Premonition of the
Check Mate at Dawn
The Preemptive Strike
Unlike the work "The Checkmate of the Red King in a Mountain Rainstorm", this work depicts the checkmate of the White King by surprise in a pre-dawn preemptive strike indicating stealth and night battle capability of the opposing force, which, oddly enough, is not a red knight but a white one, indicating treachery within, civil war or a defeat from a former ally.
This shows the quagmire of Afghanistan. Notice the white king is not defeated by any red chess piece, yet some red is visible, but principally the white king is defeated by a white knight. But the terrain in the last painting is not the 'Gan. It is a "fat" (rainy) country like the East Coast of the United States. Regardless it is linked to the defeat of the red king in Afghanistan, The 'Gan in the land of the Five Stans. There is the location of incredible petroleum reserves, the focal point in the lost instincts of man to recarbonize the biosphere.
This is actually entrenched in a deep sociological quagmire of an historic situation which I can tell you would require an extreme amount of careful research in the field, starting with the history of the Afghanistan region. Historically, it was an extremely inhospitable terrain, where only very hardy peoples could survive. Since antiquity, the trade routes stretched through there from the west through the Punjab, the Five Rivers, and into the Indian Subcontinent. Many in the region subsisted as raiders historically.
In addition, colonialism had terrible misconceptions and one or two correct assumptions. In the twentieth century, when the empires faded, they left a vacuum that gave rise to a lasez faire isolationism that resulted in a reversion to prehistoric tribalism in undeveloped nations which also is manifesting itself in the gangs of the developed world as well. These center around a strong man or war lord, as it were, with an assistant figure using belief systems to put the will of the people on the side of the leader. This phenomenon is incompatible with contemporary political compromise and therefore can become the undoing of such systems that become ensnared in it's territorial domains.
The conflict takes place nocturnally, indicating that it is between belligerents that "own the night". There's just one problem with that and it's something modern business hasn't figured out either (they're not very smart, you know). The human being is not a nocturnal animal. To get maximum productivity from a human, you have to give him or her seven to nine hours of unbroken nocturnal sleep after waiting twenty minutes in darkness, have them wake up before dawn and make sure they're outside for the sunrise. You have to think of the biology, in this case, circadian rhythms.
So those working a third shift in peacetime or fighting during dark using night vision devices in war will soon find out that they are achieving only a substandard performance at best no matter how well motivated they may be. I propose a doctrine that it is possible to defeat a force that depends on night warfare if you go on the offensive in a pre-dawn situation and mount effective night defenses. Night vision devises are cumbersome and vulnerable in field conditions. The same is true of businesses that use a third shift or alternate personnel between two day time shifts. It is possible to beat competition that does so if you confine your operation to a single day shift and if you combine all three shifts into a predawn to sundown time slot.
This may also be an indication of the defeat of the white king. The defeat of the red king was symbolized as a knight skillfully using the terrain. Now it appears that the white king is also defeated by the same knight.
Is it really all that? Or is it simply a depiction of a chess match published in the New York Times back in 1966? You can't tell for sure. Maybe I could, but for now, I'm too tired. Let us conclude with this: premonition or not, if you just take a good and careful look, you can see it coming.
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Copyright © 2003 [Paul Hall]. All rights reserved.
email address: art@paulhallart.com