Feel The Hate
I could feel the hate
As we barrelled down the street.
Memories of Ivan and Mihail
Splattered on concrete.
Expecting to die.
Flinching at every sound.
Bracing for the explosion
To send me oblivion bound.
The old man came cycling around the corner
He saw us up ahead.
I saw his terrified eyes.
Pulled the trigger. He was dead.
Opher – 7.4.2022
I was watching on the news. There was a drone videoing as a cyclist was shot dead by the advancing Russians in Buccha. The street was littered with civilians they had shot.
I wondered why. What was the reason? Why indiscriminately kill civilians.
A Big Black Cloud
There was a big black cloud
In the deep blue sky.
One moment sunshine
Then wondering why.
We were shopping,
Eating meals,
Laughing and planning
Trips to the cinema.
Tanks rolled down the streets
With bullets
Shells and missiles
A howling, satanic choir.
No more normal.
Ordinary forever gone.
After the days of terror
Life is always wrong.
Opher – 5.4.2022
In this day and age it is hard to imagine the barbarity of war coming out of the blue.
This is Europe in 2022!
It’s barbaric.
I do not believe that the Ukrainian people really believed it would happen. One minute they were living normal lives in modern cities and the next they were hiding in cellars as the Russians turned their cities to rubble.
Goons of War
They give their souls away.
Just obeying orders.
Trained not to think.
Told they’re protecting borders.
No longer reasoning people:
Zombies with no brains.
Thrown their morality
With their freedom down the drains.
Following all their orders
Without question or doubt.
Killing without mercy.
No need to work it out.
They are called soldiers.
Mindless morons
Following orders.
Opher – 6.4.2022
Why would anybody throw away their freedom, allow themselves to be moulded into a mindless killing machine, a tool of the state?
Why would they become a soldier, a secret policeman, a goon?
These mindless morons do as they are told without question. They have no vestiges of humanity as they dispense death to the innocent.
Without them tyrants cannot exist.
Here Lies Lies
Here lies lies,
Sacrificed on the altar of spin.
Here lies truth,
Lost in the propaganda within.
Casualties of war
As each side seeks to assert
Broadcasting lies
To win in a world of hurt.
We’re all victims
In the morass of untruth.
Believing lies
We accept without proof.
All’s fair
In love, politics and war.
Deceiving us
As they break every law.
Here lies truth!
Here lies lies!
Buried with the dead!
Opher – 7.4.2022
How can anybody believe what they are told? The truth is always manipulated. One has to read between the lies to see if we cannot glimpse the truth below.
We live in a world of spin, fake news and propaganda. All sides do it. They call it politics. It’s a world of lies.
The first casualty of war is the truth.
The media always has a political bias. Nothing is ever completely true.
NATO and the Ukraine appear whiter than white. They aren’t. NATO went back on promises and was after moving up to the borders of Russia. We would then have nuclear missiles close to Moscow. Were the missiles a threat? Were they a deterrent? Was it defensive or offensive?
Depends which side of the fence you sit.
Ukraine does have a number of extreme right groups who could be described as neo-Nazis. There is evident racism. But then there is in most European countries – look at the fascist Oban in Austria and Trump in America.
Can anything justify war? I don’t think so. Putin is a barbaric animal who needs trying for war crimes – not just here but in Chechnya, Grozny and Aleppo. Then we have war crimes committed by the USA and UK in Afghanistan and Iraq. We have the warmongering Iranians, Saudi Arabians, not to forget Bashir and the bastions of terrorism.
All war criminals should be tried.
Beware the black and white.
Unfortunately this distrust of politicians and the media has led to the propagation of conspiracy on the web. People are even more susceptible to the stupid propaganda flung out on the web. It’s worse than the media bias.
Hence we end up with lying Trump, lying Johnson, lying Bolsonaro and lying Oban. The whole populist movement is based on fake news and conspiracy. Lying is their trade.
But always, the first casualty of war is the truth.
Why?
Why?
Is it the same every time?
Why?
The bodies in the streets?
Why?
The rape, torture and looting?
Why?
The wanton destruction?
Young men with licence to kill.
Terrified out of their wits.
Full of bravado.
Beyond the law.
Without restrictions.
Witnessing horror.
Familiar with death.
Exacting revenge.
Following orders.
Why?
Are human minds so fragile?
Why?
They break into a million shards?
Why?
They release their demons?
Why?
They tear the world to shreds?
Opher – 5.4.2022
These young men are ordered into hell. They witness death close up. They see their comrades wounded and killed.
Directed to kill, trained to be emotionally cold. Freed of all morality. Full of terror and revenge. Told of the evils of the enemy. Full of propaganda.
A human mind can only stand so much. Minds are fragile. They break. Minds cannot stand this type of trauma.
War destroys everyone from the emotional suppression, the traumatised madness and the violent behaviour.
It’s no wonder that so many soldiers take their own lives.
I was just trawling through the web trying to see what the losses and costs of the Ukraine war were.
Staggering!!
‘According to a Nato official who spoke to NBC on condition of anonymity, up to 40,000 Russian troops were either killed, injured, had been captured or had disappeared. Between 7,000 and 15,000 are thought to have been killed, the officials said as he shared Nato’s latest intelligence assessment on the war in Ukraine.’
Losses of equipment:
| Type | Number destroyed | Unit cost | Total cost |
| Tanks | 647 | $3.7 million | $2384 million |
| Planes | 77 | $30 million | $2310 million |
| Artillery systems | 330 | $14.5 million | $4785 million |
| Helicopters | 50 | £17 million | £850 million |
| $10,349 million |
That’s without the cost of the missiles, shells, drones, bullets, fuel, trucks, bowsers and other equipment.
Just think what a difference that sort of money could have made?
The Iraq war cost the USA $1.922 trillion.
The Afghan war cost the USA $5.8 trillion.
No wonder so many of us are poor!!
We are utterly mad!! Instead of building a better world we are destroying it!!
The Valley of Death
They all walked through the valley of death;
Through the hail of bullets,
Dodging the arbitrary blasts of missiles,
Evading the bombs,
Guided by the blind hand of luck,
Emerging the other side
Physically unscathed
Yet mortally wounded.
They all walked through the valley of death
And were killed
By the misses,
Each and every one!
Opher – 3.4.2022
Nobody come through war unscathed. It twists minds. It steals futures.
Nobody escapes the horrors.
The mental scars don’t show but they cut deeper. Life can never be the same. The trauma is corrosive.
Only the psychopaths are immune. They enjoy i! But they are victims before the first bullet is fired.
Nobody survives a war.
