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

Poems Of Domestic Revolution

Tenant from Hell (from Other People’s Lives)

He cares not for mundane semiotics –
weeks of encrusted dishes mount,
all year I’ve begged the bludger
to wash the house,
sombre as my roiling mood,
disdain for stains and smudges
curses my brain.
Mould seethes from wall to ceiling,
the rot’s set in …
devolution is inspiration
for deconstructive brilliance,
cadging appreciation
of Lacanian castration.
Ragged spiderwebs in corners
mock and spin since he moved in,
from nights of carousing toil
empty cans pattern the yard
with post-structural foil,
laundry unspeakable with foetid heaps,
garden weed-festooned
like his scruffy tangled beard,
I, or is it my ego, struggle not to weep.
He clicks the remote for the footy game,
derisively philosophizes Derrida,
oblivious to temporal flames.
Someone has to clean it up
and I guess it won’t be him.
His mind’s immersed in existential
anguish of being, not doing,
my discomfort his convenient exegesis
to carve another tidy thesis.

Jinjirrie
July 2013

Domestic Inconsistencies (from Other Peoples’ Lives)

I

She made me do it, didn’t get the hint.
Simple things change. It didn’t feel right.
There had been others. I owed her no reason.
Too old, too bright, too cosmic,
her song had ended.
She came to take her furniture.
After all I’d done for her. I needed it.
She stood her ground.
Her quietness incited,
inviting me to strike.
The barbed truth prodded my hands
to encircle her neck,
clasp her thin body and throw it
like a curse across the room.
Who would have thought
she’d be so light. I didn’t mean to.
She bounced off her old table,
fell against her lounge,
head cracking.
I nearly laughed, pushed her from my house.
Hurled her bag after her.
She provoked it, this matter of perspective.
Everyone says there’s always two sides.

II

He dropped the blade on our love,
smiled when he dismissed me.
Kept my furniture. To compensate for
all he’d done for me.
So I visited to ask for my heater to keep me warm
now I was alone.
Like Anne Boleyn on the block,
my head in his hands,
across the room I flew,
ricochetting off the table against my old lounge.
My head rings still.
Once he called me his gentle rose.
Excuses are words, not blows,
not the black petals on my body.
I’ll extract the thorns,
release the angry pus in private.
Everyone says there’s two sides and
asks whether I provoked him.
I stood my ground, wept,
now weep no more.

Jinjirrie
April 2013

Love Me, I’m a Liberal Zionist


Oh, I cried at Sabra and Shatila,
The tears ran down my spine,
And I cried when Rabin was gunned down,
As though I’d lost a father of mine.

But I don’t sympathise with Zoabi,
Her antics just cross every line.
So love me, love me, love me, I’m a liberal.

I love Ray Hanania and J-Street,
Their message of peace speaks to me,
I curse Lieberman and Netanyahu,
For their counterproductivity.

But don’t talk to me ’bout apartheid,
It’s so complicated, you see.
So love me, love me, love me, I’m a liberal.

I remember the spirit of Oslo,
My faith in the process restored.
I had hoped that the Palestinians,
Would renounce all that I had deplored.

But no, they crap on ’bout “oppression” –
It’s not about whose ox was gored!
So love me, love me, love me, I’m a liberal.

I cheered for Obama in Cairo,
I know that he’ll soon turn the tide;
His call for a two-state solution,
Just makes my eyes well up with pride.

He knows that we must change the discourse,
There’s just too much hate on both sides.
So love me, love me, love me, I’m a liberal.

The ideological settlers –
It seems nothing will give them pause.
I can’t understand how their minds work:
They need to read Grossman and Oz.

But until the Pallies find Gandhi,
You won’t find me joining their cause,
So love me, love me, love me, I’m a liberal.

These boycotts, divestments, and sanctions,
Do not help the cause of peace.
Can’t you see that the two warring factions
Need dialogue and not thought police.

By the way, did you know that Barghouti,
Goes to uni in Tel Aviv?
So love me, love me, love me, I’m a liberal.

There was a time I thought quite diff’rent,
I freely admit it, you see.
I bought a book by Lenni Brenner,
And once I defended Chomsky!

But now I’m much older and wiser,
And I hope, one day, you, too, will be-
So love me, love me, love me, I’m a liberal.

Adapted from Phil Ochs, Love me I’m a Liberal by Elise Hendrick and republished from her blog.

A Spell to Decontaminate White Supremacism

Zigging and Zogging

torah or talmud, who needs books,
you just have to take a look
at all the media run by da jooos
holed up in hollywood
with their sneaky moves

and in the big banks
plotting 9/11
when they’re not sellin crack
to the poor black bums

payola to pollies
so they run the whole show
it’s a global conspiracy
don’t yah know

reptilian illuminati
and protocols malign
freemasons and aliens
blame it on zion!

it ain’t my fault
my daddy was rich
my ma was good lookin,
and you’re from the ditch,

it wasn’t my choice
that i was born white
must have been somethin’
da jooos did, right?

Sylvia Posadas August 2012

Written for my dear friend, poet and critic Emma Rosenthal, on the occasion of yet another act of cowardice by a white supremacist.

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