenient.
The truth is inconvenient.
The planet is warming
Nature is under threat.
We are causing great damage.
Our greed is killing everything.
The truth is inconvenient.
The truth is inconvenient.
Mankind is a flawed species.
Greed and violence
Lust for power
Taints our entire history
We are vicious animals.
The truth is inconvenient.
Opher – 29.4.2024
We are supposed to be intelligent. At our best we produce great art, dance, music and crafts; we show compassion and empathy, care for our sick. At our best we are wonderful.
But a brief glance at our history reveals a litany of hate and violence.
I look around at the world today and see war, religious hatred, division, poverty, destruction, pollution and misery. We are destroying the planet and ourselves.
We are self-destructively flawed.
The truth is inconvenient.
Inconvenient Truth
The truth is inconvenient
The universe began by accident.
Life began by chance.
There is no meaning,
No afterlife.
The truth is inconvenient.
The truth is inconvenient.
The planet is warming
Nature is under threat.
We are causing great damage.
Our greed is killing everything.
The truth is inconvenient.
The truth is inconvenient.
Mankind is a flawed species.
Greed and violence
Lust for power
Taints our entire history
We are vicious animals.
The truth is inconvenient.
Opher – 29.4.2024
We are supposed to be intelligent. At our best we produce great art, dance, music and crafts; we show compassion and empathy, care for our sick. At our best we are wonderful.
But a brief glance at our history reveals a litany of hate and violence.
I look around at the world today and see war, religious hatred, division, poverty, destruction, pollution and misery. We are destroying the planet and ourselves.
We are self-destructively flawed.
The truth is inconvenient.
The Bullet
The Bullet
Small, hard and metallic;
Very fast;
Designed to penetrate;
To rip, tear and shatter.
Propelled by great force;
An explosion.
Pointed, directed and triggered
Imagined,
Released and realised.
Through the air
Through skin,
Into muscle
Into bone
Into brain.
Created by man
To kill.
Opher 29.10.2023
We are very good at designing machines to hurt, torture and kill. We excel at it.
Out of the mind into reality;
A death machine.
Echoes of History
Echoes of History
Echoes of history
Louder every day,
Leaving hungry children
Shivering in the dark.
Civilisation crumbles
Into choking dust;
Houses into rubble.
Missiles hit their mark.
Security an illusion
While tyrants rule.
Ruining the future;
Leaving choices stark.
Opher – 15.3.2021
It is incredibly disturbing to see Putin directing the destruction of a country.
Why do we do it?
We live in sophisticated cities with people working and playing, worrying about fashion and whether they can afford a better house or a new car. Every normal. Lives filled with trivia – the school run, the cinema, a trip out, planning holidays, shopping and cooking. Ordinary.
We live in countries where there are debates as to whether we can afford to repair potholes inroads or replace cladding on skyscrapers, to pay teachers and nurses a living wage, yet we can but multimillion pound tanks, missiles and aircraft.
On the whim of a despot we can turn whole cities into piles of rubble.
How many trillions wasted?
If a building collapses, trapping hundreds, it is a global catastrophe. Yet we can callously deliberately kill hundreds of thousands of women and children.
Civilisation is just a short holiday from carnage. Slaughter and destruction is the norm.
We are nasty little apes who pretend.
We are witnessing the reality of our nature. Humans are not very nice.
Undoing the damage!
Chainsaws and Gun Shots
Chainsaws and Gun Shots
Chainsaws and gunshots
Chainsaws and gunshots
Saw-teeth and bullets
Bangs and buzzes
Bangs and buzzes
Tearing into flesh
Death
Death
Death.
Opher 17.2.2021
I walk up my hill into the green manufacturing industry known as the countryside to the sound of multiple bangs and the chunter of chainsaws.
Every single day I hear the sound of shots.
The green fields have been blanket bombed with pesticide but even so, if anything dares to try to cling on to life it is blasted to hell.
I can hear the chainsaws attacking another tree. There are not too many of those left – little oasis in the green desert.
I’m walking in nature and listening to the relentless sound of death.
poetry – How Much is Money Worth?
How Much is Money Worth?
How much is money worth?
Is it worth a single tree?
A forest? Or a stream?
How much is money worth?
Is it worth a single whale?
All the gorillas?
Or an orangutan, or a tiger?
How much is money worth?
Is it worth a hurricane?
A flood or a drought?
Perhaps a forest fire?
How much is money worth?
Is it worth a lung?
A plague?
A kidney or a life?
How much is money worth?
Is it worth a single family?
Or a country?
A people or a planet?
What is the price of money?
Opher – 1.3.2020
We are already starting to pay the price for global warming. The climate is changing as a result of the things we are doing. The hurricanes, droughts, forest fires, floods, heatwaves and migrations.
Of course, there are those still in denial, who claim these are natural events and not a result of anything we are doing.
They are wrong.
The science tells us most clearly – unless we change our ways the worst is yet to come.
The deniers are leading us down a path to destruction!