Indrajit Samarajiva

1. 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.

2. 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

3. 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."

4. 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.

5. 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.

6. 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.

7. 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.

8. 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.

9. How WW2 Led To WW3

If you include wars that affect non-white people, we are already well into World War III (2001-2027, inshallah). As the Nazis that won (Ze Americans) topple nations and genocides entire populations, it's important to put things in historical perspective, and to not despair in the face of the despicable. Remember that for most of World War II, the Nazis were winning. But they lost in the end because resistance persisted, and not a little because evil is its own worst enemy.

World War II

From 1939-1943 (two-thirds of the official war), Europe was getting rolled up like a cheap rug and the USSR was reeling like after too much Smirnoff. The National Socialists (Nazis) barely lost a battle till Stalingrad in early 1943, and all the Soviets won was rubble. Stalingrad was razed to the ground. The Soviets had still lost more men, more matériel, and more land, but in Stalingrad the Germans lost momentum, which is fatal for a Blitzkrieg operation. 1943 was not when the tide stopped (indeed, the Nazis killed more people in retreat), but when it turned, but that's only in hindsight. At the time, the Nazis were still mighty formidable. We are approaching such a historical terminus now, if you'll allow me to rewrite history.

While World War II historically ended in 1945, consider the source. If you include colored people and Slavs, war across the world continued until 1991. What people miss is that World War II was a three-way war, with shifting alliances. Once the alliance of convenience between commies and capitalists ended, they fought for decades more. The three parties to WWII were, broadly, the 'good' imperialists (America, UK, France), the 'bad' imperialists (Germany, Japan), and the brand-new communists (the USSR, China). In the first part of the war, the 'good' imperialists were saved by the communists, ending WWII as we know it. But that was not the end at all, if you could all people, as they do. For another 46 years, World War II continued as a two-way war, with America continuing to fight the USSR until it (largely of its own accord) fell over. This marked the 'end of history' in 1991-ish according to Francis Fukuyama, but it really marked the end of WWII.

It's important to understand that America assimilated the Nazis and continued their mission. As Soviet Marshal Georgy Zhukov said in his memoirs, "German imperialism set itself the goal of eliminating the world's first socialist country and enslaving the peoples of many countries. Yellow with time are today the documents, directives and maps in which the Hitler hierarchy charted the destinies of Europe, Asia, Africa and America after the anticipated defeat of the USSR." America largely accomplished the Nazi's goal, outlasting the USSR and enslaving countless countries under the 'rules-based order' (AKA, we rule). Hitler's dream of Brits and Americans and Germans slaughtering commies and subhumans together was realized, albeit sans Hitler, who had to die for Europe's sins. This is the coalition genociding Gaza as we speak. In his grave, Hitler is not spinning but grinning.

'After' World War II, Nazis were assimilated into NATO, the Jews were largely deported out of Europe, and socialist liberation movements across the world (please show me a Capitalist Liberation Front) were crushed mercilessly. National Socialists became National Capitalists and kept sinning, grinning, and unfortunately winning. There was no post-war era after 1945 because America immediately began fighting commies, it just stopped affecting white people. Korea, Vietnam, and Yugoslavia were battles in this unfinished war over Asia, not random, isolated events.

Ze Americans spun World War II as their victory against fascism but A) they didn't win it and B) fascism was just a brand of the imperialism they were also peddling. As Marshal Zhukov said, "The Great Patriotic War was an armed clash between socialism and fascism, the most reactionary and aggressive force of imperialism." What we call WWII was a grand battle between imperialism and socialism, with fascism merely being a type of imperialism. The fighting on the western front was actually a civil war within White Empire, between competing imperialisms (Britain, France, America). The eastern front and China's fight with China was the only actual liberation going on, who care about the liberation of slavers and genociders like France and England to slave and genocide some more (as they did)? They deserved worse than they got, albeit from better people. Hitler died to wipe away the sins of the wretched Europeans and they went on sinning with 'at least we're not Hitler' to forever absolve them. The fact is that fascism might have lost World War II in 1945, but imperialism won by 1991, creating the tensions that require World War III today.

World War III

I backdate the start of World War III to 2001 because what else would you call a war that killed at least 5 million and led to the invasion and destruction of dozens of countries across the world? It's war... across the world, I dunno, put two and two together.

After started this conflagration with their Reichstag fire moment on 9/11, their once and current proxy Al-Qaeda going off the chain, which the American chain of command seemed entirely ready for. As General Wesley Clark said, quoting some dude in the Pentagon, "This is a memo that describes how we're going to take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, and then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and, finishing off, Iran." And like a Scooby-Doo villain, they almost got away with it. Each of those wars, some of them ongoing, are presented as America defending itself against provocations in the news. But the news, especially given the flimsy connection of Iraq to 9/11, is a ruse to sell plans plotted long before. As Clark continued,

I was called in by an officer on the Joint Staff who told me that we were going to invade Iraq. I asked him why, and he said he didn't know, but guessed it was because we didn't know what else to do. The reasoning behind the invasion actually dates back a decade to the spring of 1991, which involved a significant debate within the Republican Party regarding whether the Gulf War should have concluded with the capture of Baghdad and the overthrow of Saddam Hussein. In 1991, when I spoke with Secretary Wolfowitz, he expressed that we had failed to remove Saddam Hussein and believed we should have done so. He argued that we had only five or ten years to stabilize the Middle East by eliminating old Soviet surrogate regimes like Syria and Iraq before another superpower emerged on the scene.

Whereas the Germans were aggrieved by losses in World War I, the Americans were somehow aggrieved by things they didn't win in World War II. The old 'Soviet surrogates' were largely inoffensive after the fall of the USSR and Russia itself was lost in the neoliberal wilderness. But it somehow wasn't enough for America's enemies to lose, America wanted them defeated. So it hyped those threats up just to shoot them down. As Clark said, "I guess if the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem has to look like a nail," or as war criminal Madeline Albright said, "What's the point of having this superb military that you're always talking about if we can't use it?"

In this way, America started World War III, using 9/11 as its Pearl Harbor. This gave them a casus belli to match their natural bellicosity, to solidify the police state at home and topple states abroad. This has been going for decades now, so long that we consider it normal. This was called the War on Terror but it was a War of Terror is you assume that colored people have feelings too (as I do). And it was pointedly not called a World War despite being quite literally a war waged all across the world. Comrade Zhukov described maps, yellow with time, that "charted the destinies of Europe, Asia, Africa and America after the anticipated defeat of the USSR." Just a decade after the actual loss of the USSR, America dusted off its own maps and started redrawing borders like Nazis that won. National Socialists, Nationalist Capitalists, what's the difference when you're being bombed?

World War III was being waged against already isolated states or non-states for over two decades so there wasn't much need to state anything about it. If a colored tree falls in a racist forest, who gives a fuck? World War™ is a threat alert reserved for when white people are troubled by the consequences of their own actions, which hasn't quite happened yet. However, when the 'Cold' War in Ukraine's Donbass region got hot in 2022 and when the Gaza Ghetto Uprising happened in 2023, suddenly the plot thickened. America (and all the vassals of White Empire) were fighting not one but two land wars in Asia, and threatening another over Taiwan. Returning to Zhukov's discussion of Nazi plans, Europe was conquered, Africa was debt trapped, the Americas were pretty well genocided, but Asia was proving resistant, and time was running out.

Thus the end of World War II (like the end of World War I) gave us the starting blocks of World War III. Britain and then America mobilized conscript colonies in Palestine and now Ukraine to encircle Asia from the west, and conscript colonies in South Korea and Taiwan to garrison it from the east. 'Encircling' a giant continent like Asia is a strange idea, but that's the nature of the beast. As Mao said in 1965, "Imperialism is afraid of China and of the Arabs. Israel and Formosa [Taiwan] are bases of imperialism in Asia. You are the gate of the great continent and we are the rear. They created Israel for you, and Formosa for us. Their goal is the same."

The Fighting Of World War III

I think we have somewhat established 'a' why for World War III. Because the war between imperialism and socialism was incomplete, and America still had a bit of a mopping up operation after World War II. The question of how World War II was fought is also interesting, because it tells you what's happening in World War III.

World War II—being fought thousands of kilometers away from America—was fought force light and heavy bomber. America conquered, corrupted, and occupied forward bases like the UK, France, and Germany, but its own military was relatively small and relied heavily on technology. This is the basic formula America brings to any war today. They'll fight to the last Ukrainian, 'Israeli', or Taiwanese, and make money on the arms dealing (irregardless of outcome).

It's important to see the pattern of American war making. America has not been able to conscript its own army since Vietnam, has not been able to field its debt slave army since Afghanistan, and now relies on its conscript colonies entirely. Ukraine, 'Israel', South Korea, and Taiwan. However, as Hitler could have told them, this is not a good idea. The Romanian, Hungarians, and Finns covering the Nazis flanks folded easily. These were not shock troops as much as shockingly bad troops, as America found with the collapse of South Vietnamese, Afghan, and now Ukrainian armies. The Americans, however, believe their own propaganda and have not learned anything. Why would they, since other people are dying for their sins, and when they're making a killing? It all seems like the perfect crime, until you remember that Scooby-Doo villains do not, in fact, get away with it.

Observe how America fights each of these wars, and you can see they're actually getting weaker with each iteration of aggression. America fought Korea and Vietnam with their own men, which is no longer physically possible. Even if America could conscript an army, 77% of its menfolk are too fat, mentally ill, or drugged-out to serve, even if they wanted to (which they do not). Afghanistan was the last war physically led by Americans and may be the last one ever. Every war since then has been a proxy war and proxy, by definition, ain't the real thing.

America has gone from an army that could invade and occupy anyone, to an army that could at least invade and destroy anyone, to just an arms dealer, to a sleazy used arms dealer. The military industrial multiplex can still do an awful lot of killing, but they're in a death spiral. They're trying to repeat the hits of the 80s except without an industrial base, a functional military, and with a multiplex full of shitty reruns as weak propaganda cover. Tom Cruise flying a jet at age 60? We've literally seen this one, and it ain't print.

No amount of money printing can solve actual material problems, but that's America's only solution to anything. However, they cannot print bullets, nor can they make rare earths plentiful. They literally cannot attack China without China's help, but they're still barking at them like mad dogs, frothing. America is a cornered beast and a wounded beast also, which is certainly dangerous, but also delusional. America can still kill lots of civilians and wreck many nations on the way out, but they've been in a long retreat since Afghanistan at least. Like the Nazis for the latter part of the war, when they were the most vicious.

America's method of war fighting—now amplified and televised around sacred Palestine—is actually much closer to the Nazi method of collective punishment which they continued even after it became an inefficient use of munitions. Describing his plans for Moscow, Hitler said,

The city must be encircled so that not a single Russian soldier, not a single inhabitant—man, woman or child—can escape. Every attempt to leave is to be suppressed by force. The necessary preparations must be carried out so that Moscow and its suburbs are flooded with water with the help of immense installations. The site of what is today Moscow must become a sea which will forever conceal the capital of the Russian people from the civilized world. In the case of all other towns, the rule should hold that prior to their occupation they should be reduced to ruins by artillery fire and by air raids.

This is no different from the 'Israeli' (re: American) plans for Palestine, to lock and then kill or starve everyone inside the Gaza ghetto, as a very public punishment for the Gaza ghetto uprising. Americans even had plans to 'flood' the tunnels of Gaza which proved unworkable, but they're still working on civilians with artillery and air raids daily.

Again and again, America learned all the wrong lessons from World War II, because they believed their own propaganda about them winning it. Thus they ended up closer to the losing strategy of the Nazis (at least partly because they assimilated them directly into NATO). What's important to remember about all of this history, however, is not the why nor the how but the when. Because the Nazi strategy worked very well for two-thirds of World War II. Just not the important part. The end.

The End

I reference Nazis not as an insult. I actually think Hitler was the last honest European. All Hitler did was apply European colonial procedures to Europe, as Aimé Césaire said. In Mein Kampf, Hitler said he wanted the Lebensraum other Europeans already had in their colonies. He went for Europe because that's what was left (and because he seemed afraid of crossing water). The greater White Empire (with origins in Europe and heirs in America) invaded, genocided, tortured, and raped across the world for centuries and is still going. They don't call their wars against the world wars because they don't consider us human, but fuck them, I'm writing the history now and it is what it is. Nazi is not nearly a bad word as 'European', and 'American' is positively repulsive.

To single out the heirs to White Empire, Americans have caused the most suffering and been the most insufferable about it. Pompous asses pumping children full of lead, and making interminable movies about how they felt about it. Americans have, in fact, always been worse than the Nazis, this is not controversial if you're objective about it. What happened in their plantations is worse than concentration camps and went on for centuries. These people raped women and sold their own children. American is an absolutely cursed place, it's literally built on an 'Indian' graveyard, like the hotel in The Shining.

After 'defeating' the Nazis, the Americans continued the Nazi's work of killing commies until 1991, and then selected the Muslims as their subhuman race to exterminate in earnest from 2001. America has killed at least 5 million in its post 9/11 Wars of Terror, and must have doomed a million more just last year. The Thousand-Year Reich was only 12 years but America has actually reigned terror for centuries. Please tell me how the Nazis are worse. The Americans inspired the Nazis and then assimilated them.

National Socialists, National Capitalists, Nazis, Nacos, different boots same feet, stamping on a human face forever, as that snitch Orwell said. But in the world of non-fiction, no empire lasts forever, least of all confederacies of dunces. As I said, we now see great armies reduced to petty arms dealers, warriors against 'terrorism' reduced to luxury terrorist suppliers, like LL Bean for Al-Qaeda.

Gaza is America's Stalingrad/Leningrad and the current Battle of Kursk is well, the old Battle of Kursk (history seems to be bored of us and is no longer subtle). Yes, the Americans have reduced Gaza to rubble and absolute struggle, but the Germans did the same to Stalingrad and Leningrad. They buried millions of souls there, but did not emerge out of it unscathed either. And the rules of this war are different. As the infernal Henry Kissinger said—"the guerrilla wins if he does not lose," and Hamas, Hezbollah, and Ansarallah have taken serious blows, but are still fighting (Godspeed to them, I'm not worth the dust on one fighter's sandals). And this is just one front that Ze Americans are fighting on. Hitler tried this too if you remember, and it does not end well. The saying goes never start a land war in Asia, and the Americans are starting three.

Whereas Hitler at least had the wisdom to secure one flank before starting another (oceans always confused him), Americans are throwing all of their enemies in Asia together out of sheer arrogance and hubris. Iran is now integrated with Russia and possibly China, the nightmare blunt rotation for American political thinkers from the 1980s and 90s (back when they had them). Now, of course, America is run by absolute morons which, surprisingly, can go on for a while, but it can't go on forever.

I mention this all at length to show the historical view, outside of the desperate straits of the present news cycle. The loss of Syria, the losses in Gaza, these are horrifying and real, but not new. If you read the history of World War II, it's depressing, horrible, and desperate most of the time, until it isn't. And even that was incredibly rough going. More people were killed after the Germans strategically lost the war than while they were winning. It was a long, brutal march to 1945 and, for the vast majority of the war, the socialists were being beaten, and beaten badly. Then the Americans joined the Nazis and the socialists seemingly lost history in 1991, until they reemerged stronger with Chinese characteristics. It's important to remember this, as we enter year 24 of World War III.

If you read what passes for American strategy documents (like Project 2025), it's clear that they view their main global enemy as China, and they're nowhere near them. America has been trying to pivot to China for decades and all they've done is blow their ammunition in Ukraine and their reputation in the Middle East. If anyone wins from all this carnage it's not America but China, who is doing the meme, 'Do nothing. Win.' And the Resistance will eventually win their own land back simply by being there and being brave because, as the Taliban proved, "you may have the watches, but we have the time." If you read the Resistance you can see that they view this as a generational struggle, and they believed in it when it was much more hopeless than this. So don't lose hope now is all I'm saying. If you read history, it's repeating, and we're near the beginning of the end, not the end of the beginning. Godspeed to the Resistance and God-damn the White Empire, in all its reincarnations.

10. Bibliography (-4 Billion to -300)

These are some books I reference constantly. I start in chronological order, from -4 billion years ago to the Axial Age (ending around -300 so far, this is a work in progress). Some of these books obviously weren't written a billion years ago, but I'm dating from the fossil record they reference.

You can download these books directly as EPUB or PDF, (except for the most important book, unfortunately). I must confess that I am a terrible pirate, Arrr. I think everyone has the right to a library and a pirate library is just a library for the poor and distant. I couldn't function as a writer in Sri Lanka without the pirate library system (shoutout LibGen and Anna's Archive). I both pay for books and pay for piracy, but I think everyone deserves a look inside a book for free. As a wise man told me, 'have a look, it's in a book, a reading rainbow.'

These books are the foundation of my theory, my literal Genesis. My faith starts from microbial life, which I consider the pinnacle of God's creation (God itself, really). We are all part of an unbroken line of rebirths that goes back to the first cells dividing and we reached the peak of our powers about 3 billion years ago (and declined since). My theory is that humans are just spaceships for ancient microbes (bacteria, virii) to walk about on land. Prove me wrong.

The latter books, from the Axial Age, are the foundation of my philosophy. The Buddha's Dhammapada and Confucianism, which were getting at the same point. These philosophies both get to the point that all philosophies are inadequate and that there is a way or path out of this bullshit. You must, however, understand that I am a bad Buddhist. As the recluse Gotama said in the All-Embracing Net Of Views,

Whereas some recluses and brahmins, while living on the food offered by the faithful, earn their living by a wrong means of livelihood, by such debased arts as predicting:

there will be abundant rain;
there will be a drought;
there will be a good harvest;
there will be a famine;
there will be security;
there will be danger;
there will be sickness;
there will be health;
or they earn their living by accounting, computation, calculation, the composing of poetry, and speculations about the world—

the recluse Gotama abstains from such wrong means of livelihood, from such debased arts.

I long thought I practiced right livelihood, but I don't (according to the Buddha, right livelihood is being the Buddha, basically). I feel quite seen by the Buddha in this passage, and quite scorned. Or as Socrates (via Plato) said about reading and writing in general,

The loyalty you feel to writing, as its originator, has just led you to tell me the opposite of its true effect. It will atrophy people's memories. Trust in writing will make them remember things by relying on marks made by others, from outside themselves, not on their own inner resources, and so writing will make the things they have learnt disappear from their minds. Your invention is a potion for jogging the memory, not for remembering. You provide your students with the appearance of intelligence, not real intelligence. Because your students will be widely read, though without any contact with a teacher, they will seem to be men of wide knowledge, when they will usually be ignorant. And this spurious appearance of intelligence will make them difficult company. (Phaedrus, Plato)

So with that as an unrecommendation of this whole project, here's my reading recommendations. I'm listing things in 'chronological' order as in starting with the fossil record 4 billion years ago. Might as well start a story at the beginning.

Note that the canonical version of this biblio will be here:
https://indi.ca/bibliography/

-4.374 billion years ago Indica: A Deep Natural History Of The Indian Subcontinent

I picked up this book because indi.ca is my pen name, but Pranay Lal's work is much more important. This book covers the geological history of the Earth, specifically the Indian subcontinent. I date this book to -4.374 billion because that's the first record mentioned. Stone is the first (and will be the last) form of writing. In this case, the Jack Hills zircon.

Lal's book is fascinating because it tells my history as a rock monster, it's a geological history but focused on the particular geology of my homeland. This book introduced me to a lot of things, most importantly the Great Oxygen Holocaust (never forget). This was the mirror image of the shitty 'carbon' holocaust we're experiencing today, oxygen pollution leading to a great freezing. And it was ancient lifeforms that did it.

Around -3.4 billion, cyanobacteria discovered solar energy, went fucking crazy, and farted so much oxygen that things literally snowballed. The earth almost became an ice cube, forever, like reverse Venus. Life as we know it barely made it, and we barely remember these great ancestors, even as we burn their bodies as oil and gas, thinking we're gods. We've actually just defiled much greater gods tombs. These ancients lived through prehistory by the skin of their nuts, as the New Jersey scholar Paulie Walnuts said.

The Great Oxygen Holocaust (never forget) is just one of the crazy stories in this book about supposedly boring geology. It's actually the most fascinating, what's written in stone. This book contains many fascinating stories from the time before stories, I can't recommend it highly enough. Indi.ca recommends Indica, in myriad forms.

You can buy Pranay Lal's Indica from Penguin India. I gave my copy to an unappreciative cousin and need to order another. An EPUB is available from the pirate bibliotheque, but it's enormous. I've shared the PDF here.

Indica by Pranay Lal Indica--A Deep Natural History of the Indian Subcontinent--Pranay Lal.pdf 19 MB

indi.ca/

the-earths-weird-gravity

and much more, subconsciously

-4 billion Microcosmos: Four Billion Years Of Microbial Evolution

This book has given me a religious attitude towards microbes, who I now consider to be immortal living gods. Ancestor worship is the oldest form of worship and the ancestors walk among us and inside us, as invisible creepy crawlies. Microcosmos is a masterwork of science writing by Lynn Margulis and Dorion Sagan (Carl Sagan's son and his mama). It's the special sort of science book that makes you believe in God.

This one is too big to upload, so here's a link. Microcosmos is available for purchase from the University of California Press.

indi.ca/

bacteria-is-an-immortal-living-god
how-we-misunderstand-ai
my-favorite-writing-tool-is-my-wife

-10,000 Energy And Civilization: A History

This is Vaclav Smil's deep history of energy. I read it because I was trying to understand modern energy problems, and it made me realize that modern thinking about energy is quite narrow. Smil describes how—for most of human history—energy was the sweat of our brow and cow, both ultimately deriving sustenance from the sun. He takes a very deep and wide view on energy, which makes discussing current problems simpler.

indi.ca/

how-humans-have-been-cheating-death-for-10-000-years
why-colonialism-happened
what-is-gdp
how-high-status-is-high-carbon
americas-made-up-immigration-problem
unique-american-empire
why-america-will-collapse-without-a-green-new-deal (naive)

-3000 The Collapse Of Complex Societies

Joseph Tainter's Collapse of Complex Societies is a holy book for doomers. Basically, they all collapse, present company included. Tainter's basic theory was that any complex society gets diminishing returns and an increasingly bloated elite that kills the golden goose like cancer. I've been thinking through Tainter for years and I can't say he's wrong.

indi.ca/

ai-is-a-sign-of-collapse
how-civilization-is-waste
why-america-will-collapse-without-a-green-new-deal (naive)
america-has-a-terminal-case-of-capitalism
the-us-military-is-in-a-death-spiral

-1500 Ancient Egyptian Literature — Volume II: The New Kingdom

Skipping ahead a bit, we get to stone writing from Ancient Egypt, translated by Miriam Lichtheim. This collection of inscriptions and scrolls speaks to us from the dead, and what it says is both deep and droll. For example, this bit on The Immortality Of Writers (from around -1200),

Man decays, his corpse is dust,
All his kin have perished;
But a book makes him remembered
Through the mouth of its reciter.
Better is a book than a well-built house
Than tomb-chapels in the west;
Better than a solid mansion
Than a stela in the temple!

Or this solid household advice from Scribe Any of the Palace of Queen Nefertari (around -1300),

Do not control your wife in her house,
When you know she is efficient;
Don't say to her: "Where is it? Get it!"
When she has put it in the right place.
Let your eye observe in silence,
Then you recognize her skill;

Miriam Lichtheim - Ancient Egyptian Literature Volume II: The New Kingdom Miriam Lichtheim - Ancient Egyptian Literature_ Volume II_ The New Kingdom Near Eastern Center UCLA II-University of California Press 1978.pdf 6 MB

indi.ca/

ancient-egyptian-writing-advice
the-wrecking-of-names

-500 The Dhammapada — Lord Buddha

The Dhammapada is a collection of sayings of the Buddha, it's very short. You can read it in an hour. There are hundreds of translations but I've only read one, a hundred times over. I prefer the EW Adikaram translation, but this is quite local and obscure. It's simply the copy they had at my nearest bookshop and the author seemed to be from my neighborhood. Adikaram's Dhammapada is very simple and unadorned, it's just the Buddha's words in Pali and Adikaram's translation into English. I'd say this is the foundation of my philosophy, though I'm a bad Buddhist. I've seen the Buddha's path, it's just too hard to follow. Maybe next lifetime.

This is the one book I cannot offer you a direct download of (I should just type it up myself). Maybe you can buy it here, maybe you're near a library that has it, I would love to give you this translation more than any other, but I cannot. I'm sure other translations are fine, I just don't know them.

indi.ca/

the-buddhas-words-mindfulness
the-buddhas-words-the-pairs
the-tyranny-of-we
buddhist-no-self-social-problems
towards-non-violent-governance
how-intermittent-fasting-is-a-buddhist-diet
totalitarian-nightmare-arendt
the-ouroboros-of-big-data

The Analects: Confucius

Whenever I try to learn about a nation in the news I try and go as far back as humanly possible. For understanding China, that meant reading Confucius, or Master Kong (Kongzi) as he's more properly known. I follow the Hackett editions for all the Chinese stuff, in this case Edward Slingerland is the translator.

Master Kong was a teacher, and the Analects are dialogues between him and his students, complete with jokes and gentle ribbing. Reading The Analects like being in a room with the Master, who was both a genius and quite fun. The Analects is not hard reading, but at the same time it's impossible.

What I've, personally, taken away from Kongzi is the parts I still don't understand. When asked about an ideal ruler, for example, Kongzi said, "He made himself reverent and took his proper [ritual] position facing south, that is all." What does this mean? Like a good teacher, you learn more from the questions he raises than the answers.

Confucius - Analects With Traditional Commentaries Confucius - Analects With Traditional Commentaries.epub 1 MB

indi.ca/

confucius-and-the-programming-language-of-power
confucian-parenting-advice
why-confucius-would-hate-donald-trump
how-long-will-the-fall-be
how-to-garden-your-goodness
progress-is-an-insult-to-our-ancestors-2
when-did-philosophy-get-so-boring
how-to-deprogram-yourself-from-hating-china
tolstoy-on-why-we-need-to-abolish-government
prison-unethical-experiment
towards-non-violent-governance
why-i-want-the-world-to-end
forget-gdp-we-need-zdp
americas-made-up-immigration-problem
why-sapiens-is-a-hate-crime
the-many-names-of-white-empire

-400 The Politics: Aristotle

I opened this book to just find a quote to dunk on America with (representative democracy trends to oligarchy), but it's much more than that. Aristotle goes on a Mediterranean tour of democracies and finds a huge variety, each suiting very different populations, and all constantly evolving.

Aristotle really made me think much more deeply about the meaning of 'democracy,' and able me to see it all over the supposed authoritarian world, and almost completely missing from the so-called democratic world (what I call Democracy™).

The Politics -- Aristotle The Politics -- Aristotle.epub 2 MB

indi.ca/

chinese-democracy-1
how-democracy-is-not-good
the-triangle-of-power
how-china-is-the-most-democratic-country-in-the-world
how-liberal-democracy-is-bullshit
power-to-the-people-beyond-parliament-why-not
why-voting-is-dumb
how-school-launders-class
does-electoral-democracy-work
why-crisis-is-the-time-to-build
mosque-and-metropolis
democracy-is-bullshit
unhappy-governments-shouldnt-be-overthrowing-others
what-if-opinion-polls-actually-mattered
the-undeath-of-democracy
trumps-transition-plan-plumbing-the-deep-state
conservatives-are-playing-the-long-game-and-winning
zombie-democracy
how-protest-is-a-democratic-institution

-300 Mengzi

Mengzi is, for me, the most practical Confucian sage. This translation by Bryan Van Norden is very good and Norden is an interesting scholar in his own right. What I got out of Mengzi (also known as Mencius) was a sense that people are generally good, and that there is a way to cultivate that goodness, like an organic 'sprout' within us.

Mengzi -- With Selections from Traditional Commentaries -- Van Norden Mengzi -- With Selections from Traditional Commentaries -- Van Norden.epub 1 MB

indi.ca/

how-to-garden-your-goodness
indi.ca/the-unlearning-of-empathy
how-to-deprogram-yourself-from-hating-china/

Zhuangzi

Zhuangzi is my favorite Chinese philosopher, though I understand him the least. This is the Hackett translation by Brook Ziporyn.

Zhuangzi is the anti-sage, saying, "The sages are the sharpest of all the world's weapons and should not be displayed. Hence, only when sagacity is destroyed and wisdom abandoned will the great robbers disappear. Smash the jades and crush the pearls, and the small robbers will not arise. Burn the tallies and shred the seals, and the people will become plain and straight. Break the measures and split the scales, and the people will no longer bicker and fight. Only when we decimate the sagely laws throughout the world will the people be able to listen to reason."

In one story, a King offered Zhuangzi Prime Ministership, and Master Zhuang responded thusly,

Zhuangzi, holding fast to his fishing pole, without so much as turning his head, said, "I have heard there is a sacred turtle in Chu, already dead for three thousand years, which the king keeps in a bamboo chest high in his shrine. Do you think this turtle would prefer to be dead and having his carcass exalted or alive and dragging his backside through the mud?" The emissaries said, "Alive and dragging his backside through the mud." Zhuangzi said, "Get out of here! I too will drag my backside through the mud!"

Zhuangzi is a challenging read in the best possible way. Very entertaining, but also completely mind-bending.

indi.ca/

the-power-of-being-useless
1-5/
how-long-will-the-fall-be
how-to-deprogram-yourself-from-hating-china
the-infinite-intestine
totalitarian-nightmare-arendt
forget-gdp-we-need-zdp
how-art-creates-parallel-universes
why-sapiens-is-a-hate-crime/

To be continued. This is just up to the Axial Age.