Saturday 27th of April 2024

caught in the shadow of our own web.....

 

Although the words have remained the same, the notions of separation, absence, distance, return, no longer contain the same realities. To understand the world today, we use a language that was established for the world of yesterday. And life of the past seems to us to respond better to our nature, for the sole reason that it responds better to our language.

Each progress drives us a little further away from habits that we had barely acquired, and we are truly emigrants who have not yet founded our homeland.

We are all young barbarians who are still amazed by our new toys. Our plane races have no other meaning. This one climbs higher, runs faster. We forget why we run it. The race, provisionally, prevails over its object. And it is always the same. For the colonialist who founded an empire, the meaning of life is to conquer. The soldier despises the settler. But wasn't the goal of this conquest the establishment of this colonialist? So in the exaltation of our progress, we have made men to serve in the establishment of railways, in the erection of factories, in the drilling of oil wells. We had somewhat forgotten that we erected these constructions to serve humans. Our morality was, during the duration of the conquest, a soldiers' morality. But now we must colonise. We must bring to life this new mason which does not yet have a face. The truth, for one, was to build, it is, for the other, to live.

Our house will undoubtedly become, little by little, more human. The machine itself, the more it improves, the more it fades behind its role. It seems that all of man's industrial effort, all of his calculations, all of his nights of watching over drawings, only result, as visible signs, in simplicity, as if the experience of several generations to gradually reveal the curve of a column, a hull, or an aircraft fuselage, until they restore the elementary purity of the curve of a breast or a shoulder. It seems that the work of the engineers, the designers, the calculators of the design office is apparently only to polish and erase, to lighten this connection, to balance this wing, until we no longer notice it, until there is no longer a wing attached to a fuselage, but a perfectly blossomed form, finally freed from its matrix, a sort of spontaneous whole, mysteriously linked, and of the same quality than that of a poem.

 

Antoine de Saint-Exupery

(Terre des hommes)

translation by Jules Letambour....

 

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then we crash.....

The plane [THE INTERNET] is undoubtedly a machine, but what analysis instrument! This instrument made us discover the true face of the earth [WITH FAKE AND REAL NEWS]. The roads [THE CATHOLIC CHURCHES, THE KINGS AND THEIR PHILOSOPHERS], indeed, for centuries, have deceived us. We resembled this Queen who wanted to visit her subjects to know if they rejoiced in her Queendom. Her courtiers, in order to humour her, set up on her path some happy scenery and paid extras to dance in front of these. Out of this deception, she glimpsed nothing of her Queendom, and did not know that on the other side, people had cursed her with hate, before they died of hunger.

 

————

But I calculate: “… five hours of walking, under the sun, in the desert, we perish..."

We sit in the cabin to wait the day. I lie down... While falling asleep I revue the results of our crash: we know nothing about our position. We don't have any water. If we are located approximately on the straight line we “followed”, we will be found in eight days, we can hardly hope for better, and it will be much too late. If we drifted sideways, they will find us in six months. You should not count on the rescue planes: they will search for us over three thousand square kilometres.

— Ah! It’s a shame..., Prévot tells me.

— What about?

— We could so easily have ended it all [DIED] at once!…

 

Antoine de Saint Exupery

Translation and annotations by Jules Letambour.

 

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a horse....

AS GOOOOOOGLE IS USUALLY (ALWAYS) HOPELESS, IN MY SEARCH FOR AN OLD (2011?) CARTOON THROUGH THIS WEBSITE, I REDISCOVERED AN ITEM ABOUT "The Little Prince" by SAINT EXUPERY...

 

a little prince...

I have no idea if this is the correct text, but a new unpublished chapter of "The Little Prince" by Antoine de St Exupéry has recently been discovered in France... See: http://www.europe1.fr/culture/une-variante-du-petit-prince-decouverte

 

The following text has been published at: https://www.woroni.com.au/words/le-petit-prince-de-antoine-de-saint-exupery-un-chapitre-inconnu/

 

 

An Untold Chapter of Antoine de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince

 

The little prince had decided to leave his planet to explore the universe, in search of knowledge – for he was looking for answers. He arrived, by chance, on the Earth, in a dry field. The little prince attached his wild birds to a post.

 

The field was inhabited by a large, strange animal that the little prince had never seen before. It was an impressive beast, full of elegance. It had bristles down the length of its back, which finished like a long lock of hair.

 

“Hello”, said the little prince. “What kind of animal are you?”

“Hello, little fellow. I am a horse,” it replied proudly, and it lifted its long snout towards the sky.

“What are you doing here, all alone?” asked the little prince.

“I’m waiting for the army. I carry the soldiers into battle, and in return they give me apples, which I adore. It is a truly noble profession.”

 

And the horse was indeed a very noble creature.

 

“Are you a soldier?” it asked.

“No,” said the little prince. “I’m a prince.”

“Oh really? So you must surely want to lead an army to conquer more land!”

“What does that mean, ‘to conquer’?” asked the little prince, more and more intrigued.

“’To conquer’ means to own something, and to have absolute authority.”

 

The little prince thought for a moment.

 

“I once met a king who rules over everything.”

“Well then, he must have led many battles,” replied the horse, confidently.  “People always want to own the possessions of others.”

“Oh! I always had all I needed on my little planet.”

 

The horse was not listening.

 

“People need a noble creature like me to help them win a battle. However, there have not been armies here for many years, and I have become old. I am worried that they will not be able to use me. But you seem small and light like a child. I could carry you!

The little prince thought fondly of his planet, with its three volcanos and its flower.

 

“There isn’t much to conquer on my planet, but it’s enough for me. I am not like your soldiers. I don’t want anything.”

And he began to prepare his flock of wild birds for departure.

 

The horse snorted and dragged his hooves into the ground nervously.

“That doesn’t matter to me. Let me carry you all the same! I’ll obey your orders, so long as you will give me apples.”

“That,” said the little prince, “is not very noble after all.”

 

And the little prince went away, leaving the horse feeling very confused indeed.

 

 

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IN AUSSIELAND, WE NEED .....:

 

It’s a huge policy failure that Australia can’t defend itself     By Mike Scrafton

 

Not unexpectedly, the AUKUS nuclear-powered submarine project has run into reality as Virginia class production slows down, leaving Australia with no Defence policy. A huge strategic failure, if endorsed government assessments are believed, which has left Australia vulnerable and dependent on America.

The 2000 White Paper’s highest priority was to “be able to defend Australia without relying on the combat forces of other countries”. The 2009 White Paper warned “Pronounced military modernisation in the Asia-Pacific region is having significant implications for our strategic outlook”. The 2020 Defence Strategic Update abandoned the ten-year strategic warning time for a major conventional attack against Australia as “no longer an appropriate basis for defence planning”. Clear parameters.

Disturbingly, the 2023 Review found that the ADF is “not fully fit for purpose”; a damning indictment of past policy. The Review stated that “More countries are able to project combat power across greater ranges, including against our trade and supply routes, which are vital for Australia’s economic prosperity” and issued “an urgent call to action, including higher levels of military preparedness and accelerated capability development”.

In a frank admission, though, the Review states that “In the present strategic circumstances, this can only be achieved by Australia working with the United States and other key partners”. That is, despite the collapse of warning time and the mounting threat, over two decades Australia has failed to respond to the need for an independent defence force. The level of urgency the government has identified hasn’t produced adequate action.

https://johnmenadue.com/its-a-huge-policy-failure-that-australia-cant-defend-itself/

 

NOT QUITE. I WAS GOING TO SAY: BOLLOCKS... WHAT THE RUSSIAN MILITARY INTERVENTION IN NAZI YUCKRAINE HAS DEMONSTRATED IS THAT AUTOMATED WARFARE IS COMING. HORSES AND TANKS AND SUBMARINES WILL BE USELESS BY 2040. A VARIETY OF DRONES GUIDED BY KIDS RAISED ON WARKRAFT — OR SUCH GAMES — WILL CONDUCT WARFARE (SAY DEFENCE) WITH A CONSOLE IN HAND (OR EVEN A MUSK IMPLANT IN THE BRAIN) CONTROLLING SWARMS OF DRONES IN THE AIR AND SEA.... STUFF THE YANKS, AUSSIES CAN DO IT MUCH CHEAPER AND (USELESSLY SHOULD WW3 GO NUCLEAR) EFFICIENTLY... BUT THE LITTLE PRINCE WORDS SHOULD BE TAKEN: "not noble at all".... AND READ ABOUT THE DEMONS....

 

SEE ALSO: 

droning about the drone....

 

 

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