A performance piece for Dionysian Heights. Part Two: Death
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it - George Santayana
This is a revision of the earlier video with something that I consider more appropriate both to us at the time, the feel of the piece, and how I feel right now. The music is the same and I’ve edited lots of WW2 video archive material to fit, where possible, to the sounds.
Recorded circa 1980-81
The music was created by Crawling Chaos as accompaniment to a performance piece by Zyclon B Zombies called Dionysian Heights, a morbid and gory on-stage blood fest with real offal and copious quantities of ketchup.
See http://crawlingchaos.co.uk/1145/zyklon-b-zombies-death/
All music copyright Crawling Chaos
All video and images are in the public domain, free of copyright or under creative commons’ licences. They’re all available here on the wayback machine. These are what I used:
n.b. My dad missed The Battle of Leyte Gulf (some of the footage here) though he was at D-Day and then was part of the British Task Force 57 at Okinawa on his ship, HMS Slinger. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Pacific_Fleet
This piece is dedicated to my dad and folks like him
Crawling Chaos: Zyklon B Zombies Work Back along, Crawling Chaos were asked by Curly Jhon and Mackie to do some background music for a performance they intended to do under their moniker Zyklon B Zombies. The performance was called Dionysian Heights, the name appearing as a band name on the Foetus Products’ compilation Blood Samples...
I’ve cleaned up the above track a bit although it’s still 14Meg in size and lasts quarter of an hour. It’s classed as Crawling Chaos although only two members took part in this version. This version of Zombie Dance is part of a commission given to Rees and Jeff by some chums, Zyclon B Zombies,...
85% reduction in queen (and thus new hive) production
10% smaller hives
Disorientated bees – the bees can’t find their hive and die…
US migratory beekeepers loading tractor-trailer load of bees for transport from South Carolina to Maine to pollinate blueberries. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Reasons, Nazis and Jews – What are Neonicotinoid Pesticides?
IG Farben (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
There are many candidates for CCD and pesticides are just one possible or contributory factor. Things like bee predators, mites, electromagnetic radiation, loss of habitat…. it’s quite a long list.
However, the two studies above seem to be pretty secure controlled studies that looked at one factor (the neonicotinoid pesticides), examining the bees in isolation both with and without the expected non-lethal local dosage of the chemicals so as to eliminate the other possible causes.
Acetamiprid – Aventis (French conglomerate inc. Rhône-Poulenc, Hoechst and others)
Clothianidin – Bayer, Takeda
Dinotefuran – Mitsui
Imidacloprid (the most widely used insecticide in the world) – Bayer
Nitenpyram – Novartis (formed from Zeneca, Ciba-Geigy, Sandoz)
Thiacloprid – Bayer
Thiamethoxam- Bayer, Syngenta (another entity formed from Zeneca, Ciba-Geigy, Sandoz)
Fritz ter Meer (1884-1967) at the Nuremberg Trials. Ter Meer was I.G. Farben official, member of NSDAP. This photograph of ter Meer (probably as a defendant) was taken by US Army photographers on behalf of the Office of the U.S. Chief of Counsel for the Prosecution of Axis Criminality (OUSCCPAC, May 1945 - Oct. 1946) or its successor organization, the Office of Chief of Counsel for War Crimes (OCCWC, Oct. 1946 - June 1949). (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Bayer
What’s interesting from this list is how often Bayer pops up in the neonicotinoid (a neuro-toxin) story.
It famously made Zyklon B, which made a poison gas and was one of the main methods of murdering Jews and others by the Nazis during WW2. It did this under the conglomerate business name of IG Farben which was broken up post war by the allies into the original business entities, Bayer being one, and it’s still around now!
A Bayer (IG Farben) boss, Fritz ter Meer, served 7 years post WW2 for his crimes and then was immediately made supervisory board chairman of Bayer. His crimes included designing a satellite concentration camp to Auschwitz. Some Nazi industrialists & businessmen were executed, like Bruno Tesch. Several other convicted Nazi War Criminals got high-powered jobs following their release, just like ter Meer.
Karmic Retribution
What I see as a reason for the bee decline ultimately relates to our overall karma.
It is not retribution against individuals directly. The bad karma affects us all, now, because we have continued to allow processes to continue which harm ourselves and our environment. The disappearing bees are just one manifestation of this.
Ter Meer got his nice job back at Bayer, probably because he was the best person to do it, especially at this critical period of rebuilding Germany. We could say that he continued his life’s work of creating death by chemicals (which I’ve cunningly yet disingenuously alluded to in order to attract your attention!), but it must be remembered that alongside Zyklon B, the same businesses created many products which are essential to our productive farms and lifestyles. Aspirin, for instance. Fertilisers as another.
In fact, Fritz Haber, whose academic work was enthusiastically taken up at IG Farben and others, demonstrates the dichotomy of human nature by inventing chemical warfare while simultaneously inventing a process to fix nitrogen from the air to make fertiliser (or explosive, since it’s the same thing). One gives life benefit, one removes it completely. As it says on Wikipedia,
“The food base of half of the current world population is based on the Haber-Bosch process”
Haber’s karmic retribution was swift and fast. Whether he knew or felt it is beside the point. It happened.
His wife shot herself because of her guilt over his personal supervision at the 1st gas release on the Western Front.
Their son who found her, was so appalled by this and his father’s actions, that he committed suicide in 1946 (like survivor guilt, I suppose.).
Haber was Jewish, rewarded by the Nazis who used his gas Zyklon A, developed into Zyklon B to murder Jews and others during the holocaust.
Many members of Haber’s extended family were killed in the Holocaust.
Direct Karmic Attention
A honeybee on an apiary, spreading feromones to 'call back' her collegues, showing her nassanoff-gland. Location: Tübingen-Hagelloch. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
But now we can easily see, that by continuing the bad processes, by continuing the bad ideas, by continuing the bad attitudes of the past, the actions of the past have started to hit us all full in the face.
Bees are just part of it.
Our disjointed energy & food policies of “live today, pay tomorrow” are just larger examples of the wider issue.
To fully understand how we should proceed in our lives and how we interact with others and our environment, we need look no further than some key Buddhist principles, laid out before us a very long time ago by Siddhārtha Gautama. He said:
right view,
right intention,
right speech,
right action,
right livelihood,
right effort,
right mindfulness,
right concentration.
This is called The Noble Eightfold Path, and if we all paid attention to it and acted sincerely with it, then we’d all be a lot better off.
Coroner and Law I’m often struck when reading the papers or news, to see the coroner’s verdict on someone’s death as: Ending his own life while the balance of his mind was disturbed Well they have to say something, it’s their job, but the phrase is very peculiar. Take this couple, the Milners, who were...
In a weird co-incidence that I missed at the time, I’ve just found that the plans for the Auschwitz death camp were put on display during my Austrian visit earlier this year. This visit very soon prompted my outburst on the pontificating nutty bishop, Richard Williamson (see The Face of Evil from 20 Feb...
Jeff and myself hardly spoke for over 20 years yet I find I miss his presence on the planet more than I’d have thought possible.
I think that at the root of it all is the unrequited wish by myself that somehow things would be alright between us, that in the end, maybe we’d collaborate again, but of course, there’s no chance of that, certainly in this lifetime.
All that I can say, on this day (is it really two years), is that I hope that wherever your spirit is, it fares well.
In Buddhism, there’s a saying that Buddhas meet time and again, lifetime after lifetime, which I hope (although I believe ) that this is so.
Jeff’s interests, when I knew him and when we lived in each other’s boots, were wide, and included pure physics, astrophysics, metaphysics, much research into the paranormal, out of body experiences and the like. On top of this were ancient civilisations, their habits, myths and religious activities, plus literature & music (e.g. The Crawling Chaos) of which he had broad eclectic tastes, not always, but more often than not, keyed to my own.
So what’s to be said, what’s to do? How I wish you were here.
I know! Play some music where Jeff and myself had some connection.
I hope so.. To say that I’m dissatisfied with the affairs of men on our world and how they behave towards each other would be a bit of an understatement....
The Hell of Incessant Suffering and the Land of Tranquil Light Note: This was originally published here http://buddhastate.co.uk/blog/?p=30 on Sunday, September 24th, 2006 at 4:28 pm and filed under Buddhism.. The link has been dead for quite some time, looks unlikely to re-appear, so I’m showing the words here as they are so wonderful because...
Atlantic Ocean Floor Profile Following the (as yet unresolved) crash of the Air France airbus on flight AF 447, much has been made about the ocean floor having huge cracks and being very uneven. Most atlases, online and TV news reports say this and back the statement up with visual imagery of the bathymetry. See...
I booked an appointment to make a will today. I’ve never made one before – it feels really, really weird. A bit like the arrival of a first child, it’s one’s connection and a brutal reminder of the reality of life and death, sickness and old age; things that almost everyone in the Western world...
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