#also the villains are not “thinly-veiled depictions of capitalism”

[mangled-by-disuse]

Tried to put this in the replies, but it got long and is relevant to the OP, so:

Less so than the average British/South African white guy of his time, which is to say: yes, but not notably so.

He did also speak very bluntly in his response to the Nazi requests to translate his work, claiming he would have been proud to be a genuine Aryan [that is, from the Indian subcontinent] but unfortunately he's just German and English. Some of that is "Oxford fellow thinks he's being very smart" rhetorical devices, but he also does seem to have been pretty vocally of the belief that different cultures and ethnicities held value, and while he left South Africa very young and considered himself English, he did also remark on the brutality and inhumanity of the apartheid regime there. He also criticised C.S. Lewis' assertion (in The Last Battle) that some people couldn't get into heaven on the basis of race and culture, but "have a theological argument with C.S. Lewis" does seem to have been one of his primary hobbies at the time so idk if that was purely anti-racist.

At the same time: this was at a time when the N-word was in common parlance (including in children's nursery rhymes and even in leftist discourse), when Britain had an empire and Tolkien had been raised in one of its colonies, and when the school system emphasised "the white man's burden" and the savagery and primitivism of "lesser" cultures. And Tolkien was not a radical, and not sufficiently concerned with race as a topic to break fully from that social conditioning. So it's not like he wasn't a racist, but he wasn't a racist by the standards of his time, background, and immediate environment. (Bearing in mind that his immediate environment was the same one that saw the rise of Oswald Mosley and Winston Churchill.)

What Tolkien WAS was a genuine, old-school British conservative, which I think is what right-wingers pick up on in his work. He had an engrained belief in hierarchy and traditionalism, and his arguments against capitalism come from Catholic semi-feudalism, not socialism. "The rich man in his castle, the poor man at his gate/God made them high and lowly and each to his estate" is very much an underpinning of a lot of Tolkien's work, which emphasises the importance of working to, and being satisfied with, your status in life - Sam's strength is his humility and desire to be a simple gardener, but, while humility remains valuable throughout, Aragorn's strength is that he knows that he is born to be King. Ruling is all he can ever ethically do (noticeably, whether or not his people consent to be ruled - note that the first Man of Gondor he comes into contact with is Boromir, whose response of "ok mate where the fuck have you been when we were fighting and dying for the past forty years?", and that is cast as a mistake on Boromir's part, and he is told to sit down and respect the rightful king by Literal Voice Of The Gods Gandalf), and it would be wrong and evil for him to try to do anything else, just as it would be a moral wrong for Sam to try to be a king.

Lord of the Rings in particular is very concerned with noblesse oblige and the burdens of power - while, yes, the core story is "minor gentry [Sam is the only actual working-class character] rises above his presumed station and, through being literally and metaphorically one of the little people of the world, slips under the radar and completes a heroic quest", almost all the surrounding stories are about the difficult duty of managing power. And, unfortunately, this lends itself very readily to a "white man's burden" kind of reading - these people, you see, are simply of superior race (literally, in the case of the Elves, and in the case of Aragorn, Boromir, and the ruling class of Gondor being measured by their proximity to Númenorean bloodlines), and so it is their unfortunate duty to command and to cleanse the lesser (Orcish, and by extension Easterling and Haradrim) races from their nice, functional societies.

To be clear: I do not think this is how Tolkien intended it. I think, in his own traditionalist, cloistered-academic, Catholic way, he was pretty egalitarian. He doesn't treat the ruling class as actually better than the working class - Sam is no less a hero than Frodo, Merry, and Pippin, all of whom are gentry or nobility, and none of them are lesser as people than Aragorn or Elrond or even Gandalf or Galadriel - even if he does view class distinctions as fundamental and immutable differences. He values friendship, peace, and the laying down of grudges (against all the problems caused by revenge, note that Éomer's first and most noble act of kingship is "accepting the Dunlendings' surrender, treating them kindly, and making peace with them", and they are so impressed by this that they too put aside a centuries-long war and help rebuild the country they helped to destroy). While he often forgets that women exist (I will die on the hill that "three out of 22 rulers of Númenor were women, despite equal inheritance being explicit" is evidence that Tolkien just did not think of women as being half the population), he is quick to defend their value in both masculine and feminine pursuits, and to express them as people outside of marriage and childbearing - and his own life, in which he married a much older divorcée from a different religious background against all voices from their families, reflects that same sense of valuing women on human terms. He is a humanist, not in the religious sense but in the sense that he values humanity above all things in his writing; he writes consistently against power for its own sake, against war as glory, and against bigotry and condemnation.

BUT

he was also a traditional, dyed-in-the-wool Tory, Catholic-restorationist, pro-feudal Oxford don who was raised in a much more conservative time, place, and social class than most of us, and he brings that to his writing too. From a conservative perspective, reading with an eye for right-wing ideas:

Éowyn ultimately turns from the aberration of being a warrior and becomes a wife and mother, embracing "feminine" traits of healing and caring as part of her own healing.

Class is reified through Sam's heroism being that of a servant, and Aragorn's that of a king, and the return of the king is the source of great rejoicing.

Some races, and some classes, are simply better at things. Dwarves are better craftsmen. Men are better warriors. Elves are better at everything because they're special. they are also tall and fair and European

The idyllic Shire is a cottagecore dream of traditional British rural life, in which people know their place, women are real women, and everyone has good manners.

Most of the "good" societies are coded with European or Classical trappings (the exception is actually Gondor, which is pretty easily read as Byzantine), and opposed against a literal rampaging horde from the East. Some of the horde from the East are literally inhuman, while others are elephant-riding brutes who hold oblique historical grudges and strange religious customs. Compassion against these foreign invaders is looked upon favourably by the narrative, but only after you've killed them.

With the previous point, and the films, in mind, it is easy to conclude that regardless of species diversity, the Fellowship is a cadre of brave white men fighting to protect their society from a monstrous foreign threat - one in which a cunning trickster from within the main setting has puppeted the less evolved races into destroying Western civilisation.

While the story is anti-war, it is anti-war in a way that allows for cool battle scenes and noble deaths, and there are several points at which Dying For A Cause is lionised and seen as redemptive in a way that slots nicely into a lot of more militaristic ideologies (including fascism).

again, I cannot underline enough, I DO NOT BELIEVE THIS IS A FAIR READING OF THE NARRATIVE. I think it's an ideologically-motivated reading that ignores both Tolkien's personal views and large chunks of the text. But the thing is: the people who read it in the way I've described would probably say the same thing of your description.

The thing about Tolkien's much-discussed distaste for intentional allegory is: Lord of the Rings is not 1984. It is not an explicit political polemic. It is one man unpacking his Great War trauma and political anxieties, his expertise in Anglo-Saxon literature, his special interests in folklore and etymology, his love of the English countryside and his dislike of modernity, his Catholicism and his conservatism and his egalitarianism and his loneliness and his loves. It is not absolute in its politics, because it isn't trying to give you a political solution: it's trying to give you morals, yes, but they're as much personal ones as societal ones.

It is not a shock that right-wingers latch onto Tolkien's work, or see parts of their beliefs reflected there. It's still a fucking insult to the work, but it's not a shock.

Seeing conservatives and bigots being fans of Tolkien works is a special type of jumpscare bcs what are you doing here man? In the franchise about folks from different backgrounds and races come together in brotherhood to vanquish the villain? Where kindness and compassion and sinple happiness were seen as the best ways to keep evil at bay? Where war is not glorified and seen as a grim necessity to the point where the son of the author gor criticised the movies for glorifying the war too much? Where men openly engaged in feminine activities and were open about emotions other than anger? Where multiple characters gender presentation varied from those we normally associate with their gender? Where women were empowered in multiple different ways? Where greed was presented as turning one into a literal monster?Where the villains are all thinly veiled depictions of capitalism? Where care for the enviornment is seen as a given?

[avelera]

Review: Circe by Madeline Miller

Late last night I finished “Circe” and admit I breezed through it in a couple days. It was a rare pleasure to read a book that captured my attention from beginning to end, something I’ve struggled with lately. I admire Miller a great deal, (indeed have written fanfiction in her style for my Steve/Bucky / Achilles/Patroclus reincarnation fusion fic “Sing, O Muse”) and looked forward to her take on another great figure of Greek mythology.

So, let’s get right to it:

Pros: 

The story has a lot to recommend it. Miller’s prose is well-renowned for its poetry and eloquence. She paints a vivid picture of a fantastical Ancient Greece where gods walk the earth and a witch/demi-goddess like Circe has a rich internal life. In no particular order:

- The Gods - Authors often struggle with how to include the gods in retellings of the Iliad and Odyssey. Most try to simply ignore them and chalk their involvement up to superstition. Unfortunately, that attempt usually runs into the brick wall of Thetis, who is key to the story of the rage of her son Achilles, and who shows up on the beaches of Troy, where no normal woman could. Miller has always leaned into the existence of the gods rather than run from it in her reimaginings of Greek myth, and paints a fully fleshed world where they reside side by side with mortals. Her use of language elevates their appearance and evokes a Celtic Faerie Court of powerful, capricious and otherworldly beings who are both intoxicating and deeply dangerous to mortals. Miller’s prose jumps off the page whenever one of these beings takes the spotlight and is by far one of the most creative takes I’ve seen of characterizing the Ancient Greek Gods.

- Passion - It is clear in the very DNA of this story that Miller loves Greek Mythology. There is a tenderness with which the great heroes and tragic figures of those myths like Odysseus and Prometheus are presented, almost a yearning to be able to reach out and offer them comfort in their trials that is very apparent. There is awe in how Athena is depicted, for all that she serves as an antagonist. There is wonder in the descriptions of beings like Helios and Scylla. The prose shines from within when these figures appear with a sort of joy and sadness that is infectious to the reader. The sense of love for this time and these characters is inescapable.

- Emotion - Particularly with the more melancholy emotions like sadness, resignation, and helpless anger there is a profound and powerful thread running through the story. One deeply feels the appeal of characters like Glaukos pre-transformation, Daedalus, Odysseus and Telemachus. When Circe falls in love with these men, I don’t for a second wonder why. They are presented with heartbreaking beauty and appeal. Circe’s own moments of tragedy are also evocative, she is deeply impacted by the ugliness of the world in a way that evokes understanding and sympathy. 

Cons:

I’m going to try my best in this section to not fall too much into the trap of “I would have done this differently” but... well, I’m not entirely sure I succeed. 

- Agency - The problem of character agency has plagued Miller’s two forays into Classical myth retellings, and for me personally present the most frustrating aspect of her prose. Circe, one of the most terrifying and powerful women of Ancient Greek mythology, is almost never the driver of her own destiny in this book and I found this aspect of the story baffling and at times infuriating. The moment this realization of her passivity in her own tale hit me hardest, almost enough to stop reading, was when Pasiphae, a mythological figure known almost solely for sleeping with a cow and being the mother of the Minotaur, was somehow a more terrifying and ambitious witch than Circe, one of the great villainesses of Classical literature. 

Pasiphae is presented as eagerly seeking out marriage with a powerful man, and while at first she is disappointed by her match to the mortal king Minos, she is comforted by the fact he is a son of Zeus  and will one day be one of the great judges of the Underworld. The events that take place after this are all mostly off-screen, but upon reaching the kingdom of Crete and its capital city Knossos, we learn she took the court over within, ruling with terror and poison, and that even when she was laid low by the shame of sleeping with a sacred bull, she still managed to twist this event to her own benefit and indeed even orchestrated the situation, deliberately giving birth to one of the most terrifying monsters of all time on purpose, using the opportunity for a multi-part palace coup including shaming her sister Circe by forcing her to help birth the monster and clean up the fallout, securing Pasiphae’s place in history and her dominance over the court with almost no repercussions. If she suffered at all from the fact that these events lead to the death of her daughter, Ariadne, we never see it, or any other negative consequences for her actions or opportunities for remorse, because at this point in the tale, Circe is (for no real narrative reason) no longer sleeping with Hermes and is therefore no longer privy to what is going on in the world outside her island. Even once she is free of her exile, she never follows up with the fates of her siblings.

Upon reaching this part of the book, all I could wonder was why were we not reading the tale of Pasiphae? This terrifying witch who took a weak position as the wife to a “great man” and twisted it to make herself one of the most powerful women in the world? What a fascinating subversion of the typical view of this mythological figure that would have been! 

Why Circe? Was a question I asked myself over and over. Surely if you wanted to tell the tale of such a passive character, there were plenty of other women in Greek mythology who would have been a better fit for the themes of the story that Miller eventually told? Why take Circe and make her a cringing good girl who always does what she’s told, whose one defiance in giving comfort to Prometheus as a little girl which as a flaw is basically  “being too good” and “caring too much”. Her aid of Prometheus is barely defiance at all, yet is blown into massive significance as one of the defining moments of her life when she does literally nothing purposefully bad, or even purposeful at all, for huge stretches of her life after that? Her transformation of Glaukos is cringing and secretive and almost totally accidental. Her transformation of Scylla in revenge for stealing Glaukos’s affections is more sullen than wrathful. We’re told she has a talent for transformation that exceeds the power of the gods themselves, but no sooner does she achieve these incredible feats then she apparently needs to start over and learn witchcraft from scratch and never again works such a great spell until she’s turning herself mortal so she can die at the end once she achieves her white picket fence ending. 

Where is Circe?! Where is the witch that became the subject of art and literature for millennia, one of the great female antagonists of Greek myth on par with terrifying villains like Medea? In the reimagining of this figure from her own perspective, we don’t find a great mythological figure but a tailor-made “perfect victim” - nothing bad is done by her on purpose. In fact, almost nothing she does is on purpose except to serve others in her life, like Glaukos, or Odysseus, or her son. Even her transformation of men into pigs is a result of her trying to help sailors who land on her island, only to be raped for her trouble and turn vengeful towards all other men after that. Well, until Odysseus apparently, when she gives up on transforming sailors after that, the most famous aspect of her character from mythology. Circe is given a prophecy for her fate at one point that is only that a man named Odysseus will come to her island, and that paltry prophecy turns out to be the sum total of the important events in her life as once again, she stands around in limbo until the actions of a man nudge her into actually doing something. Odysseus changes her life, not that this was hard, because she wasn’t doing anything before he came around.

Even Circe’s one great selfish act, the transformation of Scylla, brings her no joy and instead haunts her entire life like an albatross around her neck. Nothing she does is joyful, except perhaps glimmers early on as she embraces her skill with magic, and her love of the animals on her island which are presented as essentially house pets. One is left with the unshakeable sense that Circe has been re-imagined as spinster cat lady who has a couple nice little romantic flings over the years before having a kid on her own and eventually settling down with a nice husband to retire and die.

Which is fine. Perhaps it rubs me, personally, the wrong way because this is now the second iteration I’ve seen of powerful mythological women being used as modern feminist parables, only to be stripped of all their power to make these points. The other was “Penelope” by Margaret Atwood, in which Penelope is reimagined as a thinly veiled metaphor for a dissatisfied 50s housewife with a cheating husband. There’s barely any of her cleverness, her authority (for god’s sake, the woman was a queen) or her love of Odysseus, one of the great het romances of equals of ancient mythology, practically the only marriage of equals one can even point to,  and it’s torn down to make a point about not liking your husband very much when he cheats on you to feel better about himself. 

“Circe” at times feels autobiographical for the author (and of course this is speculation to a great extent), showing struggles with love and men, finding oneself, mourning beloved pets when they die, trying to escape the shadow of an emotionally abusive family, and learning to make decisions on one’s own in a patriarchal world. Which is fine, “Hamilton” by Lin Manuel Miranda is not perfectly historically accurate because at times it makes the choice to instead delve into autobiographical notes about Lin Manuel Miranda and his father, the experience of being a writer and the immigrant experience, the latter of which is hardly something the real Hamilton would have ever touted about himself but the strength of passion in telling that story elevates the text so it can be both about Alexander Hamilton and about Lin Manuel Miranda at the same time. There were moments in “Circe” where I was almost yelling at the page, just pick one! You can use the story of Circe to elevate a modern autobiography, to give certain aspects of life mythic proportions and tell the story of a woman who feels emotionally exiled eventually finding herself and finding love, but you have to go for it. To try to tell the story of Circe and tell a modern woman’s story at the same time is to do a disservice to both stories, where Circe is brought down into the dirt with other indecisive mortals, and the true pathos of a modern woman’s striving for agency in her life is outshone by the myth and wonder of Circe’s world.

My final note on agency, but “Song of Achilles” struggled with a very similar problem. Patroclus was reimagined as the passive, doting lover of Achilles. This allowed some really beautiful meditations on love and sacrifice, but it absolutely stripped Patroclus of many of his canonical qualities. The Patroclus of the Iliad did not shrink from battle or become a healer to avoid the war, he was a willing and joyous warrior as much as Achilles was. He begged Achilles for his armor in order to keep prosecuting the war and raise morale even if Achilles couldn’t fight. 

With Patroclus, as with Circe, you have two aggressive figures who are reimagined as passive perfect victims, who spend the entire book working themselves up to the courage to make a handful of active decisions for themselves. 

Going back to one of the Pros, which is the love felt on the page for these great figures like Odysseus and Prometheus, there are times when Patroclus and Circe both feel like the passive vessels for a self-insert adoration of these heroes. When Odysseus appears, I was struck by how overjoyed I was to see him. What a striking contrast Odysseus presented! Active, clever, tricky, beset by trials that he overcomes only to seek out more - contrast that with Circe who is none of those things except in glimpses. What a striking reminder of what a fantastic protagonist Odysseus is, how he is one of the greatest protagonists in almost 3,000 years of literature. Because he does things and he chooses things and he has unique qualities like his cleverness that help him overcome obstacles in fascinating ways that we still read about today. 

Similarly with Patroclus being the passive narrator of Achilles’ life, we feel the reflected glow of Achilles desire and drive, we yearn for it, because almost none of that quality is present in the protagonist and narrator of the story Patroclus! I am reminded of “Nick” in the Great Gatsby and his passive viewing of events, and I’m reminded that Nick wasn’t even supposed to be a character, he was only meant to be a narrative voice until Fitzgerald’s editor stepped in and said he needed to be characterized. At times, Patroclus and Circe both skirt the line of being so passive in their own story that on some level, they feel like little more than a narrative lens through which we glimpse the true heroes from afar.

I held off until I finished the book before making a final judgement of Circe’s passivity, because at every step I kept expecting her to finally change and take charge of her own life. Early on, I thought her comforting of Prometheus would launch her into taking control of her own destiny, which would have been a fascinating inciting incident, mirroring humanity’s gift of fire. Then I thought Glaukos would. Then Scylla. Then her exile. Then Odysseus. Then her son. And at every point, she fades into the background after and goes back to doing what she’s told. The book ends with her finally making a decision and that decision is to settle down with a kind husband and eventually die. She stands up to her father, the Sun, to make this stand and it is a beautiful, melancholy ending of the story but by god, woman, it would have been a much more satisfying retirement for a character that burns and makes decisions and does things than a character who takes hundreds of years to screw up the courage to ask for a quiet retirement on her own terms.

“Circe” is beautifully written. It is a lovely, melancholy anthology about one woman’s encounters with the great figures of mythology, lovingly told, as she seeks to find herself and what she wants out of life. I do not feel my time was wasted.

But if I were to sit down as an editor with the author and point out the three things I’d like her to work on for her next story it would be this:

- Structure - the story meanders and stays glued to the scattered known events of Circe’s life. It has no internal rising and falling action. It is a series of short stories with Circe’s life loosely tying them all together. Like JK Rowling no longer understanding how to plot a story when it isn’t built around a typical school year, I speculate that Miller struggles with building a structured story without having a pre-laid track of mythical events to hang it off of, and I’m not sure she is able to sculpt a tale into having a structure outside of “slice of life” moments in those fictional biographies, beautifully told.

- Agency - characters need to want something. They need to seek out something, they need to do something. Even if they are buffeted about by the events in their lives, they should at least have a way they wish things were going instead and take some steps to making the future they want real. Passive characters who sulk their way through the events thrust upon them by more powerful, dynamic characters, may have beautiful, languorous commentary on the world but they are essentially narrators rather than protagonists at that point.

- Telling rather than showing - I know this advice is often misunderstood and badly implemented. Telling is actually clarifying and provides structure to showing. But there are huge stretches of the book that read like just a laundry list of the narrator telling us what happened next “And then, and then, and then” without couching these moments in a scene that we could feel. There are some absolutely gorgeous scenes but they feel scattered and indeed, anthological, for the exact reason that we get a handful of strongly depicted scenes in Circe’s life, strung together by her telling us rather than showing us what happened in between. The fact that none of it really builds towards any sort of climax or true reversal of her fortunes makes those moments of telling, which I forgave at first because I felt they were in service of getting us to the good part, a greater betrayal when it became clear that the only thing those stretches were getting us too was the next mini-event in her life when she met another character more driven than herself.

[clubofinfo]

Expert: It appears that the Western public, both relatively ‘educated’ and thoroughly ignorant, could, after some persuasion, agree on certain very basic facts – for instance that Russia has historically been a victim of countless European aggressions, or that countries like Venezuela, Cuba, Iran or North Korea (DPRK) have never in modern history crossed the borders of foreign nations in order to attack, plunder or to overthrow governments. OK, certainly, it would take some ‘persuasion’, but at least in specific circles of the otherwise hopelessly indoctrinated Western society, certain limited dialogue is still occasionally possible. China is different. There is no ‘mercy’ for China in the West. By many standards, the greatest and one of the oldest cultures on Earth, has been systematically smeared, insulted, ridiculed and arrogantly judged by the opinion-makers, propagandists, ‘academia’ and mainstream press with seats in London, New York, Paris and many other places which the West itself calls the centers of ‘erudition’ and ‘freedom of information’. Anti-Chinese messages are sometimes overt, but mostly thinly veiled. They are almost always racist and based on ignorance. And the horrifying reality is: they work! They work for many reasons. One of them is that while the North Asians in general, and the Chinese people in particular, have been learning with zeal all about the rest of the world, the West is thoroughly ignorant about almost everything Asian and Chinese. I personally conducted a series of simple but revealing ‘experiments’ in China, Korea and Japan, as well as in several countries of the West: while almost every North Asian child can easily identify at least a few basic ‘icons’ of Western culture, including Shakespeare and Mozart, most of the European university professors with PhDs could not name one single Korean film director, Chinese classical music composer, or a Japanese poet. Westerners know nothing about Asia! Not 50% of them, now even 90%, but most likely somewhere in the area of 99.9%. And it goes without saying, that Korea is producing some of the best art films in the world, while China and Japan are renowned for their exquisite classical art, as well as modern masterpieces. In the West, the same ignorance extends to Chinese philosophy, its political system and history. In both Europe and North America, there is absolute darkness, withering ignorance, regarding the Chinese vision of the world. In Paris or Berlin, China is being judged exclusively by Western logic, by Western ‘analysts’, with unsurpassable arrogance. Racism is the only fundamental explanation, although there are many other, secondary reasons for this state of affairs. Western racism, which used to humiliate, attack and ruin China for centuries, has gradually changed its tactics and strategies. From the openly and colorfully insulting and vulgar, it has steadily evolved into something much more ‘refined’ but consistently manipulative. The spiteful nature of the Western lexicon of superiority has not disappeared. In the past, the West used to depict Chinese people as dirty animals. Gradually, it began depicting the Chinese Revolution as animalistic, as well as the entire Chinese system, throwing into the battle against the PRC and the Communist Party of China, such concepts and slogans as “human rights”. We are not talking about human rights that could and should be applicable and respected in all parts of the world (like the right to life) protection for all the people of the Planet. That’s because it is clear that the most blatant violators of such rights have been, for many centuries, the Western countries. If all humans were to be respected as equal beings, all countries of the West would have to be tried and indicted, then occupied and harshly punished for countless genocides and holocausts committed in the past and present. The charges would be clear: barbarity, theft, torture as well as the slaughter of hundreds of millions of people in Africa, the Middle East, what is now called Latin America, and, of course, almost everywhere in Asia. Some of the most heinous crimes of the West were committed against China and its people. The ‘human rights’ concept, which the West is constantly using against China is ‘targeted’. Most of the accusations and ‘facts’ have been taken out of the context of what has been occurring on the global scale (now and in the history). Exclusively, Eurocentric views and ‘analyses’ have been applied. Chinese philosophy and logic have been fully ignored; never taken seriously. No one in the West asks the Chinese people what they really want (only the so-called ‘dissidents’ are allowed to speak through the mass media to the Western public). Such an approach is not supposed to defend or to help anybody; instead it is degrading, designed to cause maximum damage to the most populous country on Earth, to its unique system, and increasingly, to its important global standing. It is obvious that the Western academia and mass media are funded by hundreds of millions and billions of dollars to censor the mainstream Chinese voices, and to promote dark anticommunist and anti-PRC nihilism. I know one Irish academic based in North Asia, who used to teach in China. He told me, with pride, that he used to provoke Chinese students: “Do you know that Mao was a pedophile?” And he ridiculed those who challenged him and found his discourses distasteful. But such an approach is quite acceptable for the Western academia based in Asia. Reverse the tables and imagine a Chinese academic who comes to London to teach Chinese language and culture, beginning his classes by asking the students whether they know that Churchill used to have sex with animals? What would happen? Would he get fired right away or at the end of the day? ***** The West has no shame, and it is time for the entire world to understand this simple fact. In the past, I have often compared this situation to some medieval village, attacked and plundered by brigands (The West). Food stores were ransacked, houses burned, women raped and children forced into slavery, then subjected to thorough brainwashing. Any resistance was crushed, brutally. People were told to spy on each other, to expose “terrorists” and “dangerous elements” in society, in order to protect the occupation regime. Only two “economic systems” were allowed – feudalism and capitalism. If the villagers elected a mayor who was ready to defend their interests, the brigands would murder him, unceremoniously. Murder or overthrow him, so there would always be a status quo. But there had to be some notion of justice, right? Once in a while, the council of the brigands would catch a thief who had stolen few cucumbers or tomatoes. And they would then brag that they protect the people and the village. While everything had already been burned to ashes by them Given the history and present of China, given the horrid and genocidal nature of the Western past, ancient and modern, given the fact that China is by all definitions, the most peaceful large nation on Earth, how can anybody in the West even pronounce the words like ‘human rights’, let alone criticize China, Russia, Cuba or any other country that it put on its hit-list? Of course, China, Russia or Cuba are not “perfect countries” (there are no perfect countries on Earth, and there never will be), but should a thief and mass murderer be allowed to judge anybody? Obviously yes! It is happening, constantly. The West is unapologetic. It is because it is ignorant, thoroughly uninformed about its own past and present deeds, or conditioned to be uninformed. It is also because the West is truly a fundamentalist society, unable to analyze and to compare. It cannot see anymore. What is being offered by its politicians and replicated by the servile academia and mass media, is totally twisted. Almost the entire world is in the same condition as the village that I just described. But it is China (and also Russia, Cuba, Venezuela, Syria, Iran, and other nations) that is being portrayed as villains and tormentors of the people. Black becomes white. War is peace. Slavery is freedom. A mass rapist is a peacemaker and a cop. ***** Once again: The West hates China. Let us be totally honest. China has to understand it, and act accordingly. Sooner rather than later. As we have already determined, the hatred towards China is irrational, illogical, purely racist; mainly based to the superiority complex of Western “thinkers”. But also, it is based on the subconscious fear of the Westerners that Chinese culture and its socialist system (with all its ‘imperfections’) are greatly superior to the culture of terror and thuggery spread throughout our Planet by both Europeans and then North Americans. Several years ago, I was interviewed by various Chinese media outlets, including the legendary People’s Daily, China Radio International and CCTV (now CGTN). They all wanted to know why, despite all those great efforts of China to befriend the world, there is so much Sino phobia in Western countries. I had to face the same question, again and again: “What else could we do? We tried everything… What else?” Because of its tremendous hereditary optimism, the Chinese nation could not grasp one simple but essential fact: the more China does for the world, the less aggressively it behaves, the more it will be hated and demonized in the West. It is precisely because China is, unlike the West, trying to improve the lives of the entire planet Earth, that it will never be left in peace, it will never be prized, admired or learned from in such places like London, Paris or New York. I replied to those who were interviewing me: “They hate you, therefore you are doing something right!” My answer, perhaps, sounded too cynical to the Chinese people. However, I wasn’t trying to be cynical. I was just trying to answer, honestly, a question about the psyche of Western culture, which has already murdered hundreds of millions of human beings, worldwide. It was, after all, the greatest European psychologist of all time, Carl Gustav Jung, who diagnosed Western culture as “pathology”. But Who Really Hates China and How Much? But let’s get numbers: who hates China and how much? Mainly, the Westerners – Europeans and North Americans. And Japan, which actually murdered tens of millions of Chinese people, plus China’s main regional rival, Vietnam. Only 13% of the Japanese see China favorably, according to a Pew Research Center Poll conducted in 2017. 83% of the Japanese, a country which is the main ally of the West in Asia, see China “unfavorably”. In Italy which is hysterically anti-Chinese and scandalously racist at that, the ratio is 31% favorably, 59% unfavorably. Shocking? Of course, it is. But Germany does not fare much better, with 34% – 53%. The United States – 44% – 47%. France 44% – 52%. Entire half of Spanish nation sees China unfavorably – 43% – 43%. Now something really shocking: the “rest of the world”. The numbers are totally the opposite! South Africa: 45% see China favorably, 32% unfavorably. Argentina 41% – 26%. Even the Philippines which is being pushed constantly by the West into confrontation with China: 55% favorably – 40% unfavorably. Indonesia that perpetrated several anti-Chinese pogroms and even banned the Chinese language after the US-sponsored coup in 1965: 55% favorably – 36% unfavorably. Mexico 43% – 23%. Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela: 52% – 29%. Chile 51% – 28%. Then it gets even more interesting: Lebanon: 63% – 33%. Kenya: 54% – 21%. Brazil 52% – 25%. Tunisia 63% – 22%. Russia: 70% – 24%. Tanzania 63% – 15%. Senegal 64% – 10%. And the most populous country in Sub Saharan Africa, Nigeria – 72% – 13%. The 2017 BBC World Service poll, Views of China’s influence by country, gives even more shocking results: At the two extremes, in Spain, only 15% see China’s influence as positive, while 68% see it as negative. In Nigeria, 83% as positive and only 9% as negative. Now, think for a while what these numbers really say. Who is really benefiting from China’s growing importance on the world scene? Of course – the wretched of the Earth; the majority of our Planet! Who are those who are trying to stop China from helping the colonized and oppressed people? The old and new colonialist powers! China is predominantly hated by Western imperialist countries (and by their client states, like Japan and South Korea), while it is loved by the Africans), most Asians and Latin Americans, as well as Russians. Tell an African what is being said to the Europeans – about the negative or even “neo-imperialist”, influence of China on the African continent – and he or she will die laughing. Just before submitting this essay, I received a comment from Kenya, from my comrade Booker Ngesa Omole, National Organizing Secretary, SDP-Kenya (Socialist): The relationship of China and Kenya particularly and Africa generally has not only led to tremendous development both in infrastructure but also a genuine cultural exchange among the Chinese and African people, it has also made African people understand the Chinese people firsthand, away from the daily half-truths and lies generated against China and the Chinese people and transmitted en masse globally through the lie factories like CNN. It’s has also shown that there is a different way to relate to the so called development partners and the international capital, the Chinese have developed a policy of non-interference in the internal affairs of a sovereign country as opposed to USA and Western Countries through IMF and World Bank who have imposed destructive policies on the continent that has led to the suffering and death of many African people, like that infamous Structural Adjustment Plan, that was a killer plan, after its implementation Kenyans unemployment skyrocketed, our country also became bankrupt . Another comparison is the speed at which the projects are done, in the past we had a gruesome bureaucratic expensive process, which could take several years before any work could start on the ground. This has changed with the coming in of Chinese capital, we see the projects are being effected just in time, we see very high quality work contrary to what the western media want to portray that everything from China and Russia are fake before arrival. ***** The Chinese system (Communism or socialism with Chinese characteristics), is in its essence truly internationalist. As Chairman Mao Tse Tung wrote in his “Patriotism and Internationalism”: Can a Communist, who is an internationalist, at the same time be a patriot? We hold that he not only can be but also must be… The victory of China and defeat of the invading imperialists will help the people of other countries… Chairman Mao wrote this during the China’s liberation struggle against Japanese invaders. However, not much has really changed since then. China is definitely willing and capable of putting much of the world devastated by Western imperialism, back onto its feet. It is big enough to do it, it is strong enough, it is determined and full of optimism. The West produces, directly manufactures, crises and confrontations, like the one that took place in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square in 1989, or the one that never really managed to ‘take off’ (mainly due to the disgust of the majority of the local people with the selfish and pro-Western protesters) in Hong Kong, in 2014. However, those Western implants and proxies are all that most Europeans and North Americans know about China (PRC): ‘Human Rights’, Falun Gong, Tibet, Dalai Lama, ‘Northwest of the Country’ (here, they don’t remember, or cannot pronounce the names, but they were told in the mainstream Western media that China is doing ‘something sinister’ there, so that’s what they are repeating), Tiananmen Square, Ai Wei-Wei and few other disconnected barks, ‘events’, and names. This is how this colossus with thousands of years of history, culture and philosophy, is perceived, judged, and how it is (mis-) understood. The entire situation would be laughable, if it were not so tragic, so thoroughly appalling and dangerous. It is becoming clear who really hates China: it is not the “world”, and it is not those countries on all the continents that have been brutalized and enslaved by the Western imperialists. There, China is loved. Those who hate China are the nations which are not ready to let go of their de facto colonies. The nations who are used to a good, too good and too easy life at the expense of others. To them, historically egalitarian and now for many decades socialist/Communist (with Chinese characteristics) China poses a truly great threat. Threat – not to their survival or peaceful existence, but threat to their looting and raping of the world. China’s internationalist attitude towards the world, its egalitarianism and humanism, its emphasis on hard work and the tremendous optimism of its people, may soon, very soon, break the horrid inertia and the lethargy injected by Europe and the United States into the veins of all raped, plundered and humiliated nations. China Has Already Suffered Enough! In his ground-breaking book “China Is Communist, Damn It!” a prominent China expert, Jeff Brown (who is presently based in Shenzhen) writes about the dehumanizing treatment, which the Chinese people had been receiving from Westerners, for centuries: …untold numbers in the 19th century… were pressganged and kidnapped, to be sent to the New World to work as coolie slaves. The racism conducted on these Chinese coolies was instructive. On the ocean voyage from China to Vancouver, Canada, they were tightly packed and kept in dark, poorly ventilated holds for the three-week trip, so they would not have any contact with the Whites traveling aboveboard. No sunlight, no fresh air. The crew on the ships routinely talked about these Chinese allies in terms of “livestock” and they were handled and treated as such. Actually, they were treated worse than cattle, pigs, sheep and horses, as there are laws that require animals get so much open air and exercise per day, while in transit… This kind of inhumane treatment of Chinese citizens is dispassionately captured in the diaries of a British officer, charged with overseeing them, ‘As children, we were taught that Cain and Coolies were murderers from the beginning; no Coolie was to be trusted; he was a yellow dog… The task of stowing away Coolies is a tiresome one. In orders, it is alluded to as “embarkation”. By those experienced in the job, it is known more as “packing”. The Coolies are not passengers capable of finding each his cabin. The Coolies are so much cargo, livestock, which has to be packed away. While experiences are ceaselessly pressing upon him, his attitude towards existence is the attitude of a domesticated animal.’ British 2nd Lieutenant Daryl Klein, from his memoir, “With the Chinks”, spoken like a true Western imperial racist. Of course, chinks is the worst slur word to be used against the Chinese. It’s the equivalent of yellow nigger. The term Coolie is not any better. It’s like calling someone from Latin America a wetback. At least Lt. Klein was honest in his total dehumanization of the Dreaded Other. There are countless examples of discrimination against, and humiliation of, the Chinese people by the Western colonialists, on the territory of China. The Chinese were literally butchered and enslaved in their own territory, by the Westerners and the Japanese. However, there were also despicable crimes committed against Chinese people on the territory of the United States, including lynching, and other types of killing. Hard working, many Chinese men were brought as slave laborers to the United States and to Europe, where they were often treated worse than animals. For no other reason but for just being Chinese. No apologies or compensation were ever offered for such acts of barbarity; not even decades and centuries later. Until now, there is a silence surrounding the topic, although one has to wonder whether it is really simple ‘silence’ that grows from ignorance, or whether it is something much more sinister; perhaps defiance and conscious or subconscious refusal to condemn the fruits of Western culture, which are imperialism, racism and consequently – fascism. Gwen Sharp, PhD, wrote on June 20, 2014 for Sociological Images in his essay ‘Old “Yellow-Peril” Anti-Chinese Propaganda’: Chinese men were stereotyped as degenerate heroin addicts whose presence encouraged prostitution, gambling, and other immoral activities.  A number of cities on the West Coast experienced riots in which Whites attacked Asians and destroyed Chinese sections of town. Riots in Seattle in 1886 resulted in practically the entire Chinese population being rounded up and forcibly sent to San Francisco. Similar situations in other towns encouraged Chinese workers scattered throughout the West to relocate, leading to the growth of Chinatowns in a few larger cities on the West Coast. Throughout history, China and its people have suffered at the hands of Westerners, both Europeans and North Americans alike. According to several academic and other sources, including a publication “History And Headlines” (History: October 9, 1740: Chinezenmoord, The Batavia Massacre): On October 9, 1740, Dutch colonial overlords on the Island of Java (now a main island in Indonesia) in the port city of Batavia (now Jakarta, capital of Indonesia) went on a mad killing spree of ethnic cleansing and murdered about 10,000 ethnic Chinese. The Dutch word, “Chinezenmoord,” literally means “Chinese Murder. Anti-Chinese massacres were also repeatedly committed by the Spanish occupiers of the Philippines, and there were countless other cases of anti-Chinese ethnic cleansing and massacres committed by the European colonialist administrations, in various parts of the world. The ransacking of Beijing’s Summer Palace by French and British forces was one of the most atrocious crimes committed by Westerners on the territory of China. An outraged French novelist, Victor Hugo, then wrote: We call ourselves civilized and them barbarians. Here is what Civilization has done to Barbarity. ***** The West cannot treat Chinese people this way, anymore, but if it could get away with it, it definitely still would. The superiority complex in both Europe and North America is powerful and unapologetic. There is real great danger that if unchecked and unopposed, it may soon terminate all life on our Planet. The final holocaust would be accompanied by self-righteous speeches, unrestrained arrogance, gasping ignorance of the state of the world, and generally no regrets. Chinese people cannot be beaten on the streets of Europe or North America, anymore; they cannot be, at least theoretically, insulted directly in the face just for being Chinese (although that is still happening). But there are many different ways to hurt and deeply injure a human being or the country. My close friend, a brilliant Chinese concert pianist, Yuan Sheng, once told me, right after he left a well-paid teaching position in New York, and moved permanently back to Beijing: In the United States, I used to cry late into the night, almost every night… I felt so helpless. Things they were saying about my country… And it was impossible to convince them that they were totally wrong! Several years later, at the “First World Cultural Forum” held in Beijing, an Egyptian-French fellow thinker Amin Said argued that we are all victims of capitalism. I strongly disagreed, and confronted him there, in Beijing, and later in Moscow where we spoke, again, side by side. Western bigotry, brutality and imperialism are much older than capitalism. I believe that the things are precisely the opposite: Western violent culture is the core of the savage capitalism. Recently, while addressing students and teachers at one of old alternative and officially progressive schools in Scandinavia, I finally understood the scope of the creeping anti-Chinese sentiments in Europe. During my presentation about the global conflicts being fueled by the United States and Europe, the audience was silent and attentive. I spoke at a huge hall, addressing some 2 – 3 hundred people, most of them future educators. There was some sort of standing ovation. Then questions. Then discussion over coffee. There, precisely then, things got very wrong. A girl came and with an angelic smiled uttered: “Sorry, I know nothing about China…. But what about the Northwest of the country?” The northwest of China is a few times bigger than Scandinavia. Could she be more specific? No, she couldn’t: “You know, the human rights… Minorities…” An Italian girl approached me, saying she is studying philosophy. The same line of questions: “I don’t know much about China, but…” Then her questions got aggressive: “What do you mean when you talk about ‘China’s humanism?’” She was not asking, she was attacking. I snapped at her: “You don’t want to listen, you simply want to hear yourself repeating what they brainwashed you with.” One of the organizers of the conference hated my interaction with her spoiled, rude, self-centered and uneducated brats. I could not care less. I told her directly to her face. “Then why did you accept the invitation to be a keynote speaker?” she asked. I answered, honestly: “To study the Europeans, anthropologically. To face your racism and ignorance.” Next day, the same. I showed my shocking documentary film Rwanda Gambit about how the West created the totally false Rwanda narrative, and how it triggered real genocide, that in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). But all that the audience wanted to discuss was China! One said: “I saw a Chinese government company building two sports stadiums in Zambia. Isn’t it strange?” Really? Strange? The Chinese health system is mainly based on prevention and it is successful. Building stadiums is a crime? Another one recalled that in West Africa, “China was planting cashew nuts.” That was supposed to match centuries of horrors of Western colonialism, the mass murder and slavery of hundreds of millions of Africans at the hands of the Brits, French, Germans, Belgians and others. At the airport, leaving back for Asia, I wanted to throw up and simultaneously, to shout from joy. I was going home, leaving this brainwashed continent – this intellectual bordello behind. The West was beyond salvation. It will not stop or repent. It can only be stopped, and it has to be stopped. ***** Jeff Brown in his book China Is Communist, Damn It! pointed out one essential difference between the Chinese and Western mindset: China and the West could not be more different. Western civilization is founded on Greek philosophy, culture, politics and economy. Ancient Greece was composed of hundreds of relatively small, independent city-states, which on a daily basis, were comparatively isolated from each other. They were separated by water or mountain ranges, ensconced in bays and valleys. Each city-state’s population could usually be counted in the thousands, not millions. There were a number of different dialects, with varying degrees of mutual comprehension, from familiar to total misunderstanding. Contact with each other was based on commerce and trade, grounding Western economy in the precepts of capitalism. The notion of personal agency in the West is founded in this economic system, where farmers, landowners, merchants and craftsmen were able to work and make business decisions individually, between themselves. Each city-state had its own independent government and over the centuries, there were phases of monarchy, oligarchy, tyranny and democracy. Local wars were frequent, to settle disagreements. These battles happened steadily, as ancient Greece’s agricultural production was not abundant, due to poor soils and limited tillable land. When food became scarce with droughts, agricultural trade could be interrupted, due to shortages, thus stoking the need for war, to reclaim the lost purchases of food. Ancient and modern China could not be more radically different. Life, the economy and development all revolved around a large central government, headed by the emperor. Instead of being based on trade and commerce, China’s economy has always been founded on agricultural production and the harvests were and still are largely sold to the state. Why? Because the government is expected to maintain the Heavenly Mandate, which means making sure that all of the citizens have enough to eat. Therefore, farmers always knew that the grain they grew could very easily end up in another part of China, because of distant droughts. This whole idea of central planning extended to flood control. Communities in one area of China would be tasked to build dams or canals, not to help reduce flood risk for themselves, but for other citizens far away, downstream, all for the collective good. The idea of independent city-states is anathema in China, as it always signaled a breakdown in the central power’s cohesion and governance, from border to border, leading to warlordism, strife and hunger. Chinese socialist (or call it Communist) system has clearly roots in China’s ancient history. It is based on sharing and cooperation, on solidarity and harmony. It is a much more suitable system for humanity, than what the West spread by force to all corners of the world. When the West succeeds in something, it feels that it has “won”. It drives the banner pole into the earth, gets some fermented drink to celebrate, and feels superior, unique. China thinks differently: “if our neighbors are doing well and are at peace, then China will prosper too, and will enjoy peace. We can trade, we can visit each other, exchange ideas.” In the ancient days Chinese ships used to visit Africa, what is now Somalia and Kenya. The ships were huge. In those days, Europe had nothing so enormous at its disposal. Chinese ships were armed against the pirates, but they mainly travelled with scribes, scholars, doctors and researchers. When they reached the African shore, they made contacts with the locals. They studied each other, exchanged gifts (some Chinese pottery and ceramics are still being found near the island of Lamu). There was not much common ground between those two cultures, at that time. The Chinese scribes recorded: “This is not yet right time for permanent contact”. They left gifts on the shore, and sailed home. Nobody died. Nobody was “converted”. No one was raped. African land still belonged to Africans. African people were free to do what they chose. A century or two later, the Westerners arrived… ***** I know China, but even better, I know the world in which China operates. The more I see, the more I am impressed – I actually want China to be everywhere, and as soon as possible! I have worked in all the tiny and large nations of Oceania (Polynesia, Melanesia and Micronesia), except in Niue and Nauru. There, the West divided this gorgeous and once proud part of the world, created bizarre borders, literally forced people to eat shit (dumping animal food in local stores), burdened them with foreign loans and introduced a culture of dependency and destruction (nuclear experiments, and military bases). Due to global warming, RMI, Kiribati and Tuwalu began “sinking” (in reality, the water is rising). China came, with real internationalist determination. It began doing everything right – planting mangroves, building sport facilities for people in countries where over half of the population has to often live with diabetes. It constructed government buildings, hospitals, schools. The response of the West? They encouraged Taiwan to come, bribe the local governments and to make them recognize Taipei as the capital of an independent country, forcing China to break diplomatic relationships. In Africa, I saw Chinese people building roads, railroads, even city trams, schools, hospitals, fighting malaria. This continent was only plundered by the West. Europeans and North Americans built nothing there. China did, and still does, miracles. Out of solidarity, out of internationalist principles so clearly defined decades ago by Chairman Mao. And I don’t really care what the Western propagandists and ideologues think about the Chinese Communist Party, about Mao and about President Xi Jinping. I see results! I see China, huge, compassionate and confident, rising, and with its close allies like Russia, ready to defend the world. China saved Cuba. The Western “left-wing” intellectuals said nothing about it. I did. I was attacked. Then, Fidel personally confirmed that I was correct. China helped Venezuela and it helped Syria. Not for profit, but because it was its internationalist duty. Saw China in action in East Timor, (Timor Leste), a tiny poor country that the West sacrificed, delivering it on a silver platter to the murderous Indonesian dictator Suharto and his military cronies. 30% of the people were brutally massacred. After independence, Australia began robbing the weak new government of the natural gas in a disputed area. China came in, built the energy sector and an excellent modern hospital (public), staffed with top Chinese surgeons (while Cuba sent field doctors). Afghanistan? After 16 years of monstrous NATO occupation, this once proud and progressive (before the West manufactured terrorist movements there, to fight socialism) country is one of the poorest on Earth. The West built walls, barbed wire fences, military bases and total misery. China? China built a huge modern hospital wing, actually the only decent and functioning public medical facility in the country. These are just some of many examples that I have been witnessing during my work, all over the world. When I lived in Africa (I was based in Nairobi for several years), across the floor was a flat housing four Chinese engineers. While the Westerners in Africa are almost always secretive, snobbish and arrogant, this group of Chinese builders was loud, enthusiastic and always in a great mood. They power-walked downstairs, in the garden, they ate, joked together. They looked like a good old “socialist realism” poster. They were clearly on a mission. They were building, trying to save the continent. And it was so clear how confident they were. They were building, and I was making documentary films about what the West did to Africa, including my above-mentioned Rwanda Gambit. It was clear where I stood. It was clear where the Chinese engineers stood. We stood with the people of Africa. Firmly. No matter what the Western propaganda, academia and mass media keep inventing, that is where we stood, and that is where we are standing right now, although geographically far apart. Once comrades, always comrades. And if we fall, that is how we fall – with no regrets, building a much better world. And the people of Africa, of Oceania, Latin America and increasingly of Asia, are beginning to realize, to understand. They are learning what The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is. They are learning about “Ecological Civilization“. They are slowly learning that not everyone is the same; that each country has a different culture and goals. They are learning that not everything in life is a lie or for profit. Yes, of course, resources are not unlimited and expenses have to be sometimes covered, but there is much more to life than just cold calculations. The West and its client states cannot understand this. Or they can, but do not want to. As a moral entity, they are finished. They can only fight for their own interests, as their workers in Paris are only fighting for their own benefits; definitely not for the world. The West tries to smear everything that is pure and it repeats that “everyone in this world is essentially the same” (a thief). Their (mainly Western, but also South Korean, Taiwanese, Hong Kong and Japanese) academia is deeply involved. It has already infiltrated the entire world, particularly Asia, including China itself. It teaches young Chinese people that their country is actually not what they think it is! At some point, Chinese students were travelling to the West, in order to study… about China! North American and European universities are spreading funding and trying to manipulate the best Chinese minds. In other parts of Asia, again through funding and scholarships, the local academics “get matched” with the anti-Communist and pro-Western counterparts that operate at the universities inside the PRC. This problem has been, fortunately, identified in the PRC, and the shameless attacks against the Chinese education system are being dealt with. Mass media and bookstores are not far behind. Anti-Chinese propaganda is everywhere. Anti-Communist propaganda is everywhere. Yet, China is rising. It is rising despite racism, the lies, and fake news. Socialist, internationalist China is slowly but confidently marching forward, without confronting anyone, without making too much noise about the unfair, aggressive treatment it receives in the West and from countries like Japan. It appears that its leadership has nerves of steel. Or perhaps those long thousands of years of great culture are simply allowed to speak for themselves. When a great Dragon flies, you can bark, shout insults, even shoot at it. It is too big, too ancient, too wise and determined: it will not stop, turn back or fall from the sky. And when the people on Earth have enough time to observe it in its full glory and in full flight, they may, just finally may understand that the creature is not only mighty, but also tremendously beautiful and kind. ***** • Originally published by New Eastern Outlook (NEO) http://clubof.info/