Indrajit Samarajiva

1. An Art: Tobacco College and The Ambassadors

As a palate cleanser, I look at art, so here is an art. This is Tabakskollegium [Tobacco Club], Abraham Teniers, mid-17th century. I don't know anything about this art, I just think it looks cool. I'm a big fan of dogs playing poker and this is monkeys going wild at a 'Tobacco College' or Tobacco Club.

It's pretty fun, though I don't think this artist has ever seen a monkey. The black monkey looks half bulldog, half kangaroo, half bat. The fuzzy monkey looks like the Scarecrow from Wizard of Oz. The monkey in the other room, drinking with a bar maid, looks like Chewbacca. This honestly isn't a very good painting.

This is a very good painting. This is The Ambassadors, a 1533 painting by Hans Holbein the Younger. I tried to install the 225 MB version of this painting as a wallpaper, which ground my computer to a halt until I laboriously removed it. The Ambassadors is a stunning painting which makes me mad at how shit modernity is.

I like some modern art but the fact that most modern art looks doodly and abstract is disappointing. You can lose yourself in old oil paintings as opposed to just being lost. I've seen The Ambassadors live in London and it is alive. You have to get really, really close to see the (literal) painting (on oak).

The Ambassadors is more than photo-realistic, it takes realism into the absurd. WTF is this skull, for example, and what ungodly light source is it lit by?

You're supposed to be able to view this memento mori at an oblique angle, from the very side of the painting. Or maybe through a glass tube. I don't quite get it but it's very cool.

When I look at The Ambassadors I also imagine that the two gentlemen could read and play all those instruments, spoke many languages, and could raise an army or harvest crops. Now we have all of this knowledge in our pockets, and precious little in our skulls. Anyways, that's a small artistic break from the usual fire and brimstone. One art, and another art.

2. Glory To Hamas

Hamas defeated 'Israel' on October 7th and fought the whole White Empire to a draw for 15 months. The senile emperor lost his job, and the venal one had to sue for peace before inaugurated. Peace on Hamas's terms. Hamas has been decapitated, decimated, and denigrated, but not defeated. As Abu Obeida said,

471 days have passed since the start of the historic Al-Flood Battle which ignited the spark of Palestine's liberation and drove the final nail in the coffin of the Zionist occupation—an occupation that will inevitably end by Allah's power. Our resistance in Gaza and its proud, noble people presented the proof to the entire world, and offered a remarkable, unique example of how the rightful owners of the land can indeed act in a significant, impactful way, show great steadfastness, make history, defeat occupiers, and shatter their illusions.

What Hamas calls the Battle of Al Aqsa Flood ran for 471 days and saw huge (for 'Israel') troop losses, equipment losses, economic losses, and political losses for 'Israel'. I say 'Israel' was defeated on October 7th because it was. They're now completely dependent on American support, giving them no independent existence at all. The Empire inflicted huge humanitarian losses, with targeted attacks on civilians and hospitals, but these have no military value. They barely touched Hamas, unless Hamas came out to blow them up. The war criminal Antony Blinken admitted that, "Hamas has recruited almost as many new militants as it has lost." And then he was heckled at his own press conference. Hamas is everywhere. Hell, I'm Hamas now, the kids are Hamas, as is the whole Dirty South.

We are at a historical hinge, and the ghetto uprising of October 7th has been an inspiration to a world in rebellion. The White Empire can still kill babies, but they have to bow before men in the field. This low watermark for humanity is the high watermark of White Empire. Palestine will exist in 2030 and the United States of America will not. This is a historical hinge and the doors are coming off.

The Historical Moment

As I've said, we're in the middle of World War 3 (the Last World War, inshallah), which started in 2001 and is reaching its dénouement shortly. October 7th, 2023 marks the turning point in that war, like Stalingrad was in World War 2. The beginning of the ending, the point after which the Nazis were in retreat. The Battle of Al Aqsa Flood has huge historical significance, it's Leningrad and Stalingrad all at once. Both a starvation siege of absolute evil, and where evil started to be pushed back once and for all (inshallah).

I have been so happy and proud to see the images coming out of Gaza, the fighters of Al Qassam standing with the people they fought for. These men have lived in tunnels and faced impossible odds for 15 months. They not only survived, they were lighting up 'Israeli' tanks and troop concentrations until the ceasefire. They still had men, they still had ammo, and they still had command and control. They were undefeated. The ceasefire was won not by US Presidents or pissant press but by Hamas's force of arms. The ceasefire was on their terms and they earned it.

I have also been cheered to see the prisoners released from 'Israeli' concentration camps and absolute torture chambers. Palestinian prisoners are never forgotten, and Hamas is getting them out 50-to-1. These abducted men, women, and children were the reason Hamas took hostages, not to keep prisoners but to free them. I am, of course, dreared to see 'Israel' kidnapping more people at the same time. But at least none of them will be forgotten and, inshallah, justice will soon be gotten. The late, great Yahya Sinwar was freed in a previous prisoner exchange, and 'Deans' of the Palestinian nation are being released in this one.

I am also amazed to see Hamas rapidly re-establishing civil governance in Gaza, deploying police and asserting political authority. Hamas has unified the factions of free thinking people, they freed a PLFP leader (her hair gone grey), many éminence grise from Palestinian Islamic Jihad, Mujahideen Movement, etc, because of course they did, Hamas has asserted (deservedly) leadership of the entire Palestinian nation. The Palestinian Authority is disgraced and despised, and even Fatah's military win (Al Aqsa Martyrs Brigade) salutes Hamas. As James Brown said, they paid the cost to be the boss.

Hamas's political program is now the only one. Resist or die. It truly is a jihad of victory or martyrdom, as Resistance communiqués often say. Hamas has not just taken leadership of Palestine, they've taken moral and military leadership of the entire region. The martyr General Soleimani's audacious idea of an Axis of Resistance actually happened, Iran, free Lebanon and free Yemen and struggling Iraq were able to coordinate (without coordination) along multiple fronts. They have achieved the theoretical 'unity of the fields' and sustained it despite great losses. The idea that 'Israel' can ever be lived with is dead along with hundreds of thousands of civilians. Everybody hates 'Israel' now, and everybody that isn't brainwashed likes Hamas. These men obviously aren't terrorists. They're fighting against the people blowing up hospitals. These men are heroes, and too often martyrs.

Military History

The military and political success of Hamas and Hezbollah has buried in assassinations as cope, but this has been a comedown of historic proportions for the White Empire. Afghanistan just wore them out over decades, but Palestine and the Resistance fought them toe-to-toe in high intensity warfare for 15 months. When 'Israel' fell on October 7th, all the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put the homicidal Humpty together again. All the fleets and all the flights of White Empire couldn't take an area the size of Montreal in 15 months of trying. God knows they can kill children, but the White Empire is surely dying.

In terms of counter-counter-insurgency, textbooks will be written about the Battle of Al Aqsa Flood. Tunnels, for example, have completely changed urban warfare. 'Israel' almost never encountered fighters unless they popped up to counter them. 'Israel' was constantly having troop concentrations blown up by a bunch of moles with munitions. The literally underground resistance has made military history by completely ghosting from the conventional battlefield. How do you fight people underground, when every entrance blows up on you? The answer from 'Israel' is you don't. You just fuck off and sue for peace.

I actually do not understand how it happened. I cannot comprehend how this is possible. How the hell did they live underground for 15 months, and how did they keep supplied with ammunition? I can't imagine that Hamas planned for such a long war, but Allah is the best planner I suppose. They somehow made it. Al Qassam, Saraya Al-Quds, and PLFP (among brave others) continued firing until the ceasefire, continued coordinating, and continued communicating even after after decapitation, decimation, and what would lead lesser mortals to despair. A fighting force was hemmed in by the entire might of White Empire, buried under eight Hiroshimas worth of explosives, and yet they kept fighting. It truly was like the Miracle of Hanukkah, a jug of pure oil that was only enough for one day, but which lasted for eight.

Hamas, as the first brigade of the Palestinian Army, deserves all the glory in the world. I remember seeing a Hamas fighter—mortally wounded—using his last breath to pray. I remember seeing the man Yahya Sinwar, using his last strength to throw a stick at a cowardly drone. These were acts of bravery, of people resisting a genocide. As Jesus said, "greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends" (John 15:13).

Now we can see the orphans they didn't kill emerging out of the tunnels and merging with the people. Al-Qassam is an army largely composed of boys that lost parents, it is an orphans' army fighting against great oppression. And the world has seen them fight with great discipline, as a true Islamic Resistance. After all the horror, it is an honor to live at this time, to see that among the believers, there are men, as Allah said. All glory to the Islamic Resistance, of which HAMAS is just an acronym.

Perhaps you have many questions, like 'how can he support Hamas?' This is a stupid question, but I'll indulge it. I suggest you Read the Resistance yourself.

3. The Tree Of Life

I was carrying a coffin today and it makes you think. The people you carry, carry you in the end. My Nanda used to carry me and my cousins, now we stand over her body, the children she held. Carrying her out of this world as she carried us in. We're born together and we die together. We're born on a wire and die by wire, life is an AC connection that flickers but never dims.

I think of this as I stand in front of the electrical box that activates the cremation machine. In Sri Lankan tradition I have to do this, not my cousins. A son cannot 'kill' their parent, this is a massive pin demerit, leading straight to Buddhist hell. So the task falls on the nephew, which in this case is me. So I walk away from the mourners, around the furnace, to the electrical box at the end of all things.

Holding my hand is one of the weird funeral attendants, literally holding my hand and putting it on the ignition button. He told me to look away, thus taking the karmic hit himself. Like the ferryman of the dead, he then demands all my cash which I—deeply suggestible at this point—give. I found out he hit up my cousin also, honestly props to him. Then it's done, as much as anything gets done.

I watch the smoke coming out of the chimney and look down at the caged birds and gentle dogs around the cemetery. I know how the caged bird sings, it's very loud and annoying. I look in the dogs eyes and see my Nanda's kindness, which she inherited from my Achchi, which has been handed down to me, extremely lossily. It's like we went from records to CDs to highly compressed MP3s.

My cousin and I look at each other and ask how many people would come to our funeral? Nanda was a teacher, she touched hundreds of lives and changed dozens forever. We're far richer than Nanda ever was, but much poorer in spirit. We can pay the ferryman on this side, but we have no great treasure waiting for us in heaven. Honestly, we deserve to be held up at the cremation station.

But now it's just us. The kids sneaking cutlets and doing shots of coconut wine with Achchi at family functions. Now we have to organize them. Now look at us, circulating extremely sugary coffee and holding the threads of a dozen families together, barely. Can't hold them. Not really trying. I can see the old family slowly disappearing into death, diaspora, and disinterest. We've got our own families now. New families begin I guess. The old guard is dying.

Whenever my kids are fighting I tell them family is like a tree, and hold up my hands, one hand down as roots, the other up as branches. At the beginning there's a lot of roots, grandparents, aunts and uncles. Then there's lots of branches, kids. Eventually the roots start to die, and the branches start flowering, fruiting, and dropping off seeds, the germs of new families. I tell the kids they need to be strong roots for the next generation, that they need to stick together and stop fighting. The kids roll their eyes at me and keep fighting.

I see my son handing out hymn books, some day he'll be handing out him-in-a-box (him is the past tense of me). My boy is pretty useless now, but someday that'll be me. I got to walk him to the bathroom, and someday I'll need a walking. The children you care for, care for you. That's the deal. There's a gross symmetry to it.

I was in a street pharmacy, which is extremely narrow, and I was surrounded by adult diapers. I thought. 'Shit's getting real in the field'. Shakesperera said the first and penultimate acts of life were the same; toddlers of differing cuteness, mewling and puking. It's not cute when you get incontinent as an adult, but shit happens, as they say. Why on earth would anyone deal with your shit? Because they dealt with your shit. That's the deal. The human being is not an individual. It's a relationship. And life is not a line, it's an endless loop. Energy is neither created nor destroyed. It just changes states, the AC current of life.

When everything's over I walk back through my ancestral 'village' of Galkissa, which has become an urban mess, and which I have no reason to visit now. My grandmother carried me down these streets, my aunt held my hand, but now they're gone. I physically held them and then let them go. I guess that's what funerals are for. Funerals are for the living. I can feel my place in the family tree physically shifting and I don't like it. I feel like a pigeon perched on the shoulder of giants. They don't make 'em like Lilani Evelyn anymore. From a Bubba to a Nanda, rest in peace. You were a good person.

4. Resistance Is Persistence

Shortly after the Tet offensive, the honest war criminal Henry Kissinger said, "the guerrilla wins if he does not lose. The conventional army loses if it does not win." Now, long after October 7th, all the king's horses and all the king's men couldn't put Homicidal Humpty together again. 'Israel' had to accept the terms that were available on October 8th, the terms defined by Hamas, the very group they promised to eliminate. Hamas has not lost and 'Israel' has not won. By Empire's own definition, Palestine has won this battle, though the war for liberation goes on.

Vietnam

Vietnam took massive losses in the Tet Offensive and technically lost. Kissinger said, "To be sure, from a strictly military point of view, Tet was an American victory. Viet Cong casualties were very high; in many provinces, the Viet Cong infrastructure of guerrillas and shadow administrators surfaced and could be severely mauled by American forces. But in a guerrilla war, purely military considerations are not decisive: psychological and political factors loom at least as large."

The American military point of view, then as now, is best described by Ho Chi Minh. Uncle Ho said, "They have resorted to extremely savage means of warfare — toxic chemicals, napalm bombs, etc. — and applied a "burn all, kill all and destroy all" policy." What the Americans have done in Gaza (with 'Israelis' as delivery boys) is nothing new, it's Colonialism 101. And Vietnam wrote the textbook on defeating it. Under (and after) Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam achieved a hat-trick of anti-imperialism, resisting occupation by the French, Japanese, and Americans. As Uncle Ho said at a conference on guerrilla warfare in 1952,

You must know that our war of resistance is a long and hard, but surely victorious, one. It is long because it will last till the enemy is defeated, till he "quits". The 80-year-long oppression by the French imperialists is like a chronic disease that cannot be cured in one day or one year. Don't be hasty, don't ask for an immediate victory: this is subjectiveness. A long resistance implies hardships, but will end in victory.

Uncle Ho said this before even facing the final boss of imperialism, America, and even before the 1954 Geneva Accords that clipped France. Ho actually never lived to see full liberation, but he saw it nonetheless. He saw it coming and exhorted his people forward. He ended many communiqués with "Cordial greetings. We shall win!" Even when this was decades away, he still saw it coming, and brought it on.

Palestine

Palestine has had leaders of the same caliber as Uncle Ho, however, lacking strategic depth, they have almost all been martyred. Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, for example, founded Hamas with a clear vision that he, also, never got to see. In 1999 the great Yassin said,

I say Israel was founded upon in justice and plunder. Any entity founded on injustice and plunder is destined to be destroyed.

The power of no one in the world lasts forever. You start as a child, then you become a teenager, and a young man, and then you become an aged man, an elderly man, and then it's over. The same is true of countries. They progress little by little until they become extinct. This cannot be helped.

I say that Israel will be gone in the first quarter of the next [21st] century, inshallah. To be precise, I say that by 2027, there will be no Israel.

Yassin was sadly blown out of his wheelchair in 2004, but his people and their resistance only grew stronger. Another martyr, the pharmacist philosopher Basil Al-Araj, clearly connected Palestinian strategy to classic guerrilla warfare around 2014. In I Have Found My Answers, he wrote,

The Palestinian resistance consists of guerrilla formations whose strategies follow the logic of guerrilla warfare or hybrid warfare, which Arabs and Muslims have become masters of through our experiences in Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, and Gaza...

Our direct human and material losses will be much greater than the enemy's, which is natural in guerrilla wars that rely on willpower, the human element, and the extent of patience and endurance. We are far more capable of bearing the costs, so there is no need to compare or be alarmed by the magnitude of the numbers.

I thought of Al-Araj often over these past 15 months, because he called it and did not flinch when he was called. Hamas's Khaled Mashal (who 'Israel' famously failed to kill) believed as well, and connected the Palestinian struggle to the Vietnamese example explicitly. After October 7th, he said,

Dear sister, nations are not easily liberated. The Russians sacrificed 30 million people in World War II, in order to liberate it from Hitler's attack. The Vietnamese sacrificed 3.5 million people until they defeated the Americans. Afghanistan sacrificed millions of martyrs to defeat the USSR and then the US. The Algerian people sacrificed six million martyrs over 130 years. The Palestinian people are just like any other nation. No nation is liberated without sacrifices.

Resistance Is Persistence

Reading both of these examples, you get a deep sense that resistance is persistence. That liberation takes not years but decades, not lives but generations, and not more than you think you can bear, but more than that also. The White Empire is vicious, tenacious, and deeply evil, but they are stretched wide and stretched thin being an empire and all. With enough blood, it is possible to reclaim your own patch of soil, inshallah.

Along the way, ceasefires and compromises are as essential as coming up for air, but they are not peace. There is no peace in the Middle East until 'Israel' is destroyed, and no peace in the world until America is gone. What Uncle Ho said in his appeal to the Vietnamese nation in 1968 holds true now. He said,

After nearly a hundred years under the yoke of colonial servitude and more than twenty years of resistance against imperialist aggressive wars, our people, more than any other people hold peace which is so badly needed for national construction deep in their hearts. But this must be genuine peace in independence and freedom.

This mirrors what the martyr hero Yahya Sinwar said (in 2018) about what he was fighting for. He said,

I am not the leader of a militia, I'm from Hamas. And that's it. I am the Gaza leader of Hamas, of something much more complex than a militia—a national liberation movement. And my main duty is to act in the interest of my people: to defend it and its right to freedom and independence. You are a war correspondent. Do you like war?

Interviewer: Not at all.

And so why should I? Whoever knows what war is, doesn't like war.

Interviewer: But you have been fighting for all your life.

And I am not saying I won't fight anymore, indeed. I am saying that I don't want war anymore. I want the end of the siege. You walk to the beach at sunset, and you see all these teenagers on the shore chatting and wondering what the world looks like across the sea. What life looks like. It's breaking. And should break everybody. I want them free.

When asked about ceasefires, this is what Sinwar, the eternal commander, said. He said,

A success? This ceasefire is not for Hamas or Fatah: it is for Gaza. For me, what matters is that you finally realize that Hamas is here. That it exists. That there is no future without Hamas, there is no possible deal whatsoever, because we are part and parcel of this society, even if we lose the next elections. But we are a piece of Palestine. More than that, we are a piece of the history of the entire Arab world, which includes Islamists as well as seculars, nationalists, leftists. But with that said, please let's avoid the word 'success.' Because it's outrageous for all the terminally ill patients that right now are on the border waiting for it to open. For all the fathers that tonight won't dare to look at their kids, because they won't have any meal (to provide them). What success we are talking about?

And here we are, without Sinwar, unfortunately. After pledging to destroy Hamas (and destroying hospitals instead) the White Empire has had to acknowledge them. Hamas is here, and Palestine isn't going anywhere at all.

Persistence

And so we return to today, to the news of another ceasefire which 'Israel' is already breaking and violating with massacres, including of its own hostages. The same ceasefire they could have had on October 8, 2023, were they not endlessly prevaricating, with the American Democrats fully backing Palestine's evisceration. Is there any peace here? No, only picking up the pieces. But by holding their line, holding their land to the last, and holding fast to their faith, Hamas and the Axis of Resistance have won something. You can see it in their statements now.

Dr. Khalil al-Hayya (of Hamas) said,

Today, we affirm that the occupation has not and will not defeat our people or their resistance, by the grace of Allah. The occupation has achieved nothing but destruction, devastation, and massacres against our people. It only secured its captives through an agreement with the resistance to stop the war and aggression, along with an honorable prisoner exchange deal.

Just before the ceasefire (on January 13th) Abu Obeida described the damage Al-Qassam (Hamas's military wing) was still able to inflict on invaders in deeply holocausted North Gaza. The force that made the ceasefire happen. Abu Obeida said,

After more than 100 days of the comprehensive destruction and genocide carried out by the enemy army in the northern Gaza Strip, our fighters continue to inflict heavy losses on it and deal it harsh blows that have left more than 10 dead and dozens injured in the last 72 hours.

We confirm that the losses in the ranks of the failed occupation army are much more than what it announces, and the enemy will be defeated from the northern Gaza Strip, disappointed, dragging its tails of shame without being able to break the back of the resistance, and the only achievement it has achieved is destruction, devastation and massacres against innocent people.

The numbers of 'Israeli' soldiers KIA is relatively few, but the impact on the fragile 'Israeli' military and society is powerful. 'Israeli' never achieved operational control of any part of Gaza, just massacres of civilians. It brings to mind the full quote from Kissinger, back when America was capable of self-reflection (if not correction). The war criminal said,

The North Vietnamese and Viet Cong had another advantage which they used skillfully. American 'victories' were empty unless they laid the basis for an eventual withdrawal. The North Vietnamese and Viet Cong, fighting in their own country, needed merely to keep in being forces sufficiently strong to dominate the population after the United States tired of the war. We fought a military war; our opponents fought a political one. We sought physical attrition; our opponents aimed for our psychological exhaustion. In the process, we lost sight of one of the cardinal maxims of guerrilla war: the guerrilla wins if he does not lose. The conventional army loses if it does not win. The North Vietnamese used their main forces the way a bullfighter uses his cape—to keep us lunging in areas of marginal political importance.

Even with American arms and British air support, 'Israel' was just lunging at areas of marginal political importance, and still getting blown up after 15 months. By America's own admittance, Hamas probably has more fighters now and, hell, I'm Hamas, South Africa is Hamas, the UN is Hamas; according to 'Israel' everyone that opposes them is Hamas, and everyone but corrupt western elites opposes 'Israel' now! In all political dimensions, 'Israel' is much worse off than if they'd taken a deal on October 8th. It all harks back to what Uncle Ho said in 1956,

Our present political struggle is a long, hard and complex one, but it will certainly be victorious. Victory is certain because our cause is just, our people are closely united and of one mind, our fellow-countrymen in both South and North are struggling with heroism, the peoples of the world are supporting us and the world peace movement is growing stronger every day, while the imperialists' warlike schemes have suffered ever more serious failures.

As I said from the beginning, 'Israel' is winning the genocide and losing the war. Livestreaming a genocide for 15 months is a big political loss for the White Empire, and has toppled one figurehead President already. American regimes, for generations, have been trying to 'hand-off' the Middle East to 'Israel' and Saudi Arabia so America can attack China, but Biden has been bloodily hands-on for over a year now. American arms, British eyes in the sky, and 'Israeli' boots on the ground have been trying to put Humpty Dumpty together for months now and they can't. They have to negotiate with the same Hamas they pledged to destroy. This is a strategic loss, and having destroyed hospitals and slaughtered children doesn't make that better. It, in fact, makes it worse. The whole situation is like America spending (re: embezzling) trillions of dollars and decades to replace the Taliban with the Taliban. They have replaced Hamas with Hamas.

The human cost, of course, is unfathomable. Hundreds of thousands dead or fated to die, especially since the healthcare system was targeted for destruction, with doctors abducted and targeted for death by torture. This is the same type of terror used by the French, by the British, and by the Americans (why I call it one White Empire) and, while it is certainly terrible, they struggle more and more to hold on to territory this way. Because people willing to water the soil with the blood of patriots can inherit it. Freedom is not promised and it's certainly not pleasant, but it is possible, inshallah.

Thus when the propped corpse of Genocidin' Joe Biden says, "It will take time to feel the full impact of all that my Administration has done. But the seeds we planted will grow and bloom for decades to come," he knows not what he says and what it means. This really harks back to the Irish martyr Bobby Sands when he said, "They tried to bury us, but they didn't know we were seeds." 'Israel' and America have planted the seeds of their own destruction with the genocide of Gaza. Coming decades will show, inshallah, what the blind sheikh could see.

Further Reading:

Henry Kissinger - The Vietnam Negotiations Survival: Global Politics and Strategy (1969) Kissinger Vietnam - Unknown.pdf 1 MB Ho Chi Minh - Selected Writings 1920-1969 Ho Chi Minh Selected Writings 1920 - 1969 -- Ho Chi Minh -- 1977 -- Foreign Languages Publishing House -- 87ae0827a333745b2bcc94bf3280bafd -- Annas Archive.pdf 15 MB Reading Resistance (edited by indi.ca) Hamas, Hezbollah, Ansarallah, the Ayatollah, Allah, et al Reading-Resistance-Print.pdf 2 MB

5. Diving The Damned

I dove the wreck of the SS Conch (1903) off the coast of Hikkaduwa. The Conch was an oil tanker that either sunk or was dynamited; either way, it's on the bottom now. Despite my general terror of the ocean, I swam inside the hull of this slain beast and suddenly felt a great sense of awe come over me. The Conch was huge and here its ribs towered over me, like a cathedral of modernity. But the only ministers were fishes and the only sermon was complete disinterest. As the poet said, "Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!" And so I did.

I am part of the same hypocrisy as the Conch, I am addicted to the same black drug, glugging out of tanks bigger and smaller. How much diesel did I burn to get to the wreck, and how much to run the compressor that filled my lungs? Seeing the wreck of the Conch was like seeing the wreck of the titanic industrial civilization I was still happily cruising in up above. Clinking ice in our drinks as we head for the iceberg. Flying business class into a cliff while the economy class burns. Seeing the wreck of the Conch and then swimming away was like attending my own funeral yet finding the coffin empty. A taste of the sublime, which is a cocktail of terror and getting away with it

Edmund Burke described the sublime as, "Whatever is fitted in any sort to excite the ideas of pain, and danger, that is to say, whatever is in any sort terrible, or is conversant about terrible objects, or operates in a manner analogous to terror, is a source of the sublime; that is, it is productive of the strongest emotion which the mind is capable of feeling." That is, I suppose, what I was feeling. I am honestly terrified of the ocean and diving. During the refresher course I was overconfident and just three feet of ocean made me pay for it. We have to 'lose' the regulator (what you breathe through) as part of the retraining, and when I put it back, I forgot to exhale first. Instead, I inhaled a bunch of seawater and panicked. I stood up sputtering and scared. I really got the feeling that you cannot breathe down there, and that diving is just delayed drowning.

Wreck diving is just destiny deferred, it's a tour of the termination of all things. Every ship from the 1900s has sunk, fallen apart, or been consumed for parts already. The Conch is not unusual in that sense, it just got there first. When I nervously I cleared the wreckage and entered the hull, I could see it like a reflection. The ribs of the Leviathan stretched out before me, fish swimming around like they were feeding on a corpse. I had the thought that this is a temple to modernity and also where is your god now?

All the oil all the spoils, where did it go, where will it go for us all? All of our Gross Domestic Product is all garbage in the end, most consumer products within a year. All of the oil goes up in smoke, leaving just waste and waste heat as a legacy. We call them fossil fuels but we're all fossils in the long run. The term 'fossil fuels' describes a destination as well as a source.

I thought this as I dove past the oil drums, giant cylinders lying next to an equally giant propeller, now lying on the ocean floor. I thought it as I pushed off the iron hull, now rusting into the earth's crust. Industrial civilization is certainly very big and very impressive, but to whom? The fish don't give a fuck. My cat doesn't. Everything we consider so impressive is at best an obscure mating dance within a species, at worst a terror to all species (including us), and in most cases just ignored (by most specimens).

Diving a wreck is like walking through the ruins of ancient cities like Anuradhapura or Polonnaruwa. Signboard aside, none of the current inhabitants give a fuck. Those great cities are primarily occupied by monkeys now. And the great vessels are just giant fish toys. The meek have inherited the earth many times before, what makes us think modernity will be different? Pride, certainly, but you know where that goes. Today we just build cathedrals to goods, and call ourselves gods.

Walk around any modern city, which is just ancient city that doesn't know it. A giant mall/hotel towers above the Kaaba in Mecca, the poverty in Bodhgaya would still shock the Buddha into Buddhahood. If you walk into any major city and look up, you can see what people worship now. It's bank towers, it's corporations, it's money above all. And where does that lead? It's just a hallucination of value, and the sum of a billion illusions does not a reality make. Buddha knows we're still asleep, perchance to dream as the Bard said. And that dream is/was modernity.

You can see it, diving through the already ruined cathedrals of modernity, like all the shipwrecks dotted around the coast of Sri Lanka. Though the diesel/money pump can still fill our tanks for just a little longer, surviving, like diving, is just drowning slowly.

Like the Conch was either dynamited or just sunk, whether this industrial civilization dies of fossil fuels or runs out of them first is geologically immaterial. As Ozymandias said to a traveler from an antique land, gazing upon the visage of a wreck unplanned, "Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!" And as the poet Shelly said, despairing, "Nothing beside remains. Round the decay, Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare, The lone and level sands stretch far away."

6. The Demented RISK Game That Is American Geopolitics

We are in the middle of World War 3, or what Will Schryver more accurately calls The Last World War. The last industrial war before the end of industrial civilization. Regardless of the shared threat of a collapsing climate, America still insists on threatening everybody out of sheer muscle memory and cussedness. America insists on playing what Kipling called the great game of imperialism, long after everyone has grown up. Ever since the 'end' of World War II, America has kept playing RISK: The Game Of World Conquest.

I used to play a lot of RISK, back when I was young and had six hours to waste. It's a very simple game with no particular nuance. The objective of RISK is "To eliminate your opponents by occupying every territory on the board. The first player to do so wins the game and conquers the world." RISK is a very simple game which unfortunately describes the statecraft of the sociopath simpletons in America. Not content with ruling in the background, they want to take entire continents, humiliate their allies, and genocide rebellious populations in front of everyone.

So as we enter year 23 of The Last World War, the White Empire has revealed itself in America, the Reds have resurged via China, Russia is back in Blue, and Iran is leading the Greens. These are the players and the whole board is in play, borders are in flux, genocides are happening, as is tank warfare across the steppes of Ukraine. If you anger Hitler and give a shit about colored people and Slavs, World War III has already started. As we've angered the Gods, this will be the Last World War, the last industrial war before industrial civilization collapses. So here's the state of the board in the brief historical period before mother nature flips the whole table over:

In this map, White Empire has conquered North America, Europe, Australia, and neutralized South America and Africa. Donald Trump merely calls out the obvious, that Denmark is America's bitch and that they own Greenland, that the Canucks is just their cuck state up north, and that anybody weak like Panama is just ripe for the picking. In RISK terms America is taking all of North America and already has Europe (and its 'bonus' NATO armies). To finish the game, White is trying to conquer Asia, using Ukraine, 'Israel', and Taiwan as beachheads. Asia, however, has other ideas, because Blue (Russia), Green (the Muslim world), and Red (China) are still playing (thank God).

Thus, Blue has pushed back by conquering half of Ukraine and breaking Europe. One of the rules of RISK is that you have to occupy a whole continent to get its 'bonus armies' and White has effectively lost Europe as a productive asset this way. Europe is deindustrialized, demilitarized, and its governments are despised and falling all over.

Green is also resolutely resisting and White has to keep fighting over the Middle East over and over. Despite spending trillions of dollars genociding, besieging, couping, and generally destabilizing the place, White cannot hold it. Iran is resolutely independent, Yemen has taken the Red Sea, Afghanistan is undefeated, and Palestine and Lebanon are still struggling to be free. White can still destroy lives from Libya to Sudan (via the UAE) to Syria, but they simply cannot eliminate Green (ie, Islamic) resistance.

This is is a strategic shame for them, because defeating Red is actually White's priority. But they can't even get to that side of the board without getting punched a hundred times and losing their ammunition. Red is following the dictum, do nothing, win or as Napoleon said, when you're opponent is fucking themselves, don't interrupt. America managed to suppress communism almost everywhere, but they missed the most populous nation in the world, China, and now they're a productive superpower that leads the world in every way that matters (except bullying). America still has beachheads encircling the Reds from Japan to South Korea to Taiwan (you can see the point of the Vietnam War now), but these are all useless while they're preoccupied elsewhere.

To sum it all up, White has reached the limits of its power, Blue is showing those limits, Green (the Muslim world) has rebelled and Red (China) is doing nothing and winning. The fact is that none of these countries want to play RISK at all, they simply want to exist where they are and take care of their own people. Russia, Iran, and China would happily trade with America for the rest of the century, but America wants to roll the dice and try to take it all this decade. So here we are. In a real-life RISK game, with a real risk of global thermonuclear war.

7. Babel Come Down

This is very loosely in response to Dave Pollard writing about the falsification of everything.

In the story of Babel—which might as well be future as past—man develops one language in one city until "there the LORD confounded the speech of the whole earth; and from there the LORD scattered them over the face of the whole earth." That's His story, at least, which repeats throughout history because mortals decease so quickly and forget. As the Tanakh Translation of the Old Testament comments, "In our passage, one senses both astonishment at the advanced technological level of Babylonian culture and a keen sense that technology poses grave dangers when it is not accompa­nied by reverence for God." Sound familiar? Can you hear the rhyming upon the wind?

In the history we're writing today—which might as well be science fiction—our language is autotranslated into one while we build a global village out of concrete and oil. As John Milton (Satan) said in the film Devil's Advocate,

You sharpen the human appetite to the point where it can split atoms with its desire; you build egos the size of cathedrals; fiber-optically connect the world to every eager impulse; grease even the dullest dreams with these dollar-green, gold-plated fantasies, until every human becomes an aspiring emperor, becomes his own God... and where can you go from there?

Nowhere but down. Science unmoored from sense, humanity unmoored from animals, animals unmoored from the elements. The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold, as Yeats said, tapping the rhythm in 1919. Babylon reincarnates only to be struck down. Civilization seems to be destroyed regularly, only to regenerate remembering nothing but unbelievable stories, which we repeat helplessly as mere mortals. As the prophet Isaiah chastised the king of Babylon long ago,

Once you thought in your heart,
"I will climb to the sky;
Higher than the stars of God
I will set my throne.
I will sit in the mount of assembly,
On the summit of Zaphon:
I will mount the back of a cloud­
I will match the Most High."

You might as well tell this to the Emir of Dubai, building the world's tallest tower and flying Emirates airplanes through the sky. Or the apostate of 'Israel', delivery boys for imperial bombs, exiled to Israel by the same people that hated and genocided them, to areligiously and amorally hurry the apocalypse on. Might as well tell this to yourself, who tacitly participate in this global civilization with cynical distance (like this article, scrawled on the bathroom walls of Babylon, for a bad time, call indi.ca).

Today we live in an age when languages are effectively autotranslated into one, and where rapid delivery and instant connectivity make the world effectively one city, at least for carbonaceous cosmopolitans on the good side of the bombs. But this is just a peek at the peak, which we're rapidly overshooting over.

The technological utopia we were sold, the end of history that was called, the death of God that was declared, it now all looks presumptive. Global, industrial civilization missed any chance at moderation with suppression of global communism and now, baked into individualist capitalist bricks we go down like Babylon. Infinite growth on a finite planet isn't possible, this is just basic math, but basic myth told us the same story long ago. Don't try to have it all. Keep your head down. Pride goeth before the fall.

AI speaking human languages is actually a sign of collapse, not a way out. Literal Cliff's Notes from the devil, not deus ex machina to save us all. As many studies have shown (vomit, I hate that phrase), AI models fed AI-generated data quickly spew nonsense, or, more boringly, AI models collapse when trained on recursively generated data. Garbage in, garbage out is one of the first things I learned while failing Computer Science and this dictum doesn't change just because we're using neural networks now. Mad Cow Disease is an obvious example of how eating your own brain works for neurological systems. It's not good. The Internet post 2021 is completely incestuous, and we're just a few cycles away from the digital equivalent of Hapsburg noses.

There are ways out of this, in practice (train a model on another model, segregate artificial content), but in principle that's just delaying the inevitable. The pre-2021 Internet will stand (or more precisely, fall) as our Tower of Babel, the moment we came closest to perfect information and then ruined it through incestuous debauchery up top.

You can experience how shit the Internet is already. Search doesn't find anything, news is naked propaganda, and everything can be faked as convincingly as the real now. Too much information seems to produce even worse results than too little. They have 'flooded the zone with shit' as Steve Bannon said quite openly. Within a few generations, the world has lurched between information constipation to digital diarrhea, neither of which is a healthy balance. The idea of balance, as always, eludes the capitalist algorithm entirely. And so, without balance, the whole thing falls.

AI is just the icing on the cake, the temperature rise that's already baked in, the goose that's already cooked, along with a million other species that were holding life as we knew it together. All of the things we measure are merely a sign of the ecosystem we did not treasure at all, and the God who warned us but we forgot. And so, as Britney Spears said, ooops, I did it again. Or as every major faith has told us, there will be blood. Religion and science both predict an end of the world, whether you believe it or not is largely immaterial. At this point, you can just observe. After a few decades of babble, Babel come down.

8. Not My New Year

Happy New Year, though it's not my new year. Most of the world does not celebrate new year on January 1st. Russian new year is January 14th, Chinese new year is in their spring (Jan/Feb), Sri Lankan new year is in April, Indian Diwali is Oct/Nov, and the Muslim new year is always moving. New years are literally all over the map.

At Tale Of Two New Years

I think what unifies the northern (January) and my southern (April) new year is that they happen in the worst months of the year, respectively. Both holidays occur at the hottest/coldest time of the year, at a point when things can only get better.

Sri Lanka's new year is round the vernal equinox, when the equator is directly facing the sun. Sri Lanka, being nearly on the equator, gets positively spit-roasted. By April, the air feels hot to the touch, but this is when the village decides to have footraces and climb greased poles for fun. It's maximum copage in the most difficult month.

In the same way, the Northern Hemisphere gets frozen around the winter solstice, when the north tilts away from the sun. The winter solstice is literally their darkest day but, as the saying goes, it's always darkest before the dawn. So Northerners culturally enforce good cheer during their darkest, dismalest month. It's maximum copage north and south.

The Best One

I must admit that, of the two new years, I like the southern one better. The equinox has history to it, going back to ancient Babylon. In Sri Lanka we still use the Babylonian star charts, meaning our astrology no longer matches astronomy. It's been so long (over 4,000 years) that the Earth has wobbled on its axis and the ancient 'map' we use is off. In this way, Sri Lankans still inhabit the Babylonian universe when we celebrate Avurudu. Both Sinhalese and Tamils celebrate around the same time as Iranians, harking back to some common ancestor long ago.

Post colonization and our cannibalization via mass migration, Sri Lankans also celebrate the northern new year. We effectively have two new years. April is when the servants go back to their village, and December is when the migrants come back to Sri Lanka. The old, feudal, masters have to give leave in April and the new, capitalist, masters have to give leave in December. It's two sides of the same coin, one ancient, one modern. That's why I disappeared in December, because I was hosting family from abroad. I have to warn you that I'll disappear for weeks in April also, as I go back to my own village or the hills, ideally. Some Sri Lankans never come back from Avurudu at all.

What I find interesting is that the northern (or western) world still follows the ancient calendar in its own way. For most companies, the financial year starts in April, for reasons nobody really thinks about. And Easter is still a big celebration, bigger than Christmas in many communities. The Roman calendar started in March and for many communities (including Christians), April 1st was the new year for centuries. The Gregorian calendar definitely changed this in 1582, but many people failed to get the message. People who still observed the new year at the old time were called, apocryphally, April Fools. Thus, even in the history of the northern world you can see southern roots. Which is all a roundabout way of saying, Happy New Year to you.

9. How Religion And Science Both Predict The End Of The World

Here's a bit of gallows humor. 'A polytheist is standing next to a monotheist at the gallows, nooses around their necks, ready to fall. "First time?" the Hindu says nonchalantly, as the monotheist boggles.'

In Hindu thought, the world being destroyed and recreated is literally nothing new. This has happened many times already. Vishnu has already reincarnated nine times to right things, usually violently (as a fish, turtle, boar, half-lion, dwarf human, man with axe, Krishna, Rama, and possibly Buddha). Next time is a man on a white horse (Kalki), which must sound familiar. These cycles of reincarnation broadly match the theory of human evolution (fish, amphibian, mammal, jungle rat, Australopithecus, Homo Habilis, etc), punctuated by mass extinctions to balance things out (always violently). This is not coincidental, just two ways of observing the same phenomenon.

Meanwhile the one god of the desert—which has spewed out so much Satanic energy as oil and gas—promised a total apocalypse long ago. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are all apocalyptic faiths, they're all centered around the world ending, and Judgement Day coming, biblically speaking, soon. Zionists strive (Satanically) to make it come faster and Zionists already inflict apocalyptic conditions on the people of Gaza, who least deserve it. God said this would be a time of great evil, and these godless people strive to bring it.

In the end it doesn't matter which path you take to the end. We all get there, in the end. Whether the world has ended over and over again or if it happens once is immaterial when you're in the middle of it. Even the most confident materialist can observe the mass extinction event we're living through with however many confidence intervals the false god of statistics recommends. Even the most analytical atheist would admit that the climate reeks to high heaven. These are all observable facts, even if you're not observant.

All major religions believe in an end of this world just as almost all report a flood because it's true. Sea levels did rise dramatically 20,000 to 10,000 years ago, not coincidentally the dawn of civilization as we know it. Sea levels are rising dramatically again, as fast as Meltwater Pulse 1A, leading to the dusk of civilization as we know it too. Both religion and science tell the same story, that we began out of great climatic shifts and end there too.

The modern view of religion is that it describes the individual afterlife, but the individual is a modern conception. In Abrahamic faiths there is no concept of an individual afterlife, everyone waits until Judgement day when all accounts are settled, everyone who's ever lived or died comes back and are judged all at once. In Hinduism or Buddhism there is no individual to even start from, we are constantly being reincarnated in myriad forms, which collectively amount to nothing worth clinging onto, as per Buddhism. Thus the afterlife really refers to after life, after this life as a collective, not your life right now.

The modern view of religion as separate from philosophy or science is also wrong too. Hindu numbers (including zero) came out of the need to perfect religious rituals, Pythagoras was a bit of a cult leader, and science developed through mosque and monastery, through deeply religious people who saw no contradiction as we do. The distinction between religion and science only exists if you start history at the Age of Enlightenment and ignore the Buddha's actual Enlightenment and everything preceding. Which is ignoring 99% of human history, 99.9975% of living history, and infinity and beyond.

Science and religion both predict the end of the world, and we are unlucky enough to see the experiment play out in our lifetimes now. If it's your first time you might be scared, even if you believe in cycles you're unprepared, but even if you believe in nothing you can't deny that something big is going on. However you approach this truth is largely immaterial. The truth approaches us on its own terms. Death comes to us all. Individually, then collectively, then disjointedly we are reborn.

10. The Water Cycle Of Life

On Christmas Day, my son was hospitalized with the dreaded dengue. We also hospitalized ourselves, so we wouldn't worry. Dengue is a viral, buzz-borne, potentially hemorrhagic fever. It's deceptive and deadly. In bad cases, the blood vessels basically break down and people bleed to death internally. There is no cure, but in Sri Lanka the treatment is quite good, though it consists, mainly, of educated watching. The doctors watch the blood counts, the nurses watch the blood pressure, and the family watches measuring cups, one for drinks and one for pee. This is the water cycle of life. Life is measured out with coffee spoons, as the poets say, or in cups as doctors demand, more prosaically.

As Tyrannosaurus Simon (TS) Eliot said,

For I have known them all already, known them all:
Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
Beneath the music from a farther room.
               So how should I presume?

All of our lives are measured, some just more immediately. My mother has done the measuring out for me, my wife has measured out my life in piss spittoons, and now we're doing it for my child. Some day my son will be measuring out my life, my precious bodily fluids, inshaitan. This is the water cycle of life, embodied in pee. The long golden stream.

Digression

People say you're born alone, you die alone but I have never understood this. Even the slightest amount of navel-gazing shows that we're all literally born out of someone. When you die, you require pall-bearers to leave. It's the same root word for the same root reality. Human beings are rarely alone, least of all near the exits.

In most cultures, people barely have personal names, most names are literally relative. You are either Abu Hamza (the father of Hamza) or Bappa (mother's younger brother), or some age-based family name, relating you to the community. Personal names are a modern invention, go a few generations back and most people barely have them. Hell, I can just visit family in India and their official names are like WiFi passwords, no one really knows them but they've got it written down somewhere. I discovered my (Sinhala) grandmother's last name at her funeral. I kept wondering who on Earth is Gunawardena? That was my Achchi's government name, but how would I know? I was just a gamaya. I only knew her as Achchi, grandmother, and all the villagers called her Kalutara Hamine, the lady who came from Kalutara. Every culture has relative names for parents, but most cultures also have relative names for almost everyone in the village.

Even in barbaric Far-West Asia, you were either the relative of so-and-so (Johnson), or doer of a job for the community (John Smith). Names still change based on your stage in life (Master, Mr), who's addressing you (Dr. or Dear), or where you're from (Baghdad Bob). The modern idea of a fixed identity is the same idea as 'fixing' a butterfly with a pin.

As the poet continues (PS Eliot),

And I have known the eyes already, known them all—
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall,
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
               And how should I presume?

The question capitalism asks is not 'how many angels can dance on the head of a pin', but how many poor devils can wriggle on the end of one. Individuals are pinned on a board room wall and their hopeless wriggling is monetized as productivity. Or as Leo Tolstoy said, "Now, it is a good and desirable thing, truly, to make many pins a day; but if we could only see with what crystal sand their points were polished – sand of human souls – we should think there might be some loss in it also."

Individualism is a western concoction to sell you sneakers and steal your labor time, your literal life, measured out with coffee spoons. The idea of firstname/lastname is just a password into prison. And we literally sign up for it, what is a signature, after all? What are you signing away, but having one in the first place?

The Buddha said the illusion of self was the mother of all fuck-ups. This is something babies know as well as Buddhas. Babies know very well that they don't exist on their own and immediately reach out for a titty. Buddhahood is simply remembering this as an adult, and not repeating the indignity. Even unenlightened adults express unintentional insight when they're mating. Adults subconsciously call each other baby as they make babies. As the Bee Gees wrote,

Islands in the stream
That is what we are
No one in between
How can we be wrong?
Sail away with me
To another world
And we rely on each other, ah-ah
From one lover to another, ah-ah

The Stream

So, anyways, I'm eyeballing piss in a cup while my wife eyeballs water in an unfortunately identical cup in the other room. We made this baby and now we have to maintain it forever. So we measure out the boy's life in plastic cups, recording the results in a sheet which the nurse checks like homework.

The main insight from those who died from dengue and those who lived is to measure liquids, before your internal organs liquify. My daughter has had what they terrifyingly call 'leakage,' which can lead to blood transfusions, which can simply not do anything. There's still not much the doctors can do about bad dengue, but they can at least do it quickly.

When you're in this situation—when you're completely dependent on family and society—you can actually situate yourself more accurately. With a patient perspective, every human being is just a thin and extremely fragile tube, connected to billions of other tubes that somehow make a robust network. Life is robust, but any one life is extremely fragile. I think of this as my wife measures liquids going into the tube and I measure liquids going out, to make sure the tube itself is not hemorrhaging. That's all the universe is, a bunch of relativistic tubes, atoms as well as atomized people, just vectors bouncing off each other as time splits us apart, with no fixed point anywhere in view.

Mashallah this particular tube is fine, the boy is fine. He's out of hospital and playing now, though he has to rest for weeks. Sometimes life in the tropics is a bitch but, as Nas said, God forbid the bitch divorce me. Or as the Buddha said, life is suffering, as almost every Buddhist ignores him. Life is a cycle, connecting intimately to other life cycles, most obviously your family but also your society, your species, and well beyond all artificial categories. Life is that which cannot be held on to but which must be held on to, this is the central struggle of the bubbles within the bubbles of multiverses we call human beings. The long, golden stream.