I don’t want to write about food
or visits to the stupormarket
while people in Gaza are being
starved to death deliberately by
Netanyahu and the profane AukusPorkus
Coalition of the Swilling and Killing
I don’t like family Easter feasts
mindless gobbling, pomp and ceremony
when children are taught to associate
death of a political martyr and fluffy things
obscene chocolate gluttony
built on child plantation labour
while Aboriginal children of Australia
are under curfew in Alice Springs
crime rises with wealth inequality
I don’t like celebrating another ritual
capitalist appropriation of religion
in service of the white supremacist
colonialist patriarchal ruling class
an intersectional rort built on annihilation
and subjugation while an impossible virgin
smiles benevolently despite her loss.
This solstice, celebrate trees with their gift of diversity and life, conserve dwindling resources from human predation, and aim at ending all tyrannies, capitalism, racism and bigotry and especially US imperial hegemony, the dominion of apartheid Israel over Indigenous Palestinians and Indonesia over West Papuans.
In the home zone, here’s to de-amalgamation of Noosa from the development-crazed southern Sunshine Coast vultures and protection of our UNESCO-designated biosphere in March – even if the rest of the planet goes down due to pollution and over-consumption, at least we succeeded in living in harmonious sustainability with the environment in Noosa!
Me to parent as one surveys the mountains of child-placating crap: ‘Wow, what a lot of plastic!’
Parent: ‘I never got anything at Christmas as a child so I am making sure my kids get everything!’
Me: ‘So you really spent thousands of dollars on yourself.’
Parent: ‘We can spend hours together building this rare R2D2 lego model!’
Me to child: ‘Did you get any books?’
Child: ‘No, just this instruction manuel for Power Rangers’.
“This was done by hostile divers and identical sabotage was carried out to the Swedish ship, Juliana,” ISG spokesman Raymond Deane told DPA. “The inference is that the saboteurs were Israeli,” he said.
“This is attempted murder. The damage done to the propeller means that the ship could have sailed but the propeller would have come up through the hull after some time. We are a small ship and we would have gone down,” Deane added.
The Israeli embassy in Dublin said it had no connection with the incident and no information on it, Ireland’s national broadcaster RTE reported.
Six of the 20 crew and passengers who intended to sail on the MV Saoiree will transfer to another ship in the flotilla, ISG said. Those include former Ireland rugby player Trevor Hogan and Paul Murphy, a Socialist Party Member of the European Parliament, as well as ISG campaign coordinator Fintan Lane. They are joining activists on board the joint Italian and Dutch ship in the flotilla.
State Department deputy spokesman Mark Toner said Thursday the U.S. has seen no independent confirmation of the ships having been sabotaged, yet nevertheless stated that “our opinion that’s been stated very clearly from the State Department, both from the secretary down to this podium, is that these flotillas are a bad idea.”
The sabotage against the Irish and Swedish boat, both of whose propeller shafts were similarly damaged, could just as well have been done by US navy divers, as a favour to Israel.
Minister Gilmore said he takes the matter seriously.
“I do have concerns about it, and that is something that is going to have to be investigated initially by the Turkish authorities,” the Tánaiste said.
“I would take a very serious view of it, if it turned out that there was sabotage of that vessel.”
Mr Gilmore last week told Israeli ambassador to Ireland, Boaz Modai, that any interception of the flotilla must be peaceful.
He said while the activists were well intended and well motivated, they had been warned it would it would be dangerous to travel on the MV Saoirse vessel and on the mission.
“I met with a delegation from the people who are travelling a couple of weeks ago and subsequent to that I met with the Israeli ambassador and made it clear to him both what our travel advice was but also our expectation that there would not be a repeat of last year and that people who engaged in what is essentially a form of peaceful protest activity, that there is not to be a disproportionate response to that activity,” he added.
Sinn Féin leader Gerry Adams has also called for a probe into the incident.
“The Irish government has a responsibility to protect Irish citizens abroad and must demand answers from the Israeli government on this matter,” Deputy Adams said.
“I would also urge the government to ask the Turkish authorities to carry out a full and thorough investigation into what has occurred.”
This is a recurring pattern: first demonization, then legitimization (to act violently ). Remember the tall tales about sophisticated Iranian weaponry coming through arms-smuggling tunnels in Gaza, or those about how the Strip was booby-trapped? Then Operation Cast Lead came along and the soldiers hardly encountered anything like that.
The attitude toward the flotilla is a continuation of the same behavior.
“The arrival of thousands of Muslim infiltrators to Israeli territory is a clear threat to the state’s Jewish identity,” Danon told The Jerusalem Post.
“The refugees’ place is not among us, and the initiative to transfer them to Australia is the right and just solution.
“On the one hand, it treats the refugees and migrants in a humane way. On the other hand, it does not threaten Israel’s future and our goal to maintain a clear and solid Jewish majority,” he explained.
The PLO General Delegation to the U.S. said in response that while it respects the right of Senate members to pass resolutions expressing their views, “we urge them to use an even-handed, fair, and unbiased approach when addressing their concerns on the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.”
The delegation added that “the Israeli government has failed to reciprocate, and Prime Minister Netanyahu has repeatedly chosen a policy of land grabbing and settlement expansion over a just solution to the conflict and an end to the Israeli occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip.”
