White Supremacy, Short Memories

Imperial doctrine

For a twenty four hour news cycle
After the killings black lives matter
The US is exposed for what it has always done
Hundreds of years of torture and slavery
Then white people go back to caring for kittens
and having Obama’s back.

Jinjirrie, December 2014

While US liberals and other chest-beating apologists for empire circle the wagons, wail and pontificate duplicitously about “blowback”, “context”, “fear after 9/11” and “torture tactics imported from Israel” when torture aimed at terrorising the innocent is what the settler colonial US has always done, more evidence from Udall indicates the empire is covering up the scale of its abominable torture practices.

As the top-down rhetoric shifts, the complicity of US administrations is downplayed – the CIA is being treated now as though it was an independent loose cannon, instead of overseen and applauded by US politicians, its torture practices long given the legal tick by the likes of Holder. Cheney would do it all over again. The impunity of the holey empire and its plutocrats must be sanctified. And so the criminal imperial juggernaut lumbers on, protecting its elite, sacrificing its knights. Shrouded by nationalist magical thinking, the empire’s white patriarchal capitalist culture of oppression remains intact.

Once again the bar for “permissible violence” by empire has been lifted, a triumphalist US public desensitized, and the likelihood of increased brutal oppression within the US of minorities and abroad against non-imperials more certain.

Related Links

Water Torture by the US of Phillippinos in 1902
Uruguay, 1964 to 1970: Torture—as American as apple pie
The US – safe haven for Nazi persecutors
US historical culture of torture – in the Phillippines 1901 – concentration camps, torture, atrocities
Operation Paperclip
Prosecute John Yoo, Says Law School Dean Erwin Chemerinsky
Dr. Nafeez Ahmed: “What we are seeing now is not the Obama administration putting an end to torture, but rather putting an end to the open acknowledgement of the use of torture as a routine intelligence practice.”

Poems of the Pre-Election Second Honeymoon

Progressive Except for Palestine

The almightiness of whiteyness
decrees rightness,
with blessings for oppressed
voters are impressed,
he’s green, hip and progressed
but won’t boycott and divest
for whitey knows best
it’s ‘counter-productive’ for all
when Palestinians make the BDS call.

Jinjirrie, August 2013

Political Interventions

no, i don’t buy your hate,
store it in the shed out back
with your cankering ideology to rot,
where greedy mindfucks creep
from your needy seething ego,
you tell me i’m the problem
behind your laboured disguise
of territorial invasion,
appropriation of a nation,
profit off others’ backs,
no treaty or compensation
though you crystalise, colonise,
racialise, sexualise,
for supremacist embroideries
one time and place cannot bend nor break
blaming them won’t save you
from neoliberal, patriarchal lies.

Jinjirrie, July 2013

The Pink Batts of Garrett

For romance, we discuss Midnight Oil, pink batts and refugees, pre-election alternating currents of Australian politics.

Instead of roses, he hands me a ping pong bat, and we play, listening to some pompous, racist LibNat on the radio drone on in Parliament.

I permit him to win the second set. Like hell I did. Halfway through, he reveals he played the first set left-handed.

I’ll forgive him, hand over chocolates and a political poster, cook him a nice roast chook and veg dinner. This is life as a radical feminist?

Jinjirrie, July 2013

The Law of the Gated Settler Community

stand your ground
while driving round
then hunt them down
it’s our justice in this town
we own justice in this town
that’s white justice in this town

for bullets in ceiling 20 years
privileged Amerikkka pushes fears
entitlement for white ‘pioneers’
it’s our justice in this town
we own justice in this town
that’s white justice in this town

Jinjirrie, July 2013

Origins

State of oranges roars
maroons and blues
these human tanks
like lemons bore
me to tears to be frank

Jinjirrie, July 2013

Refugee Shame

@KRuddMP
grew up empty
on a farm near Namboring,
lack of diversity a wedge for perversity
his rhetoric leaves us all snoring.

Jinjirrie, July 2013

“If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”
– Sun Tzu, The Art of War

“When strong, avoid them. If of high morale, depress them. Seem humble to fill them with conceit. If at ease, exhaust them. If united, separate them. Attack their weaknesses. Emerge to their surprise.”
– Sun Tzu, The Art of War

“Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win”
? Sun Tzu, The Art of War

Related Links

Rudd giving succour to white supremacists

Get busy acquiring your own economic productivity accessory and replacement unit. Here in Arsestralia, the government bribes people to breed unilaterally with hefty baby bonuses, to ensure increase in the number of locals, as opposed to taking in those scruffy undeserving refugees.

Shifting the goal posts to somewhere safe for settler colonials in Australia – Abbott and Rudd’s bipartisan opportunistic constitutional recognition of Indigenous Australians is short of a Treaty and may negate one.

Indigenous Debutante Balls: It is striking that many of these young women were growing up on, and around, Cummeragunja mission where every aspect of their lives was controlled by the Government, but they were also dressing in fineries and dancing.’

Zimmerman gets off.

Mr. Martin was walking back to his father’s girlfriend’s home when Mr. Zimmerman spotted him and called police to report a “suspicious” person. When a police dispatcher asked Mr. Zimmerman if he was following him, he replied, “Yeah.” The dispatcher said that was unnecessary.

What happened next is unclear. At some point, the two tussled, but no witnesses saw who started the fight. That left lawyers on both sides to try to fill in the blanks. Prosecutors called to the stand Rachel Jeantel, a friend of Mr. Martin’s who said she was on the phone with him moments before he was killed.

“Why are you following me for?” she said she heard Mr. Martin say. A voice responded, “What are you doing around here?” she said. Then she heard a bump and Mr. Martin saying, “Get off, get off,” Ms. Jeantel testified.

Classic rock musician Lester Chambers assaulted on stage at Blues Festival

“Dylan Here…. Lester was just assaulted on stage at The Russell City Hayward Blues Festival by a crazed woman after dad dedicated ‘People Get Ready’ to Trayvon Martin. He is on the way to the hospital now.”

They always get away

There will be a great deal said about what the verdict in this trial means, but, most fundamentally, we should understand that it means validation for the idea that the actions Zimmerman took that night were rational, the conclusions he drew sound, and that a black teen-ager can be considered armed any time he is walking down a paved street

Making the community ‘better’

Wendy Dorival, former coordinator of the Sanford Police Department’s neighborhood watch program, testified how she had worked with Zimmerman to set up a watch in his neighborhood.

When asked by prosecutor John Guy if neighborhood watch participants should follow or engage with suspicious people, she said no.

“They are the eyes and ears of law enforcement,” Dorival said. “They’re not supposed to take matters into their own hands.”

Similarly, Donald O’Brien, president of Zimmerman’s homeowners association, said it was his understanding that neighborhood watch members are supposed to “stay at a safe distance” and “let the police handle it.”

But Dorival said she was impressed with Zimmerman’s professionalism and dedication to his community.

“He seemed like he really wanted to make changes in his community, to make it better,” she said.

5 of the 6 jurors were white

Throughout the trial, the media repeatedly referred to an “all-woman jury” in that Seminole County courtroom, adding that most of them were mothers. That is true—but so is that five of the six jurors were white, and that is profoundly significant for cases like this one. We also know that the lone juror of color was seen apparently wiping a tear during the prosecution’s rebuttal yesterday. But that tear didn’t ultimately convince her or the white people on that jury that Zimmerman was guilty of anything. Not guilty. Not after stalking, shooting and killing a black child, a child that the defense insultingly argued was “armed with concrete.”

Talking to White People about the Zimmerman Trial Bingo

White people who kill black people in ‘Stand Your Ground’ states are 354% more likely to be cleared of murder

Great contrapuntal poem: No Country for Black Boys

On The Cat

may06 060Guest post from Kadaitcha reader Ray Nash:

“CAT, my dear Cat,

So common a name for such an enigmatic and enchanting creature. You are so much more than that, Cat. Words escape me, for I alone cannot capture that which I know to be true. Your presence seems locked into my soul. Your physical shape, your soft features and your fluidity of motion, as you move from place to place, complete my picture of the nature of life so perfect and whole.

A shame for those who see in you no good, a travesty against such a wonderful, precious and beautiful entity who so often is illegitimately misconstrued and misunderstood and the result of which is the laying of unfounded blame for bad deeds not actually done. They can never know what it is they somehow miss with their blinders of prejudice and never being able to see you simply as one who is a part of much that is good in this often-time world of sorrow, the goodness or feel of your endearing tenderness and love is beyond their comprehension.

When my gaze locks onto your mysterious far off one, I feel a symbiosis, a symbiotic bond between life cousins. There is no speech necessary, for we knowingly understand each other in so many ways. With part of you still in the wild and the other part willing to share with us humans your self-assurance and love. I hold you closely and dearly as I listen to your guttural purr. I feel your intrinsic entitlement to me, your ownership of me, and I am indeed yours forever. My wonderment in your actions and my appreciation of you continues to grow, even in your eventual death I can never let you go. We are more than just good friends, your presence has enriched me far beyond normal measures and made my life better.

Beyond flesh and bone, sinew and fur, you, CAT, are indeed so very much more than that. You are, simply, one of Mother Nature’s greatest and absolute treasures. And I love you!

-S&RNash”

Poems of Social Media Revolution

Garbage Disposal

I don’t want your chemtrails, 9/11 truth, wild theory fails
I can’t bear your bleating on of Haarp and reptile aliens.
I don’t want your nazi rants, your racism, your hate slants
I can’t stand your barking about Jewishness and eugenics,
I don’t like your Vets Today, your PressTV, your Daily Mail
Just shove it where the sun don’t shine, get an education,
I won’t embrace your Rothschild crap, your protocols, your sleazy trap,
I don’t want your Facebook spew, your conspiracies are dog do do.

Jinjirrie
June 2013

Resistance Rap

Dethrone cruel elites
Challenge their deceits
With the sole conspiracy
Uncompromising solidarity
Rejecting prejudice
Is easy with more practice
Refuse racist division
Real justice is the vision.

Jinjirrie
June 2013

Confronting Islamophobic Propaganda on Muslim Rage

Elise Hendrick [@translator_eli] takes a satirical look at the duplicitous efforts of mainstream privileged white media to promote bigotry and Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s islamophobic, faux-feminist views.

Newsweek Muslim Rage

Related Links

Films Don’t Start Riots
Did Police Use ‘Proportionate Force’ On Film Protesters?

Tired of the violence and stupidity

Jeff Sparrow on the neoliberalism of ruling elites who denigrate democratic protest.

In Australia, neoliberalism is understood largely as an economic model, characterised by the sweeping privatisations that Carr championed in NSW. But, actually, it’s more than that. Neoliberalism differs from a classical free market orientation precisely because it extends beyond the economy to embrace the entire social world, which it then recasts on market lines. The neoliberal project doesn’t just assign to the market those roles previously understood as quintessentially responsibilities of government (such as, say, the provision of utilities); rather, it recasts governance itself as an entrepreneurial project, with productivity and profit increasingly normalised as the criteria to judge success and failure.

In other words, neoliberalism effects a thoroughgoing depoliticisation. Most obviously, this manifests itself in a belief, now shared by almost all mainstream politicians, that government should not intervene in the market. This conviction – a consensus about the role of politicians as simply economic caretakers – already renders out of bounds most of the policies that previous generations of social democrats would have taken for granted.

More importantly, neoliberalism also recasts governance and the democratic process in market terms. The resulting political culture casts citizens as autonomous economic agents, relating to each other and to the state as individual entrepreneurs. The politician no longer appeals to party members, unionists, religious believers or specific communities; instead, he or she addresses individual consumers, touting for their business in much the same way as any other corporation.

In the neoliberal polity, it makes no more sense for citizens to rally than in does for, say, users of Apple computers to hold a march. In both cases, their role is simply to consume, with the ballot box understood as an extension of the cash register. If the latest iPhone is a dud, buy an Android; if the Labor Party’s been in power too long, vote Liberal.

Because democracy is understood as a market, rallies, protests, demonstrations and strikes seem, to the neoliberal, not as expressions of the popular will but as outrageous assaults on the democratic system.

To be clear, we’re not seeing the end of the right to protest, so much as its hollowing out. In the neoliberal era, tightly-controlled top-down events are still considered legitimate – witness the staged spectacles at the recent Republican and Democratic conventions in the US.

He’s my brother – why angry Muslim youth are protesting in Sydney
13 Powerful Images of Muslim Rage
Newsweek’s ‘Muslim Rage’ Cover Mocked Online
White Australia – Nation of Bigoted Climate Savers
Offending Muslims is different: on the Sydney protests

Upcoming Events

Challenging anti Muslim Bigotry: Why the left needs to defend the Muslim protests
Anti-Muslim Racism, Police Brutality and Imperialism: Why we stand with Muslim protesters: Including EYEWITNESS accounts of what ACTUALLY happened at the demonstration
Stand up to Racism and Rally Against Islamophobia