One week into Ramadan I’ve found that it’s not the abstaining from food or water that’s my biggest test, it’s finding the patience to witness a genocide unfolding and being told to go about life as usual. Fasting from food and water can be taxing, but there’s nothing harder than not actively hating our political decision-makers for 14 hours a day.
With each passing week I feel more frustration because I've truly run out of ways to express how dire the genocide in Gaza really is. As a writer, I think of language as a tool, often the only weapon at my disposal to inform or raise awareness or remind people that death on such a massive scale is unacceptable. But the weeks continue to tick by, and the death toll continues to climb to a number impossible to estimate because any recording infrastructure has been targeted and destroyed by the apartheid state of Israel.
Gaza is no longer on the brink of famine or bordering on the complete collapse of its healthcare infrastructure, it is currently in the midst of it. But don’t take my word for it, the European Union foreign policy chief said this week that, “In Gaza we are no longer on the brink of famine, we are in a state of famine, affecting thousands of people. This is unacceptable. Starvation is used as a weapon of war. Israel is provoking famine.” I’m not sure how much more clear the language could be and I’m not entirely sure what good the language is doing anymore.
Consider this a weekly reminder that if a large majority of our population wants to see an end to our involvement in genocidal war crimes but our government officials refuse to listen and instead choose to double down on funding and supporting these atrocities, we might not actually live in a democracy. Wait a few months and watch as Biden supporters try to convince you to support a demented geezer by claiming that his opponent will usher in the collapse of America. Buddy, don’t threaten me with a good time. This country has brought nothing but pain and suffering to not just most of the outside world, but to the majority of its own people as well.
In the end, the only words regarding the apartheid state of Israel that truly matter were written and spoken decades before I was born and indeed long before October 7, 2023. The writer James Baldwin put it best all the way back in 1979 when he wrote:
“But the state of Israel was not created for the salvation of the Jews; it was created for the salvation of the Western interests. This is what is becoming clear (I must say that it was always clear to me). The Palestinians have been paying for the British colonial policy of "divide and rule" and for Europe’s guilty Christian conscience for more than thirty years.”
Side Items
What Are We Dune?: I’ll admit, I took the time to watch the much-discussed new Dune film that was released earlier this month. It’s quite a long film, so those of you who complain about the length of a movie should probably just wait for it to be streamable so you can split the viewing over the course of a week or two. The film stars Tiny Timothee Charcuterie as Paul Muad’Dib Atreides, an odd choice to have the guy who recently made jokes about Palestinian resistance to violent occupation play the leader of a group of rebel fighters on a desert planet, but I digress. What I found most interesting about Dune is the anti-colonial themes of the movie, commodified and neatly packaged for western audiences to enjoy without thinking too much about the real life parallels to what they’re seeing. When it comes to fiction, Americans are remarkably capable of watching and even rooting for the indigenous dark-skinned warriors surviving in underground tunnels in the desert using primitive weapons against a technologically advanced regime of pale soulless psychopaths brutally occupying their lands for decades. Zero critical thinking skills on display, just pure mindless entertainment
Boeing Assassination: A former Boeing manager who raised concerns about the safety of certain aircrafts was suspiciously “found dead” outside a hotel in South Carolina last week. John Barnett, 62, was a quality manager for Boeing for more than 30 years, and was discovered on a Saturday morning in a car outside a Holiday Inn, suffering from what the Charleston County Coroner’s Office claimed was a “self-inflicted gunshot wound” (yeah right). Barnett was a real thorn in the side of the airplane (and weapons) manufacturer, as he was exceptionally capable of reciting "details of incidents from a decade ago, and specific dates, without looking at documents", something that apparently irked Boeing’s overpaid lawyers
Toodles Tik Tok: Looking back, it was really only a matter of time. A foreign-owned social medium that simultaneously disrupts the western media monopoly and provides access to almost-unfiltered information for millions of Americans was destined to be banned. Tik Tok has become particularly dangerous for America’s political class, as millions of young Americans, many of whom have only ever known a very US-controlled media landscape now have access to the perspectives of people around the world. The result is idiots like California representative Nancy Pelosi claiming that they don’t actually want to end Tik Tok, but rather that their proposed legislation is “Tic Tac Toe, a winner”