Symbolic Power Plays

Isenheim Altarpiece at Colmar - Niclaus of Haguenau and Matthias Grünewald 1512–1516Here’s another in the Unoriginal Patriarchy series, which commenced with Sol Invictus.

Take It To The Max

thorned on cross
cock no more crows
triumphant,
yet salutes her
mourning below.
while lambs vie,
coquetting with lions
on foreign barricades
medusa snakes writhe
disapproval
in mother’s grimace.

kill it, kill her now
recruit sisters,
initiate daughters
kill them too –
kill them all,
in bloodwash
this whiteness, this whiteness
eternal redemption,
supremacy,
damnation.

Jinjirrie, January 2016.

‘The first act of violence that patriarchy demands of males is not violence toward women. Instead patriarchy demands of all males that they engage in acts of psychic self-mutilation, that they kill off the emotional parts of themselves. If an individual is not successful in emotionally crippling himself, he can count on patriarchal men to enact rituals of power that will assault his self-esteem.’

– bell hooks, “The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love”, 2004

The Imperial Bourgeois Rag

Hieronymus Bosch- - '"A Violent Forcing Of The Frog."
Hieronymus Bosch – ‘”A Violent Forcing Of The Frog.”

My principles are lofty,
my politics so cool,
and if you dare to disagree,
I’ll push you in the pool.

I follow only brightest bulbs
who shine the truth for me,
and if you don’t embrace them too,
I’ll string you up a tree.

Ch:
Black and white,
left and right,
walk in bourgeois footsteps
or vanish in the night.

You insignificant naive prawn,
you’re at my beck and call
and if you don’t worship me
I’ll eat you, tail and all.

There’s only one way to look at this
despise me if you must,
and if you fail to follow me
I’ll throw you under the bus.

December 2015.

Partly inspired probably years ago by Red Gum’s classic “Beaumont Rag”

The Dictator Quadrille

Whtie Saviours of Arabia

The Dictator Quadrille

Did you cheer when NATO boots smashed into the face of Afghanistan?
those evil Taliban, hate hate hate, such primitives, more sanctions
and the wall came down, Brzezsinski crowed.
Did you party when US bombs destroyed the Koranic library in Baghdad,
because democracy is messy? So Cheney gloated.
Saddam is gone, pushed off the long drop.
Aren’t they better off now? history is a sweet crude encumbrance.
Did you share a joke or two when Gaddafi was clubbed in a culvert,
raped with a knife – all hail NATO, such zealot humanitarians,
AFRICOM, civilised pointy ends over means,
millions of liquidated lives afri-forgotten beyond trothawk triumph at chaos.
Great white saviours! power vacuum cleaners armed with fake incubator Saudi sat pics
sarin barrel WMDs chemical Putin Niger uranium Lockerbie Russian attacks.
Empire gives notice to the latest demon of infinite malevolence, Assad,
usurps the right to protect us all from remembering,
betrays landlocked Kurds again already.
Do you recall Halabja, Amiriyah, Fallujah?
The price, Madeline snarled, was worth it, and who paid?
not nationalist PR agents in their recliner rockers, hunched over lethal keyboards.
Your pillars of wisdom are mirages of multi-imperialism,
Syriabara buttressed by indifference to brown people squatting on our oil,
may they buy our weapons as penance.
Once venerated as obedient dancers, dictatorships topple dramatically when they stand on imperial toes.
Like Alice, the last thing you remember is the cat’s grin above the chess board,
then repeat after me, “I don’t care, I don’t care, I don’t care” as you disappear.

October 2015

Related Links

“For the last year-and-a-half we have said Assad has to go, but how long and what the modality is … that’s a decision that has to be made in the context of the Geneva process and negotiation,” Mr Kerry said.’ http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-09-20/kerry-calls-for-renwed-effort-on-syria-conflict/6789582
Assad ‘part of solution in Syria’ — Julie Bishop signals policy change  http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/foreign-affairs/assad-part-of-solution-in-syria-julie-bishop-signals-policy-change/story-fn59nm2j-1227544502722?sv=73a358828d8d737433cc8b39f524c09f
The Red Line and the Rat Line http://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n08/seymour-m-hersh/the-red-line-and-the-rat-line
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/saddam/kurds/cron.html
A Great Analysis of the Neocon BS the Guardian Has Been Selling Lately

“You can really have no notion how delightful it will be
When they take us up and throw us, with the lobsters, out to sea!”
http://www.authorama.com/alice-in-wonderland-10.html

“Brzezinski: It isn’t quite that. We didn’t push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.

Q: When the Soviets justified their intervention by asserting that they intended to fight against a secret involvement of the United States in Afghanistan, people didn’t believe them. However, there was a basis of truth. You don’t regret anything today?

Brzezinski: Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter: We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.

Q: And neither do you regret having supported the Islamic [integrisme], having given arms and advice to future terrorists?

Brzezinski: What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?

Q: Some stirred-up Moslems? But it has been said and repeated: Islamic fundamentalism represents a world menace today.

Brzezinski: Nonsense! It is said that the West had a global policy in regard to Islam. That is stupid. There isn’t a global Islam. Look at Islam in a rational manner and without demagoguery or emotion. It is the leading religion of the world with 1.5 billion followers. But what is there in common among Saudi Arabian fundamentalism, moderate Morocco, Pakistan militarism, Egyptian pro-Western or Central Asian secularism? Nothing more than what unites the Christian countries.”

http://www.counterpunch.org/1998/01/15/how-jimmy-carter-and-i-started-the-mujahideen/

Hasbaroid

Hasbara

Hasbaroid, he was a hasbaroid
Scummier than you and me
Hasbaroid, for a hasbaroid
Palestinians must not be free.

Hasbaroid, he was a hasbaroid,
One talking point too many
Hasbaroid, for a hasbaroid
Palestinians must not be free.

And he bored us a lot
and he had a job
of selling lies for Israel
to cover up its crimes.

He was a hasbaroid

Hasbaroid, he was a hasbaroid,
his friends were unaware,
hasbaroid, he was a hasbaroid,
nobody even cared,

Hasbaroid, he was a hasbaroid,
One talking point too many
Hasbaroid, for a hasbaroid
Palestinians must not be free.

and he bored us a lot
and he had a job
of selling lies for Israel
to cover up its crimes.

He was a hasbaroid
He was a hasbaroid

June 2015
(Apologies to Devo)

Related Links

The elevation of an Israeli minister to deal specifically to BDS is a clear signal that Israel regards BDS as a significant threat to its apartheid, violent oppression of Palestinians.
New funding for hasbara:

“In addition, as Hasbarah Minister, Erdan will be given 100,000,000 shekels ($25.7M) in his first year of office exclusively for coordinating international events to counter the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel. ”

Lapkin’s turgid asseveration trots out the current hasbara talking points and attacks the left, BDS and antizionists who oppose a racist Jewish state.
Omar Barghouti:
‘Netanyahu has declared, in effect, that BDS – the Palestinian-led movement of boycott, divestment and sanctions – is the new Iran.’
Israel’s latest hit mission against divestment on campus – intimidating pro-Palestinian students and threatening their careers. Israel sure knows how to delegitimise itself.
Ali Abunimah exposes Beinart’s hypocritical lib zio hasbara.
As if Ynet hasn’t donated itself as a mouthpiece for scurrilous Israeli regime propaganda forever.
Hasbara directed at fundamentalist Christians

“While the global, Palestinian-led BDS movement for Palestinian rights has proven to be a truly tough challenge for Israel’s regime of occupation, settler-colonialism and apartheid, we think there is substantial exaggeration in the recent panic-driven, racist and patently propagandistic Israeli attack on the movement.”

Adelson described three components of his Campus Maccabees concept: donors who will fund the operation; activists on the ground willing to take the fight to the campus; and researchers who will supply information about the anti-Israel groups and recommend possible legal avenues to block their activities.
Perpetrator of multiple war crimes, Elliott Abrams, pushes dirty propaganda against BDS in Newsweek
Decode the US hasbara against BDS
Current StandonUs team from the organisation that brought you pepperspraying of JVP members, portraying themselves as victims
Liberal zionist hasbara: Zonszein attempts to blame BDS for stifling of dissent in Israel.
Peter Beinart trounced by Yousef Munayyer in debate. Liberal zionism is yet again revealed as an immoral, undemocratic ideology.
South Africa’s “finest young leaders” invited on Israel lobby junket
‘Gerald Steinberg, founder of NGO-Monitor, a group that tracks anti-Israel activity of Israeli non-profits including Breaking the Silence, told TheBlaze Sunday that “any credibility given to Breaking the Silence is another blow to Israeli perceptions of the U.S.”’
Zionist AMCHA Initiative group fails to have a student-led course on the history of Palestine at the University of California at Riverside (UCR) shut down
Israel’s mockery of foreign war correspondents backfires
Hasbara and the Case for Cultural and Academic Boycott of Israel
Israeli government reps spying on activists at conferences
Israel has a long-standing policy of using cultural events to burnish its international image.

“We are seeing culture as a hasbara tool of the first rank, and I do not differentiate between hasbara and culture,” Israeli foreign ministry official Nissim Ben-Sheetrit explained in 2005.

Negative views of Israel soar in the UK, new survey shows
Israel criticized for touting Nepal rescue while Gaza is still in ruins
Israeli defense minister promises to kill more civilians and threatens to nuke Iran

#JeSuisWanker

Why is it that the utter wanker
casts opprobrium like an anchor,
weighing on unwary minds,
what makes the wanker so unkind?

Are they bitter, untimely ripped
from cold mother’s sullen tit,
or revisiting rage they often felt
with vicious father’s lashing belt?

Around the net they prance and rant
and none can trump their pious cant
or measure up to righteous gall
the world’s an ass, they know it all.

Backstabbers, zionists, liberals, preachers,
dictators, imperialists, loathsome creatures,
racists, conservatives, merchant bankers,
a howling horde of complete wankers.

January 2015

The Three Rings of Hell Downunder

first,
i wrote because it felt like singing
without music, even if only
i heard the unsung tune
yet Quadrant had CIA instructions
to keep their sacred staid tomes
cleansed of profane experiments,
these rebellions of mine –
still i versed, a contrary Australian.

then,
i found no royalties were due to
the spoken word unless it had a tune
a musician I’d be to live by art alone
sneaking in poems like thieves
at the start of raucous sets
while composers of minimalist scrapings
would earn a decent crust –
still i versed, lest words rust.

finally,
the Grabbits cut through the ABC
and what do they dump first? it’s poetry
for Poetica has died upon the vine
what is left to placate my mind
all is accompaniment to this thirst
and all have forgotten what came first,
the subtle taste of language’s dream –
still i verse, and curse the regime.

January 2015