Welcome to WWL, a place for Liberal Politics, Op/Eds, Information, Rants and Just Plain Fun.
Join in the Project to enlighten Humanity and create a more Humane, Sane and Just Society for America ~ and for the World!
I consider this a Radical Gumbo, with many varied ingredients making more than the sum of its parts. We are no-holds barred, passionate and not overly PC here. Yes, Liberals can have Fangs. Jump in and be part of the cutting edge!
How do you spell relief? PERMISSION TO ENGAGE, right? It is only right and proper that the community of Wild Wild Left pays homage to those past masters of pissing upon people from a great height - the Crazy Horses that prioritize serving the Bush Master over everything, EVERYTHING else - including their own humanity.
In January, a skimmer was installed at the ATM of a local Bank of America, one of 10 that were placed in the area by a supposed gang of Eastern European criminals. A skimmer is designed to collect your bank account information as you use the ATM so that the criminals can later forge your identity and get access to your money. There was no story in any local paper about this. I found out about it through a very localized blog called Patch.
And only Newsday, a Long Island based newspaper that recently made it's content available for subscribers only, seems to be carrying yesterday's story about a threatening letter, accompanied by an unidentified white powder, that was sent to the Kew Gardens, Queens office of Rep. Anthony Weiner (D, NY) apparently in response to his support of the health care bill. What's in the NY Times about this? Nothing. While a New York Democratic Congressman and his staff have had to endure a threat on his life made a mere 10 miles away from their own Manhattan headquarters, the NEW YORK (!?) Times seems more interested in front paging a story about the re-election prospects of a Republican Senator in Utah!
* Update: several other NY based papers carried this story approximately 2 to 3 hours after Newsday released their article at 3pm. As of the time of writing this article, the NY Times STILL had nothing but a mention in an op-ed.
In a free and democratic nation, one of the most sacred responsibilities of the press is to keep the public informed of stories which concern threats to their lives, livelihoods and general well being. These three specific failures of the mainstream media to do that have taken place only over the last week!
I am very sorry I missed Jesse Ventura at the Manhattan Borders tonight. He was on a signing tour for his new book, "American Conspiracies", in which he addresses the questions surrounding 9/11. I have been fighting off a cold for the last 3 days and was too sick to attend. I wanted to give Jesse a bottle of my homebrewed mead to thank him for everything he's done for the 9/11 Truth movement, but I didn't exactly want to give him or anybody else my sinus foo as well, so I stayed home.
I hope our paths eventually will cross because we have a certain amount in common. We share a background of military service, and ironically it is the nature of what we did for our nation in our respective military careers which leads us to believe that the full story has yet to be told.
Russia Today has an interview with Jesse in New York where he speaks about how he was censored off the front page of the Huffington Post. He was asked to present an article on anything he wanted and when he posted a very rational, logical piece that discusses the aspects of 9/11 Truth which led to his writing "American Conspiracies", the article was immediately removed by the HuffPo editorial staff. Russia Today has been courageous enough to post it on their site in it's entirety.
It's mid February when a Vanic-aligned woman's mind turns to garden planning, and this year I would very much like to incorporate the elimination of a volatile garden pest known as Monsanto.
One of their more infamous deeds is the deliberate mutation of plants which are supposed to be perennials into annuals. This applies to both ornamental and crop plants. Via a widespread, unregulated monopoly, Monsanto distributes it's "Terminator Gene" rigged seeds to buyers worldwide who will be forced to keep coming back because the plants will die every year - even though they're not supposed to by nature.
India and Germany have banned Monsanto products on a national level. It is theorized that by embedding toxins in the seed coatings of corn and other crops, Monsanto is responsible for a worldwide honeybee pollination crisis called "Colony Collapse Disorder". The toxins are meant to prevent pests from eating the seed while it grows, but the problem is they get into the plant itself - and into it's flowers. Ostensibly harmless to humans, they still affect the honeybees. Entire hives mysteriously disappear by the hundreds of thousands.
Mother Earth is the toughest cookie there is, and puts up with the irresponsible antics of her bratty children fairly well, but the behavior of Monsanto is beyond the pale. I don't want these irresponsible, greedy bastards fucking with my food ANY MORE. Monsanto needs killin'.
I'm going to be researching this issue and adding to it and I hope some folks here will join me. Let's find out who the major seed and plant distributors are who are working with Monsanto and boycott them. Let's find out good, honest alternative seed sources and buy from them instead. This list is 2 years old but might still be of use (page down a bit to see it, it's a blog).
I want to see nurseries and gardening web sites and farmer's market vendors with signs that say "WE DON'T SELL MONSANTO PRODUCTS". And if I see those places I will buy from them.
All right. Someone finally stopped slinging around the techie buzzwords, stopped wringing their hands over "terrah" while they implemented more "solutions" that would trod on our civil liberties, and created a piece of governmental IT infrastructure that's actually useful.
Several weeks ago I found a place where homeless guys were living. From some of the stuff I found I knew they were probably undocumented Hispanics, and I had a feeling they'd be skittish about accepting help, so what I did was fill an old backpack I had laying around with food and some clothes, a bottle of mead and a homemade loaf of bread. It's been killin' cold out there. Like 20 below. I wanted to help. Then (since my Spanish isn't that great) I wrote them a letter and used Freetranslation.com to rewrite it in Spanish.
Today they called me on a borrowed cel phone and I went down to the train station to meet them. Three of them piled into the car and we went off to the church where a Hispanic priest has been helping the local homeless. The priest wasn't there, but they found some clothing that had been donated which fit them, so they took it. Another priest directed us to a different church in my home town, but that one wasn't open yet.
A bit stymied about what to do next, I took them back to my house for a meal of baked beans and coffee. "Cowboy food!" I said, one of the guys thought that was funny. Two of them got to take hot showers (the third said he'd wait to go to the shelter later).
They said they were painters and offered to paint my entire house for free. I was like totally boggled by this, but they said it was to thank me for my kindness. I kinda thought that was over the top, so we left it at they might come and do it later. Anyway, they went back to the railroad station after this with a better plan of where to stay, and certainly feeling better after their hot showers. They both asked me for pairs of clean socks, so I gave them the warmest wool ones I had.
I am pretty freaked out by this whole thing but I think it was the right thing to do. I wish I could have helped them more. I am glad my husband was around in case things got dicey. You never know who people are or where they've been. But they behaved themselves for the most part.
One of the funnier things was that one of the guys who opted for a shower apparently helped himself to a very liberal squirt or five of my Fendi cologne on the way out. I guess he didn't know it was woman's perfume. My eyes were watering when I dropped him off.
I am a very angry person. It goes with the ADD and the red hair. I have spent a lifetime learning how to control my anger. I think it says a lot that over the years I've never been charged with a crime, I've served in the US military with an honorable discharge, I've got an IT resume four pages long with not a lie on it, and I brew the occasional pretty damn good mead.
One of the ways I controlled my anger as a child, when I was being regularly physically and emotionally abused by my alcoholic mother, was to keep a diary. I got the idea from reading "Harriet The Spy" by Louise Fitzhugh.
Of course, occasionally the diary was found by my abusive mother, and as part of the continued pattern of abuse things were done like reading excerpts at the kitchen table, giving it to siblings and other people to read, and even handing it to the family therapist with certain lines underlined in red ink. The therapist's reaction to this was both admirable and amusing - she handed it back to me unread and began to excoriate my mother! Unfortunately the only thing my mother learned from this was to no longer directly involve the therapist in my abuse.
However, I found that the value in being able to assess my thoughts and actions on paper was a reasonable trade off against what was quickly becoming very shruggable-off abuse. The longer some things go on, the more scar tissue develops, and scar tissue tends not to have as many nerve endings.
Being a person who is good at heart and desires to be socially productive, I therefore continued keeping a diary. It allowed me to judge when I was being oversensitive and when I was not; when my anger was justifiable and when it was not; and when it was a good idea for even my justifiable anger to be diverted in a direction that would not cause harm to self and others.
Ultimately those who would help themselves to my private thoughts would be the ones who would suffer from them, but then as now I maintained that if they didn't want to get hurt, maybe they should have respected my privacy in the first place.
Blogs eventually came along, and at first I wasn't too keen on the idea of it. Online chat (IRC) worked well enough for me for keeping in touch with a community of like minded folks. Eventually someone got me into the blogging thing, and the fact that it wasn't quite such a time sink as IRC was appealing.
I was well aware of how online blogs and chat were both quite vulnerable to surveillance by the intelligence arms of various governments, and noted how during the Bush administration blogging became the vent hole of an infuriated but otherwise impotent population. Indeed, I find myself wondering exactly how much DailyKos and other supposedly left-leaning blogs contributed to the actual INACTION of the American citizenry against the Bush administration. How much did they damp down the collective rage of the nation at stolen elections; blatant war crimes here and abroad; and a twisted fairytale told to the world about the attacks on 9/11 that insults the intelligence of anyone with two brain cells to rub together? It ended up costing one nothing but one's own time to scream about it on a blog - but that time was wasted, because little to nothing was changed.
Nothing succeeds like success, and it happens to be a fact that Karl Rove, Alberto Gonzales, Dick Addington, John Yoo, Dick Cheney, Condoleeza Rice and George W. Bush are still walking around today much freer than they deserve to be. We were exhorted to contribute excellent food for thought daily; guilt tripped if we didn't... and all the while a thousand chimpanzees were busily pounding out Shakespeare, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights a thousand times over those fucktards did whatever they wanted and got away with it.
It got to the point where my rage boiled over into action and I became an activist member of CodePink and a supporter of Veterans for Peace. For a while it worked - marching, lobbying Congress, attending hearings, protesting with signs and drums and raised voice. I watched people get arrested, sometimes brutally. At one march that promised to be rough, I purchased a box of 100 wipes meant to counteract tear gas and handed them out. I spent a lot of money I really couldn't afford to, missed a lot of meals, and marched and walked for miles despite my back injury.
Very little ended up being actually changed by this either. Public awareness of the actions in DC remained very low. It would get to the point where eventually someone's obnoxiousness or sheer courage would break the omerta in the press, and then this woman from CNN would do a "human interest piece" on CodePink in a fruity little "aren't they amusing and stupid" voice, or Saturday Night Live would give a token nod to the group by having a pair of actresses show up screaming like 5 year olds being force fed spinach.
The real story - police running their horses into nonviolent protesters, punching women in the face, breaking the glasses of a woman and the leg of a priest, abducting and holding people without charge - remained firmly in the left-leaning vent holes with all the other bitching and screaming.
Compartmentalization of dissent. This is what is being done to us. We are being corralled like domestic animals, allowed to bleat and bray when struck with the occasional cattle prod as we near the gate... and the gatekeepers watch and let them do it.
We are not cattle. We are the American people, and we NEED to break those fucking fences down. Nothing will change unless we do this. We are speaking only to each other. The powers that be are not listening except to determine where the threats might be that might initiate those changes. The extent of their listening comes with a cattle prod - speak too loudly in the direction we do not want you to go in and yes indeed, we will move you to a smaller and smaller pen. That pen is NOT mightier than the sword, and the last one the most powerful of the dissenters will be moved to is the killing floor.
No, not that one, although I'm taking a pass on that one too. ;-7
I'm talking about the CAPITAL ONE THEATER (in the fine tradition of the way our country is going, place and people names are now being replaced by the heraldry of our corporate masters) in Westbury, NY, where in a few hours Bill O'Lielly and Glenn Dreck are going to spew forth their useless, mindless hatred-as-entertainment.
The singing of "Tomorrow Belongs To Me" has already begun. Yesterday a grinning asshole in a Mr. Bitchy with Arkansas plates blocked my car in when I went to the store. Tonight, WALKING down the street to buy some milk, a goon started randomly yelling "GEORGE BUSH!" at me. I told him what he could do with Mr. Bush, who, being a closet homosexual, would probably enjoy it.
So, yeah. The thugs are in town, doing their little American Fascist rally down in Westbury.
Ironically, heartbreakingly this event is happening within miles of a park that is named after Dwight D. Eisenhower, who was very likely the last Republican this country ever saw who had a clue in life. That man FOUGHT the Nazis. He saw what they were like, and the actions of the people who are pretending to follow in his footsteps surely has him rolling in his grave.
"Sleep tight, America!" Yeah right. A woman can't even walk down the fucking street to buy a half gallon of milk without the thugs shooting their mouths off. Gods. I think I'll check the status of my Ruger Mini-30 this evening.
Democracy Now spotlighted a documentary on the growing white supremacist movement in America. I watched it a few days ago. Two days after I watched it, the earthquake in Haiti happened.
Last night I woke up at about 3am and couldn't stop thinking about something I remembered hearing in that documentary. I just watched it again to make sure I wasn't imagining things, and yup, there it was. 14:24 to 14:38.
"We've got to look at a bigger picture than just the narrow problem of racist violence. They're a constant pressure on the racial fault line in American life. They want to set dynamite on that fault line."
Here. Watch it for yourself.
"They want to set dynamite on that fault line."
Bloggers covering the situation have related how Haiti is one of the poorest nations in the world. It's people - very poor, very BROWN people - have no means to protect themselves. They have no autonomous intelligence or military. Brazilian peacekeepers patrol the border between their country and the Dominican Republic. Our country turns them back.
Now, hundreds of thousands of these innocent, very poor, very BROWN people... are dead.
I'm sorry. I just keep hearing that sentence ringing in my ears, over and over again.
There will be a protest on February 3rd against the Patriot Act, which Congress did NOT allow to sunset at the end of 2009:
With three provisions of the PATRIOT Act set to expire at the end of 2009, the House and Senate rejected a proposal, the JUSTICE Act, that would have added long overdue civil liberties protections to the many controversial provisions of the PATRIOT Act. Other competing bills simply renewed the provisions without consideration for their significant toll on the rights and freedoms of law-abiding Americans.
Instead of passing any of these bills, Congress voted late last month to renew the expiring provisions for 60 days. Now, with calls emerging to demand even more power to monitor and spy on Americans of all walks of life, we must demand that Congress uphold our Constitution and protect our rights. As the Constitution once again finds itself with few allies in Washington, Congress is about to resuscitate a cornerstone of the domestic surveillance regime and shred what little remains of constitutional privacy.
If you are interested in participating in this protest, you can find out more here.
So while we have another 60 days of fascist surveillance in the US, it would seem that Canada's Prime Minister has managed to shut down Parliament until March 3rd. Meanwhile, another shady security multinational with a rather poor track record is being brought in to provide security for the Olympics.
Verint, a (cough ahem) Melville, Long Island based multinational corporation (surprised? Me? Ummm... NOT!), provided faulty "security" in London during the 7/7 bombing. None of the surveillance cameras provided by this company were working shortly before and during the attack on London's subways. They all experienced a well-timed, mysterious "outage".
Verint was also providing "security" at the originating airports for the flights involved in the 9/11 attacks.
The Canadian Government will not be in session during the Vancouver Olympics. If a terrorist attack occurs while their government is suspended, there will be no precedent for how to respond.
This is all very clever. Elements within the United States who would want to provide genuine security for this event are rendered ineffective by the fact that the event isn't happening within our borders. Other elements inside the United States whose primary interests are JOB security have been successful in procuring a 60 day window to continue their illegal, unconstitutional operations - and they are in place to ensure that via a major false flag attack at the Olympics, combined with conveniently timed and unaccountable "incompetence" from supposedly trusted sources, they would allowed to continue their fascist policies indefinitely. And the Canadian Prime Minister has adroitly moved the entire rest of the Canadian Government conveniently out of the way.
Ignoring this now? You might not be ignoring it later.
I was sitting in a German beer festival tent a couple of whiles back when somewhat randomly, the brass oompah band struck up a melody and all present raised their glasses and began singing. None of us knew German, and what we all thought was very weird was the shortness of the little song. It was all, "DOO DA-DOO!" "Sing a few words!" Done! It tended to happen at random - sometimes the bands would play it during a set of other songs, and sometimes just in the middle of a long period of silence. We American noobs did not get it.
As the years went on and our knowledge of German grew a buddy of mine, Jesus Portillo guessed in his typical wiseass way that they were singing "Ein brotchen, ein brotchen!", referring to the little dinner rolls that came with most German meals.
By then we all knew that what they were actually singing was "Ein prosit, ein prosit, gemutlicheit!", which roughly translates to something like "A toast, a toast, to fellowship!"
Gemutlicheit is actually a lot more than fellowship or a happy party vibe. It has it's foundations in a Northern European custom documented in pre-Christian lore as gastfriður - Guest-Joy, or gast-griður - Guest Peace. Today it is commonly referred to as gastfreundschaft or gastfreundlichkeit.
In a land where the weather can kill you, HOSPITALITY IS SACRED. So it has been for millenia, and so it is today.
To protect another person from the elements, even if he is your sworn enemy, is a holy act. To create shelters from the cold where warring tribes can be guaranteed a peaceful place to eat and sleep is the foundation of our civilization. This is why small, empty mountain lodges randomly dot the hillsides in the Alps, stocked with cots, blankets, first aid supplies, small amounts of food, water and firewood. The use of dogs to find lost travelers in these mountains predates Saint Bernard by many a century. This is the source of the catchphrases, "Check your weapons at the door." "Take it outside." Grendel is considered a monster for his murders by anyone familiar with the story, but even more so among Scandinavians and Germans for his violation of guest-frith, a custom which anyone who has felt the winters of Northern Europe comes away with in their very bones.
One of the reasons Christianity assimilated itself so well into the Germanic and Scandinavian cultures was that the sacrament of Communion - the sharing of food and drink as a holy act - was something the native Northern Europeans INSTANTLY and FULLY understood.
The Havamal, the Sayings of Odin the High One, is one of the most ancient and sacred sections of Heathen Lore. The very first four verses show the importance of sacred hospitality to followers of the pre-Christian faith.
Gáttir allar Before one would advance
áðr gangi fram through each doorway,
um skoðask skyli one must look about
um skygnask skyli and peer around,
því at óvíst because one can't know
er at vita for sure
hvar óvinir where enemies
sitja á fleti fyrir sit in the hall beforehand.
Gefendr heilir Greetings to the hosts,
gestr er inn kominn a guest is come.
hvar skal sitja sjá? where must this one sit?
Mjök er bráðr He is very impatient,
sá er bröndum skal the one who must sit on the firewood,
síns um freista frama to test his luck.
Elds er þörf There is need of fire
þeims inn er kominn for him who is come in
ok á kné kalinn with cold knees;
matar ok váða food and clothes
es manni þörf this man needs
þeims hefir um fjall farit who has journeyed on the mountainside.
Vats er þörf There is need of water,
þeims til verðar kømr for the one who comes for a meal,
þerru ok þjóðlaðar of towel and friendly intonation;
góðs um œðis of good disposition,
ef sér geta mætti if he can get it,
orðs ok endrþögu of speech and silence in return.
There are homeless day laborers living along the railroad tracks and highways of Long Island. Most of them are undocumented immigrants. They have nowhere else to stay. People donate clothing to them but they have no place to store it, and I find it rotting all over the woods in plastic bags. They eat over open fires from pots and pans and drink from vessels creatively acquired from the local bars and restaurants.
As I came across evidence of their living in the woods while looking for bottles and cans this summer, sometimes I would rescue what I could of the clothing and wash it. Once I found one of them, sleeping under a plastic tarp. He spoke pretty fair English but was afraid of me, didn't want any help and wouldn't tell me his name. It can be pretty scary - you never know if these folks are out there because they might be mentally ill or on drugs, and I always carry a knife just in case. And they don't know who the heck YOU are either, which is totally understandable. But no one should have to live like this, especially in the killing cold. Not never, people. Not never.
So today I find myself putting together a little care package for them. I found a backpack in the woods at a park this summer that apparently some thief had hidden there after stealing whatever was inside (probably a laptop from the looks of it). These guys need stuff like backpacks to store the few goods they have and keep them from rotting in the elements, so I'm going to give it to one of them. I've got some canned goods in there that we can afford to donate. And I'm making bread.
Back when we didn't have much to eat ourselves, I scored a ten dollar bread machine from a local garage sale. I kept us alive with that thing for months. Making bread is a lot cheaper than buying it these days. This country still has the ability to feed the world if you play it right. We still don't have a lot of money for food, but for ingredients worth about $20 I can make enough bread to feed a lot of these homeless guys.
It's time this Heathen showed these right wing fascist "Christians", these racist white pseudo-supremacists who for all their prating about the "folk soul" and the "master race" can't even remember something as fundamental as the custom of sacred hospitality, how it's really done.
Ein brotchen, ein brotchen... gemutlicheit. Thank you, Jesus Portillo.
As for the other Jesus, well, you'll have to work a bit, pal, given the evident values of your numerous so-called "followers" on Long Island, to show me what I should be thankful for from you.
Photo: James Carbone, Newsday
Now, I have no case of the ass with Christians in general, just the ones who don't practice what they preach. So I have to give credit where it's due. Newsday reports that there's a guy in a church in Glen Head who is collecting money and donated goods for these guys. But the funny thing about that is that I can't propagate the information here with a direct link because you need to be a paid subscriber to Newsday in order to read the story. Interesting, no? Well I think this news needs to get the hell out there anyway, so here are the details for those who might be interested in helping out too:
January 9, 2010 By WILLIAM MURPHY william.murphy@newsday.com
People can donate goods or money for the homeless day laborers living in the woods in Huntington Station, the Rev. Allan Ramirez said Saturday.
Sleeping bags, gloves, hats, heavy socks and other winter wear can be left on the rear porch of the Brookville Reformed Church - where Ramirez is pastor - at 2 Brookville Rd., Glen Head, NY 11545.
Checks can be made payable to the Brookville Reformed Church with a notation that the money be used for the homeless people, Ramirez said.
Ramirez said he has already given out about 200 sets of thermal underwear, and no more of those items are needed.
(Welcome Randgrithr, and Thanks for adding this awesome report on the plight of Gaza to WWL! - promoted by Diane G)
Right now, 1362 activist marchers are attempting to get into Gaza from Egypt with humanitarian aid (food and medical supplies) and toys for children.
The Egyptian government has closed the border and will not allow anyone through. CodePink is one of the organizations supporting the march, and has requested that people who want to show support call the Egyptian Embassies both in Cairo and/or Washington DC. Desiree is there with beanie babies for the children. Desiree and Liz got back to me 24 hours ago and said no, they are still not in.
Main phone: 202.895.5400
Press & Information office phone: 202.667.3402
Fax: 202.244.4319
More information about this action can be obtained here and here.
Press release:
One year after Israeli invasion of Gaza, world leaders fail to act but global citizens step forward Medea Benjamin
One year ago, the brutal Israeli 22-day invasion of the Gaza Strip shocked the world, leaving some 1,400 people dead, thousands more wounded, as well as hospitals, schools, prisons, UN facilities, factories, agricultural processing plants and some 20,000 homes damaged or destroyed.
As we mark the one-year anniversary of the invasion, the plight of the people of Gaza continues unabated:
· Despite pledges of money for reconstruction, Israel refuses to allow in the machinery necessary to clear the rubble or the materials needed to rebuild--banning cement, gravel, wood, pipes, glass, steel bars, aluminum and tar. Many who were made homeless during the bombing are still living in tents amidst the onset of another cold winter. Desperate, some are reverting to the ancient techniques of building homes made of mud.
· Trade depends on an elaborate system of illicit and dangerous tunnels between Egypt and Gaza. The goods brought in are expensive, but they are the lifeline for the 1.5 million people who live under siege. The Israelis periodically bomb the tunnels, the Egyptians inject them with gas, and now, with U.S. technology and funds, Egypt is building a wall descending 70 feet into the ground to seal up the only trade route the inhabitants of Gaza have with the outside world.
· Recent restrictions on the transfer of gas resources into Gaza have left many without adequate means to cook or provide heating as winter deepens. The Ministry of Health says that several hospitals lack the gas supplies to provide adequate hygiene for their patients. Similar restrictions on the movement of industrial fuel into the Strip have forced Gaza's sole power plant to drastically limit the amount of electricity.
· Water and sewage infrastructure has reached a crisis point, with tons of raw sewage pumped daily into the Mediterranean. Amnesty International recently deemed that 90 to 95 person of the water available to Gaza's inhabitants was unfit for human consumption, and 60 per cent of the Gaza Strip's residents have only irregular access to water. Repairs to Gaza's overburdened sewage and water networks are largely prevented by the blockade.
· The once-steady flow abroad of many hundreds of students a year, often to pursue postgraduate studies in Western universities, has slowed to a trickle. Israel is not even allowing students from Gaza to study in the West Bank.
· Attempts at hold Israel accountable for crimes committed during the invasion have been thwarted. The September 2009 Goldstone Report recommended that if Israel and Hamas did not investigate and prosecute those who committed war crimes, the case should be referred to the International Criminal Court. But US Ambassador to the UN Susan Rice, and the U.S. Congress, condemned the report, assuring that it will not be brought before the U.N. Security Council.
In a report released on December 22 called Failing Gaza: No rebuilding, no recovery, no more excuses, a group of 16 humanitarian organizations detailed the ongoing suffering of Gaza's 1.5 million people from Israel's invasion and ongoing siege. "It is not only Israel that has failed the people of Gaza with a blockade that punishes everybody living there for the acts of a few," said Jeremy Hobbs Oxfam International Executive Director. "World powers have also failed and even betrayed Gaza's ordinary citizens."
While international governments and UN institutions have failed their obligations, global citizens and civil society organizations have stepped forward. The past year has seen the mushrooming of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign aimed at Israel. South African dockworkers refused to offload an Israeli ZIM Lines ship in February; the British bank BlackRock divested from Lev Leviev settlement projects on the occupied Palestinian territory; the Norwegian government pension fund withdrew its investments in the Israeli military contractor Elbit Systems; following the lead of South African, Irish and Scottish trade union federations, Britain's 6.5-million member labor federation, the Trades Union Congress (TUC), called for a consumer-led boycott and sanctions campaign against Israel, specifically targeting settlement products; and Hampshire College decided to divest from several companies profiting from the Occupation.
Another group making waves is Free Gaza, which has broken the siege by bringing shipments of aid by boat. Sometimes their boats have miraculously managed to sail from Cyprus to Gaza without Israeli interference. On their last effort, however, their boat was illegally intercepted on the high seas by the Israeli Navy.
Viva Palestina, a group led by British MP George Galloway, organized a massive convoy of material aid to Gaza in a month after the attack, using public pressure to force the Egyptian government to let the convoy pass through the Rafah crossing. They sent another caravan of aid in July, and to mark the one year anniversary, Viva Palestina is bringing 210 trucks and 450 activists laden with massive quantities of humanitarian aid. It is unclear whether or not the Egyptian government will let them in.
Another creative initiative is the Gaza Freedom March. Conceived in the spirit of Mahatma Gandhi and Nelson Mandela, the Gaza Freedom March was designed to mark the one-year anniversary with a massive march to the Israeli border. Some 1,350 international participants from 43 countries are setting out for Gaza via Egypt to join with thousands of local people for the march. On the Israeli side of the border, Israelis and Palestinians will gather to join the call for an end to the siege. While the Egyptian government is refusing give permission for the international delegation to enter Gaza, the group is challenging that decision with thousands of phone calls to Egyptian embassies worldwide. They are also organizing solidarity actions in cities all over the world.
The Special Rapporteur for the Occupied Palestinian Territories, Richard Falk, noting the world community's failure to help the people of Gaza, cited the Gaza Freedom March and the global Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) campaign as "the only meaningful current challenge to Israel's violations of its obligations as the Occupying Power of the Gaza Strip under the Geneva Conventions and the United Nations Charter."
As the year-end brings horrifying memories to the Palestinians in Gaza, we hope they recognize that grassroots groups the world over are not only thinking of them, but actively organizing to lift the siege that makes their lives so difficult.
Medea Benjamin (medea@globalexchange.org) is cofounder of CODEPINK and Global Exchange.
Please help them out and call today to urge the Egyptian government to LET THEM IN! Peace and prosperity for ALL!
