Time to stop waiting for Godot

Is he willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is impotent.  Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent.  Is he both willing and able? Whence then is evil?

     David Hume
     quoted by Joan Acocella
     Misery
     The New Yorker, December 16, 2013

"Death gives birth to the first question -- Why? -- and seems to kill all the answers."

"...once a life is contained, made final, as if flattened within the pages of a diary, it becomes a small, contracted thing. It is just a life, one of millions, as arbitrary as everyone else's, a named tenancy that will soon become a nameless one; a life that we know, with horror, will become thoroughly forgotten within a few generations."

Why?
James Woods
The New Yorker
December 9, 2013

Through a Glass, Darkly

Before 1999, the great powers had intervened three times in the Balkans.  The first was at the Congress of Berlin in 1878 when European diplomats agreed to replace Ottoman power by building a system of competing alliances on the Balkan peninsula.  The second began with the Austro-Hungarian ultimatum to Serbia in the summer of 1914 and culminated in 1923 with the Treaty of Lausanne and the Great Population Exchange between Greece and Turkey.  The third started with Italy's unprovoked attack on Greece in March 1940 and ended with the consolidation of unrepresentative pro-Soviet regimes in Bulgaria, Romania and a pro-Western administration in Greece. 

These three interventions were so destructive that they guaranteed the Balkans' relative economic backwardness, compared to the rest of Europe. And the violence that these interventions encouraged, often inflicted by one Balkan people on another, ensured the continuation of profound civil and nationalistic strife.  In the West however, these events are rarely regarded as the result of external intervention.  On the contrary, the Balkan countries are seen as culprits who force the reluctant outside powers into their unfathomable conflicts.  This imagined Balkans -- a world where people are motivated not by rational considerations but by a mysterious congenital bloodthirstiness -- is always invoked when the great powers seek to deny their responsibility for the economic and political difficulties that the region has suffered as a consistence of external interference.  "The Balkans," Theodore Geshkoff wrote in 1940, "are usually reported in the outside world only in time of terror and trouble; the rest of the time they are scornfully ignored." It is during these long periods of neglect that the Balkan counties have badly needed the engagement of the great powers.  Yet the only country to demonstrate a sustained interest in the economic development of the Balkans was Nazi Germany during the 1930s. 

The Balkans

Misha Glenny

What he was, he was:
What he is fated to become
Depends on us.

Elegy for JFK
W.H. Auden

November 22, 1963

 

Crucifixion

And the night comes again to the circle studded sky
The stars settle slowly, in loneliness they lie
'Til the universe explodes as a falling star is raised
Planets are paralyzed, mountains are amazed
But they all glow brighter from the brilliance of the blaze
With the speed of insanity then he died

In the green fields a turnin', baby is born
His cries crease the wind and mingle with the morn
An assault upon the order, changing of the guard
Chosen for a challenge that is hopelessly hard
And the only single sound is the sighing of the stars
But to the silence of distance they are sworn

So dance, dance, dance
Teach us to be true
Come, dance, dance, dance
'Cause we love you

Images of innocence charge him to go on
But the decadence of destiny is looking for a pawn
To a nightmare of knowledge he opens up the gate
Binding revelation is laid upon his plate
That beneath the greatest love is a hurricane of hate
And God help the critic of the dawn

So he stands on the sea and he shouts to the shore
But the louder that he screams, longer he's ignored
For the wine of oblivion is drunk to the dregs
And the merchants of the masses almost have to be begged
'Til the giant is aware, someone's pulling at his leg
And someone is tapping at the door

To dance, dance, dance
Teach us to be true
Come, dance, dance, dance
'Cause we love you

Then his message gathers meaning and it spreads across the land
The rewarding of his pain is the following of the man
But ignorance is everywhere and people have their way
Success is an enemy to the losers of the day
In the shadows of the churches, who knows what they pray
For blood is the language of the band

The Spanish bulls are beaten, the crowd is soon beguiled
The matador is beautiful, a symphony of style
Excitement is ecstatic, passion places bets
Gracefully he bows to ovations that he gets
But the hands that are applauding are slippery with sweat
And saliva is falling from their smiles

So dance, dance, dance
Teach us to be true
Come, dance, dance, dance
'Cause we love you

Then this overflow of life is crushed into a liar
The gentle soul is ripped apart and tossed into the fire
First, a smile of rejection at the nearness of the night
Truth becomes a tragedy limping from the light
All the canons are horrified, they stagger from the sight
As the cross is trembling with desire

They say they can't believe it, it's a sacrilegious shame
Now, who would want to hurt such a hero of the game?
But you know I predicted it, I knew he had to fall
How did it happen? I hope his suffering was small
Tell me every detail, I've got to know it all
And do you have a picture of the pain?

So dance, dance, dance
Teach us to be true
Come, dance, dance, dance
'Cause we love you

Time takes her toll and memory fades
But his glory is broken in magic that he made
Reality is ruined, it's the freeing from the fear
Drama is distorted, what they want to hear
Swimming in their sorrow, in the twisting of a tear
As they wait for a new thrill parade

Yes, the eyes of the rebel have been branded by the blind
To the safety of sterility, the threat has been refined
The child was created, to the slaughterhouse he's led
So good to be alive when the eulogy is read
Climax of emotion, the worship of the dead
And the cycle of sacrifice unwinds

So dance, dance, dance
Teach us to be true
Come, dance, dance, dance
'Cause we love you

And the night comes again to the circle studded sky
The stars settle slowly, in loneliness they lie
'Till the universe explodes as a falling star is raised
Planets are paralyzed, mountains are amazed
But they all glow brighter from the brilliance of the blaze
With the speed of insanity then he died

Phil Ochs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Im2lYDnDdIU

The big lie about genocide in central Europe in the 20th century

All Balkan massacres this century have enjoyed the specific approval of state organs, whose agents have usually been the instigators as well.  This is not merely a case of an army commander winking to his troops surrounding defenceless women.  In Turkey during the Great War, in Croatia during the Second World War and in the Republika Srpska during the Bosnian war of 1992-5, the legal system was turned on its head -- murder was encouraged and approved by the state and its propaganda apparatus.  Not participating in murder, conversely, was regarded if not as 'illegal' then certainly as hostile behaviour. Such events are invariably accompanied by a historical justification which can usually be boiled down to the simple formula of 'eternal enmity' between two communities.  The construction of this justification by historians, newspapers and other media under state influence, however, tends to mask the real intentions of the elite.

The Balkans 1804-1999
Misha Glenny