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.

 ðŸ”¥

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

October 22

 

Every year in October one has the privilege of seeing this, in the valley below the house, in the Alpes Maritimes. And this for 21 years… Old friends.


It’s reassuring, and like ripe beef-heart tomatoes and fresh trumpet zucchini, a good harvest of wine grapes, (and this year’s wine in Italy and France -in certain regions- should be excellent) it all seems to make a mockery of the climate change fanatics.
They cultivate nothing but their own faithless, ideological obsession.


Our summer this year was certainly long and hot, but in the hills inland of Imperia, Italy, I have never seen so much fruit blest by the sun.
The magic of seasons, and autumn is the most fabulous. The colours are always spectacular here, but they are never quite the same.


The beautiful crescendo of colour is so ephemeral, which makes it all the more precious to see. It’s a lovely annual gift that gives one so much pleasure. A warm and gracious display beautifully symbolising life’s miraculous circle.


Text and images © Mirino, November, 2022

Geomiracles

 

Everything is geometrical (and more) from snowflakes to spiders’ webs, fruit, flowers, leaves, all forms of life, their anatomy, balance and movement. The solar system, the ellipsis of the Earth turning on its axis around the sun determining the seasons, the power of the sun and the moon causing sea tides and encouraging growth. 

The admirable way that certain insects imitate twigs and flowers, and certain spiders change colour to match exactly that of the flower they wait motionless on for their prey.  

The intelligence of sea mammals, the secret, age-old intelligence of elephants. The love that such animals show. The beauty and diversity of tropical fish, butterflies and birds so absolutely incredible in form and colour. They defy all seemingly reasonable theories like those of Darwin, and they persuade us that there has to be something else still far beyond our reach. 

The universe itself and its intricate, geometrical (and more) miraculous workings. The further we are able to peer out into space, the more there is that we are still unable to perceive or imagine. 

And here we are in the midst of this paradise, pretentious enough to claim that humanity, who somehow arrived or evolved only 200,000 years ago, an instant in terms of the age of planet Earth (4.543 billion years) and even less in terms of universal time or chronology, is guilty of ‘climate change’.  If humanity is guilty of anything, it’s mainly a recurrence of regressivity, barbarity (travesty, perversion, wokism, cancel-culture, infanticide, etc.) all amounting to imbecility. Provoking rather than preventing war for the dated illusion of personal or national gain is a perfect example. It totally cancels out all other claimed preoccupations, pandemics, and professed ‘man-made climate change’.  Only humanity is capable of destroying what should be regarded as a paradise. If ever this height of human folly became a reality, only humanity would primarily suffer, simply because the powers that be, the divine, universal laws would naturally adapt. Life would go on, like masses of poppies gayly waving where bombs had once ripped up the bowels of the earth. Life would survive and continue to evolve, but the age of humanity would be over, and in such an atrocious, tragic case, perhaps it would be just as well. 

Therefore if ever such a futile, contemptible destiny awaited humanity, according to ‘universal law’ it would naturally be in the order of things.. However, in spite of humanity’s strengths and weaknesses, I believe that our destiny is unimaginably unlimited, provided we don’t derail ourselves beyond all hope, in the ‘meantime’.. 

🌋

Text and image © Mirino, May, 2022

Faith


This is not the first time I refer to faith (previously under the title of Fidem).
I’m not sure who once said it, perhaps it was Descartes, but he wouldn’t have been the only one to surmise that ‘once an ideology is established, the ideologue ceases to think’.
When one ceases to think, one rests mud-bound in one’s own dogma. For example the world is flat. Those who, against all logic, all obvious known facts, obediently continue to believe such a fallacy, do so because it would be stated in seventh century scriptures. They are also convinced that they have the monopoly of truth, because they believe they have the monopoly of God.
Naturally such pretensions are totally devoid of sense, because God, or Almighty Power, made the universe and all forms of life, and by extension all kinds of civilisations, faiths and religions. Religions are like branches trying to reach up to the heavens their own way. Branches of the one, beautiful tree of civilisation.

As Thomas More wrote in his ‘Utopia’, (first published in Latin in 1516) "(…) he (King Utopus) suspected that God perhaps likes various forms of worship and has therefore deliberately inspired different men with different views. On the other hand, he was quite sure that it was arrogant folly for anyone to enforce conformity with his own beliefs, by threats or violence (…).”
How is it that such common sense was so appreciated and so well expressed 506 years ago, yet even today it would be dismissed by Islamists as the ‘false reasoning of infidels’?

Indeed even today we seemed to be governed by doctrine, ideology and ideologues. The EU scribes are capable of writing reams of words (almost 27,000 regarding regulations on the sale of cabbages, whilst Pythagoras' Theorem is defined with only 24 words). This speaks volumes in itself.
The EU executive seems so utterly obsessed and motivated by its ideological goal, that it’s either oblivious to the constant negative consequences it’s causing, or it simply dismisses them as ‘collateral damage’ far less important than the unattainably absurd and highly dangerous objective of the ideology.

Then we have the critical race theorists, repentant apologists, and negationists who occupy themselves by  fanning the embers of dated racism. We also have ‘Wokism’. ‘Wokism’, dérives from ‘woke’ which doesn’t exist in English. One might mean awakened or awoke, indicating that one is no longer asleep, one now ‘sees the light’ or is miraculously enlightened. But from what is written on it one has enough difficulty in trying to find one’s way through the verbose smog.

Even the epidemic of Covid-19 has been, and still is being used for ideological purposes. Instead of being exemplary, of encouraging people to have faith, reassuring them that this difficult period will be relatively short, certain authorities have been exploiting the situation for disgusting purposes of fear-mongering, for socio-political power, if not for personal financial gain, dictating rules that have now reached a ridiculous level of incoherence that’s causing far more harm than good.

No good comes from trying to substitute faith with ideology. And one should never confuse faith with superstition. Faith is the confidence that the sun will rise tomorrow, even if there might be dark clouds shrouding it.
It’s the confidence that the seasons will remain relatively stable, despite the dire predictions of the ‘climate change ideologues’ who might well end up being disappointed if their cataclysmic predictions turn out to be as false as they themselves seem to be. Above all it’s the conviction that the universe and its fabulous, intricate mechanism, and naturally the miracle of life itself, didn’t come about by mere chance. (And no doubt this is not the first time that I have written this last sentence, or any other rubbish for that matter. Repetition, however, is a privilege that should be accorded to all those of a certain age).

When one starts questioning everything rather than appreciating the evolution of civilisation through the rational unfolding of history, (history that clearly demonstrates that there’s a reason for everything) one opens civilisation’s door to give a warm welcome to regression and barbarity.
By falsely correlating knowledge with privilege, one might be looking for a scapegoat for one’s own ignorance. The same goes for equality. The quest for equality only leads to mediocrity. It brings to mind the burning of good books, the destruction of masterpieces, the dismissal of individuality and the demeaning of individual accomplishment. It engenders what it claims to guard against, fascism or Soviet communism, when both ideologies have exactly the same expansionist objective that leads straight to Dystopia.
Unfortunately this is the direction the western world establishment seems now engrossed in trying to drag us. If this is true, then the establishment and all the ‘elite’ eager to win favour to try to assure their cushy future, have learnt nothing from history.

Remember in history how certain intellectual societies in various European countries, and even in the USA, admired the French Revolution, imagining that it would lead to some sort of French Utopia? The same was true regarding the birth of communism, which naturally had a great deal in common with the French Revolution. It initially inspired many western intellectuals.

The French Revolution engendered a monster that took ten years to consume itself leaving bloody ruins of illusions. It was a brutal and naive attempt to negate history and faith. It destroyed monarchy and aristocracy but created social division, and extreme poverty. It created the Republic, but left a tragic void in other aspects.
Eastern communism took a lot longer, but it finally acknowledged its own long drawn-out futility, economic failure, and gave its ultimate last gasp in Afghanistan.
Despite such blatant examples of truth, western ideologues seem to turn a blind eye to them in order to press on with what they imagine to be their own form of ‘truth’. But there is nothing new or trustworthy about Marxism, and ‘neo’-Marxism is simply regurgitated Marxism in disguise. Masked Marxism...

 

 
Text and images © Mirino. January, 2022

October


October, from Latin octo. (So called because it was originally the eighth month of the Roman year.
I love this period in the south, where I am, as I write this, in the Alpes Maritimes. Each day the colours are slightly richer until they reach their autumn colour crescendo. In principle the colour compliments of their original, spring time, mature display of tints of various greens.

 

It’s an ephemeral celebration that makes one smile, gives one confidence, feelings of thankfulness and nostalgia.
This in spite of the panic of the seemingly faithless, convinced that climates are changing in ‘unnatural’ ways, due to the folly of humanity.

 


Perhaps I am old enough to claim the privilege of repeating myself, in saying that I have seen quite a few climate changes. Late autumn and winter smog, for example, on the outskirts of London, sometimes so thick that one couldn’t see more than a yard in front of oneself. True it was caused by low atmospheric pressure, and the general use of coal, before the smokeless kind was developed, but no one panicked or jumped to conclusions that the planet was in danger. We all thought it was quite natural, and accepted it as such.
 


However, in view of our beautiful planet’s extraordinary climatic history throughout its venerable age of 4.543 billion years +, long before humanity somehow arrived on the scene, a mere 200,000 years ago, I have far more faith in universal law (and God) than in pretentious claims of man-induced climate change.
The seasons have always remained stable. They have done so for many thousands of years, so why make such claims? Why exploit fear in such a futile yet mercenary manner?
 


Admire rather the fleeting colours of autumn, and be happy with the thought that 2021 should be a good year for wine, certainly in Italy.
Wine has almost always accompanied civilisation. Its production dates as far back as between 6000 BC and 4000 BC. An ancient winery was discovered in Armenia. Surely this deserves great respect. And aren’t such thoughts reassuring? 
 


I have seen the autumn displays of this particular region for over twenty years. They are always spectacular, some years even more so than others, naturally depending on the weather. So this year we are especially privileged.
Other fabulous characteristics of this region (of an altitude of over 1200 metres) are the variety of sky-scapes, especially sunrises and sunsets. One can see examples of these that I have captured at various periods among the listed links of ‘Photographic works’ on the right. They represent rare, fleeting moments. Similar to the good fortune of seeing and being able to take a closeup of a beautiful, rare butterfly feeding on the nectar of a mountain flower, just before it flutters off, completely oblivious to the claimed perils of dreaded ‘climate change’.
 


Already lower down in the pine woods there are a few small (thus so far spared by the little white gourmet worms) ‘sanguin’ mushrooms, and the beginnings of chanterelles’, but it’s still too early and too warm. Some rain and colder weather will make all the difference when one returns in November.


 
Climate change denial’ is a new offence that seems to be considered as bad, if not even worse than alleged racism or LGBT prejudice. Yet denying climate change would be as ridiculous as, let’s say- ‘oxygen denial’ (half of the world’s oxygen is produced via phytoplankton photosynthesis in the oceans. The other half is produced on land via photosynthesis by trees, various shrubs and grasses, etc.). Indeed it would be very unnatural and worrying if climates ceased to changed. Naturally they are in constant evolution according to universal laws as well as the seasons governed by the Earth’s tilt (axial inclination or obliquity). Would it not be a shade pretentious to believe that this evolution is greatly influenced by the follies of humanity?


🌈

Text and photographs © Mirino. Octobre, 2021