God bless the Tsar and keep him far from Anatevka

Wild cyclamen growing out of rock, seen near Wahat al-Salam - Neve Shalom

Jonathan Cook's realism really speaks to me. His descriptions and analysis of our situation is spot on target and he tells it like it is.

https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/us-rubio-declared-war-humanitys-future-and-europe-applauded

Everyone should read his independent reports that are uncensored by editors-in-chief of the billionaire-controlled mass media.

But this down-to-the bone deconstruction of the world and its realpolitik does not help us ordinary subjects of empire.

Yesterday, Israeli TV's "Fact" program featured a report from an intrepid Israeli journalist, Itai Engel, who spends his time "behind enemy lines" in places like Iran, Iraq, Syria, sometimes posing as the national of another country where, as is usually and understandably the case, Israelis are not welcome. But this time he was in Kurdistan - along the mountainous borders of Iran where Kurds live. Since some Kurds believe the dictum that the enemy of my enemy is my friend, he needed to be less cautious about presenting as an Israeli. Deep within the tunnels, he got to interview a female commander of PJAK, the Iranian Kurdish Free Life Party.

Another lost cause - these brave people are never going to succeed. There is hostility towards Kurds in all the countries that they live and increasing international cooperation in eliminating the threat of their independence movements.

The idea of such causes being lost, propelled me to think that as ordinary humans, as proles, as harafish, we are all subject to the whims of powerful people and nations that control the parameters in which we live. We should not deceive ourselves in thinking that we can gain full autonomy over our own lives or the lives of the group to which we are attached (attachment meaning not only that we self-identity with the group, but that others identify us with it).

But within these parameters we can live, sometimes even thrive. And we can chip away at the edges. We can join a revolutionary movement aiming to regain control. Those fighters of PJAK and other people that have fled the prisons and torture chambers, and have suffered the loss of most of their family members, often have little left to lose.

But we can also try to live. Human lives are short and the success of noble causes is uncertain. There's a certain wisdom in looking at the overall picture, assessing our position within it, and deciding what are our chances; not exactly based on self-interest but on realism.

We will needs live with the reality expressed in the writings of Jonathan Cook, or Arundhati Roy or Noam Chomsky. Truths need to surface and should not be covered by a mantle of deception. But a knee-jerk reaction to such truths is not always the most effective way of dealing with them.

Palestinians, who, like the Kurds and many other peoples - perhaps even the majority of us - have spent centuries or millenia under the occupation of empires, are adept at nursing their grievances while, in the meantime, carving out a space in which they can live their ordinary lives. Sumud, steadfastness, is their modus vivendi.

Our hearts are big enough to embrace both the hard realities of life, the kernel of transcendental truth, and the beautiful sustaining illusions of our samsara.