They were right all along, the peaceniks and beatniks, the hippies and the ban the bombers. Flower Power could heal the world, given the chance. But armed forces can never make either peace, or love, for that is not their purpose.

The tin-pot, demented dictator with the ginger wig looks set to take over Greenland and with the most powerful army on earth, no one can stop him.

You thought you didn’t like Putin very much. Another hair brained maniac intent on empire and conflict.  And what of Benjamin Netanyahu, determined to inflict holocaust, having learnt nothing from the suffering of his own race.

So much for international law, for NATO, for the US constitution. A geriatric thug with a bad case of narcissism and incipient dementia has pissed all over all of it and no one is stopping him.

So much for Peace and Love.

The trumpets of war sound in every corner. Armies are to be increased and paraded and manoeuvred and given their head once again.

And all on the pretext of “peace” and “security”.  Such lame excuses justify the murder of untried people in fast boats on the ocean. The kidnap and imprisonment of heads of state. The invasion of neighbours and foreign lands.

The Empires Strike Back! Russian or American, what difference, who cares.  Lebensraum.  Theft of oil and minerals.  The demonisation of the “enemy” who must be conquered, eliminated, overrun.

If any of this sounds familiar, then it ought  to. It has happened with monotonous regularity over thousands and thousands of years.  Again, and again and again.

Only Flower Power can stop it.

Or at least the underlying philosophy which brought out mass demonstrations against war, brutality and greed.

It was Vietnam in those days and it was the Russian communist bogyman who had to be defeated.  With napalm and vast fleets of bombers.

And so on through the ages back to the dawn of humanity and on to our eventual demise; in all probability.

For those determined not to get caught up in the feverish nonsense of humanity it looks so absurd and unnecessary. So avoidable. 

The world is a bubbling, heaving mass of unnecessary “doing”. Whereas all we need “do” is to “be”.

To want what we have, not what others have got. To understand ourselves, to see what mean and ugly motives generally drive us.  To spend our time improving life by looking after our people, not filling our own pockets.

By ditching armies and war and by concentrating on science and improving our planet. By preventing the obscene injustice whereby the rich own the world and the rest lie in the dirt.

It isn’t politics, it’s simply decency.

So very little of what goes on in the world matters. Nothing matters really – except peace and love. What a silly phrase and yet how true.  The endless grubbing around like pigs in the dirt for more of this and that. The absurdity of economic growth and the destruction of the very base of our survival – a fragile planet.

How little we need to live a good life and yet we endlessly seek more. Always at somebody else’s expense.

Commerce is a zero sum game – someone is always on the take.  Trying to convince the losers he is on their side.

How often has all this been said. How many religions have taught all this and failed.

Lay down in front of the tanks. Even if only metaphorically. Vote for peace not war. Vote for equality not capitalism and commerce.

Lay down flowers. Look within to better understand the view without.

It’s never too late.