The Internet As Habitat

Suck
Suck

NARCISSOIDS

they drink your whine
surreptitious
needy
arseholes
faking
sliming
controlling
squeezing
spitting pips
you’re all sucked up
weighed by vacuum
balance of power
on their side
found wanting
your surfeit of trust
shallowed you
bathed you
trophied you
away they slither
remorseless
remoras
all bravado
and bag of tricks

February 2015

FACEBOOK IS DOWN

Oh noeeees, millions of peeps collectively frown,
what will they do while Facebook is down!
No cute cats or kids or political scrums
how empty the lives of deprived Facebook bums!
Was it those cunning lizards sent by Icke
To confound us all with reptilian tricks?
Or chemtrails seeping slyly into the server
To poison us with conspiratorial fervour,
Bah, ’twas just a blip, a crack in the stack
Sneer and cheer, tweeps, for Facebook is back!

February 2015

HORIZONTAL IS GOOD

Who can breathe?
the poseurs squeeze hard
blame others’egos
project personal ambition
their insecurities
dreams of conquest
multitasking
insights
dreary phds
publications
publishers
glorious leftist careers
push competition aside
top down squash and mash
the revolution as steamroller
party over people
principles for bullying
because some dead man said so
who’d vote for these freaks
who call one ‘liberal’
at whisper of dissent?
vicariously policing
what’s left of the left
they don’t see the wank in their own eyes
who can breathe beneath such fuckery
full communism?
full of themselves
not my communism
who in their left mind would want it?
who can breathe?

February 2015

British Jews Against Genocide Protest Outside the Offices of the Board of Deputies of British Jews

The Board of Deputies of British Jews is condoning genocide in Gaza. They don’t represent us.

British Jews Against Genocide Protest
British Jews Against Genocide Protest (Copyright)

Today, 4 August 2014, outside of the offices of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, on the 27th day of Israel’s military attack on the Gazan people, Jews in Britain Against Genocide staged a die-in to commemorate the hundreds of Palestinian children deliberately targeted and killed by Israel. We displayed toys, clothes and replicas of mutilated children and babies smeared red to symbolise the blood of Palestinian children murdered by Israeli forces.

We are Jews in Britain outraged at the Board of Deputies’ uncritical support for Israel as it commits genocide against the Palestinian people in Gaza.

The Board of Deputies claims to speak in our name when it lobbies in defence of Israeli violence. It organises with the Zionist Federation rallies in support of Israel’s slaughter. It demands that John Prescott be punished for comparing Gaza to a concentration camp (Daily Mirror, 26 July 2014). It attempts to intimidate local councils for flying the Palestinian flag as an expression of solidarity with Gaza, and has written to the prime minister thanking him for his support for Israel’s massacre in Gaza. It cynically uses the Nazi genocide of Jews to silence critics of the Israeli genocide of Palestinians.

We Jews know, from our history, about persecution, concentration camps, starvation and murder. Israel has turned the Gaza Strip into a concentration camp by imposing a seven-year military siege, by restricting access to food, water, fuel and medical supplies, by imprisoning 1.8 million people and squeezing them even further by imposing no-go areas within the Gaza Strip.

In the current assault on Gaza, entire families are killed and neighbourhoods obliterated. UNICEF has condemned Israel for deliberately targeting women and children. Nearly 400 children have been murdered in less than four weeks, and more than 2000 have been injured and maimed. Gaza’s dead children are dead simply because they are Palestinians – this is genocide.

At least a quarter of a million Gazans are homeless because of Israeli bombing. There is nowhere safe to escape to — Israel has bombed UN-protected schools, hospitals and other UN buildings, killing civilians seeking refuge. Ten thousand people have been killed or injured. The bombardment of Gaza from the sea, land and air increasingly turns Gaza from a concentration camp into a death camp.

We support the Palestinian call for boycott, divestment and sanctions (BDS) and in particular we demand that the British government end its complicity in genocide by first of all ending its arms trade with Israel.

The Board of Deputies claims it wants Israel to be treated fairly and impartially within British society, but in fact it demands exceptionalism. It wants Israel to be exempted from any sanctions in spite of its apartheid and now its genocidal campaign against Gaza.

We accuse the Board of Deputies of condoning the atrocities the State of Israel commits in Gaza by attempting to silence Israel’s critics. This massive blood stain will not go away.

We accuse the Board of Deputies of joining with the anti-Semites in equating Zionism with Judaism and telling the world that all British Jews support Israel. That is a lie.

Jews in Britain Against Genocide

________________________________________

NOTES

Genocide is defined by the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide as any act committed with the intention of destroying in whole or in part a national, ethnic, racial or religious group. http://www.un.org/pubs/cyberschoolbus/treaties/genocide.asp

Concentration camp is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as ‘a place in which large numbers of people, especially political prisoners or members of persecuted minorities, are deliberately imprisoned in a relatively small area with inadequate facilities, sometimes to provide forced labour or to await mass execution’

Le Trio Joubran and Mahmoud Darwish

Mahmoud Darwish (13 March 1941 – 9 August 2008)

‘This siege will persist until we teach our enemies
models of our finest poetry

the sky is leaden during the day
and a fiery orange at night… but our hearts
are as neutral as the flowery emblems on a shield

This low, high land
this holy harlot…
we do not pay much attention to the magic of these words
a cavity may become a vacuum in space
a contour in geography’

from State of Siege

‘I am dreaming of white lilies
of a song-filled street
a house that’s well-lit.
I want a good heart
not the weight of a gun’s magazine.
I want a day & its sunlight
& no fascist victory exultation in it.
I want a smiling child in this day
not an issue of the war-machine.
I came here because I thought a sun
was approaching its zenith not setting.
I refuse to die
turning my gun my love
on women & children
to guard the orchards & wells
of oil tycoons & tycoons of weapons factories.’

from “A Soldier Dreams of White Lilies

I Have Behind the Sky a Sky

I have behind the sky a sky for my return, but I

am still polishing the metal of this place, and living

an hour that foresees the unknown. I know time

will not be my ally twice, and I know I will exit

my banner as a bird that does not alight on trees in the garden.

I will exit all of my skin, and my language.

And some talk about love will descend in

Lorca poems that will live in my bedroom

and see what I have seen of the bedouin moon. I will exit

the almond trees as cotton on the brine of the sea. The stranger passed

carrying seven hundred years of horses. The stranger passed

right here, for the stranger to pass over there. I will soon exit

the wrinkles of my time as a stranger to Syria and the Andalus.

This earth is not my sky, yet this sky is my evening

and the keys are mine, the minarets are mine, the lanterns are mine, and I

am also mine. I am the Adam of two Edens, I lost them twice.

So expel me slowly,

and kill me quickly,

beneath my olive tree,

with Lorca …

Related Links

Mahmoud Darwish, “Unbeliever in the Impossible”

Poems by Mahmoud Darwish

Mahmoud Darwish Biography

Selected Works: On the 5th Anniversary of Mahmoud Darwish’s Death

Successful BDS Protest at Max Brenner, Parramatta

BDS rally at Max Brenner, Parramatta 19/9/12From the Palestine Action Group Sydney:

150 supporters of Palestine staged a rally in Parramatta in support of the global campaign of boycotts, divestment and sanctions against Israeli apartheid today. The protest was timed to also commemorate the massacres at the Sabra and Shatilla Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon 30 years ago.

The Police had yesterday requested the Palestine Action Group cancel the event, but organisers decided to proceed as planned.

Demonstrators were addressed by South African activist Kolin Thumbadoo, who was president of the Anti-Apartheid Movement in Australia during the campaign against apartheid in South Africa.

In his speech Kolin stated, “As I was then, I am now, an implacable, unapologetic anti-racist. As I was opposed to a white minority regime in South Africa, so to am I opposed to a racist Zionist regime in occupied Palestine.”

The protest marched to the Max Brenner chocolate shop in Parramatta to highlight it’s connections with the Strauss Group, an Israeli corporation which publicly supports two of the most notorious brigades in the Israeli Defence Forces, the Golani and Gavati brigades.

“Just as in the struggle against Apartheid in South Africa, companies that support or profit from Israeli Apartheid should be boycotted,” said one of the protest organisers, Patrick Langosch.

The Palestine Action Group plans to hold more demonstrations in the future to continue to support the BDS campaign and the struggle of the Palestinians.

Related Links

BDS Action at Max Brenner, Parramatta – Photo Slideshow

Julian Assange Speaks from the Ecuadorean Embassy

Memorable:

“There is unity in the oppression. There must be absolute unity and determination in the response.”

“The United States must renounce its witchhunt against Wikileaks.”

“The United States must pledge that it will not persecute journalists for shining a light on the rich and powerful.”

“The US war on whistleblowers must end.”

“Bradley Manning must be released. If Bradley Manning did as he is accused, he is a hero and an example to all of us and one of the world’s foremost political prisoners.”

Related Links

South American bloc adopts resolution on UK threats to Ecuador
No Assange DNA on torn condom – report :

‘The report said staff at two forensic laboratories were unable to find conclusive evidence of Mr Assange’s DNA on a torn condom provided by one of two women who claim to have been assaulted in August 2010.

However, the same analysts have found DNA believed to belong to Mr Assange on a condom from a second woman, The Mail on Sunday reports.’