Empiricals

this is a poem about feelings
here’s some money
to collaborate with invaders
how do you feel?
if this poem is white supremacy
there’s a euro boot on your neck
how do you feel?
if this poem is a dominant force
do you resist?
do you understand your oppressor
forgive them and heal them
be nice to the boot
as it crushes you to death
if this poem is oppression
if this poem is about land theft
whatever you do, don’t judge whitey
that won’t feed them
this is a poem about irony
it’s not about me
it’s never fair
divide and rule
they take your share
can’t you see
it’s not about you
they’re never kind
they have your absence in mind
this is a poem about hegemony
this is a poem about genocide
when there’s none alive to object
nowhere left to hide

October 16, 2023

Gaza Guernica

Those who remain silent and pretend to be neutral about deliberate psychopathic criminality, which Israel has conducted against the people of Palestine since 1948 in order to steal their land become complicit with genocide.

As Desmond Tutu said:
“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor. If an elephant has its foot on the tail of a mouse, and you say that you are neutral, the mouse will not appreciate your neutrality.”

Raz Segal, an Israeli expert in modern genocide:

‘I think that, indeed, what we’re seeing now in Gaza is a case of genocide. We have to understand that the U.N. Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide from 1948 requires that we see special intent for genocide to happen. And to quote the convention, intent to destroy a group is defined as racial, ethnic, religious or national as such that is collectively, not just individuals. And this intent, as we just heard, is on full display by Israeli politicians and army officers since 7th of October. We heard Israel’s president. It’s well-known what the Defense Minister Yoav Gallant said on 9th of October declaring a complete siege on Gaza, cutting off water, food, fuel, stating that “We’re fighting human animals,” and we will react “accordingly.” He also said that “We will eliminate everything.” We know that Israeli army spokesperson Daniel Hagari, for example, acknowledged wanton destruction and said explicitly, “The emphasis on damage and not on accuracy.” So we’re seeing the special intent on full display. And really, I have to say, if this is not special intent to commit genocide, I really don’t know what is.’

The parallels with British colonial genocide of Aboriginal people in Australia are striking.

‘The analysis of the frontier genocides waged against the Aboriginal Tasmanians, the Yuki of California, and the Herero of Namibia reveals a surprisingly congruent pattern despite the fact that the cases took place on different continents, under different regimes, and in different periods. The pattern divides into three phases. Colonists initiate the first by invasion. Economic and political
frictions then develop between the two groups as they struggle for limited resources and political power. Unable to compete with the invaders’ technology, arms, and wealth, the indigenous people find their economy fundamentally threatened and basic political rights denied under the settler regime. Aboriginal people begin the second phase by attacking settlers and their property in an attempt to regain access to economic resources, reclaim lost land, protect political rights, or exact revenge. Settlers and their government then retaliate, but cannot quickly defeat the indigenous peoples’ guerilla insurgency. Out of frustration and expediency, the invaders choose a “final solution” to the military conflict.

During and after the genocidal military campaign, the settlers’ government initiates the final phase by incarcerating Aboriginal people in camps that bear comparison with the Soviet gulag. In these reservations, settler governments continue genocidal policy though a varying combination of malnutrition, insufficient protection from the elements, inadequate medical care, overwork, unsanitary conditions, and violence.’

Referendum Day

Scrub Turkey
I go to vote on stolen land
while across the world
another criminal mob of European settlers
slaughter mercilessly again
though she’s married to another man
stolen because the Beast says they can
the myth of empty land common to thieves
convenient nullification of the locals
for demonisation and extermination
if they didn’t have Western agriculture
how could they deserve their native home
I sing Treaty Yeah and Kev Carmody
Midnight Oil and Paul Kelly
I sing of never ceded sovereignty
as on a British constitution
there’s no end to the colony
a no means yes and yes means no
rubber stamps for white supremacy
while Albo cheerleads Israel’s bone harvest
holding his sickening white pride high
caring only for colonizers’ tears
yet the chant of Jimmy Blacksmith
rings in my ears
this sordid settler colonialism
when never again meant never again
yet again there’s genocide
usual suspects backpatting cheerfully
the latest vicious lawnmower regime.

Jinjirrie, October 14, 2023.

Under Western Capitalism, White Lives Matter Most

Australian Settler Coat of Arms

The Settler

First they wanted me to hate on Aboriginals because they lived on land I wished to farm in my British way.
Kill them, poison them, send them to missions, enslave them on *my* properties.

Then they wanted me to hate on China because the pig-tailed Chinese came here to take *our* white gold.
Massacre them, hunt them down – let Lambing Flat be a lesson to them.

Then they wanted me to hate on Islanders better used here toiling as slaves on *my* cane plantations.
Let them live apart from me, and if they rebel, kill them.

Then they wanted me to hate on Europeans because they weren’t proper British whitey like me.
Send them to Silver City, Villawood and the factories.

Then they wanted me to hate on Vietnamese because the US said so.
Kill the commies, they are against my bulging property portfolio.

Then they wanted me to hate on Iraqis, Palestinians, Iranians and Muslims because the US said so.
I have powerful mates with big guns. I like big guns.

Now they want me to hate on China again because the US empire is falling and the West needs all the gold, always.
I hate. I am obedient. It is my gold too. I am capitalism. I am colonialism. I am imperialism. I am a statue in your town. White blokes are the best. I am the war on terror. I am terror.

Jinjirrie, June 2020

Relevant Australian Racism Links

Gamilaroi man, Luke Pearson:

‘White supremacy then and white supremacy now, is an innate belief in the superiority of whiteness, sorry, of Western civilisation. This is why we are so often told that we should be thankful for invasion. That it was a good thing, because without invasion I wouldn’t have an iPhone! Without white invasion, we’d still be ‘stuck in the past,’ or even worse, we might have been invaded by ‘the Chinamen,’ (which I’ve been assured would have been way worse for us because, apparently, ‘in comparison with white races’ they are ‘unequal and inferior’).’

Gareth Evans on rising sinophobia in Australia.

Invasion Day 2019

Crinum

Whitey Lament

I am not a bloody racist
Never comment to their faces
I have some very good black friends
You’re up a shit creek deadend
Can’t you see my smile
is politely nice and bright
I’m the genuine true blue article
from well-meaning #NotAllWhites
Intersectionally proud
of all my whitey cultures
What’s this crap you’re spinning
about capitalist social structures?
Who needs a republic
the mother ship gives us so much
All the lovely white things
sugar, flour, cotton and such
and why shift our Straya day
why do you want to #ChangetheNation?
We’re the lucky country, aren’t we?
be happy in your station.

January 2019

Updates

How could these barbarians do this to the memory of such a brave and noble British explorer!! Australia would be an empty wasteland without British colonialism, that great spreader of civilisation across the globe!! Mining and farming profits should not be taxed and used to extend even more civilised white British influence everywhere!!!

Racism toward courageous white exploiters of an empty land is intolerable!!!!

Invasion Day 2018

Settler Colonialism

False Muse

what is this verbose cotton wool
but suffocation of truth?
sentinel poet effuses verse
for privileged settlers
descant to daily injustices
chorused in white racist media
relentless revisions of theft and denial
endless rights and return betrayal
triumphalism of patriarchal curses
veiled advice to contaminate resistance
normalise collaboration
embrace post-colonial defeat
tender submission to ongoing genocide
for security of invaders
boot must sink in hard
negative peace sucks the bones
such brave generous poetry
healing to conqueror spirit
a noxious complicity with drones
rubbing noses of oppressed
in the misery of their predicament
with hubris of beauty and art
escaped red lines revealed
in anodyne alliterations
and poetic capitulations

January 26, 2018

Invasion Day

Invasion
Invasio
Invasi
Invas
Inva
Inv
In
I

January 26, 2018

Related Links

“The new campaign to deny the Aboriginal genocide, led by Quadrant, was taken up in the Australian mass media by a chorus of right wing columnists with records of antagonism to Aborigines and “leftist” supporters, and easy access to a wide public.”

In Genocide and Resistance in Southeast Asia by Ben Kiernan.

‘Even within the realm of literature, political writers and readers knew that their enemies were active. In 1956, Richard Krygier, head of the local arm of the Congress for Cultural Freedom, established Quadrant, explicitly intended, as he put it, as ‘a counterweight to the kind of leftism so evident in Meanjin.’ The founders of Quadrant liaised about their project with ASIO and Prime Minister Robert Menzies; their funding came primarily from the the Congress for Cultural Freedom.

Yes, that’s right – Quadrant, that scourge of tax-payer funded arts organisations, owes its existence to money secretly siphoned from American taxpayers courtesy of the CIA.’

https://overland.org.au/2014/06/overland-and-the-cia/

‘ After a series of exposes and repudiations of the CIA connection, in 1967 McAuley published a careful response in Quadrant admitting the funding from the CIA was ‘deplorable’, but no more than ‘a well-intentioned blunder’. His defence that he had been an unwitting recipient of CIA largesse has been restated by the new editor of Quadrant and by its previous editors. Yet how was McAuley so unaware when Clem Christesen knew the money came from the CIA as far back as 1956? How was it that the editor of Quadrant had shown so little curiosity as to the source of money being so liberally handed out? A quick perusal of McAuley’s editorials give the flavour of the invective he would employ should the editor of a left-wing magazine discover he had ‘unwittingly’ been receiving 40% of his income from the KGB.’

http://jacketmagazine.com/12/pybus-quad.html

‘THE conservative magazine Quadrant has accused the Australia Council of political bias after its annual grant for next year was cut by 30 per cent, from $50,000 to $35,000.

Quadrant’s editor, the historian Keith Windschuttle, a key protagonist in the history wars who denies that the removal of Aboriginal children from their families was racist or deliberate policy, has written to subscribers saying the decision by the council’s literature board was ”patently political”.’

http://www.smh.com.au/national/quadrant-cites-political-bias-for-15000-funding-cut-20091221-la2e.html

‘The troubles Quadders has with Ozco funding might suggest that they would have an easier time returning to the CIA as their main funding source. But wait – in Cassadnra Pybus’s The Devil and James McAuley, we learn that the Congress for Cultural Freedom (the irony-free CIA front set up to pay for magazines like Encounter and Quadrant) repeatedly warned the magazine’s early editors that it was too politically strident, and not publishing enough of genuine cultural worth.

Got that? Even the CIA thought Quadrant didn’t publish enough good poetry.’

https://www.crikey.com.au/2009/12/21/rundle-windschuttle-screams-blue-murder-over-quadrant-funding-cut/