39

Night for Day or Day for Night in the Heart of Darkness

Edward Curtin

“I had a dream, which was not all a dream.
The bright sun was extinguish’d, and the stars
Did wander darkling in the eternal space,
Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth
Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air”
Lord Byron, “Darkness”

Overheard in a coffee shop:-
A woman and a man are sitting together at a table.  She with a laptop open before her and he with a coffee and a book.  Looking at the screen, she says to him, “I didn’t know that the solar eclipse lasts for 70 to 80 minutes, going from partial to full, and the full eclipse lasts just 3-4 minutes.”

The man replies: “And if you’re lucky, the partial eclipse lasts more than 70 to 80 years, because then the full eclipse is forever.”

She acts as if she doesn’t hear him, as if his sardonic humor has nothing to do with her death anxiety or with the media’s celebration of the darkness visible of the total solar eclipse due to occur on April 8th across North America that the media is calling “eclipse mania,” while failing to mention they are promoting it as such.

It is strange how today people revel in the darkness even while fearing it.  Sunsets are far more popular than sunrises, even while death is the great bogeyman and birth deserves cigars and champagne.  Crowds regularly gather in the evenings, cell phone cameras raised, to laud the death of the light that they embalm on their dinguses (i.e.gadgets, just as the atomic bomb was nicknamed “The Gadget”), trying to freeze time, even as they celebrate the death of another day.  This twisted relationship to day and night, life and death, darkness and light is perhaps best summoned up in a few lines of poetry from Rainer Maria Rilke from his Duino Elegies:

For beauty is nothing but the beginning of terror
which we are barely able to endure, and it amazes us so
because it serenely disdains to destroy us.
Every angel is terrible.

We are such strange and paradoxical creatures.

And now the upcoming plunge into night for day with the solar eclipse is the next great big thing to see.  A plunge into the heart of darkness that is apposite to the dark heart of U.S. foreign policy with its ruthless power, craven terror, and pride in killing.  It is uncanny how the darkness of social life today is reflected in the promotion of a natural event as if it were a must-see film that has just won the Academy Award.  As Joseph Conrad wrote in Heart of Darkness: “Like a running blaze on a plain, like a flash of lightning in the clouds. We live in the flicker.”

And we will die in a flicker if the dark-hearted leaders of this country continue to push against Russia in Ukraine for the nuclear war that they previewed in 1945 at Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  It is understandable why in retrospect the great Australian journalist Wilfred Burchett’s first report from Hiroshima was so widely censored and why he was for many years portrayed as a communist dupe, even as twenty years later his honest reports from Vietnam were so important for those interested in the truth that the mainstream media blacked them out.  The exposure of America’s ongoing war crimes was for decades blamed on communist influence, just as today it is blamed on Russian propaganda.

But now it’s time for a flick to give us crocodile tears from the father of the atomic bomb, J. Robert Oppenheimer, with that must-see Academy Award winning film, Oppenheimer.  The imprisoned and executed German pastor, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, writing from prison before he was executed by Hitler for opposing Hitler’s mass atrocities, called such subtle self-glorification “cheap grace.”  It is grace we bestow on ourselves, forgiveness without requiring repentance, feats of self-glorification mastered by Hollywood.

A biopic of one man with all his complicated and twisted personality and scientific brilliance is a far cry from Wilfred Burchett’s article, The Atomic Plague: “I write this as a warning to the world.”  But then the Academy Awards’ ongoing support for Ukraine in its U.S. proxy war against Russia – a war rooted in the 2014 U.S. engineered coup and NATO’s encircling of Russia – is just the opposite: a provocation that makes nuclear war much more likely.  It’s a sick celebrity game.

The creation of the atomic bomb and its use on the Japanese was demonic – pure evil.  Robert Oppenheimer was not a tragic figure as Kai Bird, the coauthor of American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer, claimed last year in The New York Times. As I wrote in “Trinity’s Shadow,” he was “complicated, yes; but he was essentially a hubristic scientist who lent his services to a demonic project, and afterwards, having let the cat out of the bag by creating the Bomb, guiltily urged the government that used it in massive war crimes to restrain itself in the future.” Asking for such self-regulation is as absurd as asking the pharmaceutical and big tech industries, or the CIA, to regulate themselves.  Anyone who would give the name “Trinity” to the site where the first bomb was exploded had a twisted mind.

Oppenheimer, which excludes scenes from the devastation in Hiroshima and Nagasaki but includes one wherein scientists rapturously celebrate with flag waving the exploding of the bomb over Hiroshima, recently opened in Japan. The New York Times published a piece about the opening that contains various Japanese reactions, including one from Yujin Yaguchi, a professor at the University of Tokyo, that accurately raises a fundamental issue: the film “celebrates a group of white male scientists who really enjoyed their privilege and their love of political power. We should focus more on why such a rather one-sided story of white men continues to attract such attention and adulation in the U.S. and what it says about the current politics and the larger politics of memory in the U.S (and elsewhere).”

Exactly. The issue is political, not aesthetic.  Why it is good to see some flickering images and not others?  Why is night for day and the blocking out of the sun by an eclipse so good but the reminder that we are on the edge of a nuclear eclipse because of the policies of our dark-hearted leaders is not?

We live in very dark times.  There is no need to watch the sun being extinguished and day turn to night in the heart of an immense darkness.  Kurtz’s dying words as recalled by Marlowe at the end of The Heart of Darkness – ‘The horror! The horror!’ are not words we want to utter as we realize we too have gone mad in our souls because we looked the wrong way as the nukes were in their flight.

Chase the light!  As Oliver Stone writes in his memoir, “One of the first basic lessons in filming is chasing the light. Without it, you have nothing. . . .”

It’s true in life as well. We live in the flicker.

So if we are to celebrate the dawn of a new day on earth, paradoxical and contradictory as it might sound, we do need to look into the darkness – the heart of the darkest and demonic crimes committed by our heartless leaders – Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the genocide in Gaza, the escalating and expanding war in the Middle East, and the U.S proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, to name a few.

And if the contemplation of the eclipse of the sun disturbs you enough to impel you to do so, a quick peek won’t hurt.

Edward Curtinis an independent writer whose work has appeared widely over many years. His website is edwardcurtin.com and his new book is Seeking Truth in a Country of Lies.

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Lost in a dark wood
Lost in a dark wood
Apr 13, 2024 9:11 PM

More Putinista sock-puppets crawl out from under the rock!

Namely: Jeffrey Jaxen and Del Bigtree

https://www.bitchute.com/video/YSPrz9Lvmxrb
On The Verge of WWIII?
With US Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s latest announcement that Ukraine will join NATO, a longtime redline has been crossed with unclear and potentially world-altering consequences. We breakdown the latest in the Russia-Ukraine conflict and what these events mean for the world.
#UkraineWar #NATO #Putin #WWIII

There was no agreement and there was no transcript!

https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/briefing-book/russia-programs/2017-12-12/nato-expansion-what-gorbachev-heard-western-leaders-early

RegretLeft
RegretLeft
Apr 9, 2024 7:56 PM

“…continue to push against Russia in Ukraine for the nuclear war that they previewed in 1945…” Edward Luttwak – I suppose, a – if not the – Dean of Military Affairs advisors, says not to worry – use of nuclear weapons is so totally irrational and militarily pointless that no political/military leader would ever think of deploying them (…err – except for the completely anomalous events in 1945) – so send in NATO troops – he says- to mix it up in all ways conventional in Ukraine. Don’t you feel better now? https://unherd.com/2024/04/its-time-to-send-nato-troops-to-ukraine/
And, of course, there are real hardcore conspiracy theories out there claiming that there were no nukes used in Japan in 1945 – and – some fewer say, there are none now. (You’re welcome.)

Erik Nielsen
Erik Nielsen
Apr 10, 2024 6:54 PM
Reply to  RegretLeft

Some politicians have talked about their lust for using nukes as a warning signal.

A nuke down in the largest Iranian desert, the Lut Desert, one of the hottest places on earth, can be an even hotter, hell. To show them America means business.

There are deserted areas in Russia too, Siberia. China’s new islands in their South Sea, a discrete sub nuke. Just to show them America! As a warning.

Erik Nielsen
Erik Nielsen
Apr 8, 2024 7:07 PM

Father of day, Father of night. https://youtu.be/3KDnVPY4xgo

Robert Koch
Robert Koch
Apr 8, 2024 6:02 PM

Ever since I read Akio Nakatami’s book, I don’t care about the warmongering any more.
I don’t even care if what I read is true or not, the lack of fear feels wholesome.

sandy
sandy
Apr 8, 2024 5:10 PM

The ABC eclipse show promo has been: “We Stand United under the Sun”. Really. Patriotism.

mgeo
mgeo
Apr 8, 2024 7:29 AM

Did nukes exist in 1945? For most of the mass murder of civilians, the Allies depended on (a) fire-bombing (b) blockade and starvation, even after victory. This continues to the present day, with a few chemical weapons also entering the arsenal.

antonym
antonym
Apr 8, 2024 3:26 AM

For decades I didn’t believe in ‘extraterrestrials”: one reason was that their depictions looked too familiar to short skinny humans. Now I saw a good reason why the US was officially in denial till recently : they were trying to get alien tech for their MIC but is didn’t work out much.
Now I hear aliens always gather around potential nuclear disaster sites to avoid human stupidities. Good on them, go for it.

Tommy
Tommy
Apr 8, 2024 5:58 PM
Reply to  antonym

I, for one, welcome our new alien overlords – and I am not even joking very much. It seems a virtual certainty that any species which would have gained the ability to travel between stars or even galaxies would have to have grown way past the stage of fighting each other like stupid children, busily destroying the preconditions of their own existence and having to plunder other planets for resources to set on fire.

If our so-called leaders would just be transparent, stop the fearmongering and try to foster cordial relations with the ETs, I am sure we might actually have nice things fairly soon. But, of course, that would require the global oligarch class to give up their designs on complete rulership of the planet. So I guess suppression, doom-and-gloom propaganda and demonization is all we’re going to get.

Vagabard
Vagabard
Apr 7, 2024 10:37 PM

As transient comments hope for light of day in that dark and nebulous world of ‘pending’ (seemingly unaffected by any WordPress updates), I’m reminded (perhaps by the article title) of “Day Night Day Night (2006)”.

Yes, admittedly a pretty obscure film.. Though it does have a particularly good twist at the end (that things might not always be as they seem)…

Edwrda Curtin
Edwrda Curtin
Apr 7, 2024 10:57 PM
Reply to  Vagabard

You got where my title came from – Truffaut’s Day for Night – a good and interesting film despite Godard’s criticism

Balkydj
Balkydj
Apr 9, 2024 11:48 PM
Reply to  Edwrda Curtin

“Words are things, and a drop of ink, dropped like dew on a thought, produces that which makes thousands , perhaps millions… think.”
Byron. ‘Don Juan’.

Ada Lovelace, his daughter, Founded a profoundly mathematical & harmonic vision of thought that still remains relevant today: namely programming & fine tuning; ironic perhaps, but both died aged 36, Resting in Peace together, though she knew him Not… ‘thanks to mum’. A certain calling.

Food for thought & fine sentiment.
Thanks Edwrda, a revealing title, in deed truly,
A good & interesting article.
Balky

Victor G.
Victor G.
Apr 7, 2024 9:11 PM

As long as the USofAs exists (and the Zionist Entity), there will never be a moment of peace on planet Earth.
Accept this and what to do is obvious.
This is what is being done, here, there, and everywhere. Get on board.
The Vampire Ball is over.

Balkydj
Balkydj
Apr 10, 2024 8:25 AM
Reply to  Victor G.

So what now ? A drag act ?

Dragging our feet and brains, daily . . .

People need to get Real … ( Rubles, Rupee, Rinminbi or Rand will also do ) if,
They wish to wake up & smell the Coffee, in futures wiser & more financially
Rewarding, obviating Nestle !

Vagabard
Vagabard
Apr 7, 2024 9:08 PM

Origin gives meaning. The end of a matter reflects its beginning.

Salmon swim upstream to their birthplace at end of life. When Jesus was asked about divorce, he went back to the very origin of marriage. We enter a world with nothing, completely dependent on others. We leave with a ‘second childhoods’, memories faded.

A universe created by God leads to end time scenarios involving that selfsame benevolent Creator. The Eternal Word of God becoming flesh (Incarnation) made a subsequent return to being Eternal Word (Resurrection) inevitable.

The idea of a universe created by a big explosion in Space leads to one ending with something similar. The evolutionist ‘Big Bang’ differs little from Oppenheimer’s ‘Big Bang’ (there was always the possibility of the complete obliteration of the universe in the early tests).

So, is there a solution to societal (or personal) obsessive dwelling on dark thoughts? Well yes, presumably the opposite – cultivating a dwelling on the good, the positive, the wonderful. Ideas have consequences.

“Whatever is good, dwell on such matters” (paraphrase of Philippians 4:8)
https://biblehub.com/philippians/4-8.htm

Ubernoise – I Am On Your Shoulder

Martin Usher
Martin Usher
Apr 7, 2024 7:50 PM

I was watching a youTube video yesterday about the French defeat at Dien Bien Phu (Vietnam) back in 1954. What really struck me is the pronouncements of western (especially US) politicians. I’ve heard the same thing over and over during my life, about if we don’t do such-and-such then xxxx (fill in name of bogeyman du jour) will win and invoking Hitler and so on. Its like they recycle the same garbage over and over.

Either there’s a total failure of imagination or we’re being blinded by the same old snow job that’s been going on for at least 70 years, maybe longer. We now have the benefit of history now and can see — for example — how the Viet Minh ‘winning’ just resulted in a normal country, not the collapse of Western Civilization As We Know It. Too bad an awful lot of people had to be killed and huge amounts of resources and property wasted to find out……and we (or rather, our leaders) never learned a damn thing because we’re still at it.

aspiritrebellious
aspiritrebellious
Apr 7, 2024 6:07 PM

If we’re talking darkness, I fondly remember blue skies, and that was before roses bloomed in April.
Meanwhile an insidious Eclipse continues daily, in the current Weather Warfare, being perpetrated by the Climate Changers, through Geoengineering via the Stratospheric Aerial Injections™, that aren’t happening officially, so arent blocking The Sun apparently. Clownworld.
Peace
R. I. P. Byron (*murdered by ‘doctors’)

Tommy
Tommy
Apr 7, 2024 5:10 PM

Considering the (apparently) well-documented human bias toward negative information (for supposedly very good, survival-related reasons), it is hard to see human society just collectively “turn to the light.” However, I remain encouraged by the most salient characteristic of human nature: the awesome variability and malleability of human behavior in response to stimuli and conditions.

Thus, I think a society driven by pro-social values and in respect of fundamental human dignity is attainable. It just requires the discontinuation of an economic system built on the maintenance of scarcity, which ultimately compels nothing but self-maximizing competition for resources and consequently stimulates all the worst aspects of human potential, and the substitution of a system befitting a high-tech world, which structurally incentivizes sharing and strategically prioritizes abundance of goods and amenities according to the objectively qualified immediacy of human needs at a population level. All we have to do is do it.

Big Al
Big Al
Apr 7, 2024 3:41 PM

“We should focus more on why such a rather one-sided story of white men continues to attract such attention and adulation in the U.S.”

Not a very difficult question really and can be summed up in one word – propaganda. I knew, as anyone who has tuned in to reality, as soon as I saw that film coming out it would be nothing but propaganda. Of course it is. That’s what they do. I was born in the 50’s and grew up on John Wayne, war movies, and cowboys and Indians movies. Same shit, different day. Now it’s just more prevalent, more dressed up, more insidious. And more convincing, which is why “a rather one-sided story of white men continues to attract such attention and adulation in the U.S.”. And I guess, not to mention, we have a lot of dumb shit, clueless people in this country.

Ernest
Ernest
Apr 7, 2024 1:18 PM

If a woman says to you “You’re too extreme for me!”, you should take this as a compliment and reply: “And you’re too average, too ordinary and too mediocre for me.” Finally, we disagree and our paths inevitably diverge. But what’s it actually all about? Only a completely feminized, effeminate society without any quality detests the “radical”, “extremist” because it “worries” it.

But what is meant by “extreme”? Terror, murder, kidnapping, violence, robbery, rape? Not in the slightest! These “qualities” are only tolerated in invaders. Instead basically everything that constitutes healthy masculinity: courage, independence, will, freedom, unpredictability, self-reliance. “Extreme/radical” means that you are NOT ordinary, average or mediocre.

Bloobock
Bloobock
Apr 7, 2024 4:19 PM
Reply to  Ernest

Okay, I told her that. Now she says, “You’re also fat, dumb and ugly. Oh, and poor, short and weak, and you remind me of my grandmother, whom I hated.”

What now, Cyrano? One more strike and I’m out.

Dayi
Dayi
Apr 7, 2024 12:56 PM

“I had a dream, which was not all a dream.
The bright sun was extinguish’d, and the stars
Did wander darkling in the eternal space,
Rayless, and pathless, and the icy earth
Swung blind and blackening in the moonless air”
Lord Byron, “Darkness”
Emmanuel Velikovsky would have appreciated this.
(the bigger picture no one seems to see)

underground poet
underground poet
Apr 7, 2024 12:56 PM

I think this is just a continuation of gvt hiding their sins in the dark and targeting anyone who brings such sins to light.

Apparently either Snowden or Assange released some video of soldiers killing innocents by mistake, and then laughing about it afterwards.

The release of this information became a national security threat and he was to be tried for treason. But it was really a national embarrassment threat that turned security threat to the form of gvt we live under.

Could this be the greater issue?

ariel
ariel
Apr 7, 2024 6:17 PM

It was ‘Crazy Horse 6.’ The Apache chopper ‘Crazy Horse 1-8’ chain gunned the Iraqis from low altitude with Bushmaster 30 calibre cannon. After checking with their control who ok’d it.. Tears people to pieces.
Collateral Murder – Wikileaks – Iraq (youtube.com)
I was in Hungary for the 1999 total eclipse. It was an interesting twilight.

underground poet
underground poet
Apr 7, 2024 11:01 PM
Reply to  ariel

Crazy horse was an Indian who was shown the spanish hoard and raced off with his bar of treasure to become a legend in the mid west.

That was in mid 1800’s. I have no clue what you are referring to.

ariel
ariel
Apr 8, 2024 11:50 AM

Crazy Horse 6 (I think it was 6) was the call sign for the Apache helicopter from which the film showing it massacring unarmed Iraqis in Baghdad which was put out on WikiLeaks (2010) which became the symbol for the Deep State’s persecution of Julian Assange.

ariel
ariel
Apr 8, 2024 11:52 AM
Reply to  ariel

You can see it in glorious black and white at the link ‘Collateral Murder’ I put in the comment already.

underground poet
underground poet
Apr 8, 2024 12:30 PM
Reply to  ariel

I don’t cotton to the military much, so it in one ear and out the other where they are concerned.

My motto is no new recruits.

underground poet
underground poet
Apr 8, 2024 10:54 PM

Live by sword, die by sword.

Erik Nielsen
Erik Nielsen
Apr 7, 2024 12:27 PM

Look at the bright side of it. For every nuke killing 1 million people, there are more to us in our wallets. You have $1 billion in a pension fund. Half of the members die from a nuke.
Double up to you………….LOL!

Clutching at straws
Clutching at straws
Apr 7, 2024 12:15 PM

If TPTB have done one thing successfully it is revolution management.

They seem to have learnt from previous revolutions how to avoid them and maintain their status quo.

Sure, there are demos, riots, strikes etc. but nothing to upset the general direction of the agenda.

They allow us these “freedoms” as part of the illusion.

They keep us fed enough so we don’t revolt through hunger.

They maintain the illusion of democracy at the ballot box.

The recent, planned flooding of our countries by an alien culture, instead of creating a strong national resistance, will bizarrely result in the dilution of that very national resistance.

Experimentation has shown that 25% is the magic number to foment a revolution:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qhY2y__43z8

It doesn’t sound like a lot but where are we now?

What percentage of people in your country would be prepared to risk it all for a different society?

10% ?
5% ?
2% ?

They’re clever bastards, But they’re still bastards.

mgeo
mgeo
Apr 8, 2024 6:31 AM

A review of 323 non-violent and violent campaigns for regime change over 1906-2006 showed that within a year of sustained campaigns, once popular participation in a peak event exceeded 3.5% of the population, there were no cases of failure. -Erica Chenowith & Maria Stephan

It is irrefutable that oligarchic subversion takes far less people than that.

peter mcloughlin
peter mcloughlin
Apr 7, 2024 10:48 AM

“We live in very dark times.
Edward Curtain is right. There are few signs of approaching dawn. The “dark-hearted leaders” are marching us to nuclear Armageddon. Yet they do not see it: all convinced in the certainty of victory. Most of the public do not see it. A simple syllogism might throw some light on the matter: every empire in history has eventually faced the war it was trying to avoid; today everyone wants to avoid WWIII; therefore that is the fate that awaits humanity. Paradoxically, the only chance of avoiding that fate is to accept it. I explore this in my new publication, The Doomsday Syllogism.

NickM
NickM
Apr 7, 2024 9:45 AM

Do not despair: the future is Light and Light Transport, powered by Hydrogen. At collegein 1953 our Prof.J.O.M Bockris already predicted the Hydrogen Economy:

“China’s Hydrogen-Powered Bikes Sell Out 1 Million Units in Just 1 Hour, Leaving U.S & Japan Astonished”

dom irritant
dom irritant
Apr 7, 2024 1:54 PM
Reply to  NickM

very interesting but this hydrogen tech has been known about since at least 97 and probably a lot longer. i wouldn’t get one as they are iot connected and have gps in other words it is just more track and trace data harvesting etc apart from the fact you will get fat on these gadgets just like the slime bikes you see in london etc

NickM
NickM
Apr 7, 2024 2:19 PM
Reply to  dom irritant

“hydrogen tech has been known about since at least 97”

There is usually a lag between the birth of an idea as Science, and the widespread application of that idea as Technology. For instance, it took 50 years for Einstein’s 1917 prediction of the Laser Effect to become popular as low power lasers in optical drives, and 100 years to develope powerful Laser Weapons.

A lag of 2,000 years lies between Hero’s demonstration of a rotary steam engine at the ancient Library of Alexandria, and Stephenson’s popular Puffing Billy. Your date of 1997 is but a blink of an eye between the scientific concept of a Hydrogen Economy and China’s popular Hydrogen Bicycles.

NickM
NickM
Apr 10, 2024 7:16 AM
Reply to  NickM

Russia’s Arctic day is dawning. The ice is melting, the NW Passage will open at last for world trade, and Arctic hydrocarbons will boost available energy supply:

“Do not despair, it seems darkest before the dawn” — Proverb.

Johnny
Johnny
Apr 7, 2024 8:49 AM

Major wars are always followed by periods of economic prosperity for the psychotic ruling class and the smug middle class.
WW3 may break the pattern.

NickM
NickM
Apr 7, 2024 9:54 AM
Reply to  Johnny

WW1 for sure was followed by Austerity for the People and Prosperity for the Bosses.

But WW2 was followed by economic prosperity also for the People, because “the Spectre of Communism hanging over Europe” frightened the Bosses into throwing a few crumbs to the People.

If there is a WW3 I expect China will triumph, and the West will regain its prosperity same as it did during those “trentes annees glorieuses” (30 glorious years) of Communism, Socialism and Social Democracy after WW2.