Mohammed Abed AFP
Jawaher, Dina, Samar, Ikram and Tahrir
Killed Monday December 29th by an Israeli air strike in the Jabalia
refugee camp
If you had contemplated the victim's face
And thought it through
You would have remembered your mother
In the gas chamber
You would have been freed from the reason for the rifle
And you would have changed your mind:
this is not the way to find one's identity again.
From: Under Siege
Mahmoud Darwish
Translated by Marjolin de Jager
I say: how is it my concern?
I am a spectator.
He says: no spectators at chasm's door
And no one is neutral here.
And you must choose your part in the end.
So I say: I'm missing the beginning, what's the beginning?
From: I Have a Seat in the Abandoned Theatre
Mahmoud Darwish
Wednesday, 31 December 2008
Five Sisters
Barcelona:
Divendres 2 de gener 2009 concentració a Pl. St. Jaume 19h.
Dissabte 10 de gener 2009 manifestació a Pl. Universitat 17h.
http://www.aturemlaguerra.org/
Tuesday, 30 December 2008
Though the wars are different and years apart.
The fourth day and still they continue:
Operation Solid Lead they call it and from some saner Jewish
voices I learn it comes from a children's poem by Nachman Bialik:
Teacher bought a big top for me
Solid lead the finest known.
In whose honour, for whose glory?
For Hanukkha alone.
Hanukkha is the Jewish winter Festival of Light...
Have they no shame, no compassion?
TV news says the dead are now 360 with more than
1500 injured.
And 4 Israelis.
But what can you do against the fourth military power in the
world, aided and abetted by the first?
Or raise bare hands to say: Stop
Barcelona, Travessera de Gracia. 29.12.2008
Outside the Spanish-Israeli Chamber of Commerce.
Sunday, 28 December 2008
Palestinian Firefighters. Look different.
Hatem Omar. Associated Press.
With the wonderful video of Barcelona Firefighters from Friday,
I was planning to post a little about their role in rescue operations
during the air raids on Barcelona in the Civil War.
The present gets in the way.
"Firefighters at the site of a bombing of a Hamas security
compound" said the caption on the New York Times' report.
Where are the helmets, the masks, the protective uniforms?
A search for "Palestine Firefighters" on the net frustratingly,
ironically, gives you Palestine, Texas.
It seems the real Palestine hardly has a fire brigade at all, relying
on trained civil defence workers and a few Japanese donated
engines.
But then, under siege since long before yesterday's brutal,
unjustifiable attacks, Palestine hardly has anything at all.
Imagine life under these conditions:
...Having your free movement denied by enclosed population
centers, closed borders, regular curfews, roadblocks, checkpoints,
electric fences, and separation walls. Having your homes regularly
demolished and land systematically stolen to build settlements for
encroachers in violation of international law prohibiting an occupier
from settling its population on conquered land.
Having your right to essential services denied - to emergency health
care, education, employment, and enough food and clean water.
Being forced into extreme poverty, having your crops destroyed,
and being victimized by punitive taxes. Having no right for redress
in the occupier's courts under laws only protecting the occupier.
Being regularly targeted by incursions and attacks on the ground
and from the air. Being willfully harassed, ethnically cleansed,
arrested, incarcerated, tortured, and slaughtered on any pretext,
including for your right of self-defense. Having no rights on your
own land in your own country for over six decades and counting.
Vilified for being Muslims and called terrorists, Jihadists, crazed
Arabs, and fundamentalist extremists. Victimized by a slow-motion
genocide to destroy you.
So begins an article:
Israel's Slow-Motion Genocide in Occupied Palestine
by Stephen Lendman.
There are other voices, if you bother to search.
And others.
As some news articles report: Israel has launched an intense
diplomatic and media PR campaign to blame Hamas and
justify the killings.
Truth and lies.
Hazem Bader AFP/Getty Images
"Hamas must stop launching rockets into Israel. The United
States holds Hamas responsible for breaking the ceasefire...
We understand that Israel is reacting to the hundreds of
rockets that have been fired upon the innocent people of
Israel... (1 fatality yesterday - after the attack on Gaza).
We want the ceasefire restored but we also understand
(repeat message) that Israel is responding (at least 271
dead 700 injured) to Hamas's repeated rocket attacks on
the innocent (repeat message) people of Israel."
Gordon Johndroe, spokesman for the National Security Council
from Texas where Bush is holidaying at his ranch.
And celebrating what he has done
to this world.
And Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni asks us to understand.
I must be stupid.
Saturday, 27 December 2008
Barcelona Firefighters. Punk Not Dead.
Soundtrack: Nirvana Stay Away
Have just seen on the news that fire fighters have been called out
360 times in the last few hours - Catalonia is in the middle of
violent snow and sea storms.
I remembered had been meaning to post this video...
For the last few months Barcelona Firemen have been fighting
for better work and pay conditions. According to their web Plataforma Bombers Barcelona
just before Christmas they reached a beginning of an agreement.
Hope so.
Wouldn't want any of our dear city councillors to drown or freeze to
death in their SUVs.
Saturday, 13 December 2008
Love the Poster David
The other Hitler
David Irving
Do talk to your press people.
I think they mean this is the title of the conference David Irving
will be giving, or trying to, in Barcelona this evening.
Same Nazi bookshop.
Same hate and lies.
Prefer this one
Shepard Fairey's poster defending the right of
same-sex couples to marry.
From the campaign against California' Proposition 8.
Spain was the third country to legalize marriage between
homosexuals, in July 2005.
I believe in freedom, so I suppose David Irving should
be allowed to speak, if only to show himself for what he is.
But you remember the millions who died, and it's hard.
Between 10,000 and 15,000 homosexuals were exterminated
in Nazi concentration camps.
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