Stones

I have always been fascinated by stones. I had beautiful stones I picked up from Essex, UK, from the banks of Loch Lomond, from Arisaig, the Isle of Eigg, Scotland, from Zandvoort, and other beaches of Holland, from Yosemite, from the Grande Canyon, from Savannah, Georgia, USA.

Everywhere I go, I look at the stones. They have their own identity and reflect their environment. Often they are formed by intense pressure through eons of time from different minerals. Or they are sometimes embellished with mica, or imprinted with fossils.

They reassure by their existence, a history which covers perhaps several millions of years. They may have been cast aside or partly formed from earthquakes, or indented, even patiently ‘drilled’ through, by many hundreds of years of dripping water, or spat out from the bowels of the earth by volcanoes. Their age makes our own life-span seem so insignificant.

They have endured all the tribulations of thousands, if not millions of years of natural phenomena, of climate evolution, of the elements, to be finally formed, sculpted, moulded as they are when discovered. This is why they are fascinating, and why one sees them and picks them up. 

Nothing more than stones. 

© Mirino, Text and image. September, 2023

 

 

Soviet Nemesis

Below are two pages from Winston Churchill’s memoirs. They consist of Churchill’s speech broadcast by the BBC at 21h on June 22nd, 1941. It was made after his being informed that Operation Barbarossa had begun.
It's interesting because everything negative about Stalin and the past criminal activities of Soviet communism were shelved, for obviously there was a much greater priority.
Today Soviet communism no longer exists. Despite feverish, Western efforts to tarnish the Russian Federation, and now support Ukraine, whatever the cost, instead of making the minimum effort to understand the necessity of negotiations in order to prevent a needless war, the West is allowing history to repeat itself on another, much more dangerous level.
The West has failed to learn from history, what Nazi Germany failed to appreciate. WWII was won by the allies because of this fatal lack of appreciation.

To the West’s discredit, and to the discredit of Turkey and Azerbaijan, as soon as the Soviet Union was dissolved and its former republics regained their independence, it seems to have become a free for all. Turkey and Azerbaijan are trying to swallow up Armenia (Armenia and Azerbaijan were former Soviet republics) and the West is trying to swallow up Ukraine, by trying to expand East militarily, economically, socially and ideologically. This obviously to the detriment of the Russian Federation who is understandably preoccupied, not only regarding its own security, but by that of the Southeastern Ukrainians who naturally, culturally identify with Russia, and have been treated as rebels and ‘separatists’ since 2014. This even to the extent of Donbas, Donetsk and other Southeastern regions of Ukraine being continually bombarded by the Ukrainian military causing thousands of deaths of their own civilians, whom apparently Zelensky considers as ‘expendable’.

The most massive invasion in the history of civilisation, and its defeat by Russia at the cost of many millions of lives, Russian POWs, military and civilians, was the most important military accomplishment of WWII. There is no doubt about this, yet on V.E. Day there were no Russian flags. There were no notable praise and acknowledgments from Western allies of the Russian achievement which broke the spine of the Third Reich, and freed Europe. What’s more, from 1945 onwards mutual East/West distrust reigned.

What’s interesting about Churchill’s speech, is that he was perfectly honest about his total disapproval of Soviet communism. He mentions that this was the case for the preceding twenty-five years. But understandably he also greatly valued the Soviet Union as an ally as from 1941, because he was perfectly aware that without Russia, the UK could never withstand such a massive onslaught that he knew Russia was going to be subjected to.

Today the idea that Ukraine can defeat the Russian Federation in a conventional war is absurd. This no matter how much it is armed and financed by the West. Had the Western powers revised history, they would have reached the conclusion that the crucially necessary negotiations should have been given absolute priority in order that Ukraine preserve its territorial integrity.

 🔥

Above text © Mirino, Below, two pages from Churchill's Memoirs. March, 2023