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It is to you I speak, antipodal men,
I speak man to man,
with the little in me of man that remains,
with the scrap of voice left in my throat,
my blood lies upon the roads, let it not, let it
not cry out for vengeance!
The death-note is sounded, the beasts hunted down,
let me speak to you with these very words
that have been our share-
few intelligible ones remain.
A day will come, surely, of thirst appeased,
we will be beyond memory, death
will have finished the works of hate,
I will be a clump of nettles beneath your feet,
-ah, then, know that I had a face
like you. A mouth that prayed, like you.
When a bit of dust, or a dream,
entered my eye, this eye shed its drop of salt. And when
a cruel thorn raked my skin
the blood flowed red as your own!
...
A day will come, no doubt, when this poem
will find itself before your eyes. It asks
nothing! Forget it, forget it! It is nothing
but a scream, that cannot fit in a perfect
poem. Have I even time to finish it?
But when you trample on this bunch of nettles
that had been me, in another century,
in a history that you will have canceled,
remember only that I was innocent
and that, like all of you, mortals of this day,
I had, I too had a face marked
by rage, by pity and joy,
an ordinary human face!
"The Israeli army was saying: 'This is the Israeli Defence Forces, we are asking all the people to leave their homes and go to the school. Ladies first, then men.'
"We decided to send the women first, two by two," he said.
First to step outside was the wife of his cousin, Rawhiya al-Najar, 48.
"The army was about 15 metres (50 feet) away from the house or less. They shot her in the head," he said.
The woman's daughter was shot in the thigh but crawled back inside the house, he said.
For several hours, the family telephoned the Red Crescent, human rights organisations and Palestinian Authority officials in Ramallah in the hope of co-ordinating safe passage to evacuate people injured in the earlier shelling, Mr Najar said.
Several hours later, no help had arrived.
"We decided that's it, we're going to die, we are [going] to run and all die at once," he said.
"When we did that they started shooting with heavy ammunition from a machine gun on top of a tank," he said.
All the adults carried white flags, he said, adding that he was still grasping a piece of white cloth as he spoke over the telephone a day later.
"They told us you all have to go to the centre of the town, where the school is.
"We put the women first, and we put our children on our shoulders, with white bandanas on their heads.
"When we were walking, with the women first, they saw soldiers and they started to shout to them, to tell them 'we have children, we have children'. They started to shoot us. My aunt was killed with a bullet in her head."
... the ICRC said it found four small children who had waited with their dead mothers, apparently with no food or water, for four days last week.
Mr Shtewi said 17 children - aged between six weeks and 15 years, and six women, were in the house in the west of the neighbourhood.
"We have tried to leave the house during the three-hour humanitarian ceasefire, but we got shot at," he said.
It's a new year, a new Nakba, and an old scene; Israel is bombarding Gaza once again and the world is standing idly by, sitting on a fence very different from the electrified border fence encaging Gaza, or the separation wall dividing and ghettoizing the West Bank. The world sits on the fence, justifying Israel's massacre of a civilian population already dying from the siege....
We are four ambulances out tonight, versus two last night. The ambulances weave nimbly along blacked-out streets of a manufactured ghost town -- like the streets all over Gaza -- dodging fresh piles of rubble,
It's absolutely impossible, unbelievable, it's a massacre. "They know no limits now," the medics report. "They are going crazy."
We pass shells of houses, mosques, schools and shops, and see streams of panicked residents fleeing for their lives. Many more began to flee this morning after yet another night of bombardment on and around their houses. (...)Acrid smoke from the shelling poisons the air. The feeling of being utterly surrounded by war planes, tanks, bulldozers and warships increases as news comes of the latest attack around Gaza: an orphanage in Gaza City, near the Palestine Mosque, with whispers that the holy place is next, marking at least 10 mosques destroyed. The number of dead and injured from the attack on the Ibrahim al-Makadma Mosque today is 11 and 50 respectively, and rising.
The calls for help from the northwest region, and from 500 kilometers east of this ambulance station, must go unanswered. The medics must coordinate with Israel via the ICRC. A bitter irony; the occupier denies permission to leave, the occupier invades, the invader kills and injures, and -- beyond belief -- holds the power to grant permission to retrieve those that the invader has injured or killed.
My article ends in continued disbelief -- to the thuds of explosions and Apache blades; to the staccato of firing into the night; and to blasts hitting unknown targets with an unknown end.
Poems by Mahmoud Darwish translated into English by As'ad AbuKhalil :
Oh, my proud wound
my homeland is not a briefcase
And I am not a
traveler
I am the lover, and the land is my beloved!
...The archeologist
is busy with stone analysis
he is looking for his eyes in the burial of
myths
to prove that I
am:
a passerby in the path,
without eyes!
Not
a letter in the
sojourn of civilization!
And I plant my trees, slowly,
and
about my
love, I sing!
...
Promises of the Storm
So let it be...
I have to reject death
and to burn the tears of
the songs that are soaked with blood
and to strip naked the olive trees
from all the fake bushes
And if I am singing for joy
from behind the frightened
eyelids
it is because the storm
promised me wine...
and new toasts
and rainbows
and because the storm
brushed away the sound
of lazy birds
and the borrowed bushes
from the standing trees
And let it be...
I have to brag about you,
o, wound of the city
You are the portrait of
lightening in our
sad nights
The street frowns at my face
and you protect me from
the shadow and the looks
of hate
I will sing for joy
from behind the frightened
eyelids
since the storm hit
my homeland
It promised me wine,
and rainbows
......
Our Country is a Graveyard
Gentlemen, you have transformed
our country into a graveyard
You have planted bullets in our heads,
and organized massacres
Gentlemen, nothing passes like that
without account
All what you have done
to our people is
registered in notebooks
.....
O, ye homeland, repeated
in massacres and songs
Point out to me
the source of death
Is it the dagger
or the lie?
From the Poem of Land
O, those who are departing to
the mountain of fire
pass on my body
O, those who are departing to
the Rock of Jerusalem
pass on my body
O those who are crossing
on my body
You shall not pass
I am the earth in a body
You shall not pass
I am the earth in its awakening
You shall not pass
I am the earth.
O you who are crossing on
earth in its wakening
You shall not pass
You shall not pass
You shall not pass!
...and they searched his chest
but they only found his heart
and they searched his heart
but they only found his people
and they searched his voice
but they only found his sadness
and they searched his sadness
but they only found his prison
and they searched his prison
but they only found themselves
in the chains.
...
I have the wisdom of a person sentenced to death
I have the wisdom of a person sentenced to death:
Nothing I own to own me,
I wrote my will with blood:
"Trust in water, o residents
of my song!"
And I slept bloodied
and crowned with my future...
I dreamt that the heart of the earth
is larger than its map,
and more clear than its mirrors
and my gallow.
And I fancied a white cloud
that can take me higher
like a hoopoe, and wind is my wing.
And in the morning,
I was awakened by the
call of the night guard
from my dream and
from my language:
You will live another death,
so revise your last will,
execution time has been
postponed again,
I asked: until when?
He said: Wait until you die further
I said: Nothing I own to own me
I wrote my will in blood:
"Trust in water
o residents of my song!
Murdered Victim No. 48
They found a lantern of flowers
in his chest, and a moon
While he was stretched out,
dead, over a rock
They found some pennies in
his pocket
they found a matchbox,
and a travel permit..
On his young hand
there was a tattoo...
*
His mother kissed him..
and she cried one year for him
And a year later, boxthorn
sprouted in his eyes
and darkness intensified
And when his brother grew
he went looking for a job
in the city markets
They imprisoned him..
He did not have a travel permit
He was carrying a box
of moldiness
and other boxes
*
Oh, children of my homeland
This is how the moon died!
.....
We shall meet in a little while
in a year
in two years
and a generation..
..I sip the kiss
from the edge of knives..
I am the one in whose skin
chains are carving
a shape of the homeland.
Our Country is a Graveyard
Gentlemen, you have transformed
our country into a graveyard
You have planted bullets in our heads,
and organized massacres
Gentlemen, nothing passes like that
without account
All that you have done
to our people is
registered in notebooks
| Quote: |
| ...The best quip of the Italian election campaign so far has come from the exotically named Vladimir Luxuria, a transsexual candidate for one of the far-left parties. 'Why do you hate Silvio Berlusconi?' a television interviewer asked. 'I don't hate him at all,' Vladimir replied. 'On the contrary, we're rather alike. Both of us wear make-up and put on high heels for public occasions.' |
| Quote: |
| P2 is the common name for the Italian Freemasonic lodge Propaganda Due (Italian: Propaganda Two). P2 came to public light with Michele Sindona's inculpation and the Banco Ambrosiano scandal, in which the Vatican Bank had many shares. P2 has been involved in Gladio's strategy of tension - Gladio was the name of the secret "stay-behind" NATO paramilitary organizations. Between 1965 and 1981, it tried to condition the Italian political process through the penetration of persons of confidence to the inside of the magistracy, the Parliament, the army and the press [also by bombings, murders, kidnappings... ]. Beside Italy, P2 was also active in Uruguay, Brazil and especially in Argentina's "Dirty War" [aka Operation Condor]. (...) A list of adherents was found by the police in Gelli's house in Arezzo in March 1981, containing over 900 names, among which were very important state officers, a few politicians (4 ministers or former ministers, and 44 deputies), and a number of military officers, many of them enrolled in the Italian secret services. Notably, the current Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi was on the list, although he had not yet entered elective politics at the time. |
at the Benghazi riot massacre... death-toll figures range from 9 shot by police to 11 ... to 15. According to a direct telephone call between Italian TV and a consulate employee still in the building (a Libyan) there are a further 55 people seriously wounded (shot) plus several hundred have been beaten . He sounds shell-shocked, says he can't understand what's happening... nothing like this had ever happened there before.Calderoli had previously said "Islam should be outlawed" and called for "new crusades" against it. Here's a Trade Union statement issued in Libya, dating from the day before the riot that gives an idea how recent and past events and present-day fears all get woven together in fuelling the protests - which are by no means purely religious - other pre-riot Libyan protest-statements I've seen also focussed on "calls for violence against muslims", not blasphemy.Quote: Tripoli, Libya, 02/16 - The Workers trade Union of the Community of Sahelo-Saharan States (CEN-SAD) has criticised recent statements by Italian Minister on Constitutional Reforms, Roberto Calderoli, who called for new crusades against Muslims.
In a communiqué, the Union also decried the cartoons on prophet Muhammad published in a Danish newspaper, condemning the absence of reaction from the Danish government and its persistence will not to offer apologies to Muslims.
The communiqué thinks that this attitude proves the existence of a conspiracy against Muslims, and confirms the return of crusaders to drive a wedge between peoples.
The Union calls for the unity of Muslims throughout the world and invites Muslim countries to follow the example of Libya, which closed its embassy in the Danish capital, Copenhagen.
So in this particular case, they seem to be reacting to the cartoons as a western call for pogroms/crusades both in Europe and elsewhere - and knowing Calderoli, the Northern League and what they preach ... plus their thuggish gangs of supporters...who can say they're wrong?
|
While the League leadership dismiss charges of racism, there have been instances of speeches, interviews and banners pointing to that. Umberto Bossi himself said that African immigrants, whom he called Bingo-bongos, should not receive popular housing with the same rights of ethnic Italians.[4] Erminio Boso proposed to segregate immigrants in train cars different than for Italians. [5] Umberto Bossi, in an interview, suggested opening fire on the boats of immigrants who would disembark in Italy [6], but after widespread criticism he declared he meant the empty boats. The former mayor of Treviso, Giancarlo Gentilini, talking about those he called immigrant slackers, said that "We should dress them up like hares and bang-bang-bang"[7]. In June 2005, at a festival organised by the League, a banner inciting to "rape Pecoraro", (Alfonso Pecoraro Scanio, secretary of the Federation of the Greens and openly bisexual) was exposed; the banner caused outcry, and was condemned by the League's leadership[8].
In 2005, Mario Borghezio, MP for the League at the European Parliament, was found guilty of arson, for having set on fire the belongings of some immigrants sleeping under a bridge in Turin in 2000[9]...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lega_Nord
And in contrast with what one might assume from reading most of the press coverage on this issue, it's simply not true that most "Western" countries set no limits on satirical treatment of religious doctrines and sacred figures. In many places in Europe (UK, Eire, Netherlands, Italy, Greece...) blasphemy - in one form or another - is still on the books as a crime.The press, the politicians and the populations constitute an unholy alliance. In my opinion, the media carry the main responsibility for the fact that Denmark tops the list of the most xenophobic countries in the EU - according to surveys made by the EU itself.
In Aktuelt on 22.12.97 we can read that Denmark is the most racist country in the EU - 43% of the Danes characterize themselves as »rather or very racist« and 40% as »a little racist«. The question of where the negative attitude comes from when as much as 82% of the Danes - according to an inquiry made by Lise Togeby from the University of Aarhus - have never met an immigrant, neither in private or at work.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1569667,00.html
... Update: Now the toll is up to 114... | |||
