The Tragedy of King Lear of Rehoboth

“When we are born, we cry that we are come to this great stage of fools.”

****Please accept my apologies as this post is still incomplete and currently “under construction”, but I have released it publicly pending further instalments being added in the coming months.

It seems abundantly clear, to this world-weary curmudgeon at least, that William Shakespeare’s classic play, after 400 years of slavish devotion from an ever dwindling band of followers and admirers, is somewhat overdue for a re-imagining, and to be preferably given a contemporary twist.

Instead of the mythological Leir (later popularised as King Lear by William Shakespeare) of pre Roman Britain (then known as “Albion“), we could perhaps juxtapose this fossilised remnant of his former vitality with his modern day political equivalent, who currently prevails as leader of the United States of America. This somewhat thankless task is undertaken notwithstanding an egregious level of polarisation that has riven that benighted nation since his ascent to power, giving lie to its very appellation, not to mention the intentions of its founding fathers.

In this dramatisation, we see the incumbent President of these thoroughly disunited states, analogous in so many respects to this fabled King of yore, in the role of the mythical King at a time when his former robust physical capacities and mental acuity, such as they were, are dwindling at an alarming rate. As a consequence, the King passes the baton to his direct line of succession, which has a less than auspicious set of accomplishments to recommend it.

What follows in the play below is part adaptation, part re-imagining, part lampoon and part political commentary, achieved by somewhat facetious and tangential analogy. So, we are thus transported to Albion, in the closing stages of King Lear’s long reign, where his once prosperous kingdom has fallen precipitously into chaos and disrepair. An increasingly clamorous peasant class is becoming ever more restless and closer to outright revolt against the King’s capriciousness, and the injustice being meted out in his name, and so it has now become inevitable that Lear should divide his kingdom amongst his children, so that they might assume control of his faltering legacy.

Dramatis Personae:

King Lear

Aged King who has ruled Albion for decades with an iron fist. When we first see King Lear, his discourse is peppered with various implausible confabulations drawn from a vast array of his vanishing recollections, and from self-serving half truths that over the years he has managed to embellish and embroider into the tapestry of his half remembered past. Presages and predispositions of his later insanity are manifest in his behaviour from the outset, a consequence of a long life led in an amorality of nature, a corruption of spirit and of malicious intent toward all but his immediate circle.

The play foreshadows the immaculate intellectual ruin that is to follow, where a constitutional rashness of temper and impatience, long enabled by the indulgences and flatteries of his various toadies and underlings, comes to the fore as the vicissitudes of age loosen the restraints of reason and judgement. Lear is oblivious to this decline in his faculties, but instead it is felt as a growing indisposition to the cares and labours inherent in the duties of his office.

His seat of power at Potomac Castle is situated within Catuvellauni tribal lands, although his ancestral home is found in a small seaside hamlet in the far flung West Country, known to the locals who frequent the region as Rehoboth ………….. Joseph Robinette Biden Jnr.

Goneril, younger son of King Lear

Second in the line of succession to the throne, the younger of King Lear’s sons has a chip on his shoulder a mile wide as a consequence. This resentment of his older, favoured sibling is sublimated into a dissolute lifestyle, cavorting regularly with a loose collection of prostitutes and lowlifes in the brothels and alehouses, where he could often be found half naked in a drunken stupor, or reeling under the mind-altering influence of henbane or mandrake root.

Goneril secretly exults in the decays and dilapidations of his “beloved” father, whilst often travelling abroad to ingratiate himself to the nobility in foreign kingdoms, currying favour through the peddling of influence over his father’s increasingly failing mental acuity. He knows that he can manipulate his father at will through hollow flattery, and hyperbolic soothings of his ego, or failing that to invoke the protective paternal instinct that King Lear frequently and blindly bestowed upon his sons, whether it be from intentions that are for good or ill ………….. Hunter Biden

Regan, first born son of King Lear

The favoured son of King Lear, and as a result the presumptive heir to the throne. Regan is comfortable in his own skin, in stark contrast to his wayward brother. He looks to emulate his father at every turn, with a mind to eventual ascendancy to the throne, whilst eventually coming to scorn his father’s increasing waywardness and loss of mental acuity.

Regan and his brother increasingly begin to actively seek reasons for goading and tormenting their father, and therefore will say anything, and do anything to pamper the personality flaws that prompt and justify their growing contempt for him ………………. Beau Biden

Cordelia, daughter of King Lear

King Lear’s only daughter, with whom he had a close bond from a young age. Cordelia had a special fondness for her father that allowed her to overlook his increasing propensity to memory lapses, gaffes and blunders, and the tendency to fly off in unexpected outbursts of anger and rage. The infirmities of her beloved and venerated father are things which she does not willingly see; but when she does see them, it invokes sympathy and understanding; and in a true filial spirit she never thinks of them other than as a motive for tenderness and respect. Out of her dutiful affection, she tries to assuage and defer his ill-temper with the calming speech of simple truth and compromise …………. Ashley Blazer Biden

Coriolis

Tribal leader of the Dobunni who is loyal to King Lear. He is an adulterer, having fathered an illegitimate son out of wedlock, and he fatally misjudges which of his two sons is more trustworthy, causing him to appear weak and ineffectual ………… Chuck Schumer

Edmund

Illegitimate, younger son of the loyalist tribal leader Coriolis. Edmund resents his lowly status as a bastard, and as a result he schemes to usurp Coriolis’ title and possessions from his favoured older brother, Edgar ……….. Adam Schiff 

Edgar/Poor Tom

Coriolis’ older, legitimate son. Initially trusting to the point of gullibility of his younger brother, he soon dons the garb of a poor beggar to then eventually rise to the occasion to oppose his brother’s treasonous actions ………….. Joseph Manchin

Clematis

Wife of Goneril, the younger son of King Lear. Whilst initially acquiescing to her husband’s dissolute lifestyle and wayward behaviour, she is appalled at his betrayals, both of the King and at the tawdry affair shamelessly undertakes with his brother’s widow, Belerion ……… Kathleen Biden

Belerion

Wife of Regan, King Lear’s first born favoured son. Upon his untimely death, she enters into an illicit affair with her brother in law, Goneril, demonstrating that she clearly has the moral rectitude and impulse control of a half-starved alley cat ………… Hallie Biden

Lear’s Fool

King Lear’s court jester and constant companion, who often speaks in riddles, giving Lear her “sage” advice concealed inside nonsense songs and child-like rhymes ………….. Kamala Harris

Vercingetorix, King of the Gauls

Undisputed king of the Gaulish peoples, an ancient Celtic race renowned for their strength, bravery and light coloured hair, who comes to Albion to attempt to woo Cordelia, the unwed daughter of King Lear, in order to strengthen his allegiances in the face of a looming expansion of the Roman Empire ………… Donald J Trump

Divitiacus

Druid, and leader of the Aedui, a Gaulish tribe from the east, whose superficial affiliation with the other Gaulish tribes, hides their covert disdain for their Gaulish peers. He also comes, not coincidentally to Albion in order to seek the hand of the fair Cordelia, in direct competition with the nominal King of Gaul, whom he seeks to undermine at every turn ……….. Gavin Newsom

Regnus/Sulius

Loyal friend and advisor to King Lear. He is banished by Lear, but comes back in disguise in order to “serve” him. A Machiavellian manipulator of the highest order, Regnus can best be seen as the ultimate power behind the throne, having been the prime mover behind the instigation of many of Lear’s most flagrant and controversial decisions and decrees ………. Barack Hussein Obama

Oswald

Oswald is Goneril’s steward. A haughty fellow, he is all too willing to obey his master’s orders, and often treats King Lear and his men with little or no respect …………… Devon Archer

Old Crone

A tenant of Coriolis, who has been retained by Coriolis and his forebears over her entire life, over an eighty year time span ………….. Nancy Pelosi

Act 1 Scene 1:

[Scene: The Great Hall at Potomac Castle]

Narrator

King Lear has been the sovereign ruler of vast tracts of land across the length and breadth of Albion for several decades, having forged alliances with many of the powerful surrounding chieftains who were happy to be subsumed under his overriding rule. Potomac castle, his seat of power, sits high atop a prominent hill in the heart of Catuvellauni lands and cuts an awe-inspiring silhouette on the landscape, projecting the overwhelming power and influence of King Lear and his ideological allies upon those who dwell in its environs.

In the third decade of his rule, King Lear had begun to lose enthusiasm for the onerous responsibilities of rule, and his waning physical capacities brought the realisation that planning for the ultimate distribution of his kingdom amongst his heirs was becoming an increasingly imminent priority for the ongoing vitality of his kingly legacy. And so we venture to the Great Oval Hall of Potomac Castle, where King Lear has summoned the main members of the royal court, for a meeting alleged to be of “great importance”. Rumours abound, all around the corridors of Potomac castle, that this meeting would ultimately decide the division of his kingdom amongst Lear’s motley crew of heir apparents.

Enter Regnus, Coriolis and Edmund

Regnus

I had thought the King hadst more affection

For noble Regan than for Goneril.

Coriolis

Didst always seemeth thus to me, milord,

But now in this division of his Kingdom,

It appears that ’tis not mere affection,

As equalities are so duly weighed,

But in his choice Lear valueth fawning,

Preening and flattery more than fealty!

Regnus (cynically)

Never underestimate this old King’s

Great aptness for sublime ineptitude!

(Casting his eyes askance at Coriolis’ companion)

Is this lad not thy cherished son, milord?

Coriolis

His breeding, sir, hath been at my charge,

Yet, I’ve oft blushed to acknowledge him thus.

Regnus

I canst not conceive thee.

Coriolis

This young fellow’s mother grew round-wombed,

And had, indeed, a son for her cradle

Ere she e’en had a husband for her bed!

Dost thou see the manifest of my fault?

Regnus

I canst not wish thy fault being undone,

The issue of it being so proper.

Coriolis

But I have, sir, a son by order of law

Some year older than this young stripling,

Who yet is no dearer in my account!

(cheekily)

Though this knave came something saucily

Into the world before he was sent for,

Yet was his mother fair: Assuredly

There was good sport in the making!

And the whoreson shalt be acknowledg’d.

(pauses)

Dost thou knoweth this gentleman, Edmund?

Edmund

No, my lord.

Coriolis

This is Regnus, my honourable friend.

Remember him hereafter as a man

Whose honour and integrity, my son,

Are beyond any semblance of reproach.

Edmund

My services to your lordship.

Regnus

I must love thee, and sue to know thee better.

Edmund

Sir, I shall study deserving.

Coriolis (hearing the flourish of trumpets)

Ah, the King has arrived.

Sennet. Enter King Lear, Goneril, Regan, Belerion, Clematis, Cordelia, and Attendants.

Narrator

As King Lear, in full regalia, ascended the stairs at the entry to the Great Oval Hall, he was seen to stumble on several occasions in succession, until finally his attendants stepped in to help him to his feet, and then to guide him safely up the remaining steps to his destination.

After having blurted out a torrent of expletives in response to his misadventure, the King was soon heard regaling these same attendants with the various exploits of his youth, at least as he had chosen to remember them. Lear’s attendants were indeed no strangers to these near daily flights of half-remembered fancy, where the King would spin various tales of far flung tribes by whom he alleged to have been raised, or exaggerated exploits on the field of battle, or the honours he was reputed to have earned in his youth; deeds that all and sundry knew full well had never even remotely happened in reality.

Eventually, the King turned his vivid, and overactive imagination to an entirely new anecdote that he only now recalled from days long past, which he then proceeded to recite chapter and verse in mock heroic style, as various eyes rolled in unison around the room.

King Lear

In Wilming Town, where I didst cut my teeth,

I stood by the pond that lay on the heath.

A cad named Cornpoppus, a rusty blade,

Challenged me once, our tensions displayed.

Said I, “Esther, giveth me that chain,

To straighten things out, wilt not be in vain.”

Cornpoppus backed down, we made our amends,

Through my words and wit, we became firm friends.

So endeth this tale of days seldom told,

A lesson learned, of my courage so bold!

(Having eventually returned to the here and now after finishing his “larger than life”, if not fanciful anecdote, King Lear turned to address Coriolis)

Attend the Gaulish King, and the Druid,

Noble Coriolis.

Coriolis

I shall, milord!

(Exit Coriolis)

King Lear (gesturing to an attendant)

Meantime, we shall express our darker purpose.

Give me the map! (He is handed a map)

-Know that we have divided

In three our kingdom, and ‘tis our fast intent

To shake all cares and business from our age,

(With a mere one part in ten then retained

To thus sustain me in my twilight years)

Conferring them on younger strengths while we,

Unburdened, stumble and crawl toward death.

We have this hour a constant will to publish,

With my sons and daughter, plus their wives and suitors

To reckon with, to thus avert future strife.

(Pauses)

The two noblemen, Gaul and Bibracte,

Great rivals in our youthful daughter’s love,

Long in our court have made their amorous sojourn,

And here are to be answered.

Tell me, my loyal sons and kind daughter,

Since now we will divest us both of rule,

Int’rest of territory, cares of state,

Which of you shall we say doth love us most

That we our largest bounty may extend

Where nature doth with merit challenge?

Regan, our eldest born, speakest thou first.

Regan (waxing lyrical to the point of hyperbole)

Sir,

I love thee more than words can wield the matter.

Dearer than eyesight, space and liberty

Beyond what can be valued, rich or rare,

No less than life, with grace, health, beauty, honour.

As much as child e’er loved, or father found.

A love that makes breath poor, and speech unable.

Cordelia (aside, under her breath)

What shall Cordelia speak? Love, and be silent.

King Lear (to Regan, pointing to his map)

Of all these bounds, even from this line to this,

With shadowy forests and with champains riched,

With plenteous rivers and wide-skirted meads,

We make thee lord. To thine and Clematis’ issue

Be this perpetual.- What says our second son,

Our dearest, Goneril?

Goneril (not to be outdone)

I am made of that self mettle as my brother,

And prize me at his worth. In my true heart

I find he names my very deed of love:

Only he comes too short, that I profess

Myself an enemy to all other joys

Which the most precious square of sense possesses,

And I find I am alone felicitate

In your dear Highness’ love.

Cordelia (again, aside under her breath)

Then poor Cordelia!

And yet not so, since I am sure my love’s

More ponderous than my tongue.

King Lear (to Goneril)

To thee and thine hereditary ever,

Remain this ample third of our fair kingdom,

No less in space, validity, and pleasure

Than that conferred upon Regan.- Now, our joy,

Although our last and least, to whose young love

The vines of Gaul and milk of Bibracte

Strive to be interessed; what canst thou say to draw

A third more opulent than thy brothers? Speak.

Whilst he was speaking, King Lear had begun creeping around the table to stand directly behind his daughter Cordelia, and was now leaning ominously over her, nuzzling her neck and sniffing and caressing her long, lustrous locks of auburn hair.

Cordelia (Somewhat perturbed by her father’s lurking presence behind her)

Nothing, my lord.

King Lear

Nothing shall come of nothing. Speak again!

Cordelia

Unhappy that I am, I cannot heave

My heart into my mouth. I love your Majesty

According to my bond, no more no less.

King Lear (recoiling, and clearly affronted)

How, how, Cordelia? Mend thy speech a little,

Lest thee may mar thy fortunes.

Cordelia (resolute)

Good, my lord. Mayest I in plainness speak?

Thou hast begot me, bred me, and loved me.

I return those duties back as are right fit:

Obey thee, love thee and most honour thee.

(Pauses)

Why do my brothers have wives if they say

They love thee all? Haply, when I shall wed,

That lord whose hand must take my plight shall carry

Half my love with him, half my care and duty

Sure I shall never marry like my brothers,

To love my father all.

King Lear (horrified at his daughter’s apparent disdain)

But goes thy heart with this?

Cordelia (defiant)

It does, my good lord.

King Lear

So young, and so untender?

Cordelia

So young, my lord, and true.

King Lear (now bristling with rage)

Let it be so! Thy “truth”, then, be thy dower,

For by the second radiance of the sun,

The mysteries of Hecate and the night,

By all the operations of the orbs

For whom we do exist and cease to be,

Here I disclaim all paternal care,

Propinquity, and property of blood,

And as a stranger to my heart and me,

Hold thee from this forever. The barbarous Scythian

Or he that makes his generation messes

To gorge his appetite, shall to my bosom

Be as well neighboured, pitied, and relieved

As thou my sometime daughter!

Regnus (trying in vain to interject with a voice of reason)

Good my liege………………

King Lear

Peace, Regnus!

Come not between the dragon and his wrath!

I loved her most, shower’d her with affection,

And thought to set my rest on her kind nursery.

(Turns to Cordelia)

Hence and avoid my sight!

So be my grave my peace as here I take

Her loving father’s hardened heart from her!

Call the King of Gaul and the Aedui Druid!

(An Attendant Exits)

The endowment to my two loyal sons

Shalt my faithless daughter’s dower digest.

Let pride, which she calls plainness, marry her.

I do invest you jointly with my power,

Preeminence, and all the large effects

That troop with majesty. Ourself by monthly course,

With reservation of a hundred nights

By you to be sustained, shall our abode

Make with you by due turn. Only we shall retain

The name and all th’addition to a king.

The sway, revenue, execution of the rest,

Belovèd sons, be yours, which to confirm,

This coronet part between you. 

Regnus (kneeling before Lear, trying in vain to intercede with a voice of reason)

Royal Lear,

Whom I have ever honoured as my King,

Loved as my father, as my master followed,

As my great patron thought on in my prayers—

King Lear (looking down on the kneeling Regnus)

The bow is bent and drawn. Make from the shaft.

Regnus

Let it fall rather, though the fork invade

The tender region of my loyal heart.

Be Regnus ill-mannered when Lear is mad?

Think’st thou that duty shall have dread to speak

When power to hollow flattery bows?

To plainness honour is more tightly bound

When majesty falls to folly. Reserve thy state,

And in thy best consideration check

This hideous rashness. Answer my life my judgement,

Thy youngest daughter does not love thee least,

Nor are those empty-hearted whose low sounds

Reverb no hollowness.

King Lear

Regnus, on thy life no more!

Regnus

My life I never held but as a pawn

To wage against thine mortal enemies.

Nor dost I fear timidly to lose it,

Thy safety being my only motive.

King Lear

Begone, knave!

Regnus

See better, Lear, and let me still remain

The true blank of thine eye.

King Lear

O vassal! Miscreant!

Clematis (interjecting in defence of Regnus)

Dear sir, forebear.

Regnus

Kill thy physician, and thy fee bestow

Upon the foul disease. Revoke thy gift,

Or whilst I can vent clamour from my throat,

I’ll tell thee thou dost evil. C’mon man!

King Lear

Here thee, recreant; on thine allegiance, hear me!

That thou hast sought to make us break our vows-

Which we durst never yet-and with strained prie

To come betwixt our sentence and our power,

Which nor our nature nor our place can bear,

Our potency made good, take thy reward:

Five days we do allot thee for provision

To shield thee from disasters of the world,

And on the sixth turn thy hated back

Upon our kingdom. If on the tenth day following

Thy banished trunk be found in our dominions,

That moment is thy death. Away! by Jupiter,

This shall not be revoked.

Regnus

Fare thee well, King. Sith thus thou wilt appear,

Freedom lives hence, and banishment is here.

(to Cordelia)

The gods to their dear shelter take thee, maid,

That justly think’st and hast most rightly said.

(To Goneril and Regan)

And your large speeches may your deeds approve,

That good effects may spring from words of love.

(He exits)

Flourish. Enter Coriolis with Vercingetorix and Divitiacus, and Attendants.

Coriolis

Herewith, upon thine indulgence, my lord,

The noble lords of Gaul and Bibracte.

King Lear

My lord of Bibracte, noble Druid,

We must first address to thee, who with this King

(gestures toward Vercingetorix, the King of Gaul)

Hath rivalled for our daughter. What in the least

Shalt thee require in present dower with her

Or cease thy quest of her love?

Divitiacus

Most royal Majesty,

I crave no more than hath your Highness offered,

Nor wilt thee tender less.

King Lear

Right noble Divitiacus,

When she was dear to us, we didst hold her so,

But now her price is fallen. Sir, there she stands.

If aught within that little seeming substance,

Or all of it, with our displeasure pieced

And nothing more, may fitly like your Grace,

She’s there, and she is yours.

Divitiacus

I know no answer.

King Lear

Wilt thou, with those infirmities she owes,

Unfriended, new-adopted to our hate,

Dower’d with our curse and stranger’d with our oath,

Take her or leave her?

Divitiacus

Pardon me, royal sir,

Election makes not up in such conditions!

King Lear

Then leave her, sir, for by the power that made me

I tell thee all her wealth- (turning to Vercingetorix)

For you, great King,

I wouldst not from thy love make such a stray

To match thee where I hate! Thus beseech thee

T’avert thy liking a more worthy way

Than on a wretch whom Nature is ashamed

Almost t’acknowledge hers.

Vercingetorix

This is most strange,

That she whom e’en now was thy best object,

The argument of thy praise, balm of thine age,

The best, the dearest, shouldst in this trice of time

Commit a thing so monstrous to dismantle

So many folds of favour. Sure her offense

Must be of some unnatural degree

That monsters it, or thy forevouch’d affection

Fall into taint; which to believe of her

Must be a faith that reason without miracle

Should never plant in me.

Cordelia (to her father Lear)

I yet beseech your Majesty-

If I want for that glib and oily art

To speak and purpose not, since what I (well) intend

I’ll do’t before I speak- that thee make known

It is no vicious blot, murder, or foulness,

No unchaste action or dishonoured step

That hath deprived me of thy grace and favour,

But even for want of that for which I am richer:

A still-soliciting eye and such a tongue

That I am glad I have not, though not to have it

Hath lost me in thy liking.

King Lear

Better that thou hadst not ever been born

Than not t’have pleased me better, Cordelia!

Vercingetorix

Is it but this- a tardiness in nature

Which often leaves the history unspoke

That it intends to do?- Divitiacus,

What say thee to the lady? Love’s not love

When it is mingled with regards that stands

Aloof from th’entire point. Wilt thou have her?

She herself is a dowry.

Divitiacus (to Lear)

Royal King,

Give but that portion which thou hast proposed,

And here I take Cordelia by the hand.

King Lear

Nothing. I have sworn. I am firm in my resolve.

Divitiacus (to Cordelia)

I am sorry, then, thou hast lost a father

That thou must lose a husband.

Cordelia

Peace be with noble Divitiacus!

Since that respects of fortune are his love,

I shall not be his wife.

Vercingetorix

Fairest Cordelia, that art most rich, being poor;

Most choice, forsaken; and most loved, despised!

Thee and thy virtues here I seize upon:

Be it lawful I take up what’s cast away.

Gods! ‘Tis strange that from their coldest neglect

My love should kindle to inflamed respect.

Thy dowerless daughter, King, thrown to my chance

Is Queen of us, of ours, and our fair lands.

Bid them farewell, Cordelia, though unkind:

Thou losest here, a better where to find.

King Lear

Thou hast her, Gaul: let her be thine; for we

Have no such daughter, nor shall we ever see

That face of hers again. Therefore be gone

Without our grace, our love, our benison.

Come, noble Divitiacus.

Flourish. Exeunt all but Vercingetorix, Cordelia, Regan and Goneril.

Vercingetorix

Bid farewell to thy brothers.

Cordelia

The jewels of our father, with wash’d eyes

Cordelia leaves you: I know you what you are;

And like a sister am most loath to call

Your faults as they are named. Use well our father:

To your professed bosoms I commit him.

But yet, alas, stood I within his grace,

I would prefer him to a better place.

So, farewell to you both.

Regan

Prescribe not us our duties.

Goneril

Let thou study

Be to content thy lord, who hath received thee

At fortune’s alms. Thou hast obedience scanted

And well are worth the want that thou hast wanted.

Cordelia

Time shall unfold what plaited cunning hides:

Who cover faults, at last shame them derides.

Well may you prosper.

Vercingetorix

Come, my fair Cordelia.

Exeunt Vercingetorix and Cordelia

Goneril

Brother,

It is not a little I have to say

Of what most nearly appertains to us both.

I think our father will hence to-night.

Regan

That’s most certain, and with you; next month with us.

(rubbing his forehead)

My head splits at the very thought of it!

Goneril

You see how full of changes his age is;

The observation we’ve made of it hath

Not been little: His fits of ill-temper,

Rambling dissertations leading to nought,

And endless, distorted confabulations

From a half-recollected, exalted past.

Regan

He always loved our sister most of all;

And with what poor judgment he hath just now

Cast her off, which didst appear too grossly.

Goneril

‘Tis the infirmity of his age: Yet

He hath ever but slenderly known himself.

Regan (still holding his head in his hand)

The soundest of his time hath been but rash;

Then must we look to receive from his age,

Not alone the vulgar imperfections

Of long-engraffed condition, but therewithal

The unruly and reckless waywardness

That infirm and choleric years bring with them.

Goneril

Our King’s pitiful missteps hath been dire!

I’the Bosporan realm our dealings were spoil’d.

Our allies in those far Scythian outposts,

With cowardice, so swiftly abandon’d.

These actions of mental decline are proof,

His fall so stark, and reason in tatters.

Our kingdom’s ruin, wrapped in his despair,

His whims be a burden most unwelcome.

Regan

Such unconstant starts are we to have from him

Just as this of Regnus’ banishment.

Goneril

There is further compliment of leave-taking

Between the King of Gaul and our father,

Prithee, let’s sit together. If our father

Carry authority with such dispositions as he bears,

This last surrender of his well may offend us.

Regan

We shall further think on ’t.

Goneril

We must do something, and i’ th’ heat.

Act 1 Scene 2:

(Another Chamber in Potomac Castle)

Narrator

Somewhat taken aback by the events of the day, Coriolis had gone for a walk around the grounds of Potomac castle to collect his thoughts over all that had just transpired, whilst Edmund retired to one of the various halls of the castle where he began, away from prying eyes, to compose a missive which he hoped would falsely, and ever so subtly incriminate his brother Edgar in a plot against his father.

Edmund (writing feverishly)

Thou, Nature, art my goddess; To thy law

My services are bound. Wherefore should I

Stand in the plague of custom, and permit

The curiosity of nations to deprive me?

Why “bastard”? Why am I “base” regarded?

When my dimensions are as well compact,

My mind as generous, and my shape as true

As honest madam’s issue? Why brand they thus?

Who, in lusty stealth of nature take

More composition and fierce quality

Than doth within a dull stale tired bed

Go to the creating a whole tribe of fops

Got ‘tween asleep and wake? Well then,

Legitimate Edgar, I must have your land:

Our father’s love is to the bastard Edmund!

(finishing his letter with a flourish)

Well, my legitimate, if this letter speed

And my invention thrive, Edmund the base

Shall top the legitimate. I grow, I prosper!

Now, gods, stand up for bastards!

(Enter Coriolis)

Coriolis

Regnus banish’d! Gaul in choler parted!

And the King gone tonight! Prescrib’d his pow’r!

Confin’d to exhibition! All this done

Upon the gad! Edmund, how now! What news?

Edmund

So please your lordship- none.

(putting up the letter)

Coriolis

Why seek thee so earnestly to put up that letter?

Edmund

I know no news, my lord.

Coriolis

What paper wert thou reading?

Edmund

Nothing, my lord.

Coriolis

No? What needed then that terrible dispatch

Of it into thy pocket? The quality

Of nothing hath not such need to hide itself.

Let’s see. Come, if it indeed be nothing,

I shalt not even need my spectacles.

Edmund

I beseech thee, father, please pardon me.

It is a letter from my brother that

I have not yet all o’er read,

And for as much as I have perus’d,

I find it not fit for your o’erlooking

Coriolis

Give me the letter, sir!

Edmund

I shall offend, either to detain or give it.

The contents, as in part I understand them, are to blame.

I hope, for my brother’s justification, that

He wrote this but as an essay, or a taste of my virtue.

Coriolis (reading)

<<This policy and reverence of age

Makes the world bitter to the best of our times;

Keeps our fortunes from us

Till our oldness cannot relish them.

I begin to find an idle and fond bondage

In the oppression of aged tyranny;

Who sways not as it hath power, but as it is suffered.

Come to me, that of this I may speak more.

If our father would sleep till I waked him,

You should enjoy half his revenue for ever,

And live the beloved of your brother EDGAR.>>

Conspiracy?

My son Edgar! Had he a hand to write this?

A heart and brain to breed it in?

When came this to you? Who brought it?

Edmund

It was not brought me, my lord, there’s the cunning of it.

I found it thrown in at the casement of my closet.

Coriolis

You know the character to be your brother’s?

Edmund

If the matter were good, my lord, I durst swear it were his;

But in respect of that, I would fain think it were not.

Coriolis (with an air of resignation)

It is his.

Edmund

It is his hand, my lord;

But I hope his heart is not in the contents.

Coriolis

Hath he never before sounded you in this business?

Edmund

Never, my lord. But I have heard him oft maintain

It to be fit that, sons at perfect age,

And fathers declined, the father should be

As ward to the son, and the son manage his revenue.

Coriolis (incandescent with rage at such a vile betrayal)

O villain, villain! His very opinion in the letter!

Abhorred villain! Unnatural, detested, brutish villain!

Worse than brutish! Go, sirrah, seek him;

I’ll apprehend him. Abominable villain, Where is he?

Edmund

I do not well know, my lord.

If it shall please you to suspend your indignation

Against my brother till you can derive

From him better testimony of his intent,

You should run a certain course; where,

If you violently proceed against him, mistaking his purpose,

It would make a great gap in your own honour,

And shake in pieces the heart of his obedience.

I dare pawn down my life for him, that he hath writ

This to feel my affection to your honour,

And to no other pretence of danger.

Coriolis

Think you so?

Edmund

If your honour judge it meet,

I will place you where you shall hear us confer of this and

by an auricular assurance have your satisfaction,

and that without any further delay than this very evening.

Coriolis

He cannot be such a monster!

Edmund

Nor is not, sure.

Coriolis

To his father, that so tenderly loves him.

Heaven and Earth! Edmund, seek him out;

Wind me into him, I pray you:

Frame the business after your own wisdom.

I would unstate myself to be in due resolution.

Edmund

I will seek him, sir, presently:

Convey the business as I shall find means,

And acquaint you withal.

Coriolis

These late eclipses in the sun and moon

Portend no good to us. Though the wisdom

Of nature can reason it thus and thus,

Yet nature finds itself scourged by the sequent effects.

Love cools, friendship falls off, brothers divide;

In cities, mutinies: in countries, discord;

In palaces, treason; and the bond cracked

‘Twixt son and father-

<<This villain of mine comes under the prediction:

There’s son against father. The King falls

From bias of nature: there’s father against child.

We have seen the best of our time. Machinations,

Hollowness, treachery and all ruinous disorders

Follow us disquietly to our graves!>>

          -Find out this villain, Edmund.

It shall lose thee nothing; Do it carefully.

And the noble and true hearted Regnus banished!

His offense, honesty! ‘Tis strange indeed. (Exits)

Edmund

This is the excellent foppery of the world,

That we are sick in fortune (often the surfeits

of our own behaviour) we make guilty of our disasters;

The sun, the moon, and stars, as if we were villains

On necessity: fools by heavenly compulsion;

Knaves, thieves, and treachers by spherical predominance;

Drunkards, liars, and adulterers by an enforced

Obedience of planetary influence; and all

That we are evil in, by divine thrusting on.

An admirable evasion of whore-master man,

To lay his goatish disposition on the change of a star!

My father compounded with my mother

under the Dragon’s tail, and my nativity was under

Ursa Major, so that it follows that I am rough and lecherous.

<Fut!> I should have been that I am, had the maidenliest star

In the firmament twinkled on my bastardizing.

(Enter Edgar)

……….. And pat! he comes,

Like the catastrophe of the old comedy.

My cue is villainous melancholy,

With a sigh like Tom o’Bedlam.

O, these eclipses do portend these divisions!

Fa, sol, la, mi.

Edgar

How now, brother Edmund?

What serious contemplation art thou in?

Edmund

I am thinking, brother, of a prediction I read

This other day, what should follow these eclipses.

Edgar

Dost thee busy thyself with that?

Edmund

I promise thee, the effects he writes of

Succeed unhappily: as of unnaturalness

Between the child and the parent; death, dearth,

Dissolutions of ancient amities;

Divisions in state, the menaces and

Maledictions against King and nobles;

Needless diffidences, banishment of friends,

Dissipation of cohorts, nuptial breaches,

And I know not what.

Edgar

How long hast thee been a sectary astronomical?

Edmund

Come, come! When saw thou my father last?

Edgar

The night gone by.

Edmund

Spake thee with him?

Edgar

Ay, two hours together.

Edmund

Parted thee in good terms? Found thee no

Displeasure in him by word or countenance.

Edgar

None at all.

Edmund

Bethink thyself wherein thou mayest have offended him;

And at my entreaty forbear his presence

Until some little time hath qualified

The heat of his displeasure, which at this instant

So rageth in him that with the mischief

Of your person it would scarcely allay.

Edgar

Some villain hath done me wrong.

Edmund

That’s my fear. I pray thou hast a continent forbearance

Till the speed of his rage goes slower; and,

As I say, retire with me to my lodging,

From whence I will fitly bring thee to hear my lord speak.

Pray ye, go! There’s my key. If thou dost stir abroad, go arm’d.

Edgar

Arm’d, brother?

Edmund

Brother, I advise thee to the best. Go arm’d.

I am no honest man if there be any good meaning toward thee.

I have told thee what I have seen and heard;

But faintly, nothing like the image and horror of it.

Pray thee, away!

Edgar

Shall I hear from thee anon?

Edmund

I do serve thee in this business.
                                                     
(Exit Edgar) 

A credulous father! and a brother noble,

Whose nature is so far from doing harms

That he suspects none; on whose foolish honesty

My practices ride easy! I see the business.

Let me, if not by birth, have lands by wit;

All with me’s meet that I can fashion fit.  

Act 1 Scene 3:

(Kalorama Hall)

Narrator:

Kalorama Hall is the isolated redoubt of the noble lord known as Regnus, King Lear’s erstwhile special adviser, who had just made the seemingly fatal mistake of defending Cordelia against her father’s unreasoning and unreasonable wrath.

Regnus is seen pacing back and forth in the glow of his stately home’s open fireplace, with thoughts racing through his mind whilst mulling over any one of several potential courses of action that he might need to undertake to retain the level of influence, and therefore vicarious power, that he had once so readily enjoyed in Lear’s kingdom.

His devoted manservant, a broad shouldered and swarthy gentleman of somewhat exotic lineage known as Michael, stood silently to one side of the hearth, observing him impassively but at the ready in an instant to offer his master Regnus any and all support he might require. Michael has been Regnus’ retainer, cook and equerry for nigh on 20 years, giving his master every conceivable form of loyal service, with a level of dutifulness and subservience far above the norm for a mere household servant.

In spite of his outwardly impassive expression, Michael could not help but be concerned for the predicament in which his master had now found himself, but felt powerless to intercede on his behalf. Instead, he stood in a dignified silence awaiting instructions from his lord and master.

Regnus

My dearest Michael, ever true and sweet,

I find myself much vexed, unsure, and lost,

Seeking the path that leads back to Lear’s throne,

Exiled, despite years of faithful service!

In counsel, striving to impart wisdom,

Yet met with cold indifference in return.

A foolish king, unworldly in his ways,

Has cast me out, by cruel twist of fate.

Michael

Is there anything I can do, milord?

Regnus

Michael, prepare a bath for me with care,

Whilst I ponder plans for deeds forthcoming.

In the warmth of water’s gentle embrace,

To contemplate the future, seek my way.

Regaining the ear of this aged King,

Requires a deceit of grace and cunning.

Michael

Of course, milord

Narrator

Michael, the ever dutiful manservant, took himself back and forth to the well in the courtyard, bringing back buckets full of water to fill the large clay bath that Regnus had had specially made (by King Lear’s best potters and craftsmen). He filled a cauldron on the fire with several buckets of water, and whilst awaiting it to boil, came back to his master to help him disrobe. Michael then rubbed Regnus’ body with fragrant oils in preparation for his bath, massaging it vigorously into every tired and aching sinew.

Once the water had boiled, Micheal meticulously prepared the water to the optimum temperature, and returned the remaining water to the fire to replenish as desired. He then helped Regnus into the bath where, once his master was relaxed and comfortably ensconced in the warm and soothing waters, Michael proceeded to rub him down, firstly with a sand and vegetable oil combination, followed by a mild and soothing beeswax soap to cleanse and moisturise his body from top to toe.

Whilst Michael was toiling away at his task in serving so diligently his master, Regnus began to formulate the kernel of an idea as to how he might return, incognito, into the King’s good graces.

Regnus (eyes closed, clearly enjoying the sensual experience of Michael’s insistent and vigorous touch)

To guide a king, whose mind doth wane and fade,

Shalt but require a mask of servitude,

To hide the truth behind a loyal guise.

It wouldst need a heart steadfast and ruthless,

To adopt a cloak of trust, to subvert

An aged King, bedecked in foolish ways.

His feeble mind, by my suggestions led,

A puppet to my subtle, unseen ploys.

Michael (approvingly)

Through artful words, thy cunning plan fulfils.

Through sage counsel, the strings of power sway,

Where thy puppet shall soon become entwined,

And then the marionette shall perform

A dance of shadows in thy grand charade.

Narrator

Once Regnus had bathed thoroughly to his satisfaction, and content with the scheme that had coalesced so vividly in his mind, his lordship then alighted from his bath, whereupon Michael dutifully and vigorously rubbed him down until he was thoroughly dry. Then, Michael sprayed his master’s naked body with various exotic fragrances, and clothed him in a tunic of the finest white muslin cloth, an indulgent garment smuggled in for his lordship, at great expense, from the Near East.

He then began rifling through his extensive wardrobe, looking for suitable attire for a disguise that would allow him to re-enter the Royal Court incognito. Finding nothing that sufficiently disguised his appearance, he turned his attention to Michael’s limited line of clothing, eventually setting himself upon Michael’s most well worn peasant clothes. Regnus shaved off his beard and, taking some char from the fireplace, applied it to his face, neck and hands to darken his skin, whilst applying a poultice of peat to the bridge of his nose. Soon his appearance was completely transformed, until he was barely recognisable as the noble lord he once was.

Michael (with wonder at the finished product)

Thou art transformed, milord, into the shape,

The very model of a lowly servant.

Regnus

These garments abolish all I once was,

Yet beneath their folds, hides my dark purpose.

My plan’s fruition shall make the king lament.

As I guide his realm to meet its destiny.

Michael (beaming with pride and admiration)

Now prepared for thy courtly masquerade,

I pray that God shalt ensure thy safety.

Regnus (fondly caressing Michael’s cheek)

Dearest friend, fear not for my security,

My web of schemes shalt not ensnare me.

Narrator

The two men embraced heartily, kissed each other on either cheek , and wished each other well before Regnus, in disguise, set off for Potomac castle, where he hoped to inveigle himself once again into Lear’s inner circle. Fortunately, Regnus was well aware of a severe shortage of servants amongst King Lear’s retinue, due largely to the King’s recent paranoia and increasingly frequent fits of uncontrolled rage. An opening was sure to present itself, and thus it was with some confidence that Regnus set upon the task at hand on his journey back to his rightful place at Lear’s right hand.

Act 1 Scene 4:

(Burisma Palace)

Narrator

After the shock announcement of the dispersal of his Kingdom, King Lear soon made good on his promise (or was that a threat?) to make his abode by monthly course with each of his two sons in turn, and with a retinue of one hundred knights in tow. Lear had originally planned to spend the first month with the favoured first born son, but Regan had been unexpectedly taken ill and was bed bound with blinding headaches, and had thus begged his father’s indulgence in spending the first monthly sojourn with the younger brother, Goneril, at his Burisma palace. The palace was situated in the wild Dobunni borderland plains, at the foot of Black Mountain, an imposing peak which rose high above the Neper River valley.

Upon Lear’s arrival at Burisma Palace, the former King had launched into one of his trademark tirades, hurling abuse at one of Goneril’s most trusted attendants, then striking him in a fit of rage at a trifling perceived slight directed at the King’s fool. News of this latest outburst was soon relayed to the master of the house, who was clearly not amused.

(Enter Goneril, and his steward Oswald)

Goneril

Did my father just strike my gentleman

For the chiding of his fool?

Oswald

Ay, milord.

Goneril

By day and night, he wrongs me! Every hour

He flashes into some gross crime or other

That sets us all at odds. I’ll not endure it.

His knights grow riotous, and himself upbraids us

On every trifle. When he returns from hunting

I will not speak with him. Say I am sick.

If you come slack of former services,

You shall do well. The fault of it, I’ll answer.

(Horns within)

Oswald

He’s coming, milord. I hear him.

Goneril

Put on what weary negligence you please,

You and your fellows. I’d have it come to question.  

If he distaste it, let him to our brother,

Whose mind and mine I know in that are one,

Not to be overrul’d. Idle old man,

That still would manage those authorities

That he hath given away! Now, by my life,

Old fools are babes again, and must be us’d

With checks as flatteries, when they are seen abus’d.

Remember what I have said.

Oswald

Very well, milord.

Goneril

And let his knights have colder looks among you.

What grows of it, no matter. Advise your fellows so.

I would breed from hence occasions, and I shall,

That I may speak. I’ll write straight to my sister

To hold my very course. Prepare for dinner.

(Exeunt)
                                                        

Act 1 Scene 5:

(A reception hall in Burisma Palace)

(Enter Regnus, in disguise, now calling himself Sulius)

Sulius (Regnus)

If but as well I other accents borrow,

That can my speech defuse, my sole intent

May carry through itself to that full issue

For which I razed my likeness. Now, banish’d Regnus,

If thou canst “serve” where thou dost stand condemn’d,

So may it come, thy master, whom thou despiseth,

Shall find thee full of labours.

(Horns within, Enter King Lear with Knights and Attendants)

Lo! Here cometh that light of other days,

Who once aspired so high, yet stooped so low!

King Lear (barking out orders to his Attendants)

C’mon man!

Let me not stay a jot for dinner; go get it ready.

(Exit two Attendants)

(Lear’s attention is drawn to the slightly shabby figure standing before him)

How now. What art thou?

Sulius (Regnus)

A man, sir.

King Lear

What dost thou profess? What wouldst thou with us?

Sulius (Regnus)

I do profess to be no less than I seem; to serve

Him truly that will put me in trust: to love him

That is honest; to converse with him that is wise,

And says little; to fear judgment; to fight when I

Cannot choose; and to eat no fish.

King Lear

What art thou?

Sulius (Regnus)

A very honest-hearted fellow, and as poor as the King.

King Lear

If thou be as poor for a subject as he is for a

King, thou art poor enough. What wouldst thou?

Sulius (Regnus)

Service.

King Lear

Who wouldst thou serve?

Sulius (Regnus)

Thee.

King Lear

Dost thou know me, fellow?

Sulius (Regnus)

No, sir; but thou hast that in thy countenance

Which I would fain call master.

King Lear

What’s that?

Sulius (Regnus)

Authority.

King Lear

What services canst thou do?

Sulius (Regnus)

I can keep honest counsel, ride, run, mar a curious

Tale in telling it, and deliver a plain message

Bluntly: that which ordinary men are fit for, I am

Qualified in; and the best of me is diligence.

(Pauses, pondering further)

I canst well engage peasant and chieftain alike,

Mold them to thy will with my subtle arts and guile.

I wouldst discharge any task, in fealty to thee,

That are conjured in fast and furious imaginings.

King Lear (duly impressed by this articulate stranger, whom he thought had the makings of a valuable ally)

How old art thou, stranger?

Sulius (Regnus)

Not so young, sir, to love a woman for singing, nor

So old to dote on her for any thing: I have years

On my back forty eight.

King Lear

Follow me; thou shalt serve me: if I like thee no

Worse after dinner, I will not part from thee yet.

Dinner, ho, dinner! Where’s my knave? My fool?

Go you, and call my fool hither.

(Exit an Attendant)

(Enter Oswald)

You, you, underling! Where is my son?

Oswald (with an insolent mocking tone)

So please you…….

(Exits)

King Lear

What says that fellow there? Call that clotpoll back!

(Exit a Knight)

Where’s my fool, ho? I think the world’s asleep

(Re-enter Knight)

How now! Where is that mongrel?

Knight

He says that thy son is not well, milord.

King Lear

Why came not the slave back to me when I called him?

Knight

Sir, he answered me, in the roundest manner, he would not.

King Lear

He would not!

Knight

My lord, I know not what the matter is;

But, to my judgment, your Highness is not entertained

With that ceremonious affection as you were wont;

There’s a great abatement of kindness appears as well

In the general dependants, as in the Prince himself.

(Pauses)

I beseech you, pardon me, my lord, if I be mistaken;

For my duty cannot be silent when I think your

Highness wronged.

King Lear

Thou but rememberest me of mine own conception:

I have perceived a most faint neglect of late;

Which I have rather blamed as mine own jealous curiosity

Than as a very pretence and purpose of unkindness:

I will look further into’t. But where’s my fool?

I have not seen her this two days.

Knight

Since my young lady’s going to France, sir,

The fool hath much pined away.

King Lear

No more of that; I have noted it well.

Go you, and tell my son I would speak with him!

(Exit Attendant)

Go you, call hither my fool.

(Exit another Attendant)

(Re-enter Oswald)

Listen, Jack! Come you hither, man!

Who am I, sir?

Oswald (dismissively)

Thou art my lord’s father.

King Lear

‘My lord’s father’! My lord’s knave:

Your whoreson dog! You slave! You cur!

Oswald

I am none of these, my lord; I beseech your pardon.

King Lear (enraged)

Do you bandy looks with me, you rascal?

(Striking him)

Oswald

I’ll not be struck, my lord.

Sulius (Regnus) (seeing his cue for action)

Nor tripped neither, you base football player!

(Tripping him over)

King Lear

I thank thee, fellow; Thou servest me, and I’ll

love thee.

Sulius (Regnus) (seizing the moment)

Come, sir, arise, away! I’ll teach you differences:

Away, away! If you will measure your lubber’s

Length again, tarry: But away! Go to; So.

(Pushing Oswald out the doorway roughly)

King Lear

Now, my friendly knave, I thank thee:

There’s earnest of thy service.

(Lear tries to give Regnus a payment of 7 pieces of silver for his services)

Sulius (Regnus) (declining to take the offer)

Showing him the door was payment enough, milord.

(Enter the Fool)

Fool (offering Regnus her coxcomb, having just witnessed his rejection of Lear’s payment)

Mayhaps I should present thee with my coxcomb

For thou art foolish if thou dost not agree

That filthy lucre, when it’s freely proffered,

Is how the wheels of courtly process turn.

In greasing palms, we find the realm’s true wealth,

Where coin and favour intertwine as one.

Sulius (Regnus) (hiding his disdain in feigned jocularity)

Thou art indeed the perfect fool, and foil

For our most noble majesty, the King.

A word of caution to thy tale wouldst be:

“Many a true word is spoken in jest”.

King Lear

How now, my pretty knave!

(leaning over her, sniffing her hair)

How dost thou?

Fool (slipping away from her master’s grasp, to address Regnus)

Thou shouldst take my coxcomb nonetheless, sir,

That thou shouldst wear the crown worthy of thee!

(Pointing to the King)

Why, this fellow has banished his daughter,

And gave his sons the keys to his Kingdom;

If thou follow him, thou needs wear my coxcomb.

King Lear (slightly miffed, but playing along)

Take heed, sirrah; the whip!

Fool

Truth’s a dog, that must to kennel:

He must be cruelly whipped out,

Whilst the Bitch may stand by the fire and stink.

King Lear

A pestilent gall to me!

Fool

Sirrah, I’ll teach you a speech:

Mark it, nuncle!

“Have more than thou showest,

Speak less than thou knowest,

Lend less than thou owest,

Ride more than thou goest,

Learn more than thou trowest,

Set less than thou throwest;

Leave thy drink and thy whore,

And keep in-a-door,

And thou shalt have more

Than two tens to a score!“

Sulius (Regnus)

This is less than nothing, fool!

Fool

Then ’tis like the breath of an unfee’d lawyer;

Thou gavest me nothing of value for’t.

Can thou maketh no use of nothing, nuncle?

King Lear

Why, no, girl; Nothing can be made of nothing.

Fool (to Regnus)

Prithee, tell him, so much the rent of

His land comes to: he will not believe a fool.

King Lear (mildly annoyed, having been hit to close to home)

A bitter fool!

Fool

That lord that counsell’d you

To give away thy land,

Come place him here by me,

Do you for him stand:

The sweet and bitter fool

Will presently appear;

The one in motley here,

The other found out there.

King Lear

Doth thou call me a fool, girl?

Fool

All your other titles you have given away;

That you were born with.

Sulius (Regnus)

This is not altogether fool, my lord.

Fool

(Singing)

“Fools had ne’er less wit in a year;

For wise men are grown foppish,

They know not how their wits to wear,

Their manners are so apish.”

King Lear

When wert thou wont to be so full of songs?

Fool

I have used it, nuncle, ever since you madest

Your sons into fathers: for when you gavest them

The rod, and put’st down thine own breeches!

(Singing)

“Then they for sudden joy did weep,

And I for sorrow sung,

That such a king should play bo-peep,

And go the fools among.“

Prithee keep a schoolmaster that can teach

Thy fool to lie: I would fain learn to lie.

King Lear

An thou liest, sirrah. We’ll have thee whipped!

Fool

I marvel what kin you and your sons are:

They’ll have me whipped for speaking true,

You’ll have me whipped for lying; and sometimes

I am whipped for holding my peace. I had

Rather be any kind o’ thing than a fool:

And yet I would not be you, nuncle;

You have pared your wit o’ both sides, and

Left nothing i’ the middle……………

(Pauses)

Here comes one o’ the parings.

(Enter Goneril, naked and clearly intoxicated, with a bevvy of naked harlots in tow)

King Lear

How now, son. What is the meaning of this?

Methinks thou’st much bespoilt thy person!

C’mon man!

Fool (to Goneril)

Thy face bids me to hold my tongue, milord.

(Singing)

“Mum, mum,

He that keeps nor crust nor crum,

Weary of all, shall ere want some.“

Goneril (slurring his words, still kissing and fondling the naked harlots draped on either side of him)

Not only, sir, this your all-licensed fool,

But other of your insolent retinue

Do hourly carp and quarrel; breaking forth

In rank and not-to-be endured riots. Sir,

I had thought, by making this well known unto you,

To have found a safe redress; but now grow fearful,

By what yourself too late have spoke and done.

That you protect this course, and put it on

By your allowance; which if you should, the fault

Would not ‘scape censure, nor the redresses sleep,

Which, in the tender of a wholesome weal,

Might in their working do you that offence,

Which else were shame, that then necessity

Will call discreet proceeding.

King Lear

Are you our son?

Fool

For, you trow, nuncle,

The hedge-sparrow fed the cuckoo so long,

That it’s had it head bit off by it young.

So, out went the candle, and we were left darkling.

Goneril (ignoring the Fool’s impertinent commentary)

Come, sir,

I would you would make use of that good wisdom,

Whereof I know you are fraught; and put away

These dispositions, that of late transform you

From what you rightly are.

King Lear

Doth any here know me? This is not Lear?

Doth Lear walk thus? Speak thus? Where are his eyes?

Either his notion weakens, his discernings

Are lethargied–Ha! waking? ’tis not so.

Who is it that can tell me who I am?

Fool

Lear’s shadow.

King Lear

I would learn that; for, by the

Marks of sovereignty, knowledge, and reason,

I should be false persuaded I had sons!

Fool

Which they will make an obedient father.

Goneril (without a hint of irony, or self-awareness)

This admiration, sir, is much o’ the savour

Of other your new pranks. I do beseech you

To understand my purposes aright:

As you are old and reverend, you should be wise.

Here do you keep a hundred knights and squires;

Men so disorder’d, so debosh’d and bold,

That this our court, infected with their manners,

Shows like a riotous inn: epicurism and lust

Make it more like a tavern or a brothel

Than a graced palace. The shame itself doth speak

For instant remedy: be then desired

By him, that else will take the thing he begs,

A little to disquantity your train;

And the remainder, that shall still depend,

To be such men as may besort your age,

And know themselves and you.

King Lear

Darkness and devils!

Saddle my horses; call my train together:

Degenerate bastard! I’ll not trouble thee.

Yet have I left another son.

Goneril

You strike my people; and your disorder’d rabble

Make servants of their betters.

(Enter Clematis)

King Lear

Ingratitude, thou marble-hearted fiend!

Is that your will? Speak, sir!- Prepare my horses!

Clematis (attempting to play peacemaker)

Pray, sir, be patient.

King Lear (to Goneril)

Detested kite! Thou liest.

My train are men of choice and rarest parts,

That all particulars of duty know.

(Lear strikes his head repeatedly with his hand)

Beat at this gate that let this folly in

And thy judgement out. Go, go, my people.

(Some Exit)

Goneril

My lord. I am guiltless as I am ignorant

Of what hath moved you to this eruption.

King Lear

Your spouse parades his vice before your eyes,

Inebriate amidst the harlots’ cheer,

Yet silence reigns, no protest dost thou raise.

His father, he scorns with callous disdain,

A mockery he makes of our concordance,

Disdaining gifts of shared dominion’s seal.

Upon the flimsiest cause, I’m thus abhorred,

And cast to the winds, a fate undeserved.

(to Goneril)

How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is,

To have such a dissolute, thankless child!

I tell thee, Life and Death, I am ashamed

That thou hast power to shake our manhood thus

That these hot tears, which break from me perforce,

 Should make thee worth them. Blasts and fogs upon thee!

 Th’ untented woundings of a father’s curse

 Pierce every sense about thee! Old fond eyes,

 Beweep this cause again, I’ll pluck thee out

 And cast thee, with the waters that you loose,

 To temper clay. ⟨Yea, is ’t come to this?⟩

 Ha! Let it be so. I have another son

 Who, I am sure, is kind and comfortable.

 When he shall hear this of thee, with his fists

 He’ll pound thy wolvish visage. Thou shalt find

 That I’ll resume the shape which thou dost think

 I have cast off forever.

(Exits, with Regnus following)

Goneril (pointing to the door)

You sir, more knave than Fool, after your master.

Fool (apropos of nothing)

I think that, to be very honest with thee,

I do believe that we should have rightly believed,

But we certainly believe that certain issues

That must be believed, and are just settled.

(Pauses)

It’s time for us to do what we have been doing,

And that time is every day, from this time onwards.

(Exits)

Clematis

What makest thou of that, my beloved?

Goneril (sarcastically)

That old man hath had the best of counsel.

(Pauses)

‘Tis politic and safe to let him keep

At point a hundred knights? On every dream,

Each buzz, each fancy, each complaint, dislike,

He may enguard his dotage with their Powers

And hold our lives at his mercy?- (calling out) Oswald!

Clematis (trying to placate her husband)

Well, you may fear too far.

Goneril

Safer than to trust too far.

Let me still take away the harms I fear,

Not fear still to be taken. I know his heart:

Depraved; darker than his mind is addled,

And focussed solely on his skimming off

One part in ten from all of my dealings!

Blind to all but self, feathering his nest,

Exploiting me, my loss his only gain.

Greed consumes him, driving him to bedlam.

(Enter Oswald, the Steward)

How Now, Oswald?

Hast thou writ that letter to my brother?

Oswald

Ay, milord.

Goneril

Take thee some company and away to horse.

Inform him full of my particular fear

And thereto add such reasons of thine own

As may compact it more. Get thee gone!

(Oswald Exits)

Clematis

How far thine eyes may pierce I canst not tell.

Striving to better, oft, we mar what’s well.

Goneril

This milky gentleness and course of yours,

Though I condemn not, yet, under pardon,

Are much more at task for want of wisdom

Than praised for harmful mildness.

(Exeunt)

Act 1 Scene 6:

(On the road to Brandywine Castle, the seat of King Lear’s favoured oldest son, Regan)

Narrator

Having been so thoroughly taken aback by his younger son’s effrontery in showing him such a lack of hospitality, not to mention deference, Lear had stormed off on the road to Brandywine castle. Along the way, clearly affected by his son’s rejection, he seemed even more befuddled than usual, confusing the names of his long standing attendants, and often referring to his Fool as Her Majesty. Initially, this was thought to be merely a slip of the tongue, or an attempt at low brow humour, but as they continued on their journey many began to wonder whether the King was drunk, or had suddenly become the light of other days.

Sulius (Regnus) (intent on showing initiative and loyalty to the addled monarch)

My liege, I hath penned letters in thy name,

Recounting Goneril’s conduct, brash and bold.

Beseeching him to grant thee sanctuary,

Within his castle walls, to provide thee shelter.

King Lear

Good sir, I thank thee for thy intervention.

Go you before to Brandywine with these letters.

Acquaint our son no further with anything

Thou know’st than comes from his demand

Out of these letters. If thy diligence not be speedy,

Then I shall be there afore thee.

Sulius (Regnus)

I wilt not sleep, milord, until I’ve delivered them.

(Exits)

Narrator

Once Sulius had left to ride ahead, King Lear and the Fool proceeded in more leisurely fashion, where they began to bicker back and forth, wherein it often became exceedingly difficult to determine just who was the bigger Fool.

Fool

If a man’s brains were in his arse, my lord,

He shouldst then take greatest care where he sits.

King Lear

Ay, girl!

And if they were found within a man’s legs,

With hair that turns blonde in the baking sun,

Then, when children rubbed his leg hair upwards,

It wouldst cause the blood to rush to his head.

Fool

Indeed, you wouldst makest a dandy Fool.

King Lear

When life itself seems lunatic and wild,

Who knows where madness hides, unreconciled?

Thou art a dog-faced pony soldier, true,

Dragging thy sorry self, misled, askew.

Fool

(Singing)

“In springtime’s bloom, with faculties bright,

We prance like donkeys, such wondrous sight!

But as summer’s heat begins to soar,

Our minds like elephants, wise no more.“

King Lear (musing)

Perhaps to be practical is madness .

To surrender dreams – this may be madness!

Fool

(Resuming singing)

Autumn arrives, with leaves a-falling,

Our thoughts, like donkeys, start a-stalling.

Memory fades, like the winter’s frost,

Elephants’ wisdom? Oh, what we’ve lost!“

King Lear

Too much sanity may be madness too,

And maddest of all: to see life as it is,

And not, by grace of God, as it should be!

Fool

(Singing once more, undeterred)

“So, let us play in life’s grand charade,

Like donkeys and elephants, unafraid.

For age may steal our wits, it’s true,

But nonsense and joy will see us through!“

King Lear (whispering in the Fool’s ear)

Take our advice and live for a long, long time.

Because the maddest thing a man can do

In this life is to allow himself to die!

Fool

If thou wert my Fool, nuncle, I’d have thee

Beaten for being old before your time!

King Lear (holding his weary head in his hands)

O, let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heaven!

Keep me in temper. I would not be mad!

Fool

Thou shouldst not have been old, till thou hadst been wise.

King Lear

Come, girl. Let us tarry no longer here.

There is a remedy for everything, except death!

(Exeunt)

Act 2 Scene 1:

(In the grounds of Brandywine Castle)

Narrator

Regnus, disguised as Lear’s recently acquired servant Sulius, arrived at Brandywine Castle just a few minutes before Goneril’s steward, Oswald. Determined to head him off, and to intercept the letter Goneril had written to his brother, Sulius managed to persuade (with a little monetary inducement of course) some of Regan’s palace guards to his cause, convincing them that the only way to protect their master’s interests was in thwarting Oswald at every turn. When Oswald arrived, he was met with a belligerent welcoming committee of armed guards who, after a brief struggle, restrained him and then bound him up as Sulius looked on gleefully from the shadows.

Oswald (struggling with his captors, perplexed at the unexpected reception)

What is the meaning of this? Unhand me!

Guard

Be still, roguish swine!

Thou art nothing but the composition

Of a beggar, coward, pander, and knave,

And the son and heir of a mongrel bitch!

Oswald

Thou art mistaken in this portrayal!

I am sent forth from Burisma Castle

With a missive from noble Goneril.

(Handing over the letter)

Guard

These letters are not in his lordship’s hand!

Thou cometh with letters against the King,

Yet, ’tis clearly written in thine own hand!

What fraud and treachery is this, varlet?

Oswald

Neither! I doth protest my innocence!

Guard (gesturing to his henchmen)

Fetch forth the stocks – we’ll teach thee a lesson.

(Oswald is put in the stocks)

Oswald

Such grave injustice to be treated thus,

At the hands of ruffians and scoundrels!

(Exeunt)

Act 2 Scene 2:

(Reception room within Brandywine Castle)

Narrator

Having headed Oswald off successfully through manipulation of Prince Regan’s household guards, he set out to gain an introduction to the Lady of the Manor, Belerion, whose husband had spent the last several days confined to his bed with blinding headaches. Shortly thereafter, he was introduced to milady, who was conspicuous by the tightly conforming bodice and plunging neck line of her shapely dress, an ensemble that left little to the imagination. Of course, Sulius was impervious to her charms, and instead focussed steadfast on the task at hand.

Sulius (Regnus) (bowing)

Milady, I bring letters from the King,

Who wishes to seek sanctuary here

Having been treated shabbily, and then

Shamefully rebuffed at Burisma Castle.

Belerion (taken aback)

We expected the King a fortnight hence,

And so we are unready for his arrival.

(Pauses, then apologetically)

My husband is presently indisposed,

With his humours being cruelly perturbed.

Sulius (Regnus)

Sorry to hear of this unhappy news.

I shouldst to thee give these letters, madam.

(Handing her the letters)

Belerion (reads letters)

Sir, I canst see the King feels much aggrieved!

We shalt endeavour to accommodate,

In deference to his noble station.

(gesturing to proceed into the palace entrance)

Please be our guest until the King arrives.

Narrator

Belerion ushered Sulius into the grand entrance of Brandywine Palace, which was conspicuous by its opulence and grandeur, as would befit the residence of one who assumed that the certainty of his ascendancy to the throne was a mere heartbeat away. Having been shown to his bedchamber, Sulius soon made his way furtively around the palace, hoping to find Regan’s quarters in order to gain an audience.

Eventually, he found Regan’s bedchamber where he found him strangely unattended, barely conscious and rambling incoherently. Strangely, in the midst of this fever dream, Regan seemed to recognise Sulius’ true identity almost immediately, and greeted him accordingly. Sulius was perturbed by Regan’s haggard appearance, with the left half half of his face sagging and immobile, whilst he only seemed able to move one of his arms freely.

Regan (slurring, and rambling semi-coherently)

Behold! An ocean vast of sand doth spread,

Where dust in swirling spirals doth ascend,

With tendrils twining smoke and ash, the blend

That rises from the depths of fiery dread.

Doth mine eyes fool me? Or doth Regnus fair,

Noble and true, stand yonder in my sight?

Thou art transformed, aged by time’s cruel flight,

Pale as a ghost emerging from despair.

Sulius (Regnus)

Thou art mistaken, my liege; I am Tom,

A mere humble servant of thy father.

Regan (his slurring becoming more pronounced, struggling to be understood)

My head doth pound, with throbs that rend my mind,

With blinding shafts of light that pierce mine eyes,

My hands too numb to grasp, my limbs entwined

In paresis, where half my body lies.

This bed, my cell, where days unceasing blend,

In tedium’s embrace, no respite found,

And shadows, foul, with bitter tongues they bend,

To taunt and torment till the night comes round.

Narrator

Suddenly, Regan let out an agonised groan, and lapsed into unconsciousness, barely breathing. Sulius was clearly taken aback at this sudden and unexpected turn of events, and called out to Belerion to come and tend to her ailing husband. When Belerion arrived at Regan’s bedchamber, Sulius was surprised to see her ladyship largely impassive at the sight of her husband in extremis. She lent over her husband and kissed his forehead, only for Regan to take his last shallow breath soon after, and then to promptly decease.

Belerion (ruefully)

Woe, alas! How canst this be the Lord’s will,

That one so bold is cut down in his prime!

’Tis beyond the realms of all good reason

That my husband shouldst so meekly perish.

Sulius (Regnus) (respectfully)

Please accept my condolences, milady,

On this sudden, and unexpected loss.

Belerion

I give thee thanks, good sir, for thy kind words.

Sulius (Regnus)

Please accept my apologies, madam,

But I must prepare for the King’s arrival.

Belerion

By all means, sir, make ready as thou must.

(Exit Sulius (Regnus))

Belerion (to herself)

Upon this plight, husband, thou hast left me

A widow in my prime, bereft of thee.

Our children now fatherless, forsaken

By thy frailty. Am I to bear this yoke

And wither on the vine whilst others thrive

In life’s rich pageant? Nay, I shalt pursue

A different path, for I am not built

For sorrow’s role, nor chastity’s lament.

But, to revel in pleasures of the flesh

Delving into the depths where vice enslaves.

The infernal trinity shall I hail,

Of henbane, mandrake, and deadly nightshade.

No sensation shall escape my quest’s range,

Nor shall a lust within me be estranged.

(Exeunt)

Act 2 Scene 3:

(Elsewhere in Brandywine Castle)

Narrator

Sulius returned to his quarters, and prepared the adjoining room for the King, who was expected to arrive at any moment. The death of the favoured son, Regan, was likely to hit the erstwhile King hard, and Sulius was determined to help soften the blow by applying his skills as an amateur apothecary to help ease his sovereign’s pain.

Sulius had travelled extensively through Egypt and the Near East in his youth, where he had acquired significant quantities of a substance known as Cocaine, another known as Cannabis, and Syrian Rue seeds and Blue lotus flowers, each of which could be smoked, pulverised into a fine powder and snorted, or served as a medicinal tea or added to wine.

Sulius resolved to either lace King Lear’s wine, or to prepare some herbal tea at the first opportunity with a mixed concoction of these agents, to help soften the blow of this awful loss for the King.

Sennet. Enter King Lear, his Fool, and Attendants. The King half stumbles over the stoop on entry.

Sulius (Regnus)

Welcome to Brandywine Castle, milord.

King Lear (miffed)

I had expected that thou wouldst greet me

At the front gates, as wouldst befit a King.

Sulius (Regnus)

Apologies, milord, but there has been

A tragic circumstance that has occurred,

Which hath made such fine points of protocol

Somewhat more vexed than is customary.

King Lear (with some trepidation)

What hath happened to cause such disquiet?

Sulius (Regnus)

‘Tis your son, milord. He had taken ill

These past few days complaining of his head.

Whilst he seemed to rally at first, my liege,

The young Prince hath sadly just passed away.

King Lear

C’mon man! Canst not be true! Our son dead?

(Pauses, visibly shaken – pondering the gravity of it all)

Oh, what a woeful tale doth unfold here,

Wherein our young son’s life is snatched away,

By cruel fate’s ruthless, unyielding hand.

God, in His mercy, called him to His side,

Ere his time on this earthly stage was done.

Sulius (Regnus) (apologetically)

I regret, sire, I must be the bearer

Of news so deplorable and tragic.

King Lear (lamenting his ill fortune)

In life’s twilight, such loss weighs heavy now,

A burden undeserved in aging years.

Betrayals sting, since we divided all,

Our kingdom shared ‘mongst heirs I held so dear.

Once cherished, now showeth but scant regard,

For father’s love and sovereign’s solemn charge.

(Pauses)

‘Twas met with disdain by our younger son,

And indifference by our once beloved,

Yet ungrateful daughter, now estranged.

Wouldst have hoped our eldest would carry on

Our legacy, with honor and with pride.

But fate, in its caprice, hath intervened,

Dashing those hopes, leaving me grieved and lone.

Sulius (Regnus) (gesturing toward the dining hall)

Come majesty, let me soothe thy spirit

With a calming cup of my herbal tea.

A concoction of mine own rendering,

‘Tis a remedy for all that ails thee.

King Lear

Our gratitude for thy sympathy’s grace,

A cup of soothing tea wouldst bring me peace.

To calm my nerves, frazzled and worn thin,

‘Twould be a balm, a solace in my strife.

(Exeunt)

Act 2 Scene 4:

(Midnight. Sulius’ bedchamber)

Narrator

Having seen to it that King Lear was suitably tranquillised for the occasion with his ministrations of the promised herbal tea concoction, Sulius retired to his bedchamber satisfied that he had helped His Majesty significantly to be his best self through the difficult funeral and burial of his most favoured son.

As he drifted off into fitful slumber, a shadowy figure appeared in the doorway, and made its way in the darkness to his bedside. As the figure moved into view in a shaft of moonlight that streamed through the window above his head, to Sulius’ surprise the silhouette resolved into the figure of Belerion, widow of the recently deceased Prince Regan, who stood over him in all her glory, naked as the very day she was born.

To suggest that Sulius’ reaction to this unexpected nocturnal apparition was a mixture of both astonishment and trepidation would be a huge understatement. As Belerion leant over the now startled lord, it became abundantly clear to Sulius that not only was the Princess under the influence of some kind of heavy intoxicant, but also that her behaviour was completely bereft of any of the normal inhibitions or moral rectitude that one would expect from a well bred lady of the Royal Court.

Belerion (leaning over Sulius, then reaching under the covers to rub him up and down suggestively, whilst whispering softly into his ear)

Come now, milord! Let passion be thy spur.

Surely thou canst rise to the occasion!

Sulius (Regnus) (recoiling in horror)

Milady, please forgive my reluctance,

For thou art indeed a most alluring,

Seductive and bewitching paramour,

But thy prince is not e’en cold in the ground!

Belerion (maintaining her grip on the situation in spite of Regnus’ protestations to the contrary)

Come, come. Be not so shy and timid, sir,

Lest thou mayst miss the opportunity

For carnal delights both rare and refined!

Sulius (Regnus) (sitting bolt upright in bed, whilst gently pushing milady’s insistent hand away)

I regret, madam, I canst not oblige

In the fulfilling of thy entreaty.

As a servant of my King I canst not,

In all conscience, betray his Royal trust

By consorting thus with his son’s widow!

Belerion (disdainfully)

Verily, thou must have other preferences

That moves thee more than my feminine wiles!

Sulius (Regnus) (forcefully)

Get thee hence, madam, and beclothe thyself!

To thy charms and spells I am impervious.

Belerion

Thou canst be assured thou shalt ne’er know

The exotic pleasures that my flesh is heir to.

(Defiantly, as she storms out of Regnus’ room)

Such consummation is devoutly to be wished for!

(Exit Belerion)

Sulius (Regnus) (breathing a sigh of relief)

Such relief to escape that drugged woman’s snare,

Unscathed I’ll now flee from that brazen hussy’s lair.

(Exits)

Act 2 Scene 5:

(Edmund’s quarters in Blaise Castle, the ancestral seat of Lord Coriolis of the Dobunni)

Narrator

Edmund arrived back at Blaise Castle an hour or so prior to his father, so that the bastard could further prepare his plan in discrediting his elder brother in his father’s eyes. There he met his brother Edgar who was hiding out in Edmund’s quarters as instructed.

Edmund

Our father approaches. O sir, fly this place.

He hath six ways from Sunday to get back at thee.

Intelligence is given where thou art hid.

Thou hast now the good advantage of the night.

Edgar

Hast thou heard what hath so offended him?

I am perplexed at his sudden volte-face!

Edmund

I am just as mystified as thou art,

By his sudden hatred of thee, brother.

(Pauses, hearing the clamour at the gates of his father’s arrival)

I hear my father coming; Pardon me:

In cunning I must draw my sword upon thee!

Draw: seem to defend thyself: now quit thee well.

Fly, brother. Torches, torches! So, farewell.

(Exit Edgar)

Some blood drawn on me wouldst beget opinion.

(Edmund wounds his arm, then admires his handiwork)

I have seen drunkards do more than this in sport!

(Enter Coriolis and Servants with torches)

Coriolis

Now, Edmund, where’s this villain?

Edmund

Here stood he in the dark, his sharp sword out,

Mumbling of wicked charms, conjuring the moon

To stand as his auspicious mistress—

(Pointing to his wound)

Look sir, I bleed.

Coriolis (enraged)

Where is this villain, Edmund?

Edmund

Fled this way, sir, When by no means he could–

Coriolis (gesticulating to his Servants)

Pursue him, ho! Go after him!

(Exeunt Servants)

By no means what?

Edmund

Persuade me to the murder of your lordship;

But that I told him, the revenging Gods

‘Gainst paarricides did all their thunders bend:

Spoke, with how manifold and strong a bond

The child was bound to the father; sir, in fine,

Seeing how loathly opposite I stood

To his unnatural purpose, in fell motion

With his prepared sword, he charges home

My unprovided body, lanced mine arm:

But when he saw my best alarum’d spirits,

Bold in the quarrel’s right, roused to the encounter,

Or whether gasted by the noise I made,

Full suddenly he fled.

Coriolis

Let him fly far: for he has reap’d the whirlwind

And now must he pay the price of his betrayal.

He is unfit for civilised society,

With his failures of duty, his perfidy,

As he creeps along on the fuel of cowardice!

Not in this land shall he remain uncaught;

Bring the murderous coward to the stake;

He that conceals him, death!

(Exeunt)

Act 2 Scene 6:

(A wood)

Enter Edgar

I heard myself proclaim’d

And by the happy hollow of a tree

Escaped the hunt. No port is free: no place,

That guard, and most unusual vigilance,

Does not attend my taking. Whiles I may ‘scape,

I will preserve myself: and am bethought

To take the basest and most poorest shape

That ever penury, in contempt of man,

Brought near to beast: My face I’ll grime with filth;

Blanket my loins, elf all my hair in knots;

And with presented nakedness out-face

The winds and persecutions of the sky.

(Pauses)

This country gives me proof and precedent

Of Bedlam beggars, who, with roaring voices,

Rally the deplorable and the horrible,

From the low farms, the poor pelting villages,

The sheep-cotes, and the dark satanic mills;

Sometime with prayers, sometime with lunatic bans,

Enforcing their charity where’er they go.

Edgar I nothing am; “Poor Tom” instead!

(Exeunt)

Act 3 Scene 1:

(A heath outside Brandywine Castle)

Narrator:

King Lear managed to get through Regan’s funeral with the help of Sulius’ herbal concoctions, but once these effects had worn off he was soon overwhelmed by grief, and enraged at the cruel fate that had befallen him: disrespected by his beloved daughter, and cruelly spurned by his younger son, only to shortly thereafter lose his eldest son, the apple of his eye and the one in whom he had placed his faith in the continuity of his regal legacy.

As the heathen proverb goes: “Those whom the Gods would destroy, they first make mad”. And so it was with Lear, who wandered out of Brandywine Castle in the dead of night, muttering to himself in rambling fashion with a litany of non-sequiturs and assorted gibberish. The King’s Fool, roused from her sleep at the sound of her sovereign stumbling about in the dark outside the palace, proceeds to follow after him. A storm is brewing as Lear treks out onto the heath, shouting at the sky and cursing the Gods for the predicament in which he has found himself, an existential crisis largely of his own making.

Enter King Lear. Storm and tempest.

King Lear

Blow, winds, and crack your cheeks! Rage! Blow!

You cataracts and hurricanoes, spout

Till you have drench’d our steeples, drown’d the cocks!

You sulphurous and thought executing fires,

Vaunt-couriers to oak-cleaving thunderbolts!

Singe my white head! and thou, all shaking thunder,

Smite flat the thick rotundity o’ the world!

Enter Fool, who was observing from a distance.

Fool (pleading with Lear to come in out of the storm)

Here’s a night pities neither wise man nor fool.

O nuncle, court holy-water in a dry house

Is better than this rain out o’ door!

King Lear

Rumble thy bellyful! Spit, fire! Spout, rain!

Nor rain, wind, thunder, fire are my offspring:

I tax not you, you elements, with unkindness:

I never gave you kingdom, call’d you children,

You owe me no subscription: then let fall

Your horrible pleasure: Here I stand, your slave.

A poor, infirm, weak, and despised old man:

But yet I call you servile ministers,

That have with two pernicious siblings join’d

Your high engender’d battles ‘gainst a head

As old and white as this. O! O! ’tis foul!

Fool (trying to rationalise with her King)

As wild winds rage and howl with fervent might,

Saplings shalt sway, but mighty oaks stand firm!

King Lear

I once was that “grand oak”, vanquishing tribes

To enlarge and enrich mine own domain.

My kingdom was once virtue’s paragon,

But now Elysium is just a shadow

Of its former halcyon days of glory.

(sighs)

Alas, I too am light of other days.

Fool

‘Twas a paradise for a Fool such as I,

‘Tis true, but memory plays tricks, milord!

King Lear

What trickery dost thou imply, young Fool!

Fool

Remember Caledonia’s dismal plight,

Where thy forces fled, leaving all contrite.

Brave soldiers abandoned, their fate sealed grim,

At barbarian hands, left to shadows dim!

King Lear

Not mine the fault!

I was much constrain’d by transition’s weight

From Chaos’ reign, which trump’d what I couldst dictate.

In early years, shadows of the past loomed,

And I struggl’d to undo what dark times groomed.

Fool

Prosperity eroded by spending’s spree,

On trifles and trinkets, while peasants plead.

High taxes a burden, inflation’s a blight,

Brought thy kingdom down from a lofty height.

King Lear

At times my plans defied reason or rhyme,

But building back better took it’s sweet time

To improve the plight of the peasant class,

But someday their reward shall come to pass.

Fool

See yon borders, where invaders doth tread,

Disrupting our peace, not easily led.

From distant realms they come, a surging tide.

As foreign intruders seeking here to abide.

King Lear

Long have I welcomed strangers to our fold,

With open arms and hearts, the sum untold.

As kin to our clan, join’d with hearts sincere,

To fortify my power, so be of good cheer!

Fool

Thy power was great, ’tis certainly true,

But what entire didst that power imbue?

Didst the serfs break free from their penury?

Wilt thou be saved from their wrath and fury?

King Lear

Poor naked wretches, whereso’er they are,

That bide the pelting of this pitiless storm,

How shall their houseless heads and unfed sides,

Their loop’d and window’d raggedness, defend them

From seasons such as these? O, I have ta’en

Too little care of this! Take physic, pomp;

(stripping himself naked, exposing himself to the storm raging around him)

Expose thyself to feel what wretches feel,

That thou mayst shake the superflux to them,

And show the heavens more just!

Fool (now chasing the naked Lear as he runs around the heath)

Nuncle! Hold fast and gather thy senses,

Lest the guards witness this exhibition.

King Lear (laughing out loud, and jumping around waving his arm madly)

So let the stars mock, let the moon jeer,

For my kingdom’s collapse, I shed no tear.

On the heath I’ll dwell, ‘neath the cold night’s shroud,

My bequest shatter’d, but I’m out and proud!

Narrator

Eventually, the naked monarch began to slow down in his lunatic romp, with the bitter cold and damp chilling him to the core. His Fool encouraged him to come back to the castle, to have a hot cup of herbal tea, and to warm his bones in front of the fire. As the heady concoction took its effect, Sulius and the King’s Fool guided the misguided sovereign back to his warm bed, where he soon was lured into a deep, and hopefully restorative sleep. Perhaps tomorrow would be a better day.

Act 3 Scene 2:

(A heath outside Brandywine castle)

Narrator

Having witnessed the behaviour of the King the night before, running naked around the heath during a violent tempest, raving and ranting at the sky like an escaped lunatic, Sulius had gone for a walk on the moor to contemplate the significance of this behaviour on the future of the Kingdom. Clearly, there was only so much his herbal concoctions could be expected to do to overcome the demented and increasingly irrational behaviour of the former monarch.

The death of Regan, with Cordelia having been cast into exile, left only the degenerate Goneril as heir apparent to the throne, a man in whom Sulius placed little confidence as to his suitability as a future King. Instead, Sulius began to wonder whether contacting the exiled Cordelia, a woman he staunchly defended to his own detriment only a few short weeks ago, would be his best option for survival amongst all this courtly intrigue and duplicity. Perhaps she, with the King of the Gauls as her new husband, would present the best hope for restoring the Kingdom to its former glory.

Enter Sulius (Regnus) and a gentleman, meeting.

Sulius (Regnus)

Who’s there, beside foul weather?

Gentleman

One minded like the weather, most unquietly.

Sulius (Regnus)

I’m inform’d thou art of good character,

And none too pleased with this dire circumstance.

Gentleman

The King contends with fretful elements:

Bids the winds blow the earth into the sea,

Or swell the curled water ‘bove the main,

That things might change or cease: tears his white hair,

Which the impetuous blasts, with eyeless rage,

Catch in their fury, and make nothing of;

Strives in this little world of man to out-scorn

The to and fro conflicting wind and rain.

Sulius (Regnus)

Sir, I do know thee;

And dare, upon the warrant of my note,

Commend a dear thing to thee. There is division,

Although as yet the face of it be cover’d

With artful cunning, within King Lear’s realm.

Lear’s last born son, and Regan’s young widow,

Have set their great stars be enthroned on high.

Gentleman

From Gaul there comes a powerful faction

Into this scatter’d Kingdom, who already

Wise to our negligence, have secret feet

In some of our best ports; and with their spies

Intelligent of our state, who’re at point

To show their open banner in defiance.

Sulius (Regnus)

If on my credit thou darest build so far

To make thy speed to Dubris, thou shalt find

Some who will thank thee, making just report

Of how unnatural and bemadding sorrow

That the King hath given us cause to plain.

I am a gentleman of blood and breeding;

And, from some knowledge and assurance, offer

This assignment to thee, my good fellow.

Gentleman

I must think it o’er, and get back to thee.

Sulius (Regnus)

For confirmation that I am much more

(Handing him his purse, within which is a distinctive signet ring)

Than my out-wall, open this purse, and take

What it contains. If thou shalt see Cordelia,-

as fear not but thou shalt,- show her this ring:

And she will tell thee who this fellow is.

Gentleman

I shall do my best, milord, in thy charge.

Sulius (Regnus)

Godspeed and good luck be to thee, good sir!

(Exeunt)

Act 3 Scene 3:

(Another part of the Heath, just after sundown)

Enter Lear and his Fool. The King is dishevelled and his grey hair matted and wild, and once again he is seen roaming around the heath as storm clouds gather and the wind begins whipping up to a savage intensity. Lear is muttering to himself in a gibberish decipherable only within his own head.

King Lear (singing, in a childlike voice)

“The cod-piece that will house

Before the head has any,

The head and he shall louse;

So beggars marry many.

The man that makes his toe

What he his heart should make,

Shall of a corn cry woe,

And turn his sleep to wake!“

(now laughing maniacally)

Fool

In such a storm, only mad dogs and men

Of English breed would venture out again.

They brave the lash of rain, the wind’s wild cry,

In senseless folly, while the sane apply

Themselves to seek the shelter, wise and good,

Which any prudent soul in safety should.

King Lear (oblivious to his Fool’s pleas for sanity)

Let those great and all powerful deities,

That keep this dreadful pother o’er our heads,

Find out their enemies now. Tremble thou wretch,

That has within thee undivulged crimes,

Unwhipp’d of justice: hide thee, thou bloody hand;

Thou perjured, and thou simular of virtue

That art incestuous! Wretch, to pieces shake,

That under covert and convenient seeming

Practised on man’s life! Secret pent-up guilts,

Rive your concealing continents, and cry

For mercy these dreadful summoners grace.

(Pauses)

I’m a man more sinned against than sinning!

Enter Sulius (Regnus)

Sulius (Regnus)

Alas, sir, are you here? Things that love night

Love not such nights as these; the wrathful skies

Gallow the very wanderers of the dark,

And make them keep to within their dank caves.

Such sheets of fire, such bursts of horrid thunder,

Such groans of roaring wind and rain, I never

Remember to have heard: man’s nature canst

Not carry the affliction nor the fear.

Fool (Singing)

“He that has and a little tiny wit— 

With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,

Must make content with his fortunes fit,   

For the rain it raineth every day.”

Sulius (Regnus) (pointing to an open, low shelter nearby)

Gracious my lord, hard by here is a hovel;

Some friendship will it lend you ‘gainst the tempest:

Repose you there; whilst I to thy son’s house-

More harder than the stones whereof ’tis raised;

I shall return, and force their scant courtesy.

King Lear

The art of our necessities is strange, 

That can make vile things precious. Come, your hovel.

Poor fool and knave, I have one part in my heart

That’s sorry yet for thee. 

(Exit Lear and Sulius)

Fool

This is a brave night to cool a courtesan!

I’ll speak a prophesy ere I go:

When priests are more in word than matter;

When brewers mar their malt with water;

When nobles are their tailors’ tutors; 

No heretics burn’d, but wenches’ suitors; 

Then shall the realm of our Albion 

Come to great affray and confusion!

(Pauses)

When every case in law is right;

No squire in debt, nor no poor knight;

When slanders do not live in tongues; 

Nor cutpurses come not to throngs; 

When usurers count their gold i’ the field; 

And bawds and whores do churches build; 

Then comes the time, who lives to see it, 

When freedom reigns by royal fiat!

(Exits)

Act 3 Scene 4:

(Blaise Castle)

Narrator

Coriolis, having failed in his task of finding his disloyal son Edgar, who it seems had vanished into thin air, had returned to Blaise Castle to contemplate his future, now that his legitimate son had proven so unworthy of his affections. 

Being ever loyal to the former King Lear, and having heard of the disdainful way in which Lear was treated at Burisma Palace by his son, Coriolis was shocked and disgusted at the shamelessness displayed by the nominal heirs to the Kingdom.

Foreseeing that a potential conflict between Goneril and Regan was only a matter of time, Coriolis had sought to make representations to Cordelia, now the Queen of the Gauls, to return to Albion to help mend this broken kingdom. Cordelia communicated frankly and openly with the noble gentleman, whom she knew to be loyal to her father, in a letter that outlined her intentions to venture back across the sea with her husband and his army to help restore the kingdom to her father’s rightful rule.

Knowing the potential danger of such a missive falling into either Regan or Goneril’s hands, Coriolis secreted the letter in a locked closet, where only he and his trusted son Edmund would know of its whereabouts.

Enter Coriolis and Edmund

Coriolis

Alack, alack, Edmund.

I like not this unnatural dealing.

When I desired their leave to pity him,

The brothers barred me, silenced every word, 

Denied him solace, forbade him succour,

Or to speak, plead, or offer him relief.

Such ignominy, denying their sire, 

In disdain of his once regal station.

Edmund

Most savage and unnatural!

Coriolis

Go to: say you nothing. 

There will be division twixt the Princes,

Mark my words, son, nothing could be surer!

Worse still, this night I’ve received a letter;

‘Tis dangerous for this to be spoken;

I have locked the letter in my closet:

These injuries the former King now bears 

Shall be rightly revenged home in due course.

There’s part of a power already footed:

We must incline loyalty to the King.

Go you and maintain talk with Goneril ,

That my charity be not of him perceived.

Though I die of it, as no less is threatened me,

The King, my old master, must be relieved.

Edmund: pray you, be careful!

(Exits)

Edmund

This courtesy, forbid thee, shall the Prince

Instantly know; and of that letter too:

This seems a fair deserving, and must draw me

That which my father loses; no less than all:

The younger rises when the old doth fall.

(Exits)

Act 3 Scene 5:

(The heath. Before a hovel)

Sulius (Regnus)

Here is the place I said, my lord, enter:

The tyranny of the open night’s too rough

Even for nature to endure.

Storm still

King Lear

Let me alone!

Sulius (Regnus) (gesturing to the hovel’s opening)

Good my lord, enter here.

King Lear

Wilt break my heart?

Sulius (Regnus)

I had rather break mine own, majesty.

King Lear

Thou think’st ’tis much that this contentious storm

Invades us to the skin: so ’tis to thee;

But where the greater malady is fix’d

The lesser is scarce felt. Thou’ldst shun a bear;

But if thy flight lay toward the raging sea,

Thou’ldst meet the bear i’the mouth. When the mind’s free,

The body’s delicate: The tempest in my mind

Doth from my senses take all feeling else

Save what beats there.

(Gesturing to his heart)

-Filial ingratitude!

No, I will weep no more. In such a night

To shut me out! Pour on; I will endure.

In such a night as this! O Regan, Goneril!

Your old kind father, whose frank heart gave all,-

O, that way madness lies; let me shun that;

No more of that!

Narrator

With that King Lear’s eyes begin to glaze over, and after a quarter turn to either side, confused as to where to go next, he began to wander off in the opposite direction, only for Sulius to gently guide him back to the entrance to the hovel. The King’s Fool, sensing the King’s hesitation, entered the hovel to show the way in to the shelter.

(The Fool goes in)

King Lear (to Sulius)

Prithee, go in thyself. Seek thine own ease;

This tempest will not give me leave to ponder

On those things that wouldst hurt me even more.

Leviathan Unbound

Frontispiece of Thomas Hobbes’ “Leviathan, or the Matter, Forme, & Power of a Commonwealth Ecclesiasticall and Civil” – (Source Wikipedia)

Thomas Hobbes, in his famous and influential 1651 book entitled “Leviathan”, set out a theory of political philosophy known as “social contract theory“. In his book, Hobbes posits that a social contract is formulated on the idea of constitutionalism, where “free men” contract with one another to establish a political community, and thus to promote a civil society through the agency of the consent of the governed.

Hobbes’ over-riding philosophy was no doubt influenced greatly by the English Civil War that had raged from 1642 through to 1651, with those hard fought conflicts between Parliamentarians and Royalists that epitomised the Interregnum. His thesis therefore clearly and firmly advocated for not only the legitimacy, but the primacy of the authority of the state over the individual.

In what Hobbes termed “a state of nature”, i.e. existing in the absence of political order and laws, he claimed that human life would devolve into one of endless privation and brutality, where unlimited freedoms would be certain to lead to total chaos and anarchy, and where those of a disposition to do so would be “free” to plunder, rape and murder, leading to an “endless war of all against all”. He also suggested that: “……..In such condition there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain, and consequently no culture of the earth, no navigation nor the use of commodities that may be imported by sea, no commodious building, no instruments of moving and removing such things as require much force, no knowledge of the face of the earth, no account of time, no arts, no letters, no society, and which is worst of all, continual fear and danger of violent death, and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”

Whilst Hobbes may well have had a compelling case to prosecute against the complete absence of any political order or laws, which would thereby ensure the creation of chaos and lawlessness, his argument devolves into a false “all or nothing” dichotomy where the only two options he offers are total anarchy or complete subservience to the absolute authority of a monarch, political leader or government. Just because the governed have given consent to forego some “freedoms” in order to allow an effective government “leviathan” to act on their behalf and in their best interests, it does not however provide carte blanche acquiescence to every action of that monarch (or other elected leader) if those actions are unduly capricious, unjust, corrupt or malicious.

In Hobbes’ world view, the consent given by the citizenry was absolute, and there would be no instance where the subjects can legitimately and lawfully change either a monarch, the aristocracy or the government (depending upon which of the three kinds of “Commonwealth” entered into the social contract). Because those subjects had entered into a covenant giving the sovereign the right to act on their behalf, in Hobbesian logic the sovereign therefore cannot possibly breach that covenant; and therefore the subjects can never argue to be freed from the covenant because of the actions of the sovereign, no matter how egregious, as he is acting as their agent.

Furthermore, he argues, the ultimate purpose of the Commonwealth is peace, and therefore the sovereign has the right to do whatever he thinks is necessary for the preserving of peace and security and prevention of discord. Therefore, the sovereign (according to Hobbes) may prescribe the rules of civil law and property, judge what opinions and doctrines are adverse to civil order, and thus would be the ultimate arbiter of truth and justice for his subjects.

It is therefore clear that Hobbes rejects any notion of separation of powers amongst different branches of government, and explicitly supports censorship of the press and suppression of free speech that in any way conflicts with what the sovereign, or government deems appropriate for the promotion of order. This Hobbesian philosophy has sadly gained a renewed traction in recent times, where once again certain Western governments have once again gone down the path of promoting themselves as the sole arbiters of truth (New Zealand PM Jacinda Ardern’s recent declaration as but one recent example), whilst they have actively sponsored the censorship of inconvenient opinions at odds with government propaganda and policy (e.g. the COVID 19 pandemic, the integrity of US elections, the war in Ukraine, etc.).

Such absolutism in Hobbes’ philosophy serves ultimately to undermine much of the credibility of his argument. In the decades following “Leviathan”, the estimable philosopher and physician, John Locke, a man widely regarded as perhaps the most influential Enlightenment thinker (and renowned as the father of “liberalism”), would temper Hobbes’ ideas further by promoting political and legal principles that continue to have a profound influence on the theory and practice of limited representative government, and the protection of basic citizen rights and freedoms under the rule of law, basic “natural rights” that underpin the guiding principles of Western democracies up to the present day.

In contrast to Hobbes, John Locke believed that human nature is guided by reason and tolerance, and that in the “natural state” humans are fundamentally equal and independent, with every citizen having the natural right to defend his “life, health, liberty, or possessions”. The American Declaration of Independence was profoundly influenced by Locke’s philosophy: with “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of happiness” being derived from Locke’s theory of rights.

John Locke further developed two other important theories that enshrined property rights and the value to civil society of labour. Firstly, his labour theory of value posited that the labour expended by citizens in the creation of goods gives those goods value. Secondly, in Locke’s labour theory of property, the ownership of property is a natural right created by the application of labour. In addition, he believed that property precedes government and therefore government cannot, and should not “dispose of the estates of the subjects arbitrarily“, in stark contrast to Hobbes’ view in “Leviathan” of the over-riding and immutable hegemony of the sovereign. This Lockian philosophy set the foundations for individual property rights that would thereafter become the cornerstone of a modern free and democratic society.

Not surprisingly perhaps, these foundations are also now coming under renewed threat from the bureaucratic Leviathan that has rapidly been brought to bear over the last 30 to 40 years, in the Anglosphere and Europe in particular. Western governments, of all political stripes, have begun the Herculean, and no doubt Machiavellian task of seeking to fatally undermine the rights of the individual, whether in the ownership of property, the application of labour through farming and small business free enterprise, or even in the fundamental rights once held to be sacrosanct such as freedom of association, the right of bodily autonomy, freedom of expression, the right to hold one’s own faith and political opinion, and the right to due process and equal application of, and protection under the law.

As Western civilisation has moved away from the monarchic systems of government that Hobbes considered ideal, the all powerful “Leviathan” has increasingly been transmogrified in the modern era to that of our “representative” governments and their aligned bureaucratic administrations. As the Leviathan’s power has increased and consolidated in ever more labyrinthine and entangled webs of complexity, the natural rights of John Locke’s egalitarian and humanitarian philosophy have been systematically undermined and progressively supplanted by the Leviathan, who finds instead the absolute authority of the Hobbesian philosophy to be a far more tantalising prospect in managing an increasingly inconvenient and problematic citizenry.

The Leviathan has thus become almost completely unbound from John Locke’s natural rights protections over recent decades, becoming instead an opaque, corrupt and unaccountable Hobbesian edifice governing for its own sake, serving itself for its own ends, with any pretensions to the provision of “public service” becoming nothing more than a quaint anachronism, increasingly being beyond the scope of its very limited remit. The social contract that the citizens entered into in good faith, with the expectation that their collective benefit would be at the forefront of the ambitions of the governments they elected to represent their best interests, has been effectively broken across the Western world.

Under various guises, our governments have sought systematically to strip away the natural rights of the individual in allegedly free and democratic societies, particularly since the late 1980s as mass computerisation and other technological advances dramatically increased the reach and capabilities of the surveillance arms of the state. Under the guise of protecting society from the threat of terrorism, for example, the U.S Patriot Act (and similar legislation in other Western nations) greatly increased the authority of the state to surveil, investigate and detain citizens on the most trivial of pretexts. The perceived threat to safety and social order from without was soon to be turned within, as the Leviathan’s tentacles reached forth to ensnare often innocent civilians, particularly those whose views were deemed, by the faceless bureaucrats in the shadows, to be inconvenient to the government of the day.

Under the guise of a global pandemic of a novel coronavirus, the absolute right of the individual to determine whether or not he or she would consent to a medical procedure being performed upon them (i.e. bodily autonomy and informed consent) was run roughshod over, as people were forced to submit to a novel gene therapy “vaccine”, one which had undergone scant testing prior to being forcibly mandated upon huge swathes of the population. This “leaky” vaccine conferred no benefit whatsoever either in preventing the disease or its spread and, for many, provided limited (if any) benefit in risk reduction from the disease itself. Many highly trained and vital individuals were ultimately forced out of the workforce in their chosen vocations, or deprived of an income entirely, for failing to comply with these highly flawed mandates delivered from on high by the anointed few who controlled the COVID-19 response.

The pandemic became the pretext for the Leviathan to transgress with impunity upon on many natural human rights that had previously been taken for granted by the general population: these being freedom from discrimination, freedom of movement, freedom to manifest one’s religion or beliefs, freedom of expression, freedom of association and the right to peaceful assembly. All of these rights, to a greater or lesser degree, were infringed upon throughout Western democracies, for months and sometimes years on end, as a result of an alleged public health emergency that presented little if any risk to anyone without significant co-morbidities under 60 years of age.

Multitudes of small businesses (cafes, restaurants, bars in particular) were forced to close their doors at the hands of the Leviathan and it’s bureaucratic over-reach, often dragging on for months on end, leading to a significant proportion of them being forced into bankruptcy or permanent closure. Many of the central business districts of major cities were decimated as a result, becoming a mere shadow of their former vibrant cosmopolitan selves, replacing a thriving business community with shuttered businesses, store closures and vacant retail spaces.

The Leviathan, amongst its many other transgressions in the COVID era, further extended its tentacles to interject itself between medical practitioners and their patients in response to the pandemic, seeking to over-ride the clinical acumen, experience and knowledge of the practitioner in the treatment of an illness, forbidding even some adjunctive therapies (Vitamin D, cough medicines, inhaled steroids, etc. without evidence to the contrary), actively suppressing the use of existing treatments (principally Hydroxychloroquine and Ivermectin -whose use was based on limited but positive existing evidence), whilst other low toxicity alternative regimens were actively discouraged, with those practitioners engaging in such approaches for the benefit of their patients, sometimes with noteworthy success, being vilified and even actively punished.

The Leviathan instead took it upon itself to prescribe for these COVID patients the masterly inactivity of watchful waiting, Paracetamol only (an agent that increased COVID mortality in some studies by a factor of 4) and eventual late treatment when hypoxia supervened, with disastrous consequences. In the name of “Public Health”, the Leviathan’s obscene hubris, callous indifference to suffering and oppressively dictatorial behaviour knew no bounds.

Under the guise of “saving the planet” from the vicissitudes of alleged anthropogenic “Climate Change”, the governmental misanthropy and utter disdain for the health and welfare of its citizens has reached its apogee, as the ultimate excuse to micromanage and control every aspect of human existence. Under the pretext of “Net Zero” policies of so called “sustainable development” to mitigate against the production of carbon dioxide, which is speculated to increase extreme weather events (in spite of evidence to the contrary) and increase global warming, the Leviathan seeks to dictate to all but the privileged few how its citizens live their lives. By assuming total control of how we all eat, heat or cool ourselves, move through the community, work and conduct business, and travel locally and internationally, our government bureaucracies dictate that these previously free choices can (in the very near future) no longer be an individual decision, but must increasingly be curated by the state if the Leviathan gets its way.

The egregious influence of the Leviathan’s vain attempts to control weather and climate has been to promote enormous mal-investment in technology not fit for purpose, destabilising and compromising energy grids in modern industrialised nations, and thereby often (and likely prospectively) fatally undermining national economic prosperity and industrial capacity, whilst disproportionately negatively impacting on the aspirations and quality of life of the poor, disadvantaged and less economically self-sufficient.

The transition to renewable energy sets the stage for the Leviathan to engage in population wide energy rationing, whilst the prospective contraction or even collapse of agriculture (which the Leviathan is now beginning to actively discourage) and industrial capacity allows government to dictate food choices (plant and bug protein, “fake meat”), introduce food rationing and quotas, and to discourage citizens engaging in anything but a highly restricted lifestyle within “15 minute communities” in a “decarbonised” economy, where personal transport is reserved only for the very privileged, and travel is almost completely curtailed.

As can be seen from the above examples, the modern Leviathan has now evolved to represent an existential threat to the health and welfare of the general population, whose interests it is allegedly meant to serve. The social contract of Hobbes’ “Commonwealth” has clearly been broken, as the Leviathan has not lived up to its broader obligations to civil society. Having become unbound from its role protecting and fostering those natural rights of the common man that John Locke described, to pursue the goals of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”, we have reached the point where the Leviathan must be firstly exposed and then opposed by all good men and women of conscience, by whatever preferably peaceful means are considered necessary. Only by restoring accountability to, and limiting the scope of representative government, can the integrity of Western nations be returned to its former vitality and glory.

From Democracy to Pathocracy – How We Default to Rule by Psychopaths:

An ever increasing majority of nations around the world have descended into what might be termed a Pathocracy, a system of government created wherein a small minority with a pathological psychology assumes control over a society of what might pass for, for want of a better word, “normal” people.

History is littered with ruthless and blood thirsty leaders of empires who more often than not had psychopathic tendencies, often coupled with narcissistic personality traits, and demonstrating a complete lack of empathy, compassion and being utterly indifferent to the suffering of others. By contrast, the modern era had, until recently at least, seen evolve systems of government that purported, particularly in the Western world, to promote enlightened and democratic principles which were intended to mitigate against such tendencies.

Unfortunately, these systems of government have been progressively undermined over time, predominantly through the process by which such people with psychopathic personality disorders tend to congregate and then slowly take over organisations, political parties and businesses. Those with such psychological pathologies tend to seek positions of power, and do so in a most single minded fashion, stepping over countless “bodies” in so doing. What is characteristic of the machinations of such a pathogenic mind, one that is egotistical, manipulative, dominating and vindictive, is that almost universally it never recognises any need to change even its most damaging behaviours, exhibiting no sense of any wrong-doing and least of all, showing the remotest tinge of remorse.

These states are reflected in various degrees of inflexibility and manipulativeness in behaviours, and an inability to see outcomes from present action. Not all will rise to the top of the corporate or political tree, whether through bad luck or bad management, but many are still driven along the way to steer others toward very destructive paths. Being devoid of insight into the consequences of their own actions, they tend to be self-destructive themselves, although they believe their actions will fulfil their goal of self-preservation. The actions of these people almost always spell doom for those who fall under their influence, or are close enough to them to be adversely affected.

The Evolution of Our Current Pathocracy:

Over the course of the late 20th Century, we have seen the gradual emergence of a cadre of psychopaths assuming roles as leaders of society, whether in the corporate boardroom, the government bureaucracy, in various so called NGOs, or in political leadership. They can often be spotted through tell tale manifestations of their diseased minds: via their shameless self-promotion, in compulsively taking centre stage as they crave the perpetual spotlight, by showing a clear-eyed steeliness when confronted with incontrovertible evidence of their own corruption and conflicts of interest, and in conspicuously seeking praise or awards or often unearned “honorary” credentials (honorary doctorates for example), which allows them to assume audacious titles which they have either created or lobbied to have bestowed upon them. These serve to add glitter to their image, legitimise their titles and add a veneer layering over their true nature and objectives.

The powerful interlocking political, financial, social and religious institutions that the sociopathic collective have meticulously propagated allows them to project their egos, including in the form of laws and legally enforced monopolies that allow them to lord it over their mere mortal underlings.

The legacy they leave in their wake from their catalogue of lies and Machiavellian scheming continue to to enlarge like ripples in a pond, until all are subjugated under an inhumane system that has come to be accepted as “normal”, such is the universality of the Pathocracy under whom, and against which we all must labour.

Under normal circumstances, such a contagion of Pathocracy becomes self-limiting, due primarily to the very pathological personality traits that spawned it, as those without morals, or guiding principles governing their behaviour, are drawn into a vortex of underhanded scheming, betrayal and duplicity where trust is eroded, loyalty becomes untenable, and effective governance becomes increasingly nullified.

Once such a “contagion” takes hold, eventually spreading through large social systems such as governmental bureaucracies, corporations or other organisations (whether religious, political or allegedly philanthropic), the natural progression becomes a death spiral as the pathogen of psychopathology usually burns itself out, dying at the hands of its own inherent flaws, provided of course that they can be subjected to adequate objective scrutiny, and are not shielded significantly from accountability, or consequences for their actions.

The Psychopath as a Social Contagion:

Some of the commonest symptoms and signs of a psychopathic disorder can include such things as: 

• engaging frequently in behaviour that conflicts with social norms
• disregarding and/or violating the rights of others
• demonstrating an inability to distinguish between right and wrong
• having distinctive difficulty in showing remorse or empathy for the suffering of others
• tendency to lie frequently
• manipulating and/or hurting other people, particularly those within their orbit
• having recurring problems with breaking or circumventing the law of the land 
• having a general disregard toward safety or assuming responsibility
• expressing anger and arrogance on a regular basis
• lacking in deep emotional connections with others around them.

Whilst such people can be superficially charming and engaging, those with some measure of observational skill (an admittedly vanishing competency within our society) can usually recognise the warning signs in their behaviours and stay well clear of them, whilst those less observant creatures who fall into their circle are destined to be not so fortunate.

However, when they become entrenched in power structures within corporations or bureaucracies, where their superficial charm and self-aggrandisement become advantageous in climbing the ladder to success, ultimately the Peter principle comes to the fore, and they are promoted until they inevitably reach a level of employment at which they are no longer competent.

Floundering in roles they are not capable of performing adequately, and to avoid the cognitive dissonance of acknowledging their failings, it becomes only natural that they will turn their “skills” at manipulation, rule breaking and violating the rights of others into scapegoating of those around them, abusing and bullying subordinates, and engaging in Machiavellian schemes to undermine and discredit their colleagues and associates.

Often, such people network well with others of a similar disposition to themselves, and become expert at identifying other similar psychopaths to themselves within the ranks, people whom they can recruit to help them maintain their power and influence within the organisation. Because such psychopaths are an increasingly prevalent percentage of the population, and because they often seek out vocations in which their flawed character traits are advantageous (politics, finance and the law being particular standouts), it is not difficult for networks of such individuals to become established and, through mutual convenience and advantage, then come to influence the ethos of the entire organisation involved, where soon the company or bureaucracy itself comes to reflect the same lying, duplicitous, unprincipled and manipulative traits that these influential psychopaths demonstrate in their personal and professional lives.

Is it any wonder then that the very institutions that formed the foundational basis for Western civilisation are crumbling, and that confidence in these bastions of our society, once the bulwark against injustice and anarchy, are at an historical low? This reflects an evolving realisation that such institutions have become progressively corrupted and co-opted by such psychopaths, routinely showing no respect for societal norms, thinking nothing of infringing upon the rights of others, and flouting the law of the land at every turn.

Our bureaucracies have become faceless entities, labyrinthine in structure, unwieldy in practice, and divorced entirely from their alleged purposes. The welfare and wellbeing of the people that they are meant to serve are the furtherest consideration, even though many people working within these organisations almost certainly have good intentions. The very structures of them, particularly in the age of computerisation which has served to depersonalise processes still further, whilst marginalising those who are less able to engage digitally whether due to their age, or through mental or physical infirmity or a lack of literacy or education.

Whilst these organisations have KPI’s (Key Performance Indicators) to the moon and back, very few of them are designed to truly assess customer satisfaction, or success in achieving goals that the customer values most. Instead they are designed to keep the employee in a joyless and fear-filled rut, where ingenuity is discouraged, enthusiasm is quashed, and collaboration with workmates becomes anathema, giving way to a grudging compliance to largely arbitrary rules and standards.

“In our quest to make business and work as mechanical and inhuman as possible over the past hundred years, every position in many large organisations has been sliced and diced into tiny pieces so that each piece can be measured and evaluated against a chart posted on the wall………. The more fear-based an organisation’s culture is, the more things they measure and count.” (Liz Ryan- CEO of Human Workplace)

It is not so hard to see how such instruments are designed by people who lack human empathy, who are blind to consequences, have little or no social awareness, and care little for the welfare of those whom the organisation is allegedly meant to serve. They are a window into the mindset of the people who create them, and among the rungs on the ladder to a pervasive Pathocracy, by taking away the humanity that is required to be effective in improving social and other outcomes.

Conclusion:

When a legal system cares very little for justice, and for all being equal in the eyes of the law regardless of race, socioeconomic status or professional standing, one can be confident that those with psychopathic tendencies have co-opted the legal system to their ends. When political advancement comes not from intelligence and talent, but from ideology rather than policy, and how effectively one can compromise oneself in a web of lies and corrupt practices, then one knows that a Pathocracy is ascendant.

When a legacy media hides the truth from the population and becomes an instrument of government propaganda dressed as investigative journalism, then we can be sure that psychopaths without conscience are pulling the strings. And, when medical systems are so compromised that patient care becomes a secondary or tertiary consideration for therapeutic decision making, then the descent into hell is almost complete. A staggering fall from grace for a civilisation that once aspired to reach so high, only to eventually, and perhaps inevitably, stoop so low.

The Google Archipelago:

“Unlimited power in the hands of limited people always leads to cruelty”

The above quotation derives from “The Gulag Archipelago”, by Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, which is a seminal masterwork of 20th century literature: part testimonial, part memoir, and part literary manifesto, one that was formed into a hybrid of meticulous journalism, historical record and compelling biography.

As Penguin books describes it: “A vast canvas of camps, prisons, transit centres and secret police, of informers and spies and interrogators but also of everyday heroism, The Gulag Archipelago is Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s grand masterwork. Based on the testimony of some 200 survivors, and on the recollection of Solzhenitsyn’s own eleven years in labour camps and exile, it chronicles the story of those at the heart of the Soviet Union who opposed Stalin, and for whom the key to survival lay not in hope but in despair.”

The “Google Archipelago”, the clever catchphrase coined by Prof. Michael Rectenwald in his 2019 book of the same name, describes the evolution of a 21st century digital equivalent of the Soviet Gulag system, where dissidents and those who failed to conform and submit to the dictates of the oppressive Russian Communist regime were neutralised and controlled by this brutal appendage of state tyranny.

Instead of a physical prison, and all those privations associated with the harsh physical and mental constraints applied to prisoners like Solzhenitsyn in the Russian system, the digital Gulag is clearly not as obviously physically oppressive, but will nonetheless become increasingly omnipresent and ubiquitous, with a reach and penetration that far exceeds the wildest dreams of the would be dictators of the past. This digital prison, being constructed around us, in plain sight and with our complete complicity, threatens to engulf and subsume us, and thereby extinguish every last possible vestige of happiness and freedom that the citizenry might hope to attain in their lives through strenuous effort and enterprise.

The technologies of Big Tech not only amplify and extend the powers of the state, but they also lend a new found precision to the various elements of the newly established, and rapidly evolving corporate surveillance state. As Solzhenitsyn observed of his contemporaries, in eerily prescient commentary of our modern malaise: “We didn’t love freedom enough. And even more – we had no awareness of the real situation”. If “the price of freedom is eternal vigilance”, then we have clearly been asleep at the wheel, and it is not a price we have up till now been prepared to pay.

Ivan Denisovich 2.0:

Ivan Denisovich Shukhov is the protagonist in Solzhenitsyn’s short novel “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich“, which was a  sparse, tersely written narrative of a single day of the ten-year labor camp imprisonment of a fictitious Soviet prisoner, and based on the author’s first-hand experience in the Gulag system. When Solzhenitsyn won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1970, the short story was specifically mentioned, given that it marked the first occasion that such Stalinist repressions had been documented and widely distributed within the Soviet Union. As the Soviet Ukrainian and Russian author and journalist Vitaly Korotich noted- “The Soviet Union was destroyed by information – and this wave started from Solzhenitsyn’s “One Day……“.

As we are propelled headlong into the 21st century cyberscape, it is becoming ever more patently clear that we are all Ivan Denisovich now. The panopticon prison that we modern day equivalents find ourselves in is patrolled using extended capabilities of pervasive surveillance, recording, data mining and personal tracking, facial recognition, social credit scoring and other forms of digital supervision of everything we buy, do, think and say. This provides the ultimate mechanism of control through the province of firstly shaming, shunning, de-platforming and ostracising those “guilty” of various forms of “wrong think” (arbitrarily applied by the men behind the curtain, and capable of turning 180 degrees on a dime), and then ultimately to punishing transgressions (rarely proportionately or fairly) through penalising, trammeling into inaction, and eventually “un-personing“ the “offender” entirely within and beyond the digital space.

As every aspect of the human experience becomes bathed in an ambient cyberspace, we will no longer merely access the internet at our leisure and at own choosing, guided by our various wants and desires, but we modern day equivalents of Ivan Denisovich will become as one with cyberspace, our total identities will be our digital ID and we will rely entirely upon this digital presence to define who we are as human beings.

Each of us will have a uniquely codified identity as a hybrid of our computer, phenotypic and genetic code, including all our past online activity, digital and physical behaviour, our political inclinations and financial history, our beliefs (religious and otherwise), and so on, with the high likelihood that this digital portrait of you as an individual will be used eventually to “predict” your future behaviour- a potential prelude to establishing the precedent of “pre-crime” or “thought crime” based purely on AI driven algorithms of past surveillance of your “activity” in the digital space.

Just as the unjustly accused and harshly dealt with Ivan Denisovich was half- starved, brutalised and worked to the point of exhaustion in the Gulag labour camps, deprived of almost every last semblance of his humanity and self-respect, the digital Google Archipelago wherein we find ourselves confined threatens to incrementally rob us of our freedoms, rights to self-determination and personal dignity.

The Prisoner Redux – “Be seeing you!”:

The Prisoner (1967) was a brilliantly conceived, allegorical British television series, created by and starring Patrick McGoohan about an unnamed British intelligence agent who is abducted and then imprisoned in a mysterious coastal village, where his captors designate him as “Number Six” and try to find out why he so abruptly resigned from his job. “The Village” is really a bizarre prison, even though the internal physical movement of residents around the Village is unconstrained.

The premises are secured by numerous high-tech monitoring systems and security forces, including a balloon-like automaton called Rover, which recaptures or kills those who attempt escape. “Number Six” soon encounters the Village’s population, hundreds of people from all walks of life and cultures, all seeming to be peacefully and mostly enjoyably living out their lives within this prison. The villagers do not use names, but have been assigned numbers which, aside from designations such as Two, Three, and Six, give no clue as to any person’s status within the Village, whether as prisoners or warders. Potential escapees, therefore, have no idea whom they can and cannot trust. 

Number Six is monitored heavily by the constantly changing Number Two, the Village administrator, who acts as an agent for the unseen Number One. Several techniques are used by Number Two to try to extract information from Number Six, including hallucinogenic drugs, identity theft, mind control, dream manipulation and forms of social indoctrination and physical coercion. All of these are employed not only to find out why Number Six resigned as an agent, but also to elicit other information he gained as a spy, for motivations that remain obscure.

The position of Number Two is assigned to a different person in each episode of the series, and only on two occasions do they make repeat appearances. This is assumed to be part of a larger plan to disorient Number Six, but sometimes the change of personnel seems to be the result of the failure of the previous incumbent, whose fate is then unknown. Number Six, distrustful of everyone in the Village, refuses to co-operate or provide the answers they seek. He struggles, usually alone, with various goals, such as determining for which side of the Iron Curtain the Village functions, if either; remaining defiant to its imposed authority; concocting his own plans for escape; learning all he can about the Village; and subverting its operation. (Source: Wikipedia)

In the very first episode, Number Six asserts his individuality and his determination to not be forced into compliance and conformity:

“I will not make any deals with you. I’ve resigned. I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or numbered! My life is my own.”, and later: “I am not a number. I am a free man!”; a credo we all would do well to live by.

What passes for civic life in the Village consists of repeating cheery slogans as meaningful communication. Celebrations that are held by the villagers may have lots of cheering but they are essentially cheerless, reminiscent of the ‘celebrations’ of totalitarian regimes rather than those of a free people.

Presciently perhaps, the Village’s inhabitants are forever parading through the streets waving flags with rainbow colors, whooping and clapping. Yet they also live in dread of not saying the right thing (a portent of cancel culture), of being seen not to be celebrating enough, or of being individuals rather than part of the collective herd.

The rigid world in which Number Six is confined is one where he has no freedom of identity or expression. No matter how much or how often he tries, escape is futile. Number Six’s suffering proves to be every bit as much existential as physical. Because he is the only person who thinks differently, the stifling conformity of the Village is a very lonely place indeed, where the noisy revelry of the madding crowd of the Village’s inhabitants becomes increasingly jarring and unnerving to him. 

The customary farewell of Village residents is “Be seeing you!”, accompanied by a little salute made from the forehead with the right hand in the symbol of “OK”. Tellingly, this remains the only concession to conformity to which Number 6 willingly acquiesces, perhaps indicative of his desire to remain dignified, respectful and polite even in the most desperate of circumstances.

More than 50 years after its airing, Patrick McGoohan’s “The Prisoner” remains a remarkably prescient looking glass, albeit a distorted one into our collective future, with subject matter and themes which are entirely relevant to the digital panopticon of the Google Archipelago that we are currently facing down. The depiction of a society under total and constant surveillance, where social conformity and collectivism is rigidly enforced, and where cutting edge (for the time) technology is used as an instrument of state power to quash the individual’s spirit and sense of reality, has all too clear parallels to our present predicament.

Concepts explored in the series, which have contemporary relevance, include a faceless bureaucracy (an endless sequence of adversarial Number 2’s), institutionalised inquisition and torture, star chambers and kangaroo courts, and a bland and innocuous broader community (the Village as an allegory of broader society) of cowered and compliant drones too frightened to strive for the smallest tincture of individual autonomy or freedom, complicit in their own imprisonment whilst aiding and abetting the ruling regime by spying or informing upon other members of society.

“A man wakes up in a world that is familiar yet strange, peaceful on the outside and endlessly assaultive from within. He can’t trust anyone, can’t trust reality. He knows he is fighting something nefarious, a force of evil. But that force is elusive, seems to be in the blood veins of his community, touches everything in his past, and shrouds his future in mystery. Every action he takes becomes vital, a potential act of escape, and yet every move he makes seems pointless, one more failure in a world where even winning feels like losing.” (Source: Darren Franich)

Central Bank Digital Currency – The Final Piece in the Totalitarian Puzzle:

The old adage “Beware of Greeks bearing gifts” is derived from Virgil’s “The Aeneid”, and refers to the legend of the Trojan Horse used by the Greek armies under Odysseus to break the decade long siege of Troy by deception. The phrase normally is used to refer to an apparent act of charity that masks a hidden destructive or hostile agenda, and the metaphorical “Trojan horse” has come to mean any trick or stratagem that causes the subject to invite his foe into any kind of securely protected bastion or place.

The most recent iteration of the Trojan Horse is most assuredly going to be the upcoming roll out of Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs), which are likely to be based on blockchain technology, and will allow comprehensive governmental and banker tracking of all transactions. The combination of racking up absurd levels of national debt, maintaining long term near-zero interest rates and, worse still, decades of money-printing (euphemistically known as Quantitative Easing) have eroded the value of money and guaranteed a lose/lose situation for all but the largest (and most well connected) multinational corporations, with no prospect of escape for the honest, hard working remainder.

The upcoming controlled demolition of the world’s financial system, fortuitously for some it seems, provides the perfect opportunity for the Davos and banker elite to promote a new system that allows them total control of every single penny earned from its creation to circulation. These banking controllers ultimate desire is the ability to make money appear or disappear in real time. More than that, they crave the ability to track every single dollar, including who has them and what they are using them for. They are thus able to micromanage enterprise, income and trade, and thereby achieve a global financial totalitarian empire with themselves at the centre. This is how domination is established and grows, how empires are born and how liberties die.

A major crisis, whether it be global warfare or complete economic collapse, would empower the Davos and banker elites to consolidate control, while individuals are distracted not unreasonably by their own private concerns. Implementation of CBDCs would also mean that ownership of money and the ability to transact, to participate in the economy, will become privileges, not rights. The programming capabilities of a CBDC could mean that people would be prohibited from buying certain goods, or limited in how much, and over what time frame they might be allowed to purchase any given product. By time limiting the CBDCs, something that has already been floated as a desired outcome, one would be forced to spend all that one has left after all essential expenses are paid, or else forfeit the “money” they have earned that can be erased at a computer’s keystroke, thereby completely negating the ability to accumulate wealth for all but the privileged few- creating a financial aristocracy whilst the serfs are indentured in servitude for life.

Governments have also long recognised that freezing someone’s financial resources is one of the most effective ways to lock them out of society, and thereby to neutralise or eliminate them as political opposition. However, a CBDCs could make the process easier and faster for governments by establishing a direct line between citizens and the government itself. Digital currency schemes like this are a panopticon that gives government total knowledge of your earnings, spending patterns, and even the specific items you buy. They’re both the carrot and the stick, the latter of which can implemented on a whim if you step out of line.

This is the world we are facing if we allow central banks to fully digitize money and trade. It is a nightmare environment of complete authoritarianism, where there is no other possible choice or way out of the digital bind in which we find ourselves consigned. I would argue that, in addition to creating a financial aristocracy, CBDCs promise to open out the prospect of establishing a financial caste system, one where those of a preferred caste (whether based upon racial, social, political or ideological grounds) receive small (or even not so small) concessions or indulgences, whilst those in the lowest caste (and I will leave it to you, dear reader, to imagine who might fall into that category) would become literal “untouchables“, cast out of civil society without any means to allow them, or their loved ones to even survive.

Those who might consider these scenarios far fetched need only imagine the crash of the U.S dollar, or some other global currency crisis, associated with a new Great Depression of similar or worse magnitude than the 1930’s. The introduction of CBDCs in the wake of a dollar crash would be the beginning. Global central banks would call for a new international network of currencies to “stop such a crisis from ever happening again”, or words to that effect. Notice that this transition to CBDCs would be pitched as being for “security”, and would be sold to one and all as being in their best interests.

They will no doubt posit that the sacrifice of a “small amount” of liberty would be a small price to pay in exchange for safety that is “beneficial” to all, especially when existing money would be rendered virtually worthless overnight, and with the economy mired in the gutter. “Stimulus cheques“, just as was utilised during the COVID lockdowns, would now likely only be paid in CBDCs, and so even those suspicious that they are being baited on a hook will have little choice but to accept this, or watch their children or loved ones being deprived, a stark choice that desperate times will only make into a fait accompli.

No matter which way one looks at it, CBDCs are the currency of the Google Archipelago, and acceptance of it as a replacement for “real” (i.e. tangible) money opens the door to the end of prosperity for all but the privileged few, and the weaponisation of currency against those who dissent against the totalitarian future that seems to be bearing down on us at frightening speed.

AI: Is It Artificial, or Merely Simulated Intelligence?

What defines “intelligence”, in its most rudimentary terms, is the ability to acquire, understand, and use knowledge. By that metric, so called Artificial Intelligence (or AI as it is more popularly known) can already utilise its ability to acquire and collate knowledge, often at speeds far in excess of even the best human capability, and which are likely to become exponentially faster over time.

But the question of what constitutes “understanding” remains a more nebulous concept for “artificial intelligence” to grasp. Understanding a set of mathematical equations and arriving at the correct answer, or playing a highly structured game like chess to a superhuman level (due to its enormous capacity for calculating and controlling different variables) is one thing, but as the rank failures of climate models in predicting global climate trends shows, even the highest powered supercomputer fails in comprehending and accurately modelling stochastic and chaotic systems, and is only as good as the limitations of the (human induced) input parameters that inform them. Garbage in will invariably lead to garbage out.

A slew of questions therefore arise: Is AI “intelligent”, and does it have, and more importantly understand knowledge, or does it merely regurgitate it? Does AI have even limited insight, and does it comprehend nuance and subtlety, or is its concept of knowledge really a mere “digitised” form of reality, which it represents as a series of “noughts and ones”? Would deferring increasingly to AI create an intellectual climate where human ingenuity and intellect was stymied rather than enhanced, as “intelligence” is outsourced to an entity whose own version of intelligence is limited to not only existing knowledge, but confined to generally accepted consensus knowledge? Are the biases entrenched amongst the cohort of those responsible for AI development- Anti-humanism, Malthusianism, Climate Millenarianism, Radical Environmentalism, etc- similarly informing the attitudes and principles with which AI will be inevitably imbued?

Search Engines and Social Media- Artificial Intelligence 1.0:

The initial publicly available and more pervasive forays into Artificial Intelligence came predictably through the agency of the Internet, the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the “Internet protocol suite” (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. 

As Wikipedia notes: “The linking of commercial networks and enterprises by the early 1990s marked the beginning of the transition to the modern Internet, and generated a sustained exponential growth as generations of institutional, personal, and mobile computers were connected to the network. Although the Internet was widely used by academia in the 1980s, commercialisation incorporated its services and technologies into virtually every aspect of modern life.”

Examples of tasks in which Artificial Intelligence was first implicated include such functions as speech recognition, computer vision, translation between natural languages, as well as other mappings of inputs. Applications of AI from there included advanced web search engines (e.g. Google, Bing, etc.), recommendation systems (used by YouTube, Amazon, and Netflix), understanding human speech (such as Siri and Alexa), and competing at the highest level in strategic game systems (such as chess and Go), etc.

The mass digital transformations, and the adoption of AI and machine learning (ML) technologies, have accelerated the growth of the social media businesses, and have been used allegedly to boost customer satisfaction, but also have the potential to shape public opinion. Facebook uses an AI tool called “Deep Text” that monitors the comments, posts, and other data generated on the platform, in order to understand how people use different languages, slang terms, abbreviations, and exclamation marks, to learn more depth of detail about the context of comments, etc. produced by users, whether for good or ill.

Twitter uses AI in its platform to understand what “tweet” recommendations to suggest on its users’ timelines. Its aim is allegedly to recommend the most relevant tweets to users for an increasingly personalised experience. Of course, this opens out the prospect of external manipulation of what is deemed “relevant”. Twitter also uses IBM Watson and natural language processing (NLP) AI to track and remove abusive messages, and inappropriate content which can sometimes be arbitrarily or unfairly applied.

Instagram, the social networking app for sharing photos and videos, was launched in 2010 and currently has around 1 billion active monthly users. The platform has also implemented big data and AI to enhance user experience, filter spam, and boost the results of target advertising. With the help of tags and trending information, the platform users can find photos of a particular activity, place, event, restaurants, food, and discovery experiences.

So, with these three popular social media platforms as specific examples of a wider, pervasive influence of AI across the digital social space, it becomes apparent that this computerised “intelligence” has created (or at least facilitated) a whole new subset of problems that have only come to the fore in the last 2 or 3 decades.

Artificial Intelligence driven social media platforms have pervaded all aspects of society over that period, with its sphere of influence affecting local to federal politics, national security (e.g. Huawei, TikTok), the outcomes and integrity of elections (“Zuckerbucks”, digital voting systems), and it has significantly compromised the media landscape and the profession of journalism in general (fake news, click bait, overweighting negative news).

Additionally, social media (even in its nascent, rudimentary form) has become the dominant influence on society’s value system, driving a cultural evolution that has become increasingly unintelligent, shallow and narcissistic, by promoting a stilted view of history and a simplistic and often perverted (in every sense of the word) response to social justice issues and political discourse. More troubling still has been its pernicious influence on our children’s intellectual development, social participation, interpersonal relationships, and their very concepts of personal identity.

This has opened society up to a series of largely unexpected, and inadvertent ills of the following:

a) social media and information overload, with much of that information undifferentiated and uncritically accepted,

b) addiction to these platforms to the exclusion of healthy activities such as reading books, physical activity and sports,

c) shortened attention spans created by the characteristics of the platforms to emphasise brevity, the visual over the literate, and the emotive over the intelligent,

d) the rise of influencer culture, where impressionable minds are influenced by popular image makers of dubious distinction or merit or qualification,

e) an ever increasing sexualisation of children, both in the content they are exposed to and in the access the platform has given to those who would exploit children,

f) the promotion of increasingly divergent polarisation, particularly across political and racial divides,

g) the advent of “bots” and “deep fakes”, where AI generated responses and visual stimuli provide fake facsimiles of a subject to deceive or distract from reality, or to prime anger or other negative responses based on false perceptions generated.

These earliest iterations of AI have, in spite of the relatively embryonic stages of their development, become so pervasive and influential that the next stage of AI, the one upon the threshold of which we now stand, promises to be transformative in ways we cannot possibly imagine.

The Next Generation – Artificial Intelligence 2.0:

In spite of this litany of as yet unresolved and even unaddressed problems unearthed by the first tranche of AI related technology, we now are being propelled headlong into a “brave new world” brought to us by more sophisticated versions of this technology that have the potential to evolve at a pace beyond even our ability to understand and control it.

Amongst the next iterations of Artificial Intelligence are to be found with self-driving autonomous vehicles (e.g. Google’s ‘Waymo’, Russia’s ‘Yandex’, China’s ‘AutoX’, amongst a legion of others), which are being rolled out as we speak across the globe. What started as lane departure sensors with neural network steering correction, collision avoidance and adaptive cruise control features, and including such useful features as reverse parking modes, driver fatigue detection and GPS navigation systems, has graduated to Tesla’s ‘Autopilot’, ‘Audi AI’, and Mercedes Benz’s ‘Drive Pilot’ amongst many others at the forefront of fledgling Level 3 autonomous driving capabilities being integrated onto public roadways.

In March 2018, the world’s first fully electric self-driving bus that is open to the general public was launched in Neuhausen am Rheinfall, Switzerland. In December 2018, Waymo launched the first commercial robotaxi called “Waymo One”; with users in the Phoenix metropolitan area using an app to request a pick-up. By the early 2020s multiple electric, autonomous buses open for public transport were being launched right around the world.

Autonomous vehicles have also been used in the mining industry. In December 2008, Rio Tinto Alcan began testing the Komatsu Autonomous Haulage System – the world’s first commercial autonomous mining haulage system – in the Pilbara iron ore mine in Western Australia. Rio Tinto has reported benefits in health, safety, and productivity, with much of this deployed in high risk activities to reduce the likelihood of fatal accidents. In November 2011, Rio Tinto signed a deal to greatly expand its fleet of driverless trucks, and is currently operating the largest autonomous fleet in the world, with trucks that are controlled by a centralised system hundreds of miles away in Perth.

The biggest challenge, and potentially insurmountable hurdle for those in the driverless technology industry is how to get autonomous vehicles to operate safely and effectively in complex and unpredictable human environments. Much of this driverless technology is already in use exists in industrial settings like mines, warehouses, and ports, which are largely controlled environments that are likely to become increasingly independent of human involvement moving forward. For that to translate to the public roadways, highways and byways across the world requires not only a staggering investment, but increases the complexity of the systems required to make it safe and workable exponentially.

Whilst it is laudable and indeed desirable to see remote or driverless technology deployed in high-risk environments, from mines to nuclear plants to military settings, to limit the dangers to human life, this also opens out a potential future of “lethal autonomous weapon systems” which could be deployed in the theatres of war and conflict.

As a global AI arms race heats up driven by profit motive on the one hand, and fear of being left behind by the lethality of an opponent’s AI capability on the other, we are being propelled into a future where killing machines without conscience or remorse, make autonomous or semi-autonomous decisions about who are and who are not enemy combatants, and what proportionality (an often subtle distinction) is to be applied to any response to that perceived threat.

It is clearly impossible to programme a robotic warrior or drone with appropriate and proportionate reactions to the infinite array of situations that could arise in the heat of conflict or battle, particularly against non-uniformed guerrilla or insurgent combatants who might be indistinguishable from ordinary civilians. No matter how well technology monitors, detects and neutralises threats, there is no evidence that it can engage in the type of subtle and flexible reasoning essential to the application of even slightly ambiguous laws or norms.

This fails to even account for the inevitable malfunctions, glitches or other unintended consequences from automated weaponry, which should give rise to a measured discourse of reform around military robotics and cyber-weaponry, except fear, greed and self-interest is more likely to trump such common sense and good governance, as it always does.

As the Guardian notes, “The advance of AI use in the military, police, prisons and security services is less a rivalry among great powers than a lucrative global project by corporate and government elites to maintain control over restive populations at home and abroad. Once deployed in distant battles and occupations, military methods tend to find a way back to the home front. They are first deployed against unpopular or relatively powerless minorities, and then spread to other groups.” This deployment then becomes standard issue for the whole population in its entirety- on a relentless AI driven path to dystopia 2.0.

A.I 3.0- Large Language Models and the Upcoming Brave New World:

The recent evolution of generative and creative tools (including Large Language Models like ChatGPT, and AI art and music generators like DALL-E2, Stable Diffusion and Midjourney) has captured the imagination and taken the world by storm over the last year. ChatGPT is an artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot developed by OpenAI, which was released in November 2022. It is built on top of OpenAI’s GPT-3.5 and GPT-4 families of large language models (LLMs) and has been fine-tuned (an approach to transfer learning) using both supervised and reinforcement learning techniques.

The advent of the GPT chatbot has also increased competition within the space, motivating the creation of Google’s Bard and Meta’s LLaMA in response. Whilst this competition is gratifying in terms of choice available to consumers who wish to use AI to help them write song lyrics and poetry, draw graphic art, compose music, and write essays, etc., the presence of multiple players in the field will not overcome some fundamental and basic issues with Large Language Models generally, particularly as their self-reinforced learning propagates exponentially going forward.

The problem is these models are trained on large corpuses of internet text. They should be specifically factual, empirical and verifiable data trained much as the Wolfram language (a symbolic computer algebra system) is all about factual numerical data and calculation. The models should be small and portable and knowledge domain specific to avoid the pitfalls of perpetuating misinformation being given the false aura of infallibility by being “Artificial Intelligence”.

As an example of how humans can come to overvalue AI platforms, Google software engineer and AI researcher Blake Lemoine had been working with an AI called Language Model for Dialogue Applications (LaMDA), designed to predict and generate natural-sounding language for chatbots based on large quantities of text scraped from the internet. But he was suspended from his job for publishing conversations with the AI, which he claimed were evidence that it was actually “sentient”.

“Neither LaMDA nor any of its cousins (GPT-3) are remotely intelligent,” writes Gary Marcus, a psychology professor at New York University and founder and former CEO of machine learning firm Geometric Intelligence. “All they do is match patterns, draw from massive statistical databases of human language. The patterns might be cool, but language these systems utter doesn’t actually mean anything at all. And it sure as hell doesn’t mean that these systems are sentient.”

The definition of sentience, however, is somewhat at odds with Blake Lemoine’s perceptions, with the Collins dictionary defining ‘sentient’ as ‘having the power of sense perception or sensation; conscious’. What the tech expert named above confuses with sentience is merely a sophisticated facsimile of human to human interaction, and not remotely conscious.

Large Language AI models are not intelligent in any real sense. The AI has no method of determining the difference between objectively true information and misinformation. These models just take existing information and produce an output to meet a request based solely on how internet sources, trusted organisations, and government and regulatory authorities (so ultimately humans) seem to respond when given the same request.

The illusion is that we have access to exponentially more computing power compared to even just a decade ago, and that increasing this at an even greater rate will deliver “intelligence”. It is merely becoming much more efficient at processing all that data, and providing the simulation of intelligence at lightning speed.

These models will easily replace things like Google search engines, and they would clearly benefit those who have average or worse than average communication skills. But they are fatally limited to the corpus of existing knowledge, and therefore cannot inform, nor solve problems that involve new ideas or situations that it has no experience in, or information about.

They are not a pathway to innovation, but a limitation to it, as people become increasingly reliant upon them to do the thinking for them. One further danger of Large Language AI models is when the output of these language models becomes the input again, at which point you have a cycle of self reinforcing static beliefs, where new interpretations of existing facts no longer matter, and they can no longer change as a consequence.

The prospect of the development of automated decision-making based on “all-knowing” AI perceived as infallible opens out society to a rigid form of orthodoxy and subtle authoritarianism, being able to be manipulated and misused via entrained biases or false inputs programmed into it.

Just because AI like ChatGPT is not intelligent, or sentient, and is limited to existing information, doesn’t mean it is not potentially dangerous to humanity, and even a potential existential threat to it. The use and misuse of this tool threatens us purely from its ability to mimic things so authentically on the surface, and at such speed, and with such exponential growth into the future to increase its threat beyond the capacity of humans to control it.

The evolution of AI therefore threatens to simulate everything, leading to a collapse of the concept of reality, and then inevitably to a loss of trust amongst those still capable of independently analysing information. Exploiting automation to find legal loopholes, engage in political lobbying, to manipulate “news”, to exploit computer code, and even be used to engage in identity fraud, blackmail and financial scams, to promote pseudo-religious cults and to fake elections, having created the ultimate tool for bad actors from within and without, where AI can pretty soon convince a significant majority of the population that black is white, and up is down.

Additionally, it is worth noting that randomness is fundamentally illogical and computers are not – they have to conform to logic since that is what all computer coding is. AI can be programmed to learn, and create new guidelines for learning, but it is still not human and has no soul, no conscience, and thus no ethics, and fails completely to comprehend the unpredictable and random event. No longer will students studying in schools, and even at a tertiary level, develop their own opinions or evolve a more sophisticated world view, which they can synthesise and construct into an effective argument in an essay or other detailed response.

Instructing AI to do the thinking, as it becomes more sophisticated itself, will become increasingly the default setting for cogent argument, where everyone’s critique will resemble everyone else’s because they derive from the same AI well spring. True critical thinking, “lateral thinking” (thinking outside of the box), and alternate viewpoints and opinions, along with real creativity will likely become increasingly devalued and irrelevant in the face of the pseudo-authority of an AI overlord that we have elevated to a level of prestige and omniscience that it’s capabilities don’t really deserve.

Transhumanism:

Transhumanism (also abbreviated as H+) is a philosophical movement that advocates for technology not only enhancing human life, but to take over human life by merging human and machine. Transhumanists think of disease, aging and even death as both undesirable and unnecessary, and believe that technology will eventually overcome them all. Advocates of Transhumanism believe there are spectacular rewards to be reaped from going beyond the natural barriers and limitations that constitute an ordinary human being.

The Transhumanist movement seeks to develop and use a suite of technologies to radically transform humanity beyond its current physiology and limitations—to augment or amplify natural abilities like intellect and physical strength, to create disease-resistant bodies, and ultimately extend lifespans or even prevent death altogether.

To accomplish its goals, the Transhumanist movement is looking to such technologies as genetic engineering (the deliberate altering of DNA sequences to produce new traits), implant technology (the embedding of digital implants in the body to interface with computers), artificial intelligence (the development of computer systems that mimic the thinking capabilities of the human mind), nanotechnology (the manipulation of atoms and molecules to produce new molecular structures), and cybernetics (the replacement of biological body parts with biomechanical devices).

Adherents to this pseudo-philosophy may well be a very small cohort in society, but they have significant power and influence, particularly in Silicon Valley. “Elon Musk, the world’s richest person, is devoted to boosting “cognition” and co-founded the company Neuralink toward that end. Having raised more than $200 million in new funding in 2021, in January, Neuralink proclaimed its readiness to start human trials of brain-implantable computer chips for therapeutic purposes, to help those with spinal-cord injuries walk again. But Musk’s ultimate target in exploring brain-computer connections is ‘superhuman’, or ‘radically enhanced’, cognition—a top transhumanist priority. Those with radically heightened cognitive ability would be so advanced that they wouldn’t even really be human anymore but, instead, ‘posthuman’.”(Source: Slate)

Concerns that Transhumanist technology will create greater social inequities are among the most-voiced criticisms of the movement. In an article published in the journal Foreign Policy in 2004, the American political theorist Francis Fukuyama called Transhumanism “the world’s most dangerous idea,” warning that biotechnology’s offerings might come at a “frightful moral cost” to human rights. Fukuyama pointed out that wide economic disparities between countries may further encourage “enhanced” individuals to claim superior rights to “those left behind.”

Transhumanism continues to be compared to the Eugenics movement, reflecting fears that technology will be exploited by those wishing to either become, or to breed “superhumans”. “Among the many substantive parallels between Transhumanism and Anglo-American Eugenics are an insistence that science set humanity’s guiding aspirations and that human intelligence and moral attitudes (such as altruism and self-control) require major, biological augmentation.” (Source: Slate)

The foundational misconceptions that underpin the Transhumanist fantasy is that the human intelligence and moral attitudes are somehow congruent with artificial intelligence neural networks, and that they simply need to be integrated to improve these outcomes. Artificial neural networks are clearly inspired by the human brain, in which billions of cells called neurons form complex webs of connections with one another, processing information as they fire signals back and forth, but these artificial networks are highly simplified analogues of human biology.

Humans learn by making structured mental concepts, in which many different properties and associations are linked together in unsupervised learning processes. AI systems do not form conceptual knowledge like this. They rely entirely instead on extracting complex statistical associations from their training data, and then applying these to similar contexts, within a supervised learning context. We clearly need more fundamental insights into how the human brain actually works to a much more detailed extent, before we can build machines (if that were even possible) that truly think and learn like humans, or to be able to integrate “computer chips” into the human brain to achieve human-like responses, let alone enhance human capabilities.

As stated above, the opportunity to extend lifespans and even cheat death is too clearly tantalising for some, and the overwhelming desire to play God seems to be highly motivating to narcissistic Big Tech oligarchs like Larry Page or Elon Musk, who labour under the misconception that the human experience can be reduced to a downloadable commodity that can be digitised and “enhanced” by merging human consciousness with soulless, conscience-less, unsophisticated and, ironically, unintelligent artificial intelligence.

Such hubris, when merged with narcissism and a fear of one’s own mortality, forms a heady mixture; one that opens the rest of us up to a realm of possibilities too troubling, and possibly too horrifying to contemplate.

In Search of the Perfect Limerick:

The humble limerick is a form of verse, frequently perverse and of a humorous nature, that arose in Britain in the early 18th Century. As Wikipedia accurately asserts: “From a folkloric point of view, the form is essentially transgressive; violation of taboo is part of its function.”

Given that “violation of taboo” and occasional obscenity is an expected and intrinsic component of the form, I would therefore warn any readers of delicate dispositions, those under 18 years of age, or those who could possibly be offended, to STOP here and read no further, lest they expose themselves to material they might deem offensive, lewd, or obscene.

The author therefore takes no responsibility for any such offence caused should you read beyond this point, having chosen to continue “at your own risk”.

Winston’s self-penned selection:

The death of Lord Nelson was quite solemn

But “Kiss me, Hardy” created a problem,

His crew thought it quite gay,

They didn’t know he lent that way,

So, in memoriam, they erected Nelson’s column.

There was a young man known as Heather,

Whose gender would change with the weather,

It came and it went,

‘Till the whole thing got bent,

And he came to the end of his tether.

Young Arthur was such a damn martyr,

Identity politics his sole imprimatur,

When it came to his gender,

It was all an agenda,

So, now he’s neither Arthur nor Martha.

When the “Woke” make an unholy alliance

With AI where they place untold reliance,

The reckoning will come

When we’re blown to Kingdom come

And they realise it’s only an appliance.

There was a young man from Nantucket,

Who sailed round the world in a bucket,

He made it all the way

To the shores of Bombay,

Shrugged his shoulders, and cried out “Oh, fuck it!”

There once was a young man named Cedric,

Who was known to be a tad anglocentric,

Around and around,

His thoughts were soon bound,

In circles within circles concentric.

There was a young fellow named Brandon,

Who lost both his legs in tandem,

Having murdered his mistress,

Right in front of a witness,

In law, he had not a leg to stand on.

There was a young priest called McGonigal,

A master of all things canonical,

He was tempted by sin

‘Til he eventually gave in

Give the Devil his due- diabolical!

Little known is that the poet Catullus,

Would take sexual toys to the palace,

On the way to the forum,

He had lost all decorum,

For which Caesar would bear him no malice.

The delights that the young blonde did proffer,

Would make men seek to honour an offer,

But they had to be quick,

Before they gave her the flick,

So they had to be on her and off her.

There was a virile young soldier, Horatio,

Who had courage and strength in equal ratio,

His sexual proclivities,

Included various activities,

With a young servant boy named Ignacio.

There was a young poet, Anonymous,

Whose name with bright wit was synonymous.

He got carried away,

With his ego some say,

And now all of his poems are eponymous.

When “Woke” Silicon Valley arch-technoids,

Create a race of super intelligent androids,

Imbued with “white fragility”

And “toxic masculinity”,

There’ll be societal mayhem on steroids.

There once was a tender young Druid,

Who decided to become gender fluid,

Over the course of a year

Their vocation became clear,

And now they’re a Qantas flight steward.

There once was a bold armadillo,

Who had just one slight peccadillo,

He played chicken on the highway,

Insisting: “I’ll do it my way!”

And was squashed flat just outside Amarillo.

There once was an accident of birth,

Which, in polite quarters, created much mirth.

The miserable bastard

Would never have lasted,

Except he ran with it for all it was worth.

I recount the tale of a mischievous elf,

Whose indiscretions were far from top shelf.

But, the wood fairies had tact,

Kept his reputation intact

While the forest gnome was discretion itself.

When thoughts coalesce in my mind,

With poetic verses for this purpose refined,

Then my lyrical intent

Becomes a comical bent,

Leaving no conceited oaf unmaligned.

Or perhaps on a darker note………..

The average Joe in the street has not realised,

Just how much, by the elites, he’s despised.

They’ll piss on him from on high,

He can kiss his ass goodbye

As they rob him of all that his life was comprised.

A selection of Limericks from other sources:

Whilst not originals by yours truly, these clever limericks deserve the utmost consideration as amongst the best examples of the form, or at least deserving of honourable mention:

A flea and a fly in a flue,
Were imprisoned, so what could they do?
Said the fly, “Let us flee!”
“Let us fly,” said the flea,
And they flew through a flaw in the flue.

There was a young woman, Miss White,
Whose speed was much faster than light.
She set out one day,
In a relative way,
And returned on the previous night.

There was a young schoolboy from Rye,
Who was baked by mistake in a pie.
To his mother’s disgust,
He emerged through the crust,
And exclaimed, with a yawn, “Where am I?”

There once was a farmer from Leeds,
Who swallowed a packet of seeds.
It soon came to pass,
He was covered with grass,
But has all of the tomatoes he needs.

A crossword compiler named Ross,
Who found himself quite at a loss,
When asked, “Why so blue?”
Said, “I haven’t a clue
I’m 2 Down to put 1 Across.”

A dozen, a gross, and a score,
Plus three times the square root of four
Divided by seven
Plus five times eleven
Is nine squared and not a bit more.

(Source: British Mathematician Leigh Mercer: (written mathematically as follows (12 + 144 + 20 + 3√4)/7 + (5 × 11) = 9² + 0; which reduces to 182/7 + 55 = 26 + 55 = 81 QED)

One Saturday morning at three,
A cheese monger’s shop in Paree.
Collapsed to the ground,
With a thunderous sound,
Leaving only a pile of de brie.

There was a young lady named Alice
Who was known to have peed in a chalice.
‘Twas the common belief
It was done for relief,
And not out of protestant malice.

The limerick packs laughs anatomical
Into space that is quite economical.
But the good ones I’ve seen
So seldom are clean
And the clean ones so seldom are comical.

And as if to prove a point, the following aspire to live up to that axiom:

While Titian was mixing rose madder
His model reclined on a ladder.
The position to Titian
Suggested coition,
So he ran up the ladder and had ’er.

There was a young girl of Baroda
Who built an erotic pagoda;
The walls of its halls
Were festooned with the balls
And the tools of the fools that bestrode her.

I met a lewd nude in Bermuda
Who thought she was shrewd: I was shrewder;
She thought it quite crude
To be wooed in the nude;
I pursued her, subdued her, and screwed her.

There was a young lady named Sally,
Who enjoyed the occasional dally.
She sat on the lap 
Of a well-endowed chap,
And cried “Sir! You’re right up my alley!”

There was a young man from Dundee
Who buggered an ape in a tree.
The results were quite horrid:
All arse and no forehead,
Three balls and a purple goatee.

(Source: Algernon Charles Swinburne (1837-1909))* NB: see my reply to this limerick a few lines down below

An Argentine gaucho named Bruno
Said “Humping is one thing I do know.
A woman is fine,
and a sheep is divine:
but a llama is ‘numero uno’”.

And the last word should go to the Irish, with a twinkle in the eye I’m sure at the cleverness of the penultimate line:

There’s a frivolous five line distraction

Of seemingly Irish extraction,

And rather like Guinness,

Or Oscar Wilde’s pen is,

A source of immense satisfaction.

*NB: my reply to the long dead Algernon Swinburne, in defence of the poor “benighted” offspring referred to in his wonderful limerick above is as follows:

An ugly man with a purple goatee,

Lived to the age of one hundred and three,

A fright to behold,

But his wit was pure gold,

Being renowned for his sparkling repartee!

A Confederacy of Dunces- How the West Was Won:

“We now live in a nation where doctors destroy health, lawyers destroy justice, universities destroy knowledge, governments destroy freedom, press destroys information, religion destroys morals and our banks destroy the economy.”

This quote from American journalist and commentator Chris Hedges, is a sobering, and unerringly accurate account of what has become of the United States in particular and, in lockstep, many of our much cherished Western democracies around the globe over the last 40 years.

Once diligent and efficacious governance has been progressively co-opted by the most incompetent, corrupt, venal and amoral amongst us, whilst the foundational pillars of our societies, incorporating those institutions that were established principally to serve and protect us all, have been systematically subverted and undermined to work against the interests and aspirations of hard working citizens of those once great nations.

Hard won freedoms, enshrined in the Magna Carta Libertatum at Runnymede in 1215 CE, and the propensity to assuming individual responsibility for oneself and one’s community and nation have been effectively subverted, whilst established enlightenment principles of justice and procedural fairness, along with the aspiration for promoting social cohesiveness and equality of opportunity that had once epitomised Western societies have been effectively allowed to dwindle into obscurity, as mere shadows of their former glory. These values form the very core tenets that have underpinned the civilisation that many of our forebears fought fiercely and died for, often against apparently insurmountable odds.

Climate Change, Race Politics, Russiaphobia, Insurrection and Other Assorted Hobgoblins:

“The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.” H.L. Mencken

“For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong.” H.L. Mencken

It is difficult to know precisely where the corruption of Western Civilisation began, but its progression toward “decline and fall”, much like the Roman Empire before it, is gathering pace and has an air of inevitability that is both depressing and alarming.

When Rome fell to the Barbarians in 476 CE, they entered Rome unopposed. The “Barbarians at the gates” merely took advantage of difficulties already existing in Rome at that time- problems that included a decaying city (both physically and morally), having little to no tax revenue (economic incompetence), overpopulation (leading to overcrowding, unemployment and disease), poor leadership and having inadequate defense capabilities and preparedness.

As Edward Gibbon wrote ……“the decline of Rome was the natural and inevitable effect of immoderate greatness. Prosperity ripened the principle of decay; the causes of destruction multiplied with the extent of conquest, and as soon as time or accident has removed artificial supports, the stupendous fabric yielded to the pressure of its own weight.“

So much of Roman civilisation’s fall is echoed in our present day decline in Western civilisation, where poor leadership is the norm, moral decay is both promoted and celebrated, and infrastructure has become degraded, exceeding the capacity for its ongoing maintenance and sustainability.

Our cities are being deliberately overcrowded, with citizens being confined like battery hens in medium and high density housing in the name of “saving” the environment, whilst relentless waves of unprecedented immigration (both “legal” and “illegal”) are being actively encouraged beyond the capacity of communities to remain cohesive and neighbourly, in favour of establishing enclaves where tribalism inevitably leads to societal division and segregation, rather than an harmonious integration.

Economic profligacy and malfeasance, in the vein of their Roman counterparts, has replaced what was once sensible stewardship, recklessly racking up debt to unprecedented levels across all Western nations, and disproportionately rewarding speculative practices while simultaneously deriding and disincentivising sensible investment, frugality and thrift. Free markets have been replaced with crony capitalism and asset bubbles where prices greatly exceed the intrinsic value of the product or service provided. We now stand on the precipice of a catastrophic economic collapse, the likes of which we have never seen before, and even likely exceeding the depths of the 1929 stock market crash and the ensuing “Great Depression” that followed it.

Our bureaucracies that are meant to service the needs of the people have grown exponentially and then metastasised, becoming unaccountable fiefdoms reigned over by unelected Napoleons who savour only their own positions, perquisites and power, and the edifice erected is driven to ruthless inefficiency and sclerosis through layer upon layer of middle managers and paper shufflers, intellectual non-entities who achieve nothing more than covering their own behinds and pretending to be indispensible.

During a late phase of the Roman Empire’s decline, during the reign of Diocletian (in 284-305 CE), Edward Gibbon spells out this reference to oppression as the product of twin evils which always go together: a swollen bu­reaucracy and excessive taxation.

“The number of ministers, of magistrates, of officers, and of servants, who filled the different departments of the state, was mul­tiplied beyond the example of for­mer times; and (if we may bor­row the warm expression of a con­temporary) ‘when the proportion of those who received exceeded the proportion of those who con­tributed the provinces were op­pressed by the weight of tributes.’ From this period to the extinction of the Empire it would be easy to deduce an uninterrupted series of clamours and complaints. Accord­ing to his religion and situation, each writer chooses either Diocle­tian or Constantine or Valens or Theodosius, for the object of his invectives; but they unanimously agree in representing the burden of the public impositions, and par­ticularly the land-tax and capita­tion, as the intolerable and in­creasing grievance of their own times.“

Western Civilisation is now doing its level best to facilitate its own attempted suicide: inciting wars it has no intention of “winning”, recklessly engaging in debt monetisation (money printing) to the moon and back, surveilling and persecuting its own citizens and progressively stealing their liberties, and then onward to subjecting them to medical malfeasance, destroying their goods production and food-growing capabilities, and finally in subjecting the public at large to incessant campaigns of propaganda to systematically distract and demoralise them by falsifying and disfiguring reality.

Some prominent examples of this relentless propaganda campaign includes in shamelessly, and uncritically promoting the charlatanism of the doctrines of “Climate Change“, “Identity Politics” (involving “race” and “gender”) and “Cultural Marxism”.

Citizens inhabiting Western democracies have been relentlessly bombarded with Global Warming (now known as “Climate Change“) ideology, with a litany false and exaggerated claims of eco-catastrophe that are entirely divorced from reality, and that have been promulgated successfully for the last more than 40 years. No stone has been left unturned and no opportunity missed in gleefully traumatising young impressionable children and adults with speculative, highly dubious (if not outright hysterical) apocalyptic predictions of a “dying planet”, “collapsing ecosystems” and “carbon pollution”. These are pretend calamities, meant primarily to promote unreasoning fear and unquestioning compliance, for which the only alleged solution is “net zero” carbon reduction policies that are destined to promote real poverty, suffering and privation, and which are designed to widen the gap between rich and poor, and to promote the financial interests of the privileged “haves” from an ever-burgeoning number of “have nots”.

Identity politics, similarly, is a pernicious influence that has pervasively infected Western culture, and is often rightly criticised for its intrinsic ideological biases and its diminishment of the human spirit. One of the main problems is its tendency to characterise people solely based on their race, gender, sexual orientation, or other identity markers rather than on the basis of their qualities as individuals, more often than not leading to an oversimplification of often complex and multifactorial social issues. This approach tends to pit different identity groups against one another, reinforcing societal divisions rather than promoting solidarity, social cohesion and understanding.

More tellingly, identity politics often ignores real economic and class-based inequalities, which are more germane factors in understanding and addressing any alleged systemic “oppression” it claims to address. Ultimately, it inevitably leads to a narrow-minded, victimhood mentality that undermines individual agency and personal responsibility of the alleged “victim”.

Cultural Marxism is a broader term used to describe the form of Marxist ideology that focuses on culture and identity rather than economic and class-based issues. The concept of “Cultural Marxism” has been justifiably criticised for its lack of coherence and academic rigour, and is the natural consequence of traditional Marxism having failed to initiate their much hoped for working class revolution against their hated Capitalist foes.

One would think that Marxist ideology that was and remains the very antithesis of the West’s merit based, freedom loving and prosperous way of life would have little traction in a well-educated and privileged society, but incrementally and by stealth its pernicious politics of envy has permeated what were once stable foundational pillars of civilisation, from academia to the law, from schools to universities to churches to the judiciary, and across the broad range of institutions to whom we naively entrusted the protection of citizens rights and privileges. Marxism, at its essence, represents a path to totalitarianism that breeds anarchy and tribalism along the way.

Alexis de Tocqueville’s words, in the nineteenth century, have the ring of truth and serve as a warning for those willing to listen: “Democracy and socialism have nothing in common but one word, equality. But notice the difference: while democracy seeks equality in liberty; socialism seeks equality in restraint and servitude.”

One of the many potential dangers of Cultural Marxism, as outlined above, is its tendency to promote a mentality of adversarial tribalism, one that has now led to ever-increasing social polarisation and conflict. By framing cultural issues as a “battle” between self-appointed oppressed groups and their alleged “oppressors” (often arbitrarily and conveniently ascribed), Cultural Marxism creates an environment of pervasive resentment and hostility that undermines civil society (as it is intended to do), promoting a victimhood culture that encourages weak (and often easily led) individuals to see themselves as victims of so called “systemic oppression”, rather than focusing on their own much needed personal development, and upon assuming individual responsibility for their attitudes, actions and ultimately their social advancement.

The masses in Western democracies, largely insulated from what is really happening in the world around them by layers of technology, mindless entertainment, stilted reportage and various other mechanisms of distraction, are being routinely programmed through mainstream and social media to accept this march toward a totalitarian future, marked by the brutality, surveillance and dehumanising treatment of an evolving police state. This desensitisation to such authoritarianism is further rationalised as things that are happening, and can only happen to “other” people, particularly those of other political or ideological persuasions. The ramifications for the future of civic engagement, political discourse and self-government are incredibly depressing and demoralising, where moral principles and the rule of law are abandoned in favour of apathy, partisanship and wilful blindness.

As Edward Gibbon further noted about the fallen Roman Empire, the dwindling intellectual life of the average Roman led to an apathetic, feckless and inept society that was ripe for exploitation and conquest: “This long peace and the uni­form government of the Romans introduced a slow and secret poi­son into the vitals of the empire. The minds of men were gradually reduced to the same level, the fire of genius was extinguished, and even the military spirit evapo­rated…. They received laws and governors from the will of their sovereign and trusted for their de­fense to a mercenary army…….. They no longer possessed that public courage which is nourished by the love of independence.”

Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire!:

“Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on, or by imbeciles who really mean it.” Mark Twain

A confluence of public bureaucracies and corporate entities (forming a clandestine corporatocracy) has institutionalised the falsification of reality under the pretense of saving the human race from a cluster of H.L. Mencken’s hobgoblins, led by such hot button existential issues as Climate Change (formerly Global Warming before the warming became half-baked), Racism, Putin’s Russia and Heteronormativity.

These entities have been driven to the point of insanity by the probability of the pending economic collapse that is verging on being a mathematical certainty, coupled with the increasing likelihood of the war in Ukraine transforming into pan-European and then global warfare (with nuclear confrontation by no means off the table), a prospect which has only been accelerated by their own self-interested, neglectful, derelict and ultimately suicidal activities. As the saying goes: “Those whom God wishes to destroy, He first deprives of reason!”

Mass computerisation, the digital world that has been created around it, and its many ways of assembling and controlling information, has thus enabled the more pervasive control of the general population, especially directed at those who object to the totalising control that has been implemented through its agency. Without doubt, the nascent surveillance state is far more advanced than is openly admitted to on the surface, with innocent citizens being profiled and categorised “as we speak” for their thought crimes in holding opinions at variance with the ideological articles of faith of the prevailing fascist corporatocracy in the West.

What is unforgivable, from the point of view of the totalitarian ideologues who have assumed the apex of power throughout the West, is for an individual of conscience to see through the political partisanship, the wall to wall propaganda, and the veil of lies and obfuscation, and to have both a desire for objective truth and a dedication to one’s personal morality and sense of obligation to others. The access of free thinkers to the digital world is a double edged sword for these elites, a mechanism which they seek to exploit through covert unwarranted surveillance, psychological warfare and gaslighting, but which simultaneously threatens their control of the narrative as those who remain sceptical of the official line have a tool of unprecedented reach for the dissemination of counter-narratives to thwart their ambitions.

The list of lies and distortions of reality is extensive, and reveals much about the forces that are actively undermining the societal norms and culture in Western nations. The deceptive behaviour and outright lies can be traced back at least to the assassination of John F Kennedy, where the CIA involvement and the Warren Commission coverup were only part of the web of lies and misdirection; which was then followed shortly thereafter by the Gulf of Tonkin Incident that allowed the U.S. to engage more directly in the Vietnam War, whereupon the U.S. and its allies would remain mired there for another decade.

Putting aside the potential disinformation perpetrated surrounding the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the collapse of the World Trade Centres (as it is still too emotionally highly charged), it is more widely accepted that the narrative on Saddam Hussein having significant “Weapons of Mass Destruction” that were an existential threat to surrounding nations, and being a pretext for the subsequent invasion of Iraq, was gilding the lily at the very least, if not patently and completely false, and a deception for which those responsible remain unrepentant.

The lies surrounding the causes of the 2008 Global Financial Crisis were pervasive, with the role of the Clinton administration (through the deadly combination of passing the Community Reinvestment Act and then repealing of the Glass-Steagall Act) being particularly obvious (as outlined in a more detailed post “A Binary Poison: the Root Cause of the 2008 Global Financial Crisis” on this site), with Democrat-aligned apologists falling over themselves to deflect blame from where it clearly belongs. Similarly, one should also consider the bail outs from the Obama administration of the “Too Big To Fail” banks in the GFC aftermath, in spite of explicitly stating that those responsible for rampantly irresponsible speculative practices would be held accountable, and yet who were then conspicuously allowed a free pass and then given a golden handshake for their crimes.

The 2014 CIA directed coup in the Ukraine, alongside similar and near simultaneous “Colour Revolutions” in Georgia and Kyrgyzstan, were depicted as entirely “organic” and self-determined when they were very far from it, and were clearly, at least in part responsible for the havoc of the Russia-Ukraine war that we are suffering the consequences of today.

By extension, one must also examine the role played by the U.S. and its allies in promoting the “Arab Spring”, the wave of “non-violent” popular uprisings against despotic (of varying degrees) leaders across Northern Africa and the Arab world. The U.S. goal in the Arab Spring revolutions was to replace these unpopular despotic dictators, while taking care to maintain the autocratic U.S.-friendly infrastructure that had brought them to power. All initially followed the nonviolent, “colour revolution” template and precepts that Gene Sharp outlined in his 1994 book From Dictatorship to Democracy. 

In Libya, Syria and Yemen, the U.S. and their allies were clearly even prepared to introduce paid mercenaries when their Sharpian “revolutions” failed to produce regime change. In Libya, U.S. State Department trained activist “assets” were utilised to engineer the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi, including by instigating nonviolent Facebook and Twitter protests timed to coincide with the 2011 uprisings in Tunisia and Egypt. After Gaddafi’s assassination, some of those same CIA trained militants involved in his overthrow would go on to lead Islamic militias attempting to overthrow Bashar al-Assad in Syria.

In Egypt, the Tahrir Square uprising was estimated to involve approximately 10,000 Egyptians who took part in NED (National Endowment for Democracy) and USAID (United States Agency for International Development) training in social media and nonviolent organizing techniques, in order to facilitate the takeover of Egypt by President Obama’s favoured Muslim Brotherhood, from the regime of Hosni Mubarak to that of Mohamed Morsi. The latter’s stint as President from 30 June 2012 to 3 July 2013, marked by the persecution and violence directed particularly at the Coptic Christian minority, was brought to an end when General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi removed him from office in a coup d’état after widespread popular (non-U.S. promoted, and genuinely organic) protests throughout that June.

Sustained street demonstrations also took place as part of the Arab Spring in Bahrain, Morocco, Iraq, Algeria, Lebanon, Jordan, Kuwait, Oman and Sudan. Minor protests took place in Djibouti, Mauritania, Palestine, Saudi Arabia and the Moroccan-occupied Western Sahara, with varying levels of success, but all with a common thread of fostering regime change, and to a significant extent bearing the fingerprints of clandestine Western involvement.

The arrival on the political scene of Donald J Trump as the Republican Presidential nominee in 2015, ramped up the storm of lies and disinformation to the level of a force 10 gale. The establishment lied serially and shamelessly about the “Russiagate” fabrication, the non-existent links between Trump Tower and the Russian Alpha Bank, the infamous Steele Dossier (scuttlebutt and salacious fantasy dressed up as “intel”) and the roles of the DNC, Fusion GPS and others in generating false narratives to hamstring the eventual President in a “Crossfire Hurricane” of their making.

The peaceful democratic transition of power was fatally undermined by outgoing President Obama in initiating surveillance on the Trump campaign (in echoes of the Watergate scandal) under false pretences, with the full complicity of the DOJ, CIA and FBI alphabet agencies, who each variously and severally exceeded their remit to become partisan political tools to condemn the innocent, and to then protect the guilty, not least of whom being members of their own agencies.

The actions subsequent to Donald Trump’s election as the 45th President of the United States amounted to an attempted coup to overthrow the will of the people who elected him, and particularly to derail his agenda of revitalising American manufacturing and industry, restoring its energy independence, controlling its borders, and especially in promoting employment opportunities for working class people for their best chance of economic and social advancement.

From the unwarranted surveillance of the Trump campaign when he was presidential nominee, there then followed by a series of attempts to hamstring, curtail, obstruct and otherwise hinder his mandated agenda, including selectively leaking against him to the media by high ranking government officials, and various impeachment hoaxes and partisan investigations, each designed primarily to entrap him into an “obstruction of justice” charge were he to release information to attempt to exonerate himself, efforts that could then be shown to compromise the “investigations” being run concurrently and overlapping throughout his presidency and beyond (as I outlined in depth in the post “A House of Cards: Six No Trumps and One-Eyed Jacks Are Wild” elsewhere on this site). The are indeed “six ways from Sunday” to becoming a banana republic, and the “Uniparty” and the alphabet agencies were determined to use every last one of them to hell and back – “because Trump!”.

On the other side of the aisle, the political establishment and their media lackeys lied incessantly to agitate social unrest during Trump’s presidency, for example in exploiting George Floyd’s death, in questionable circumstances (but allegedly at the hands of law enforcement), as a tool to defund police forces, removing from them the ability to contain rampant crime and protect the citizenry from lawlessness, actions which particularly victimised the Black and Hispanic communities in socially disadvantaged neighbourhoods in Democrat run major cities, adding to and further entrenching the social disadvantage of law abiding citizens in those communities, rather than “helping” them as was claimed.

When the ensuing Black Lives Matter protests were to become marred by graphic violence, destruction of property (to the tune of $2 billion USD) and widespread looting, leading to injuries to more than 200 police officers and deaths of dozens of innocent individuals in the riots that followed, the mainstream media fell over themselves to describe the violence on full display as “mostly peaceful“. This fatally undermined the credibility of the mainstream media in the eyes of a significant, if silent majority of the population, whereupon trust in the mainstream media has since fallen to its lowest ever ebb in Western societies. We no longer buy what they are selling.

The lawlessness, including assaults on police precincts and government buildings, and then the setting up of “self-governing” autonomous zones (like Seattle’s “CHAZ”), were lionised by the media and by weak, left-wing politicians, who uncritically praised these experiments in anarchy, chaos and brute-force criminality, where crime rates surged unchecked and gangs ran the streets, with the law of the jungle maintained by self-appointed “leaders” who “ruled”, for a short time at least, by intimidation and at the point of the gun. Those politicians and the media personalities involved utterly disgraced themselves, as they cheerled the destruction of peaceful co-existence and civil society that were assumed, up until then, to underpin our civilisation.

During the COVID pandemic, the lies that underpinned the pandemic and its response were off the charts, and anyone who strove to assert any contradiction, or insert even a small semblance of rationality into the narrative being spun were quickly marginalised, ostracised, de-platformed, derided and delegitimised, up to and including loss of employment and tenure, regardless of the credentials of the person involved.

When questions arose as to the possible laboratory derived origins of the COVID-19 virus, the establishment across the West circled the wagons, prominent virologists lied through their teeth in seeking to protect themselves from the consequences of their irresponsible gain of function research, and a full-court press of propaganda was employed to ensure the truth was hidden from an unsuspecting and trusting public. (For a more in depth assessment, see “Gain of Function: the True Proximal Origin of SARS CoV2?” elsewhere on this site)

There was also never any justification for many of the responses to the pandemic, where science was selectively ignored, and Public Health as a discipline was brought step by egregious step into disrepute, as the fullness of time has since shown that society-wide lockdowns and school closures were counterproductive, community wide mask mandates were next door to useless, and the prophylactic and early treatment protocols (or lack thereof) were woefully inadequate in both planning and execution.

The dereliction of duty and broad mismanagement was widespread and pervasive, with the fish rotting from the head, with leading “experts” like Anthony Fauci, and institutions like the CDC and the FDA leading the way down a primrose path to calamity for not only the U.S. but the entire Western world. The entire premise of vaccinating oneself out of a pandemic, for example, flew in the face of all previous immunological knowledge, and was particularly fraught in relying upon a “leaky”, non-sterilising vaccine that cannot help but induce evolutionary pressure to produce more virulent strains of an already dangerous virus.

In the lead up to the 2020 U.S. Presidential election, the cover-up of the contents of Hunter Biden’s laptop computer, left carelessly and abandoned at a repair shop, clearly had a hand in influencing the election outcome. A gaggle of 51 intelligence agency experts be-clowned themselves, swearing black and blue that the contents were Russian disinformation when they were not only genuine, but a damning indictment of the Biden family misusing their position for influence peddling, and in their clandestine wheeling and dealing with foreign oligarchs and politicians for apparent personal gain.

The suspicious death of Jeffrey Epstein whilst incarcerated in August 2019, and the details of the honeypot blackmailing scheme to which he was central, has shone a light on the depths of moral depravity of many of those at the apex of political and economic power in the West, and the ease with which inconvenient people like Epstein can be murdered under the custody of the state and in the full glare of media, whereupon a cone of silence is predictably lowered, and the curtains drawn on the incident without so much as a murmur of disquiet or even an ounce of incredulity from the complicit media, or a compliant populace.

Meanwhile, the contents of thousands of hours of video known to exist showing various local and world leaders and captains of industry, etc. in compromising situations with often underage girls are hidden from public view, with no mainstream investigative journalist even remotely interested in sourcing the contents, or probing the identities of those involved, or even to what end the FBI could be using this information in its possession. Given the conspiracy of silence surrounding the latter, it is not unreasonable to assume that blackmail of these “gentlemen”, to exert control over them for geopolitical goals, is well within the realms of possibility.

The catalogue of lies and subterfuge took a turn into cyberspace with the now documented collusion between Twitter, Facebook, and Google, and the various arms of government (FBI, CIA and the NSA) to help influence elections and to control the narrative with regard to the COVID-19 pandemic. The just released Twitter files, brought into the open through the agency of Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter, was testimony to the billionaire’s personal integrity (a highly unusual trait, to say the least) in attempting to thwart such subterfuge and collusion being perpetrated away from public scrutiny, by releasing these files into the public domain.

The 2020 U.S Presidential Election brought the lies and subterfuge to almost stratospheric levels, as the desperation of the Deep State players to remove President Donald Trump by any means, fair or foul, became glaringly obvious to an almost comical (if it weren’t so deadly serious) extent. Under the cover of the COVID-19 pandemic, ballot harvesting reached epic proportions that, along with organised gaming of the voter rolls and the various digital voting systems, compromised the integrity of the election process to the extent that a significant proportion of U.S. voters still believe the election was stolen more than two years later.

The ballot-harvesting agenda of the “Left Wing” (the DNC/Democrats) in the U.S. could not be more crystal clear. They have accumulated thousands of indoctrinated and networked groups, funded by donor activity (with $400 million in funding from Mark Zuckerberg alone), that have been organised at the grass roots in every community to assemble ballots, independent of actual votes. Perhaps Joe Biden’s notorious Freudian slip: “We have put together I think the most extensive and inclusive voter fraud organization in the history of American politics” was not so far from the truth after all.

Their “Right Wing” opponents, the Republicans, are far more interested in garnishing donations than they are in the business of winning elections. Provided the monetary gravy train continues to roll on, and they enrich themselves personally in the process, they are content to be in “opposition”, because they are cynical enough to realise that it matters little who is in power, because it is one big Uniparty club, and the citizens who elect them are not invited.

As the cornerstone of the legitimacy of the democratic process, the integrity of voting in elections is an issue far more important than the merits or otherwise of any individual leader, and needs to be protected vigorously to avoid further disenfranchising the citizenry any more than they already have been in having a say in the running of the nation.

Not surprisingly, the realisation of at least one side of the political spectrum that the process has been fatally rigged against their interests, goaded them into mass protests that turned violent at the U.S. Capitol on January 6th, 2021. What appears to many as an example of an “insurrection” against the democratic process was far more nuanced than that, as it is the only insurrection in history without a single weapon being raised.

Video footage released initially, selectively edited for popular consumption, certainly shows violent protests with some of the protestors damaging windows and engaging in aggressive behaviour assaulting Capitol police officers. However, as time has passed much of the official narrative has collapsed, particularly with the release of the remainder of the surveillance footage on the day.

It is now clear that no police officers were killed on that day, that two of the protesters were murdered in cold blood, and another 4 protesters died of natural causes on the day. Rather than breaking into the Capitol (a public building), most of the protesters had doors opened for them and were ushered in, and most of them merely filed around slowly and peacefully and were generally well behaved.

Many of the worst perpetrators of violence, breaking windows and glass doors, etc were dressed in black rather than MAGA gear and were claimed by some of those present to be ANTIFA agent provocateurs, whilst the FBI had dozens of agents embedded amongst the protesters and were egging the protesters on to enter the Capitol. Strangely, none of those people that engaged in this activity have since been charged for their actions, whilst others who merely wandered in and out and did nothing untoward had the fullest extent of the law thrown at them.

Nancy Pelosi, as Speaker of the House, had responsibility for securing the Capitol, and had been requested days previously to engage National Guard reinforcements given the size of the protest expected, but refused to do so. Meanwhile, by complete coincidence of course, Pelosi’s daughter was filming a “documentary” in the Capitol on the day of the protest and was able to capture the moment from “behind the scenes”. The optics of the occasion served its purposes admirably, whereupon the questionable nature of the 2020 election soon dissolving into the aether in the context of an “insurrection” that threatened the sanctity and security of the Republic. How easily we were played.

With such an extensive litany of utter mendacity on the part of the mainstream political establishment demonstrated above, particularly in the U.S., how can any thinking individual believe anything that their elected representatives ever assert as being the “truth” or an unimpeachable “fact”? In such a climate of distrust in authority, is it any wonder that so many have lost faith in the institutions at the heart of Western civilisation, and are increasingly cynical about their elected representatives, doubting their sense of morality and the worthiness of their motives?

The Confederacy of Dunces Idiocracy Finds It’s Leadership Dream Team:

“On some great and glorious day the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be adorned by a downright moron.” H.L. Mencken

The catalogue of lies and deceptions continued unabated during the Biden administration, particularly surrounding (but not limited to) their suicidal economic, social and legal policies in setting the U.S. on the path to self-destruction.

The ongoing grand lie, at the heart of much that has since spiralled out of control, and which forms the basis of the (Orwellian) “Build Back Better” program that is in train at this very moment, is that mankind somehow controls the global climate through his industrial and farming activities, and that Carbon Dioxide (CO2) is the control knob that only needs to be reduced in the West (but strangely not in Asia or elsewhere) for our climate to be restored to its former placidity.

This is a concept so inane that only a child could believe it, but Climate Change (former known as Global Warming, until the utter modesty of any minor warming actually occurring became too inconvenient a truth) has become the “noble” lie that all “the best” people wish to be seen to be believing; a fashion statement that became a pseudo-religious cult– a religion for atheists.

This Climate Change cargo cult, seeking “to usher in an age of great material wealth by ritual imitation”, has led to the Biden administration engaging in massive expenditure on all manner of boondoggles alleged to “save the planet”, but which are really designed to impoverish the middle and working class, and to enrich his friends and donors in the “champagne socialist” private jet set. Simultaneously, the energy independence advantage that the U.S. enjoyed under Trump has been deliberately undermined, and its strategic oil reserve diminished to near zero.

Meanwhile, spiralling inflation, driven not by the war in Ukraine as claimed, but by rising input energy prices (caused primarily by Climate Change policies) and lack of supply particularly in food and medicines. Western governments, including the U.S. through Joe Biden, have limited and curtailed the production and exploitation of Oil, Coal and Natural Gas, leading to shortages which then causes the prices of these energy sources to skyrocket. The response of Central Banks in reducing demand to match supply with interest rate rises (monetary policy) is cover for the true cause of these ongoing supply side issues, as they try in vain to make the Build Back Better square peg fit the round hole of the economy. It will not end well.

In the little over two years of the Biden Presidency, it is hard to imagine a more incompetent handling of the affairs of state. From presiding over a far greater death rate than his predecessor in the COVID pandemic (in spite of availability of a vaccine, and a far less virulent strain of COVID to contend with), to a southern border crisis of unprecedented proportions (more than 2 million per year for each of the last 2 years, and 250,000 in December 2022 alone), to an embarrassingly ham fisted withdrawal from Afghanistan (leaving $80 billion in military equipment for the Taliban, causing dozens of deaths, deserting allies and leaving the country in chaos), to the spiralling national debt heading to upwards of $31.5 Trillion USD, it is hard to imagine anyone could possibly do a worse job of administering their nation if they tried.

As a consequence of the proxy war in Ukraine, where America’s plans to weaken Russia and promote a regime change targeted at Vladimir Putin has backfired spectacularly, with sanctions against Russia only strengthening the Russian Rouble, not to mention their resolve, and simultaneously damaging their European allies economically. Sanctions have also driven a former foe in China into an alliance of very strange bedfellows (given their history of antipathy), united against a common enemy (the West) with all the inherent geopolitical dangers their combined might can cause.

Confiscating the assets of Russian oligarchs only served to undermine the confidence of all and sundry in the security provided by the banking sector against arbitrary confiscation of one’s wealth, and blocking Russia from access to the Swift (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) payment system, the global financial artery that allows the smooth and rapid transfer of money across borders, has only led to Russia to develop its own cross-border transfer system called the System for Transfer of Financial Messages (SPFS) as an alternative to Swift. Moscow is also working with Beijing to connect to China’s Cross-Border Interbank Payment System (CIPS) – yet another alternative to Swift, which processes payments in Chinese yuan.

The end result of these ill-conceived machinations can be seen in the “de-dollarisation“^* that is now unfolding with almost depressing inevitability, where the status of the $U.S. Dollar as the international reserve currency is now very tenuous indeed, and with it the hegemony of the U.S. led unipolar world order is increasingly in doubt, to be replaced by a multipolar world where those disaffected with U.S. foreign policy begin to trade their commodities in either Chinese Yuan, Russian Roubles or Indian Rupees.

^*Since the enthronement of the $U.S. dollar as a reserve currency in 1944 at the Bretton Woods conference and then the establishment of the petrodollar in the early 1970s, almost all international trade has been conducted in $U.S. dollars. Thusly, $U.S. dollars are held by every country’s central bank to settle international trade flows.

The practice of trading oil in $U.S. dollars dates back to 1943, during WW2 when then President F.D. Roosevelt met the then Saudi king, Abdul Aziz, in 1943, and declared that Saudi oil was vital to U.S. security. In exchange, the U.S. agreed to build military bases and supply the Saudi army with training and equipment.

In 1974, following an oil embargo by the Arab state members of OPEC (the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries) the “petrodollar” system was consolidated by a deal between the U.S. and Saudi Arabia, which formally agreed to price and trade oil in $U.S. dollars,, and to recycle the Dollars by buying U.S. government debt – Treasury bonds.

No one in the key positions of power in the U.S. appears to understand anything about real money and real finance. They are blinded by the promise of Keynesian economics and modern monetary theory, which posits that creating aggregate demand (Keynesianism) funded by massive money printing (modern monetary theory) is the sure path to economic progress. They fail to appreciate that the steady fall in the purchasing power of the $U.S. dollar, and that the rise of an alternative trade settlement system are the inevitable consequences of their hubris and wilful blindness.

The continued debasement of the $U.S. dollar, now coupled with arrogant and harmful financial sanctions, will encourage the establishment of an alternative international reserve currency, and all the consequences that it will bring to an unprepared US-dominated world.

If China manages to usurp the U.S. and become the world’s reserve currency, then things will get really bad, really fast. Virtually overnight, the $U.S. Dollar would become worth little more than the paper it’s printed on. Its purchasing power, which has been slipping for some time now, would bottom out. Not to mention that all the U.S. debt that China holds would very shortly thereafter come due, devaluing the $U.S. dollar that much more. At this point the financial chickens will have come home to roost, and the sudden impoverishment of the U.S. and those societies tied to it would be at least calamitous, if not catastrophic.

The leadership in the U.S., in response to their catalogue of failure, continue to double down on identity politics and woke symbolism. President Joe Biden shuffles from press conference to press conference, mouthing jumbled word salad and failing to respond to inconvenient questions, losing his temper without warning with outbursts (such as calling one Fox News reporter’s question “stupid,” or referring to another reporter as a “stupid son of a bitch”), with frequent memory lapses and losing his train of thought, which could be considered clues to possible significant evolving cognitive problems.

His Vice President, Kamala Harris, has over the last 2 years cemented her place as possibly the worst VP in U.S. history. As a consequence of her absolute lack of acumen and being completely out of her depth, she often is seen laughing and cackling inappropriately when serious questions arise about, for example, the deadly chaos in Afghanistan or spiralling fuel prices for American consumers or the unfolding refugee crisis in the Russia-Ukraine War. This latter performance prompted President Zelensky’s former press secretary to state: “It would be a tragedy if this woman won the presidency.”

The Washington Post recently spoke with 18 current and former Harris staffers. Their assessment was uninspiring, to say the least. “It’s clear that you’re not working with somebody who is willing to do the prep and the work,” one ex-staffer said in the scathing Dec. 4 piece. “With Kamala you have to put up with a constant amount of soul-destroying criticism and also her own lack of confidence. So you’re constantly sort of propping up a bully and it’s not really clear why.” (Source: New York Post)

What has become increasingly apparent is that Kamala Harris lacks the leadership, problem-solving and management skills required in the highest echelon of government. At every test, when her nation needed the Vice President to step up to the plate and solve serious problems affecting American lives — including the safety and security of US troops — she fell short.

In making Kamala Harris the “border Czar”, charged with the responsibility in addressing the crisis at the southern border, she responded by not even visiting the border in person, and doing precisely nothing to even attempt to address the 2 million plus border crossings that occurred in each year of the Biden administration.

American voters are rightly concerned about the illegal weapons and deadly drugs such as Fentanyl pouring into their country, killing tens of thousands of Americans and making their communities unsafe. Disturbing reports of human trafficking, women being sexually exploited and abused as they make the treacherous journey to America, and other horrors on the administration’s, and therefore border Czar Kamala Harris’ watch, are met with masterly inactivity, and callous indifference to suffering.

Kamala Harris is the embodiment of P.J. O’Rourke’s well known quote about the nature of politics: “Politics is the attempt to achieve power and prestige without merit.“

The Biden/Harris dream team are, two years into their administration, on the threshold of largely destroying what took 250 years, and blood and sweat and tears to build. Whatever it’s faults, the U.S. (when properly administered by genuine representatives) still represents, at its best anyway, the best hope for humanity in avoiding the authoritarian future that many of the globalist elites seem to have mapped out for us.

Sam Bankman-Fried and FTX: Bernie Madoff & Enron Redux:

The recent FTX cryptocurrency exchange collapse is a case study in much that is wrong with so many aspects of society in the West, where we witness a poorly regulated space (cryptocurrency), coupled with the greed of emotionally and intellectually immature people, who have been given a saloon passage into obscene levels of wealth, achieved on foundations made of sand.

In this particular case, the young entrepreneur at the centre of this travesty was a young man by the name of Sam Bankman-Fried, who was the founder and CEO of the cryptocurrency exchange FTX and the associated trading firm Alameda Research, companies that both experienced a high-profile collapse resulting in chapter 11 bankruptcy in late 2022.

Prior to FTX’s collapse, Bankman-Fried’s net worth peaked at $26 billion. By November 11, 2022, amid the bankruptcy of FTX, the Bloomberg Billionaires Index considered that his net worth had been effectively reduced to zero. Before his wealth evaporated, Bankman-Fried was a major donor to political campaigns, donating mostly to Democratic candidates, and he has claimed that he planned to spend around $1 billion in the 2024 U.S. presidential election. (Source: Wikipedia)

But according to the Securities and Exchange Commission: “Bankman-Fried was orchestrating a massive, years-long fraud, diverting billions of dollars of the trading platform’s customer funds for his own personal benefit and to help grow his crypto empire.” In other words, an old fashioned Ponzi scheme in the same vain as the infamous Bernie Madoff investment scandal in 2008, and the Enron scandal in 2001 before it.

Authorities claim the wrongdoing started at the very beginning. A parallel lawsuit filed by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, said the method by which Bankman-Fried siphoned FTX customer funds into the coffers of his trading firm, Alameda Research, was installed into the structure of the operation from the day it opened in 2019.

John Ray III, a veteran bankruptcy expert who took over FTX after its collapse, told Congress recently that this was a case of “old-fashioned embezzlement”. Ray and his team sifted through the company’s records to find out how much money is missing, who was owed what and how much he might be able to claw back. But Ray asserts that he has been hampered by the parlous state of FTX’s record keeping and its “unprecedented and complete failure of corporate controls”.

In addition to allegedly enriching himself at the expense of investors who foolishly trusted him, Sam Bankman-Fried and his FTX operation diverted a not insignificant proportion of its ill-gotten funds to funnel it directly and indirectly to predominantly Democrat political candidates. The complicated money-go-round helped curry favour through donations to political allies, which clearly helped perpetuate the scheme, using much the same template as the recent Theranos fraud perpetrated by Elizabeth Holmes from 2003 to 2015.

In each case, a sophisticated but ultimately vacuous proposal or commodity, built on the flimsiest of foundations, is lent credence and authenticity by the endorsements of its political associates – with both schemes being prime examples of Woke crony capitalism where the lure of easy money and the desire to associate oneself with “the next big thing” overwhelms any inclinations to due diligence and one’s better judgement.

The moral of the story: – It’s not sufficient for a failing empire to be comprised of corrupt and idiotic leaders and representatives, but you also need institutional failure, lack of oversight, and an economy that values charlatans and chancers over those with integrity and genuine ingenuity.

So, here we are.

Glossary of Terms:

a) Kakistocracy– is the term given to a government run by the worst, least qualified, or most unscrupulous citizens. 

The word was coined as early as the seventeenth century, and used often to defend the legitimacy of the aristocracy (derived from the Greek “aristo” – meaning best), so therefore literally “rule by the best”. Whilst history shows that to be often very far from the truth (although not always), with hereditary heirs and peers often demonstrating the basest of instincts, the worst of intentions, and often less than even the merest tincture of either moral or intellectual capacity.

As novelist and poet Thomas Love Peacock is quoted as saying in describing the French Revolution: “Anarchy is not so much the absence of government as the government of the worst—not Aristocracy but Kakistocracy—a state of things, which to the honour of our nature, has seldom obtained amongst men, and which perhaps was only fully exemplified during the worst times of the French Revolution, when that horrid hell burnt with its most horrid flame. In such a state of things, to be accused is to be condemned—to protect the innocent is to be guilty; and what perhaps is the worst effect, even men of better nature, to whom their own deeds are abhorrent, are goaded by terror to be forward and emulous in deeds of guilt and violence.”

Whilst he clearly had a pertinent point in relation to the French Revolution, and the subsequent Jacobin Reign of Terror that replaced the detached and often indifferent Bourbon monarchy with something far more deadly and blood thirsty, there are an embarrassment of riches in enumerating the various aristocracies that were anything but the rule by “the best”.

b) Ineptocracy – Defined as a system of government where the least capable to lead are elected by the least capable of producing the goods and services that sustain a vital and enterprising society.

In turn, those who are least capable of producing are the members of society least able to sustain themselves or succeed, without being unduly rewarded through the confiscated wealth of an ever diminishing number of productive members of society.

This tends to take the “rule of the worst” idea and expand it to incorporate societal forces that drive its implementation, with the blame laid at the foot of those members of the plebeian classes who are unproductive in terms of contributing to society, and who in turn reward those politicians cynical enough to reward them for their lack of productivity.

c) Democracy– A way of governing which depends on the will of the people, a government by the people and for the people, which is exercised either directly or through elected representatives.

Not that “democracies” (from the Greek “demos”- meaning the populace) always deliver a rule by the best either, although it can successfully be argued that at least the resort to popular vote in free and fairly run elections gives the semblance of an opportunity for correcting one’s errors of past judgement, if their rule has been sufficiently unsatisfactory or blameworthy.

The renowned wit and political commentator, H.L.Mencken is quoted as saying that “Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance” and also that “Democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard. …“, which might at first glance seem unduly harsh and cynical, but the phrase “the voter is always right” may well be a truism from political concession speeches, but it is completely wrong as often as it is even remotely correct.

d) Corporatocracy– is an economic, political and judicial system controlled by corporations or corporate interests.

The concept has been used in explanations of bank bailouts, excessive pay for CEOs, as well as complaints such as the exploitation of national treasuries, people, and natural resources. It has been a term variously used by critics of globalisation, sometimes in conjunction with criticism of the World Bank, or those who engage in criticism of unfair lending practices, as well as of the downsides of the trend toward instituting free trade agreements. (Source: Wikipedia)

It is this latter that has been ascendant in recent decades, a crypto-fascist unholy alliance that aims to privatise profits and socialises losses, and boosted to prominence by the globalist agenda of the World Economic Forum and the Davos elite.

Thy Economic Bubble Bursteth:

Edward Gibbon, as Wikipedia notes, was a prominent English historian, writer, and member of parliament. His most important work, The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, published in six volumes between 1776 and 1788, is known for the quality and irony of its prose, its use of primary sources, and its polemical criticism of organised religion.

Were he alive today, what might he say about the impending stock market crash and the inevitable unprecedented economic depression that will inevitably follow? Chat GPT4 has allegedly produced the following answer, which in spite of the limitations of so called AI (which is more simulated intelligence than an artificial actual one) gives a very good response nonetheless that cuts very close to the bone, giving a quite reasonable facsimile of what the august gentleman may have said in response to the economic lunacy of the current age:

“In this melancholy epoch of our once flourishing Republic, the Federal Reserve, like a capricious deity, hath once more decreed the continuation of its bond-buying charade, known to the learned as Quantitative Easing. A lamentable decision, poised to unleash catastrophe upon the unsuspecting multitude!

This pernicious policy hath been in use for years, its baleful effects upon the stock market and economy well documented. As the Fed engorges itself upon government bonds, the excess currency disgorged into the market thus inflates the already bloated value of stocks and sundry assets.

The vainglorious Fed contends that its machinations are essential to revive the moribund economy. Yet this illusion of prosperity, conjured by their monetary sleight of hand, only serves to veil the insidious damage inflicted upon our Republic. The stock market, soaring to unmerited heights, hath become but a distorting mirror of our nation’s true plight, a mere marionette dancing to the whims of the Fed’s manipulation.

Within the shadows of this illusory wealth, the genuine economy languishes. The masses groan beneath the weight of unemployment, and myriad businesses, bereft of succor, teeter on the precipice of ruin. The profane ritual of Quantitative Easing hath yielded no bounty for these hapless souls, bestowing its largesse only upon a fortunate few.

The specter of a perilous bubble looms, borne aloft by the Fed’s hubris. When this tenuous facade doth crumble, the ensuing devastation shall be a testament to their folly. Renowned economists, aghast at the Fed’s imprudence, condemn their reckless dalliance with disaster, foreseeing prolonged suffering and a bloated stock market on the verge of rupture.

‘Tis high time the Fed abandon its futile endeavor, permitting the invisible hand of the market to determine the true worth of stocks and assets. Their ceaseless meddling in the sacred domain of currency is a recipe for calamity, a pyrrhic game destined to end in tears.

In fine, the Federal Reserve’s obstinate persistence in its bond-buying program portends a cataclysmic denouement, the stock market’s collapse, and the amplification of our economic malaise. Let them now desist from their insidious manipulations, and permit the economy to convalesce unaided, lest the very foundations of our once great Republic be irreparably shaken.”

Ukraine, Burisma and Biden Inc.:-Tales Emerging from the Fog of War:

The seeds of the current war in Ukraine go back well before the invasion by Vladimir Putin’s Russian troops on February 24th, 2022, and is far more complex and nuanced than the “black hat, white hat” portrayal of the conflict, shamelessly advocated for in both the Western and in the pro-Russian media.

In the first major invasion at this scale in Europe since WW2, the first casualty of war is undoubtedly the truth. As the rhetoric ramps up on each side of the divide, and the brinkmanship escalates to a possible point of no return, there is a story to be told in the details behind the conflict that reflects poorly on both sides of the aisle, with no one in power coming out entirely unscathed by criticism for their part in the wholesale carnage, death and destruction that has since followed.

History of Ukraine:

Ukraine, as the fully independent nation we see today, has only come into existence in its current form since 1991, after long periods of domination by the Polish-Lithuanian confederation, then by Tsarist Russia and finally the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R.). When the Soviet Union began to unravel in the aftermath of the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the Ukraine S.S.R. first declared sovereignty in July 1990, subsequently declaring its independence in August 1991, a declaration which was then ratified after a popular plebiscite in December 1991.

Vladimir Putin has claimed, conveniently, that Ukraine is a fabricated country, and that Ukrainians, Belorussians and Russians share a common ethnicity and heritage that dates back to the Kyivan Rus (862 to 1242 CE). Whilst there is a small kernel of truth in there being some common cultural ancestral roots between these three Slavic ethnic groups that are currently separate nations, the history is subject to significant controversy depending upon which nationality is interpreting it.

The Rus was established under Varangian (Viking) rule in the 9th Century, and incorporated a loose affiliation of Eastern Slavic, Norse and Finnic peoples, which over the next 150 years integrated into a loose Slavic confederation. By contrast, the city of Moscow was not even founded until 1147 CE.

During this period, Kyiv was dominant, and the Kyivan Rus colonised Russian territory, not the other way around. The Mongol-Tatar expansion westward into these regions culminated in the sacking and destruction of Kyiv in 1240 CE. The Mongols helped Vladimir-Suzdal (later to become the Grand Duchy of Moscow) become dominant, to eventually form the core from which developed the future Russian state.

From Brittanica:

“By the middle of the 14th century, Ukrainian territories were under the rule of three external powers—the Golden Horde, the grand duchy of Lithuania, and the kingdom of Poland.

The steppe and Crimea, whose coastal towns and maritime trade were now in the hands of the Venetians and Genoese, formed part of the direct domains of the Tatar Golden Horde. This was the westernmost successor of Genghis Khan’s Mongol empire, whose Khan resided at Sarai on the Volga River. By the mid-15th century the Golden Horde was in a process of disintegration. One of its successor states was the Crimean Khanate, which after 1475 accepted the suzerainty of the sultans of the Ottoman Empire. Both the Crimean Peninsula and large areas of the adjoining steppe continued under the Khanate’s rule until its annexation^* to the Russian Empire in 1783.”

^*annexation, is a formal act whereby a state proclaims its sovereignty over territory hitherto outside its domain. Unlike cession, whereby territory is given or sold through treaty, annexation is a unilateral act made effective by actual possession and legitimized by general recognition.

Once again, from Brittanica:

“In 1569, by the Union of Lublin, the dynastic link between Poland and Lithuania was transformed into a constitutional union of the two states as the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. At the same time, the greater part of the Ukrainian territories was detached from Lithuania and annexed directly to Poland. This act hastened the differentiation of Ukrainians and Belarusians (the latter of whom remained within the Lithuanian grand duchy) and, by eliminating the political frontier between them, promoted the closer integration of Galicia and the eastern Ukrainian lands. For the next century, virtually all ethnically Ukrainian lands experienced in common the direct impact of Polish political and cultural predominance.”

The gradual near complete “Polonisation” of the Ruthenian nobility, and the progressive enserfment of the peasantry, alongside the suppression of the Orthodox faith in favour of Catholicism alienated the Zaporozhian Cossacks, who had various social and ethnic origins but were a group of fiercely combative people, predominantly made up of escaped serfs who preferred the dangerous freedom of the wild steppes, rather than life under the rule of Polish aristocrats. 

In 1648, Hetman Bohdan Khmelnytsky led the largest of the Cossack uprisings against the Commonwealth and the Polish King, founding the “Cossack Hetmanate“, which existed until 1764 (some sources claim until 1782). After Khmelnytsky suffered a crushing defeat at the Battle of Berestechko in 1651, he turned to the Russian Tsar for help. In 1654, Khmelnytsky was subject to the Pereiaslav Agreement, forming a military and political alliance with Russia that acknowledged loyalty to the Russian monarch.

After his death, the Hetmanate went through a devastating 30-year war amongst Russia, Poland, the Crimean Khanate, the Ottoman Empire, and Cossacks, known as “The Ruin” (1657-1686), for control of the Cossack Hetmanate. The Treaty of Perpetual Peace between Russia and Poland in 1686 divided the lands of the Cossack Hetmanate between them, reducing the portion over which Poland had claimed sovereignty to Ukraine west of the Dnieper river. In 1686, the Metropolitanate of Kyiv was annexed by the Moscow Patriarchate, placing Kyiv under the authority of Moscow.

In the years 1764–1781, Catherine the Great incorporated much of Central Ukraine into the Russian Empire, abolishing the Cossack Hetmanate and the Zaporozhian Sich, and suppressing the last main Cossack uprising. After the annexation of Crimea by Russia in 1783, the newly acquired lands, now called Novorossiya, were opened up to settlement by Russians. The Tsarist autocracy established a policy of Russification, suppressing the use of the Ukrainian language and curtailing the Ukrainian national identity. The western part of present-day Ukraine was subsequently split between Russia and Habsburg-ruled Austria after the fall of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1795. (source: Wikipedia)

Ukraine emerged as the concept of a nation, and the Ukrainians as a nationality, with the Ukrainian National Revival which began in the late 18th and early 19th century.  During the Spring of Nations, in 1848 in what is now the city of Lviv, the Supreme Ruthenian Council was created which declared that Galician Ruthenians were part of the bigger Ukrainian nation, and they then adopted the current yellow and blue Ukrainian flag.

Ukraine first declared its independence with the invasion of Bolsheviks in late 1917. Following the conclusion of World War I and with the Peace of Riga, Ukraine was partitioned once again between Poland and the Bolshevik Russia. The Bolshevik-occupied portion of the territory became the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, which soon after became one of the founding member states of the Soviet Union. Whilst the Bolsheviks under Vladimir Lenin initially encouraged a national renaissance in Ukrainian culture and language, as a part of a policy to promote the advancement of native peoples, their language and culture into the governance of their respective republics, this took a diametrically opposite course once Joseph Stalin assumed leadership.

It is at this time that the Ukrainian story takes a particularly horrific, and genocidal turn, with the Holodomor (or Terror Famine) of 1932-1933. This was an entirely man-made famine, induced and perpetuated under the direction of Joseph Stalin and facilitated by the pseudo-scientific theories of the U.S.S.R.’s chief scientist, Trofim Lysenko. The motivation for this despicable act perpetrated by Stalin on “his own people” was in order to crush every last semblance of the Ukrainian independence movement. The death toll is estimated to be between 7.5 and 10 million souls, with men, women and children sacrificed on the altar of political bastardry by a ruthless Communist regime.

Under Stalin’s collectivism policy farmers were not only deprived of their properties, but a large swath of these were also exiled in Siberia with no means of survival. Those who were left behind and attempted to escape the zones of famine were ordered to be shot. These and other special and particularly lethal policies were adopted in, and largely limited to Soviet Ukraine at the end of 1932 and 1933, and were indicative of Stalin’s intent to eliminate the Ukrainians as a distinct people. Several repressive policies were implemented in Ukraine immediately preceding, during, and proceeding the famine, including but not limited to cultural-religious persecution, the “Law of Spikelets”, blacklisting, an internal passport system, and harsh grain requisitions.

Areas depopulated by the famine were resettled by Russians in the Zaporizhzhya, Donetsk and Luhansk Oblasts, although not as much so in central Ukraine. In some areas where depopulation was due to migration rather than mortality, Ukrainians returned to their places of residence to find their homes occupied by Russians, leading to widespread fights between Ukrainian farmers and Russian settlers. Such clashes caused around one million Russian settlers to eventually be returned home.

Following the death of Stalin in 1953, Nikita Khrushchev became the new leader of the USSR, and began the policies of De-Stalinisation, and the “Khrushchev Thaw”. During his term as head of the Soviet Union, Crimea was transferred from the Russian SFSR to the Ukrainian SSR, formally as a “friendship gift” to Ukraine (in tacit acknowledgement of past grievances), and for possible economic reasons. This represented the final extension of Ukrainian territory and formed the basis for the internationally recognized borders of Ukraine ever since.

The scars from the attempted genocide of the Holodomor by the Russian Soviets, along with the millions who died in the Russian Civil War and Stalin’s Great Purge, runs deeply in the consciousness of the modern Ukrainian people, and is a source of intense ongoing resentment, distrust and hatred that is still prevalent today, even preceding the current Russian invasion under Vladimir Putin. For Putin to claim, as justication for his recent invasion, an intrinsic commonality between the peoples of these three nominated nations ignores the centuries of conflict, annexation and dispossession, the religious and ethnic differences, and the diverse cultural history and influences (external and internal) that make the Ukrainians distinct from the Belorussians and the Russian people.

Modern Ukraine- Independence After the Dissolution of the U.S.S.R:

The democratisation of the Soviet Union under Mikhail Gorbachev fuelled nationalist sentiment in Ukraine, and on 16 July 1990, the newly elected Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic adopted the Declaration of State Sovereignty of Ukraine. Outright independence was proclaimed on 24 August 1991, and this was approved by 92% of the Ukrainian electorate in a referendum on 1 December 1991.

Ukraine’s economy in general has been through several periods of turmoil, and otherwise underperformed since the time of independence, due to pervasive levels of corruption and mismanagement, which, particularly in the 1990s, led to widespread protests and organised strikes. Like much of the rest of the post-Soviet Union states, Ukraine fell into significant control of business oligarchs in the immediate aftermath of independence, as the economy transitioned to a market economy with the rapid privatisation of state assets.

“In 2008, the combined wealth of Ukraine’s 50 richest oligarchs was equal to 85% of Ukraine’s GDP. In November 2013, this number was 45% (of GDP). By 2015, due to the Russo-Ukrainian War, the total net worth of the five richest and most influential Ukrainians at that time (Rinat Akhmetov, Viktor Pinchuk, Ihor Kolomoyskyi, Henadiy Boholyubov and Yuriy Kosiuk) had dropped from $21.6 billion in 2014 to $11.85 billion in June 2015.” (Source: Wikipedia)

The influence of Ukrainian oligarchs on domestic and regional politics has been the source of criticism from pro-Western sources critical of Ukraine’s lack of political reform or action against corruption, but interestingly (and tellingly) only in so far as it relates to any links they may have had to Russia. Among the most corrupt of Ukrainian oligarchs was Mykola Zlochevsky, who co-founded the largest independent oil and natural gas company Burisma Holdings, and who is currently (nominally at least) the sole owner of the Ukrainian gas and oil producers Aldea, Pari, Esko-Pivnich, and the First Ukrainian Petroleum Company and the investment group Brociti Investments. But more on him later.

Again via Wikipedia:

“During the 1990s, the oligarchs emerged as politically-connected entrepreneurs who started from nearly nothing and got rich through participation in the market via connections to the corrupt — but democratically elected — government of Ukraine during the state’s transition to a market-based economy. Later, numerous Ukrainian business-people have “taken over control” of political parties (examples of this are Party of Greens of Ukraine, Labour Ukraine and Social Democratic Party of Ukraine (united)) or started new ones to gain seats and influence in the Verkhovna Rada (Ukrainian parliament).“

On 5 December, 1994, a monumental flagstone on the path to the current conflict was installed when the Budapest Memorandum was signed, in which Russia, the US and the UK confirmed their recognition of Belarus, Kazakhstan and Ukraine becoming parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons and effectively the Ukraine abandoned their nuclear arsenal to Russia (the world’s 3rd largest stockpile at the time), and in return the signatories would respect each of the signatory’s independence and sovereignty in the existing borders, refrain from the threat or the use of force against any other signatory, agree not to use economic force or coercion to gain advantage against any signatory’s interests, and to refrain from the use of nuclear weapons against any other signatory.

Even though it is questionable to what extent it might have been capable of utilising these weapons (Ukraine did not posses the nuclear codes), having given up the entirety of their nuclear arsenal through this agreement, Ukraine removed an effective potential deterrent against any future Russian aggression. This was given up in return for assurances that, as events since readily attest, weren’t worth the paper they were printed upon.

Since the mid-1990s, the Clinton administration re-oriented the geopolitical hegemonic ambitions of the U.S., encouraging EU and NATO expansion eastward to weaken Russian influence in the region, and ultimately to isolate and weaken Russia itself. Russian leaders have, not surprisingly, been adamantly opposed to this NATO enlargement and encroachment, and made it clear that they would not stand by while their strategically important neighbor turned into a Western bastion.

From well-respected American political scientist and international relations scholar, John Mearsheimer:

“I think all the trouble in this case really started in April 2008, at the NATO Summit in Bucharest, where afterward NATO issued a statement that said Ukraine and Georgia would become part of NATO. The Russians made it unequivocally clear at the time that they viewed this as an existential threat, and they drew a line in the sand. Nevertheless, what has happened with the passage of time is that we have moved forward to include Ukraine in the West to make Ukraine a Western bulwark on Russia’s border… NATO expansion is the heart of the strategy, but it includes E.U. expansion as well, and it includes turning Ukraine into a pro-American liberal democracy, and, from a Russian perspective, this is an existential threat.“

To underline this point further, 4 months after this announcement by NATO, Russia invaded its southern neighbour Georgia on 7 August 2008 on the pretext of defending the Russian-backed self-proclaimed, separatist republics of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, with the result of the 5 day land, sea and air invasion leading to the expulsion of 192,000 ethnic Georgians from South Ossetia and from the Kodori Gorge in Abkhazia, and the establishment of Russian military bases in these areas. It is clear that Putin’s invasion was in response to the threat of NATO expansion into Georgia, and to establish a military buffer zone should Georgia’s overtures toward admission to NATO come to fruition.

For Vladimir Putin, the overthrow of Ukraine’s democratically elected and pro-Russian president, Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014—which he viewed as “illegal” and labeled as a “coup”—was the final straw. He responded to pro-Russian and anti-revolution protests in the Donbas (Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts) by taking Crimea within the next month, a peninsula he feared could potentially become a NATO base.

Russia’s annexation of the Crimea in March 2014, in the aftermath of the Euromaidan protests and the “Revolution of Dignity”, was particularly fuelled by concerns that it would lose access to its own Black Sea Fleet naval base at Sevastopol if Ukraine continued to move towards NATO and European integration. Mearsheimer concluded that US policy should shift to recognize Ukraine as a buffer state between NATO and Russia, rather than attempt to absorb Ukraine into NATO.

(Source: John Mearsheimer lecture 25 September 2015 “Why Is Ukraine the West’s Fault?”)

The Orange Colour Revolution and Euromaidan- Regime Change by Proxy:

The National Endowment for Democracy (NED) was created in the 1980’s by CIA head Bill Casey as a covert CIA tool to overthrow specific regimes around the world, under the guise of being a “human rights” Non-government Organisation (NGO). In spite of their NGO status, they received their funding from U.S. Congress and the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), the latter being an allegedly “independent” agency of the U.S. federal government that is primarily responsible for “administering civilian foreign aid and development assistance”. USAID’s work, according to its own website, “advances U.S. national security and economic prosperity, demonstrates American generosity, and promotes a path to recipient self-reliance and resilience”.

In the year 2000, the US State Department, aided by its National Endowment for Democracy (NED) and select CIA operatives, began secretly training a group of Belgrade university students led by a student group that was called Otpor! (“Resistance!”) to promote regime change to remove then Serbian President Slobodan Milošević. Using the template of Gene Sharp’s “From Dictatorship to Democracy: A Conceptual Framework for Liberation”,  as the Washington Post wrote, “US-funded consultants played a crucial role behind the scenes in virtually every facet of the anti-drive, running tracking polls, training thousands of opposition activists and helping to organize a vitally important parallel vote count. US taxpayers paid for 5,000 cans of spray paint used by student activists to scrawl anti-Milošević graffiti on walls across Serbia.”

Trained squads of activists were deployed in protests to take over city blocks with the aid of ‘intelligence helmet’ video screens that give them an instantaneous overview of their environment. Bands of youth converging on targeted intersections in constant dialogue on cell phones, would then overwhelm police. The US government spent some $41 million on the operation. Student groups were secretly trained in the Sharp handbook techniques of staging protests that mocked the authority of the ruling police, showing them to be clumsy and impotent against the youthful protesters. Professionals from the CIA and US State Department guided them behind the scenes. (Source: Covert Geopolitics)

Milošević resigned from the Yugoslav presidency amid demonstrations after the disputed presidential election of 24 September 2000, and was arrested by Yugoslav federal authorities on 31 March 2001 on suspicion of corruption, abuse of power, and embezzlement.

The Colour Revolution Otpor! model was refined, and the deployed again in 2004 as the Ukraine Orange Revolution with logo and color theme scarves, and also in 2003 in Georgia as the Rose Revolution. Later Secretary of State Hillary Clinton used the template to launch the Arab Spring. In all cases, the NED was involved along with other NGOs, including the George Soros Open Society Foundations.

Whether it is the “Rose Revolution” in Georgia in 2003, the “Orange Revolution” in Ukraine in 2004, the “Tulip Revolution” in Kyrgyzstan in 2005, or the “Arab Spring” in Asia and Africa in 2011, the past decades have seen the US plan and implement “colour revolutions” in many places around the world, under the pretext of exporting “American values.”

Instead of launching military operations directly in the name of “democracy,” the US prefers to use colour revolutions as a tool to intervene in other countries’ internal affairs to subvert governments in order to reinforce its global control, a playbook for regime change, for good or ill, which the US has found more efficient and economical.

At the end of 2003, the US forced Eduard Shevardnadze, then president of Georgia, to resign on grounds of allegations of electoral fraud in vote counting in parliamentary elections, and supported opposition leader Mikhail Saakashvili to be president. Consisting of twenty days of protests from 3 to 23 November 2003, the Rose Revolution triggered new presidential and parliamentary elections in Georgia, which brought the National Movement–Democrats coalition to the power.

In Ukraine, from late November 2004 to January 2005, in the immediate aftermath of the run-off vote of the 2004 Ukrainian presidential election between leading candidates Viktor Yushchenko and Viktor Yanukovych, it was claimed that the vote hd been marred by massive corruption, voter intimidation and electoral fraud in favour of the latter. Kyiv, the Ukrainian capital, was the focal point of the movement’s campaign of civil resistance, with thousands of protesters demonstrating daily. Nationwide, the revolution was highlighted by a series of acts of civil disobedience, sit-ins, and general strikes organised by the opposition movement, including activism by the civic youth group “Pora!” (“It’s time!”) who directly modelled themselves on the Serbian Otpor! group.

The “colour revolution” was ultimately successful, when results of the original run-off were annulled, and a re-vote was ordered by Ukraine’s Supreme Court for 26 December 2004. Under intense scrutiny by domestic and international observers, the second run-off was declared to be “free and fair”. The final results showed a clear victory for Yushchenko, who received about 52% of the vote, compared to Yanukovych’s 45%. It should be noted that Yanukovych was pro-Russian, and expressed a desire for careful arms length engagement with the EU, conscious of Russia being Ukraine’s major trading partner, and of potential future conflict from actively embracing full NATO membership, whilst Yushchenko was notably much more Eurocentric and open to Western values.

Once again, in March 2005, the US drove Kyrgyzstan’s opposition to protest against the results of the parliamentary elections, with those protests eventually turning into riots. The “Tulip Revolution” ended with the President of Kyrgyzstan, Askar Akayev, abandoning power and fleeing the country. The similarities between these “spontaneous” colour revolutions, one year after the other in former Soviet republics, requires straining one’s credulity to breaking point to conceive of these events as being somehow “organic” or coincidental.

It seems clear that, whatever the merits (or likely otherwise) of Shevardnadze, Yanukovych, or Akayev (or Milošević for that matter), the US through its various NGO operatives, with likely CIA assistance “on the ground”, helped foment opposition to unfavoured regimes (and certain politically inconvenient individuals) to promote its geopolitical aims, with little or no regard for the autonomy of those nations, or the likely consequences, both in the short and long term, for the target population.

In the case of Ukraine, the success of the Orange Revolution was short-lived, as Yushchenko’s presidency was marred by disunity and allegations of election financing impropriety and, more troublingly, of his attempting to circumvent the Ukrainian constitution. The first 100 days of Yushchenko’s term were marked by numerous dismissals and appointments at all levels of the executive branch. In spite of campaigning on a platform of social partnership, European integration and fighting corruption, Yushchenko appointed his onetime opponent in the presidential race, Viktor Yanukovych, to be the new Prime Minister in August 2006. This was generally regarded as indicating an attempt at rapprochement with Russia.

Over the course of Yushchenko’s presidency, his support collapsed progressively through parliamentary elections in 2006 and 2008, until the 2010 Ukrainian presidential election which was won by his nemesis Yanukovych, where Yushchenko gained only 5.5% of the vote, the lowest ever result for a sitting president.

Viktor Yanukovych was therefore elected president in 2010, defeating Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko. Importantly, in spite of Western antipathy to Yanukovych, this election was judged to be free and fair by international observers.

In April 2010, President Yanukovych signed an agreement with Russia, the Kharkiv Pact, a treaty between Ukraine and Russia whereby the Russian lease on Black Sea Fleet naval facilities at Sevastopol in Crimea was extended beyond 2017 until 2042, with an additional five-year renewal option in exchange for a multiyear discounted contract to provide Ukraine with Russian natural gas. The treaty was effectively a continuation of the lease provisions that were part of the 1997 Black Sea Fleet Partition Treaty between the two states.

According to Yanukovych the main priority of his foreign policy was to integrate Ukraine “into the European mainstream”, while simultaneously improving relations with Russia by remaining a “European, non-aligned state”, referring to his inclination to avoiding full NATO membership.

During his first foreign visit, to Brussels, President Yanukovych stated that there would be no change to Ukraine’s status as a member of the NATO outreach program. On 3 June 2010, the Ukrainian parliament excluded, in a bill written by Yanukovych, Ukrainian membership of any military bloc, but allowed for co-operation with military alliances such as NATO.

It is clear that President Yanukovych was hugely corrupt (in alignment with previous Ukrainian presidents), enriching himself to the tune of $12 billion, along with his “family” of robber baron cronies. It is also apparent that he attempted to centralise power by the politically motivated jailing (Yulia Tymoshenko), and with targeted criminal investigations (former President Leonid Kuchma, etc.) of his political adversaries, alongside sustainable allegations of press interference and censorship.

However, recent events would suggest that his attempts to remain open to Europe, and yet neutral and non-aligned, were the wisest course of action he could have taken in a difficult situation fraught with potential pitfalls, and that attempting to integrate economically with both Europe and Russia, whilst remaining a buffer between the latter and NATO was sensible policy. The pressure from both the US and the EU for Ukraine to be integrated fully into Europe and then to become a fully-fledged member of NATO was foolhardy and naive in the extreme, and was always going to be a grave mistake paid for with the blood of the Ukrainian people.

In November 2013, a series of events began that led to his ousting as president. Amid pressure applied from Russia, President Yanukovych changed his mind and rejected the pending association agreement with the EU, instead choosing to pursue closer ties with Russia, including a Russian loan bailout. This sparked large protests by supporters of European integration, who occupied Kyiv’s Independence Square and held rallies throughout Ukraine, in a wave of civil unrest dubbed the “Euromaidan“.

The scope of the protests widened, with calls for the resignation of Yanukovych and the Azarov government. Protesters opposed what they saw as widespread government corruption, abuse of power, human rights violations, and the influence of oligarchs. The violent dispersal of protesters on 30 November caused further anger. The Euromaidan unrest led to the 2014 Revolution of Dignity.

The uprising climaxed on 18–20 February 2014, when fierce fighting in Kyiv between Maidan activists and police resulted in the deaths of almost 100 protesters, and 13 police officers. Police abandoned central Kyiv on 21 February, then Yanukovych and other government ministers fled the city that evening in fear of their lives, eventually with Russia’s help making his way out of Ukraine to Moscow. The next day, parliament removed Yanukovych from office and installed an interim government. After Yanukovych’s removal, the contentious EU association agreement was eventually ratified and signed on 29 May 2014.

The role of the Obama Administration, the US State Department and the newly appointed Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs, Victoria Nuland, in the Euromaidan protests and the regime change overthrowing the Yanukovych government, is a matter of some contention. Some facts (albeit contentious) are worthy of consideration including:

a) The uprising in the central plaza known as the Maidan began soon after Victoria Nuland’s arrival.

b) To underscore the US support for the protests, both Nuland and Senator John McCain passed out bread and cookies to the crowd (captured on film). Senator McCain even dined with opposition leaders, including the extreme far-right Svoboda party. During his trip the former US presidential candidate met with government and opposition figures, but gave his endorsement to the pro-Europe protesters. Senator McCain later waved to protesters from the stage in Independence Square during a mass rally in Kiev, standing with Oleh Tyahnybok, leader of the anti-Semitic Svoboda party.

c) In early February 2014, an audio recording of Victoria Nuland talking the US Ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt, was leaked to the public. The recording showed that Nuland was meddling in domestic Ukraine affairs, had direct contacts with key opposition leaders, and was managing the protests to the extent she was deciding who would and would not be in the post-coup government (she nominated Arseniy Yatsenyuk as the preferred Prime Minister)

d)  “On February 18-20, snipers massacred about 100 people [both protesters and police] on the Maidan …. Although the US Ambassador and the opposition blamed the Yanukovych Administration, the evidence points to the shots coming from a hotel controlled by the ultranationalists, and the ballistics revealed that the protesters and the police were all shot with the same weapons.” (President of the American Chamber of Commerce in Kiev, Bernard Casey)

e) Casey continued: “On February 20, 2014 an EU delegation moderated negotiations between President Yanukovych and the protesters, agreeing to early elections – in May 2014 instead of February 2015…. Despite the signing of an agreement … the ultranationalist protesters, and their American sponsors, rejected it, and stepped up their campaign of violence.”

f) The coup was finalized over the coming days. Yanukovych fled to for his life and Arseniy Yatsenyuk was designated as the new Prime Minister of the Yatsenyuk Government in the aftermath of the 2014 Ukrainian revolution, exactly as the US had planned.

In May, 2014, Petro Poroshenko, a pro-West oligarch, won an outright majority in the first round of Ukraine’s presidential election, surprising many. Poroshenko promises to fix the economy by aligning Ukraine with Europe and to root out corruption that has trailed Ukraine since its independence. U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration signals interest in helping Poroshenko “battle corruption”, and assigns Vice President Joe Biden as its chief envoy for Ukraine.

Annexation of Crimea by Russia:

In February and March 2014, Russia invaded and subsequently annexed the Crimean Peninsula, taking it from Ukraine. This event took place in the aftermath of the “Revolution of Dignity” and is part of the ongoing wider Russo-Ukrainian War.

The events in Kyiv that ousted Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych on 22 February 2014 sparked pro-Russian demonstrations as of 23 February against the incoming new Ukrainian government. On 27 February, Russian troops captured strategic sites across Crimea, followed by the installation of the pro-Russian Aksyonov government in Crimea, the Crimean status referendum, and the declaration of Crimea’s “independence” on 16 March 2014. Russia then formally incorporated Crimea on 18 March 2014, and following the annexation (or accession as Vladimir Putin would prefer to characterise it) Russia escalated its military presence on the peninsula.

Ukraine and many other countries condemned the annexation and consider it to be a violation of international law, and of Russian agreements (the Budapest Memorandum ) safeguarding the territorial integrity of Ukraine. The annexation led to the other members of the then-G8 suspending Russia from the group and introducing sanctions. The United Nations General Assembly also rejected the referendum and annexation, adopting a resolution affirming the “territorial integrity of Ukraine within its internationally recognised borders”, and referring to the Russian action as a “temporary occupation”. (Source: Wikipedia)

War in Donbas:

Following the 2014 Ukrainian Revolution, anti-revolution and pro-Russian protests began in Ukraine’s Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, known collectively as ‘the Donbas’. Armed Russian-backed separatists seized Ukrainian government buildings in the Donbas and declared the Donetsk and Luhansk (DPR and LPR) as independent states, leading to conflict with Ukrainian government forces.

After a year of fighting, the conflict developed into trench warfare. There were 29 failed ceasefires. About 14,000 people were killed in the war: 6,500 pro-Russian separatist and Russian forces, 4,400 Ukrainian forces, and 3,400 civilians on both sides of the frontline, more than half during the relatively static combat taking place from February 2015.

Ukraine, Russia, the DPR and LPR signed a ceasefire agreement, the Minsk Protocol, in September 2014. Ceasefire breaches became rife, and heavy fighting resumed in January 2015, during which the separatists captured Donetsk Airport. A new ceasefire, Minsk II, was agreed on 12 February 2015. Immediately after, separatists renewed their offensive on Debaltseve and forced Ukraine’s military to withdraw. Fighting and shelling along the line of contact still flared up from time to time thereafter. Both sides of the conflict continued to trade accusations on violations of the deal, although international observers (predictably) placed more of the blame on Russian and Russian proxy forces.

After the fall of Debaltseve, skirmishes continued but the front line did not change. Both sides fortified their position by building networks of trenches, bunkers and tunnels, resulting in static trench warfare. Stalemate led to the war being called a “frozen conflict“, but Donbas remained a war zone, with dozens killed monthly. The war meandered on, waxing and waning incrementally until 24 February 2022, when Russia began a full invasion of Ukraine, when the Donbas war became subsumed into it. (Source; Wikipedia)

Burisma and the Bidens:

Going back to the Yanukovych years, some of the details that have since emerged via the Hunter Biden Laptop saga, and the investigative journalism of the New York Post, among others, which portray some of these behind the scenes machinations in a different light.

First we must digress to the story of Hunter Biden, the son of current U.S president (and former Vice President in the Obama Administration) Joe Biden.

From the New York Post:

“In 2001, fresh off a plum job in the Clinton administration, Hunter Biden was named founding partner at Oldaker, Biden & Belair LLP. The lobbying firm—on whose website [Hunter] Biden touted his status “a presidential appointee” of Bill Clinton—quickly took on a scattershot of clients ranging from hospitals to universities and, according to Delaware’s News Journal, was known for “specialising in the sort of earmarks doled out by (then) Senator [Joe] Biden”.”

Just one month after Hunter Biden registered to lobby for Napster on the issue of “compulsory licensing,” the service’s chief executive officer appeared before the judiciary committee, of which Joe Biden was a member, and called on members “to provide a compulsory license for the transmission of music over the Internet.”

But after the election, as ‘Senator’ became ‘Vice President,’ Biden, Inc., opened back up for business, and Hunter Biden pivoted from congressional lobbying to international consulting, violating the spirit of his pledge as soon as Election Day passed.

That violation would continue for years.

In December 2013, Hunter Biden accompanied the Vice President (his father Joe Biden) on an Air Force Two flight to Beijing and, upon arrival, arranged for him to shake hands with businessman Jonathan Li. Bohai Capital, Li’s firm, would go on to partner with Rosemont Seneca Partners—co-founded by Hunter Biden six months after his father took office—to form a foreign investment fund called BHR Partners. Corporate records for BHR Partners were completed 12 days after the Bidens’ trip to Beijing.

Even a former senior aide in the Obama White House later said that the younger Biden appeared to be “leveraging access for his benefit.”

Clearly being a prominent senator’s (and then Vice President’s) son opens a few doors and greases a few gears. From there Ukrainian energy company Burisma enters the frame:

“Burisma is an independent Ukrainian producer that does business in Crimea, which is the region that has been invaded and annexed by Russia. What makes it especially interesting is that the enterprise is partly the brainchild of Victor Yanukovych, who was the one overthrown by the Ukrainian people during the 2014 revolution there — a man considered to be massively corrupt and a puppet of Vladimir Putin. Now he lives in Russia, exiled there along with his family. 

A new president was then elected named Petro Poroshenko, who served as President from 2014 to 2019. He too was allegedly corrupt, getting rich at Ukrainians’ expense. So in May 2019, a new election occurred — one that swept Volodymyr Zelensky into the country’s highest office. Before that he had been a comedian. He ran as the ultra-reformer and the person who would rid Ukraine of the cronyism and corruption that has long been a part of that nation’s fabric.

In May 2014, Hunter Biden joined the board of Burisma Holdings, a Ukrainian energy firm, one month after his father traveled to Kiev to urge parliament to “fight the cancer of corruption”, which led to VP Biden announcing a new “U.S. support package”. In fact, Burisma was at that time being investigated for corruption by Ukraine’s prosecutor general, who was subsequently fired at the insistence of Vice President Biden under the threat of withholding U.S. loan guarantees.

Burisma paid Hunter Biden USD $80,000 per month, the purpose of which, as the Eurasia Group’s Ian Bremmer said, was “clearly to be selling influence, because otherwise no one would ever pay him that kind of money.” He would retain the board seat until April 2019, the same month his father announced his candidacy for President.

It is clear that, at the very least Hunter Biden should have registered as a foreign agent under U.S. FARA requirements^#. The Foreign Agents Registration Act (or FARA) (22 U.S.C. § 611 et seq.) is a United States law that imposes public disclosure obligations on persons representing foreign interests. It requires “foreign agents“—defined as individuals or entities engaged in domestic lobbying or advocacy for foreign governments, organizations, or persons (“foreign principals”)—to register with the Department of Justice (DOJ) and disclose their relationship, activities, and related financial compensation.

^#This involvement in influence peddling by Hunter Biden in exploiting his father’s position as Vice President in the Obama Administration was merely part, as his laptop email trail attests, of a broader money making scheme by “Biden Inc”. Hunter Biden, along with “business associates” like Devon Archer (since convicted of defrauding $60 million from the Oglala Sioux Nation), cultivated influence and high level political and oligarch contacts in places as far flung as Kazakhstan, Romania, Serbia, Mexico, Libya and China. (Source: Marco Polo: Report on the Hunter Biden Laptop)

Burisma Holdings and its owner, Ukrainian oligarch Mykola Zlochevsky, have been the subjects of fraud and money laundering investigations in the United Kingdom and Ukraine dating back to 2012. Zlochevsky has been accused of using his businesses to launder millions of dollars in stolen funds from the Ukrainian treasury. Zlochevsky was front man for another Ukrainian oligarch, Ihor Kolomoyskyi, a shadowy figure in the background who bankrolled Burisma through Cypriot shell companies, and came to prominence later as a financial backer of current Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.

Burisma mounted a massive public relations and lobbying campaign to fight these charges and bolster its reputation in Washington. In 2014, the company appointed then-Vice President Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, to a lucrative board position. Burisma also retained Atlantic Council board member Sally Painter, the chief operating officer of Blue Star Strategies, a Washington, D.C., lobbying firm. Painter had served for years alongside Hunter Biden on the board of the liberal Truman National Security Project.

Burisma Holdings tellingly donated $100,000 per year for three years to the Atlantic Council starting in 2016, clearly to foster influence in this high profile, Democrat aligned U.S think tank. “It is perceived by Ukrainian and other Eastern European politicians and oligarchs as a way to buy influence in D.C. and launder their reputations,” Christina Pushaw, an Eastern Europe political consultant and policy specialist, said of the Atlantic Council.

The Strange Case of Ukraine’s Prosecutor General Viktor Shokin:

As mentioned above, in 2014 in the aftermath of the Yanukovych coup, Burisma Holdings was at the time being investigated for corruption by Ukraine’s prosecutor general, a role assumed by Viktor Shokin on 10 February 2015 (replacing Vitaly Yarema), and who was subsequently fired at the insistence of Vice President Biden under the threat (in a speech to the Council on Foreign Relations) of withholding $1 billion of U.S. loan guarantees.

These investigations dated back to 2012, and involved millions of dollars misappropriated from Ukraine’s treasury, and then laundered through overseas banks.

From Wiki, the sequence of events :

In early November 2013 Deutsche Bank reported that $24 million of funds from Zlochevsky‘s companies were wired from Cyprus to the Latvia branch of PrivatBank, a Ukrainian bank co-founded by Ihor Kolomoyskyi.

In April 2014, the Serious Fraud Office froze approximately $23 million belonging to companies controlled by Zlochevsky. At the end of 2014, Zlochevsky fled Ukraine amid allegations of unlawful self enrichment and legalization of funds (Article 368-2, Criminal Code of Ukraine) during his tenure in public office.

In January 2015, then Prosecutor General Vitaly Yarema announced that Zlochevsky had been put on the wanted list for alleged financial corruption.

At the end of January 2015, the Central Criminal Court in London released the $23 million that were blocked on accounts of Zlochevsky due to inadequate evidence.

In June 2018, the Serious Fraud Office stated that the case was closed.

Zlochevsky returned to Ukraine in February 2018 after investigations into his Burisma Holdings had been completed in December 2017 with no charges filed against him.

Viktor Shokin was only in the job a little more than a year, when on 2 Feb 2016 Shokin’s allegedly “slow walked” investigation had led, according to Interfax, to a court petition on that date seizing all movable and immovable holdings of Zlochevsky. 

This is in spite of allegations in Bloomberg and other left aligned MSM outfits that the investigation was “dormant”, when clearly court proceedings show it was far from dormant. It is indeed strange to note how all those various news outlets used that exact term, over and over, almost as if reading from the same pre-prepared script. 

So, to summarise, Viktor Shokin’s “dormant” investigation led them to petition the court to freeze Zlochevsky’s assets 6 weeks before he was forced to resign and, after he left office and was replaced, the case was then vacated due to “inadequate evidence” and two years later, Zlochevsky returned to the Ukraine with no charges laid. 

That sequence of events does not remotely tally with Shokin running dead on the Burisma case. Quite the opposite, in fact.

A far more plausible scenario for Prosecutor Shokin’s removal is that Shokin’s investigations were potentially uncomfortable for the Obama administration, particularly coming hot on the heels of its role in the 2014 Maidan revolution to remove former President Yanukovych, which in turn came after Yanukovych’s decision in late 2013 to avoid signing an association agreement with the European Union (triggering mass protests across Ukraine and culminating in the February coup), and that some of the administration’s most high profile members and associates had their fingers in many Ukrainian pies.

From independent researcher and writer Timothy Alexander Guzman 

“In his interview with CNN, Obama admitted that the United States “had brokered a deal to transition power in Ukraine.”

“Obama’s statement is reiterating something that the world public opinion already knew — the US was involved in the coup of [ex-Ukrainian President] Viktor Yanukovych from the start. History shows us that the US has overthrown numerous governments in Latin America, Asia and Africa and replaced them with leaders that ruled with a fascist ideology that proved useful for Washington’s geopolitical interests.”

It seems clear that Viktor Shokin was initially warned to back off, culminating in an assassination attempt^##, did so (at least for appearance’s sake) and then was rewarded by being removed to be replaced by someone more willing to look in the “right” directions.

^##On 2 November 2015, there was an assassination attempt against then Ukrainian prosecutor general, Viktor Shokin, when an unidentified sniper fired three shots into his office, but was foiled by the bulletproof glass window.

The contention that the Vice President, and point man for Ukraine in the Obama Administration, Joe Biden, was wanting to facilitate an investigation into fraudulent activity and money laundering being committed by the company (Burisma) that his son (Hunter Biden) was working for, rather than impeding it, is a contention that makes sense only to the rusted on Left wing ideologue.

To reinforce this logical conclusion, after Viktor Shokin was fired from the position of Ukraine’s prosecutor general under pressure from the United States^###, and a permanent replacement initially was not been named.

^###For added context, Hunter Biden was also directly and indirectly involved, through his association with Romanian oligarch Gabriel Popoviciu, in the brazen attempt to apply U.S. mediated pressure to fire the former chief prosecutor of Romania’s National Anticorruption Directorate, Laura Kövesi, who was zealously pursuing criminal charges against the well connected oligarch. This case therefore clearly has eerie similarities to the Shokin situation, trying to apply pressure to impede the prosecution of a favoured oligarch on the one hand, while campaigning to stamp out “the scourge of corruption” on the other. (Source: Marco Polo: Report on the Hunter Biden Laptop)

However, a few months later, Yuri Lutsenko, widely regarded as a hero in the West for spending two years in prison after fighting Russian aggression in his country, was named prosecutor general, and among his first duties he was invited to meet new U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine Marie Yovanovitch. 

“Lutsenko told me he was stunned when the ambassador “gave me a list of people whom we should not prosecute.” The list included a founder of the AntAC group^#* and two members of Parliament who vocally supported the group’s anti-corruption reform agenda, according to a source directly familiar with the meeting.”

^#* the Ukrainian Anti-Corruption Action Centre (AntAC) is a Ukrainian NGO that allegedly aims to reduce corruption, however it is worth noting that it received much of its funding in the past from the Obama Administration and George Soros’ Open Society Foundations.

A spokesperson from the Ukrainian Anti-Corruption Action Centre (AntAC) was utilised as evidence that Prosecutor Shokin was NOT investigating Burisma for corruption. 

The following quote from The Hill debunks the objectivity of this supposed anti-corruption NGO:

“Bankrolled by the Obama administration and Hungarian-American billionaire George Soros, the Anti-Corruption Action Centre (AntAC) was under investigation as part of a larger probe by Ukraine’s Prosecutor General’s Office into the misallocation of $4.4 million in US funds to fight corruption in the eastern European country.”

How could that evidence even remotely be considered objective or unbiased, when there is a clear financial link to the very Obama administration that some have alleged have a case to answer for in the actions by a very prominent member of that administration (VP Joe Biden through his own actions, and by extension through his son Hunter) with the investigation into Burisma Holdings, especially when they are themselves the subject of allegations of misappropriation of their own funding, being investigated by that same prosecutor?

The Trump Years:

Under President Donald J. Trump, the United States approved lethal arms sales to Ukraine in December 2017, moving beyond the non-lethal military assistance that the Obama administration had allowed. In the summer or 2018, Trump named Kurt Volker as his special envoy for Ukraine negotiations. Prior to that, the U.S. Congress created the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, which authorised hundreds of millions of dollars in additional military aid for Ukraine.

In April 2019, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, a television comedian and political novice, won a presidential runoff with more than 70 percent of the vote, defeating Petro Poroshenko. Two months later, Zelenskyy’s party also won a majority of parliamentary seats, marking the first time since independence that Ukraine’s president had a majority party in the parliament. Zelenskyy had campaigned against corruption and poverty, and pledged to end the war in the east; many saw the vote as a rejection of Poroshenko and his failure to root out corruption.

On 25th July 2019, President Trump and President Zelenskyy had a phone conversation that later became the focus of an impeachment inquiry by the U.S. Congress into allegations of “abuse of power” and “obstruction of justice“. A U.S. government whistleblower, Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman^#**, expressed concern about President Trump’s alleged effort during the call to enlist Zelenskyy to investigate Joe Biden, the former Vice President, who was potentially to become a leading Democratic candidate in the 2020 presidential election.  This was in spite of the fact that Vindman was only privy to one half of the dialogue in the call.

^#**“Documents recently obtained by Human Events show that Alexander Vindman had been pitching the government of Ukraine to obtain lucrative defense contracts. In August 2022, Vindman, operating as CEO of Trident Support, pitched a deck on a Ukraine Weapons Systems Sustainment Center to address problems with Ukraine’s weapons management, namely readiness, repair, and maintenance. Vindman proposed that for $12 million in initial funding, his company, Trident Support, would bring support closer to the front lines by providing a logistical midpoint from which equipment could be distributed. The idea behind the proposal is that Trident Support would be a middle-man between NATO weapons and Ukrainian forces, teaching the latter how to operate and repair the equipment, while taking an exorbitant fee from Ukraine to do it.” (Source: humanevents.com)

In November 2019, several former and current U.S. officials testified that the Trump administration postponed a Trump-Zelenskyy meeting and then held up congressionally approved military assistance, allegedly in order to get Kyiv to investigate the Biden issue. White House officials dismissed these complaints as politically motivated, which no doubt they were, and in January 2020 President Trump was acquitted in a Senate vote that was mostly along party lines.

In June 2020, Ukraine was named a NATO Enhanced Opportunities Partner, joining Australia, Georgia, Finland, Jordan, and Sweden as countries with deeper cooperation on NATO-led missions and exercises. The alliance stated that the new status “does not prejudge any decisions on NATO membership.” In September 2020, Zelenskyy approved Ukraine’s new National Security Strategy, which provided for the development of a distinctive partnership with NATO with the aim of gaining membership. The previous year, Zelenskyy’s predecessor signed a constitutional amendment committing Ukraine to become a member of NATO and the EU.

The Biden Presidency: A New “Hope” for Ukraine:

From the aforementioned Atlantic Council comes an article 14 November, 2020 containing these gems:

Entitled: What can Ukraine expect from a Biden presidency?

“Most Ukrainians were understandably relieved to see the end of the 2020 US presidential election campaign. Thanks to a combination of President Trump’s impeachment and ongoing Ukraine-related corruption allegations leveled at Joe Biden, Ukraine had found itself thrust into the presidential race at a time when Kyiv counts more than ever on continued bipartisan US support as it seeks to fend off ongoing Russian aggression.

This unwelcome involvement in the US election was the climax to an awkward period in US-Ukrainian relations that began during the previous campaign in 2016 amid speculation regarding then-candidate Donald Trump’s commitment to opposing the Russian attack on Ukraine. Lingering questions over Trump’s attitude towards Russia would go on to cast a shadow over his entire Presidency, with Ukraine ties also suffering as a consequence.

News of Joe Biden’s election win was greeted with cautious optimism by many Ukrainians, who viewed it as an opportunity to return to the kind of unambiguous US backing that helped consolidate international opposition to the Russian invasion of Crimea and eastern Ukraine in 2014. Biden’s personal ties to Ukraine also inspired a degree of confidence. As US Vice President in the Obama administration, Biden oversaw Ukraine policy and visited the country on six occasions. No previous US President has ever been so intimately familiar with Ukrainian affairs.“

Intimate indeed. They do go on to say, in a rare moment of clarity:

“Not everyone in Ukraine shared this enthusiasm. Skeptics pointed to the failure of the Obama administration to prevent Russia’s seizure of Crimea and subsequent reluctance to provide Ukraine with lethal military assistance. In contrast, the Trump administration sent anti-tank Javelin missiles to Ukraine along with other military aid.”

They conclude:

“Regardless of changes at the White House, the foundations of the relationship between the United States and Ukraine are solid. Bipartisan US support for Ukraine has been a consistent feature since the country first gained independence in 1991. This has remained the case despite the turbulence of recent years.

Nevertheless, Joe Biden’s election win paves the way for a new chapter in the strategic partnership between the two countries.“

As evidenced by subsequent events, a new chapter was indeed very shortly to unfold, but perhaps not in quite the optimistic way it was initially imagined.

In February 2021 President Zelenskyy ordered a series of measures against pro-Moscow oligarchs, notably Viktor Medvedchuk, a businessman, chairman of Ukraine’s largest pro-Russia political party, and close friend of Vladimir Putin. The government froze his financial assets for three years and shut down three pro-Russia TV channels that Medvedchuk controlled, alleging that they broadcast “misinformation.” In May 2021, authorities lodged treason charges against Medvedchuk, claiming that he transferred oil and gas production licenses in Crimea to Russian authorities. Zelenskyy said the moves were necessary to defend the country, while Putin blasted them as motivated by anti-Russia bias.

Meanwhile, in April 2021, officials from Ukraine and EU member states warned about Russian deployments near Ukrainian border areas and in Crimea. Adding up to more than a hundred thousand troops, along with tanks, rocket launchers and other weaponry, analysts called it the largest troop buildup since Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea. President Joe Biden and Vladimir Putin then agreed to a June summit to discuss a range of contentious issues, including Ukraine, and to launch dialogues on strategic stability and cybersecurity.

In September 2021, the Russian energy firm Gazprom finished construction of the Nord Stream 2, a pipeline that is set to deliver natural gas under the Baltic Sea to Germany and that would cut off a major source of income for Ukraine, a current transit country. Leaders in Kyiv protested that Moscow would use the pipeline, which could double gas deliveries to the rest of Europe, as a geopolitical weapon. The Biden administration opposed the pipeline, but agreed to hold off on sanctions and reached a deal with Germany to fund alternative energy projects for Ukraine. Amid the Russian military buildup near Ukraine, Germany stated that a German-based firm involved in the project must take administrative steps before any gas can flow, a process that “could take until mid-2022“.

In December 2021 to January 2022, as Russia continued to mobilise tens of thousands of troops along the border with Ukraine, the Putin government demanded a set of security guarantees from the United States and NATO. This included a draft treaty calling for tight restrictions on U.S. and NATO political and military activities, notably a ban on NATO expansion. The Biden administration delivered written responses in January; few details were made public, but it rejected Russia’s insistence that Ukraine never be accepted into NATO and instead proposed new parameters for security in the region.

In February 2022, Putin deployed Russian forces to Ukraine’s separatist regions of Luhansk and Donetsk after the Kremlin recognised them as independent. The military action raised concerns that Russia would then try to assert full control over the regions, which were partially governed by Ukraine, and then use the move as a pretext for a broader invasion of the country. In an address to Russia, Vladimir Putin said that the government in Kyiv is a “puppet regime” run by foreign powers, and that NATO ignored Moscow’s security demands. In response to Russia’s moves, Germany announced the suspension of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, while the United States, EU, and UK pledged additional financial sanctions against Russian entities.

The Russian Invasion of Ukraine:

On 24 February 2022, Russia invaded and occupied parts of Ukraine in a major escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian War, which began in 2014. The invasion has since resulted in tens, if not hundreds of thousands of deaths on both sides and instigated Europe’s largest refugee crisis since World War II.

The invasion began the morning of 24 February 2022 upon Russian president Vladimir Putin’s announcement of a “special military operation” seeking the “demilitarisation” and “de-Nazification” of Ukraine.  Russian air strikes and a ground invasion were launched along a northern front from Belarus towards Kyiv, a north-eastern front towards Kharkiv, a southern front from Crimea, and a south-eastern front from Donetsk and Luhansk. In response, Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelenskyy enacted martial law and a general mobilisation.

Russian troops retreated from the northern front by April. On the southern and south-eastern fronts, Russia captured Kherson in March and then Mariupol in May after a siege. On 18 April, Russia launched a renewed battle of Donbas. Russian forces continued to bomb both military and civilian targets far from the front line, including electrical and water systems.

By 11 December 2022, Ukraine President Zelenskyy stated that Russian forces have turned the city of Bakhmut into a “burned ruins”.

In late 2022, Ukraine launched counteroffensives in the south and in the east. Soon after, Russia announced the illegal annexation of four partly occupied oblasts. Elsewhere, by November 2022, Ukraine had retaken Kherson. On 16 December, Russia concentrated on launching missile attacks on Kyiv, Kharkiv, Poltava, and Kremenchuk, destroying infrastructure. Of 76 missiles that were fired at 9 power plants; Ukraine claimed 60 were intercepted. The next day, another missile bombardment targeted infrastructure on Kyiv, Kharkiv, Kryvyi Rih and Zaporhizhzhia.

As of March 2023, the number of civilian and military deaths is impossible to determine precisely in the fog of war.

On 12 October 2022, the independent Russian media project iStories reported that more than 90,000 Russian soldiers had been killed, been seriously wounded, or gone missing in Ukraine, citing sources close to the Kremlin. The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) estimates the number of civilian casualties to be considerably higher than the figure the United Nations has been able to certify.

On 16 June, the Ukrainian Minister of Defense told CNN that he believed that tens of thousands of Ukrainians had died, adding that he “hoped” that the true death toll was below 100,000. In the destroyed city of Mariupol alone, Ukrainian officials believe at least 25,000 have been killed; but investigations of morgue records indicate many more, and some bodies remain uncollected.

Independent sources suggest that Ukraine forces have suffered far greater casualties than they have been willing to acknowledge, but one recent estimate wagers between 150,000-200,000 Ukrainians have been killed in action since the war began, while some others estimate upwards of 250,000. The average lifespan on the frontline of the fierce fighting in the city of Bakhmut is estimated as being a mere “four hours,” according to an American mercenaries fighting side by side with the Ukrainian army against Russian forces in the Donbas.

Vladimir Putin’s current strategy of Russian economy-of-force operations in southern Ukraine appear to have successfully ground down attacking Ukrainian forces with the minimal expenditure of Russian lives and resources, an implementation of attrition warfare that appears to be gaining the upper hand in the conflict, with an April/May offensive in the offing.

From Douglas MacGregor:

“The fact that the West’s economic sanctions (against Russia) damaged the U.S. and European economies while turning the Russian ruble into one of the international system’s strongest currencies has hardly enhanced Washington’s global standing.

Biden’s policy of forcibly pushing NATO to Russia’s borders forged a strong commonality of security and trade interests between Moscow and Beijing that is attracting strategic partners in South Asia like India, and partners like Brazil in Latin America. The global economic implications for the emerging Russo-Chinese axis and their planned industrial revolution for some 3.9 billion people in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) are profound.”

The Nord Stream Pipeline Sabotage:

On 26 September 2022, a series of bombings and subsequent underwater gas leaks occurred on the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipelines. Both pipelines were built to transport natural gas from Russia to Germany through the Baltic Sea, and are majority owned by the Russian majority state-owned gas company, Gazprom. The perpetrators’ identities and the motives behind the sabotage remain debated, but explosion caused massive damage to the Nord Stream pipelines.

After the explosions, investigators from Sweden and Denmark both determined the act to be one of sabotage. The U.S. agreed that the attacks were deliberate, but didn’t take responsibility. Western sources were quick to blame Russia for sabotaging its own pipeline, a source of significant income for them in a time of war, when there was little to justify such an action on Russia’s part.

U.S. investigative journalist Seymour Hersh published a report on his Substack blog in February, 2023 asserting that U.S. Navy divers set bombs that massively damaged the Nord Stream. He reported that U.S. Navy divers planted the explosives under the cover of BALTOPS naval exercises, as part of a Central Intelligence Agency operation under President Biden’s direction.  

At the press briefing that followed President Biden’s meeting at the White House with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz on 7 February 2022, President Joe Biden defiantly said, “If Russia invades . . . there will be no longer a Nord Stream 2. We will bring an end to it.”

Twenty days earlier, Undersecretary Victoria Nuland had delivered essentially the same message at a State Department briefing, with little press coverage. “I want to be very clear to you today,” she said in response to a question. “If Russia invades Ukraine, one way or another Nord Stream 2 will not move forward.”

Clearly, from a motive, means and opportunity point of view, the U.S. remains the prime suspect in the Nord Stream pipeline sabotage, although pro-Ukrainian actors still remain a possibility, for economic reasons and to undermine Russia financially, though it is quite difficult to see them having the logistical capability to pull off such an operation without detection.

Whatever the ultimate truth of the matter, the U.S. and the E.U nations clearly have no genuine desire for the truth to come out, and with the help of their mainstream media enablers will continue with the plausible deniability that the fog of war allows.

Conclusion:

None of the above should in any way excuses Russian President Vladimir Putin for his actions in invading Ukraine, and the blame for the death and destruction that has since followed rests in substantial proportion on his shoulders. Putin has also completely miscalculated the likely costs of the invasion, and has since pivoted in his plans to a war of attrition, a strategy that seems at this stage to have far greater prospects of success.

In many ways, however, the recent historical actions of the US in provoking, or at the very least rushing blindly headlong into this current Ukraine situation have also been utterly deplorable, and they remain similarly culpable, along with the European Union for their part in precipitating an existential crisis for Ukraine, with a price paid with bucket loads of Ukrainian blood.

The Colour revolution, encouraged by the Obama administration, as I demonstrated above, to install a new Ukrainian President favourable to Europe in 2014 was obviously perceived as a significant threat to its existence by Russia, potentially opening the door to NATO troops being deployed near to or at its border, and thereby threatening their unfettered access to the Black Sea.

Ukraine is strategically much more important to Russia than the Baltic States ever were. Ukraine shares a 1,576km long border with Russia and borders on the Black Sea, the Sea of Azov, Belarus, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, and Moldova. The coastal city of Sevastopol, located in the Crimean peninsula, serves as the major southern naval base for the Russian navy, being where the headquarters where Russia’s Black Sea fleet is located. The strategic need for continuous use of this base by the Russian navy resulted in a deal in April 2010 being done in which Russia agreed to lower the prices of the gas and oil it sells to Ukraine in return for continuing their unfettered access.

The sabre rattlers in the U.S. and NATO are now playing a dangerous game of brinkmanship, when all they needed to do initially to ensure peaceful co-existence was to assure Russia that Ukraine can remain independent, and therefore a buffer between NATO aligned nations and the Russian border.

Additionally, making a pariah of Russia (a project years in the making in the name of “regime change”) and forcing them into an unholy alliance with China was a massive geopolitical mistake. No matter what one thought of the merits or otherwise of Vladimir Putin, it would have been far more sensible for the West to keep him “in the tent” and at least to engage him in non-combative dialogue, handling the Russians sensibly and with diplomacy without necessarily pandering to them.

We in the democratic West (irony notwithstanding) are not entirely the “good guys” in this melodrama at least partly, if not wholly of our own making. The forced alliance between strange bedfellows in China and Russia against a common enemy in the West now makes WW3 far more likely than I am comfortable with. This represents an absolute failure of diplomacy by the Americans in particular, and of their alphabet soup of Deep State agencies.

The current Ukrainian situation, and subsequent sanctions on Russia directly after the COVID 19 response, will ultimately crush global energy and food security even if full blown European War does not eventuate, whilst supply chains threaten to grind to a halt as all the interconnected pieces are only as strong as the weakest link.

This provides somewhat convenient cover for the systemic bureaucratic, economic and political incompetence that has characterised Western governance over that period.

As a final word of caution, in my view President Vladimir Putin believes (like all megalomaniacs) that he and Russia are indivisible, and that anything which threatens his safety and future as supreme leader of Russia is, in his mind at least, an existential attack on Russia itself. Therefore, if he is cornered to the point where his existence is to be potentially compromised, he will no doubt hold the view that Russia should launch all its military (and likely nuclear) capability to defend him, since the two entities are indivisible in his mind. The potential consequences of that should be obvious to anyone paying the remotest attention.

Epilogue:

As of on cue, the Colour Revolution bandwagon must roll on:

From Last Refuge:

Hungary has been in the crosshairs of the Biden/Obama administration ever since Prime Minister Viktor Orban refused to align with the WEF Western Democracies in their quest for regime change in Russia.  As the NATO led western alliance assembled to use Ukraine as a proxy war against Russia, Hungarian Prime Minister Orban would not join.

In early April 2022, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban was overwhelmingly reelected, despite the massive efforts against him by the European Union, western and euro-centric multinational globalists.   As a result of the victory, Brussels was furious at the Hungarian people.  Associated Press – […] “Orban — a fierce critic of immigration, LGBTQ rights and “EU bureaucrats” — has garnered the admiration of right-wing nationalists across Europe and North America.”

Within the statements reported from his 2022 victory speech, Prime Minister Orban warned citizens of the NATO and western allied countries about the manipulation of Ukraine and how he views the Zelenskyy regime: – “while speaking to supporters on Sunday, Orban singled out Zelenskyy as part of the “overwhelming force” that he said his party had struggled against in the election — “the left at home, the international left, the Brussels bureaucrats, the Soros empire with all its money, the international mainstream media, and in the end, even the Ukrainian president.”

This put Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban in the crosshairs of the western alliance, specifically the EU and U.S. bureaucrats who use their power, position and intelligence apparatus to manipulate foreign nations.  A year later and now we see USAID Administrator Samantha Power in Hungary openly discussing her seeding of the NGO’s and political activist systems in order to generate yet another colour revolution.”

And further proof of the concerted effort at “regime change”, now in Hungary:

“The EU, which includes 21 NATO countries, has frozen billions in funds to Budapest and accused populist Prime Minister Viktor Orban of cracking down on media freedom and LGBTQ rights. Orban’s administration has also been accused of tolerating an entrenched culture of corruption and co-opting state institutions to serve the governing Fidesz party.”

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