There are moments in modern history when the mask of liberal and humanist democracy – its efficacy always premised on Westerners having little inkling of the price paid by the global south for our relative affluence and fading freedoms – slips away entirely. Now is one of those moments.
Here’s Craig Mokhiber, a former top UN official in New York who has resigned after publicly accusing it of failing to address a “text-book case of genocide” in Gaza. His calmly incisive remarks apply no less to such hallowed entities as the EU, Nato and 5 Eyes – all complicit, for reasons set out here, to the most heinous crimes recognised in international law:
And here’s Caitlin, her post today offered in verse form:
As the lights go out in Gaza
In America they killed all the buffalo just to take away food from the natives,
made mountains of their skulls and posed proudly in photos
like they posed proudly in front of burnt bodies after lynchings in the south.
In Australia they stole the brown children and gave them to pale families
and watched their ancient civilization disappear into the toxic fumes of industry
like a sailboat into the mist.
In Israel teenagers play with buttons that cause explosions on screens
and look forward to the end of the Gaza operation
so they can leave and go play better video games.
In Gaza mothers clutch tattered pieces of flesh and clothing to their chests
and scream names that will never again be answered
and call out questions to the heavens that will also go unanswered.
And the ghosts of the buffalo roam through the ruins
looking for their heads
while the people of Gaza comb through the rubble
looking for their dead,
and the rest of us stare at screens and cry like babies
and ask our own unanswered questions
of heavens clouded by the fumes of industry,
vanishing stars above a dying world
as the lights go out in Gaza
one by one.
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