The New Dark Age

Thursday, 7 August 2025 — karlof1’s Geopolitical Gymnasium

As noted over the past several days, Roger Waters has released a new song, a ballad of resistance formulated in support of Palestine but also globally as Humanity seeks freedom from Western Oligarchy. Pepe Escobar has written a review of the song which I’ll share with you.

A YouTube version is posted here. Here’s Pepe’s review:

Roger Waters has got a brand new song. It’s called Sumud. A ballad, but not just another ballad: actually a timeless Hymn to Resistance. From now on, these sounds, and their rallying cry, should ideally straddle the global spectrum from Mali to Java, forging an already budding Global Resistance Alliance.

Gently, nearly whispering, setting up a Leonard Cohen-esque mood, Roger starts by introducing “Sumud” in Arabic: “steadfast perseverance”. As in non-violent everyday Resistance, at every level, against the occupation, exploitation and vicious, forced colonization of Palestine. But what’s at stake is even bigger, larger than life, as he evokes how “voices join in harmony” all the way to the positive, cathartic chorus. Resistance against injustice, conceptually, should imply the profound commitment of all of us.

Roger evokes martyrs from Rachel Corrie to Marielle Franco – “oh my sisters / help me to open their eyes” – bridging gaps “across the great divide” all the way to a state of awareness as “reason comes of age”.

The persistent, hypnotic theme of “Sumud” is the struggle to reach that stage of collective consciousness “when voices join in harmony”.

As we “follow our moral compass”, voices inevitably will come to a point of “standing shoulder to shoulder”. And “from the river to the sea”, “ordinary people just standing their ground” are and will be able to make their mark.

The long dark clouds comin’ down, over and over again, do not intimidate Roger’s intuition. He chooses to close “Sumud” in the most auspicious manner, evoking parallels with Buddhism: “Together these ordinary people /they will turn the ship around”.

How to turn the ship around

The notion of an ordinary people’s collective being able to turn the current ship of (dangerous) fools around could not be more at odds with the fully oligarch-orchestrated dementia of liberal totalitarianism cum techno-feudalism, totally out of control and bent on normalizing even genocide and forced starvation. This paradigm is set to intimidate, harass, demoralize and destroy exactly these “ordinary people”.

Roger, with a simple ballad, shows that turning the game around may be [IS] in the realm of the possible. This insight comes with age, experience, and mastery of one’s craft. Roger, after all, since the 1960s is one of the prime embodiments of Shelley’s intuition about poets being “the unknown legislators of mankind”.

Many of us spent our younger days mesmerized by the ceaseless exploration and experimental overjoy contained in “Relics”, Ummagumma” or “Meddle” – even before the outer space expedition to the Dark Side of the Moon.

On several layers, “Sumud” can be apprehended as a contemporary echo of–-what else–-the epic transcendental experience “Echoes” , whose lyrics are as crucial as the musical voyage: “Strangers passing in the street / By chance, two separate glances meet / And I am you and what I see is me / And do I take you by the hand / And lead you through the land / And help me understand the best I can?”

London in the late 1960s meets the Global Resistance in the mid-2020s: it’s all about human inter-connection. And once that happens, nothing is more noble than reaching towards a higher purpose.

It’s the same spirit already present in “Us and Them”: “With, without / and who’ll deny / it’s what the fighting’s all about.”

The defining fight of our time is how to turn the ship around from a death cult, with impunity, being able to unleash a homicidal potential equivalent to 12 atomic bombs in Hiroshima on a population ceaselessly subjected to serial assassination, famine and calculated extermination – live, on every smartphone across the world, and all that fully blessed by the collective West.

Is it possible to lead the fight just by brandishing–-and singing–-a ballad? Perhaps not. But that’s an almighty start. Resist. Persevere. Like the Houthis in Yemen – hailed as ethical heroes, with a clear moral purpose, by the Global Majority. Roger’s uplifting message is that one day, that rotten ship will sink. [My Emphasis]

I found it Dylanesque and simple enough for basic guitar players to strum. It joins the many protest and resistance songs that came before, but the focus isn’t only on Palestine and its resistance. The focus is on Humanity and the vital need to it to come together to beat the Corporate, Zionist, Neocon, Neoliberal, and Evangelical Christian War Pigs. Elders can offer sage advice, but the energy of resistance will need to come from the young, those under 35. Another thought is Roger’s Hymn is perfect for church and school choirs for there’s a gospel aspect to it begging to be explored. I don’t expect it to get much radio play since there are very few morally upright radio station remaining within the West. I hope it gets entered into Russia’s Intervision song contest, although it’s perhaps too late as the finale is on 20 September in Moscow.

Gym readers can listen and spread the link to their circles who can then spread it to their circles. The unsung premise is nothing will change if we don’t collectively challenge what we’re being subjected to. This short minute-long video message by Pepe is important to view and pushes that point home. Most of us are all older folk and veterans of many past protests that changed nothing, so we are cynical when it comes to trying again. The last time there was close to the current level of global solidarity was in 2002-3 in protesting the imminent illegal invasion of Iraq, which began the current round of West Asian Genocide, and in Iraq’s case continued the already ongoing genocide present there—a genocide many have forgotten. The Freedom Marchers never gave-in or gave-up, and I’m typing this from within the womb of that Movement, Birmingham, Alabama. The oppression and exploitation haven’t stopped, only the means have changed.