I put my head out of the door in the morning on Boxing Day, and the world seemed quite quiet – fresh, and undisturbed. I stepped outside and found my street a little damp, a little scruffy, but still there. I walked down to the local shops which were not only still there but lit up, open, and reasonably stocked. I stuck my card in an ATM which worked and, mysteriously, showed that I still had a little money in the account.
I took out £20, bought some milk and such like, and ambled round to the newsagents. On my way, I smiled at the welcoming, golden light spilling through the open portals of Greggs, where early morning workers were being provided with more than halfway decent coffee and sausage rolls. I walked home over the railway bridge, noting demonstrably unexploded lines gleaming in the grey-day morning light. I came home feeling much blessed.
Truth and dreams
That bit wasn’t a dream. Most of it was true (the exception being the bank balance. That was a symptom of the super-modern, electronic capability of my bank being unable to process online payments over Christmas. I will probably regret that £20 withdrawal tomorrow, but that’s life).
The reason my house, my street, our shops, our town are all still there is that so far, no ghouls at the Pentagon have decided their life would be easier if Westminster stopped existing, so the USA has never seen fit to launch a demonising campaign against the English, arm one of its snivelling client states then set them in motion to reduce the entire south east of England to rubble.
That is a piece of good luck to start the New Year with.
Dream one
As an anti-war, anti-austerity, pro-NHS activist, you get used to peeling away layers and layers and layers of lies and misdirection. That, for anyone who didn’t get it, is why Alexei Sayle’s Christmas message was a tad repetitive.
He’s one hundred percent on the nose there. Every time you think you’ve dismantled all the lies, you have to remind yourself there are probably several more you haven’t seen through yet, and even if there aren’t, the PR ghouls are even now putting together the videos and the speeches to present the next lot of lies.
After nearly three months of the battle against Israel’s case for destroying Gaza, partner and I hit Christmas with that ‘we’re going down with something’ feeling. Just about everyone I know was taking it in turns to get COVID or that other fluey thing that’s following it around, and we were no exception. By Christmas Day, snivelling and sneezing, wearing six jumpers, all I could do was sit and watch the videos in my fevered back brain (who needs television?!) The best one came after I read this…
… and I wondered about all that US and UK talk about ‘a sustainable ceasefire’ (they are even the word, they use in those corporate plans to derail climate protestors with lies about ‘sustainable growth’). I wondered if it was true that the US had lost control of Israel: if all those abstentions and weasel words were a cover to keep Israel happy while they figured out what to do about Israel’s huge nuclear arsenal (largely given to them by the US, the UK and Germany). Was the plan to keep the madman calm by broadly agreeing with him while they did … something clever … to save us all?
You know the movie – it’s that one where the cops are out the front with their megaphones and all the rest of it, talking to the madman on the 4th floor balcony while the really clever detectives / secret agents are creeping up the back stairs, preparing a last-minute ‘save the world’ trick.
Have you heard of the Samson option?
The video playing in my back brain for most of Christmas had Netanyahu singing ‘Don’t Take Me Alive’ by Steely Dan.
But I was delirious, remember? It was flu, or something. In real life, neither the cops nor the secret agents are that clever, or that lucky. They normally end up killing half the people they’re supposed to be saving. For three months, we’ve watched the UN trying and failing to save Palestine, to save us from this, the start of World War Three. We’re going to have to save ourselves.
Dream two
It’s estimated that something like 75% of the people – everywhere – globally – around 75% saw what was happening in Gaza, and saw that it was wrong. Quite a large proportion of us have been out campaigning and, when not out campaigning, pounding away on social media, blogs and emails, calling for a ceasefire. We tried to get our community leaders, our councillors, our MPs to find the courage to speak up, and help us change the narrative soon enough to force the politicians’ hands, to save the people of Gaza.
They were too cautious, too hesitant, too slow. But there are still people trying to stay alive in Gaza so we need to keep going, to force the politicians, now, to figure out how to help them. But in my dream, I compared the 75% of us with all those UN delegates who tried and failed to come together forcefully enough to overpower those few countries in thrall to the US, who insisted on defending military destruction in Gaza.
I dreamed of those delegates seeing the US use its veto, and its snivelling clients either going along with it or abstaining. In my dream, they looked at each other in anger and despair and said to each other, as we said to each other after our demos didn’t force our politicians into sanity, ‘well, we’ll have to do it ourselves’. I dreamed those delegates from those 150+ countries, went home and said to their governments, ‘we’ll have to do it ourselves’ and all their countries came together to make the huge, global effort now needed to organize and save Gaza.
To stop the bombing, to channel aid in from all around the world for the displaced people, to talk to Hamas, to the PLO, to the peace groups in Israel, to any organizations still standing who would be willing to join in figuring out what to do about the rubble heap that was home to 2 million people, and how to care for those people in the meantime. To ship in all the supplies and the people and the peacekeeping forces it will take to keep everyone safe while they take down all the walls and fences, and all the trainers and debaters and peacemakers it will take to persuade the deluded in Israel and the battered and enraged in Palestine that, in every country in the world except Israel, people from a range of cultures with a range of religions and political ideas manage to live together with only occasional outbreaks of rioting, violence and mayhem. Even if they are fueled by burning grudges and the scars of heartbreak, when those outbreaks happen, our countries do not respond by trying to destroy every last member of the people who get the blame, along with their homes, schools, hospitals, churches, mosques, universities libraries, farms and – everything.
To do all that, always keeping in the forefront of their minds that before the attack on them, the people of Gaza were a well-educated, well organized populace with opinions of their own, and they still are, and they above everyone have a right to be heard now, when decisions are being made about ‘afterwards’.
Changing the western narrative
It’s been a long time since most Middle Eastern countries believed the US-led narrative, if they ever did. In fact, many of them have for decades now been working on ‘de-dollarisation’ that is, the project to extract themselves from dependency on a US-dominated economy. It’s perfectly obvious China has other plans and most of South America has had quite enough of their violent neighbours to know who the real enemy is.
In the last three months, while we were looking at videos from Gaza and falling into rage and depression, wailing ‘why doesn’t anyone stop them!’ – quite a few someones have taken action. Ireland has spoken out with a passion. Spain has taken steps against Israel, the Houthis in Yemen have tried to prevent Israeli shipping activity in the Red Sea, drones from Iran have hit Israel-connected ships. China – well, we’re supposed to believe we can never know what China is doing, but it’s doing something.
Qatar, as well as hosting what is currently one of the most realistic news channels…
… has also been hosting talks with Hamas – which it’s been doing for ages, with the blessing of the US (you can’t control the world without talking to people). That’s why, when Israel said the purpose of killing everyone in Gaza was to kill the leaders of Hamas, those who were paying attention said ‘but the leaders of Hamas are in Qatar’.
So what do we do now?
I don’t like Hamas – or the leaders of most of the countries now taking action – they’re variously too capitalist, too conservative, too fond of uniforms and guns, too male- led or too regressive-religious for my taste but I don’t like them in the old way, where there were politicians you broadly supported, and others that you broadly didn’t, but none of them were making serious attempts to destroy the entire planet and everyone on it, so you could negotiate with them. For now, let’s just get our heads round the idea that those countries that are willing to come together to try and stop the destruction of everyone and everything probably are not our worst enemies.
Let’s get on with increasing our understanding, whether we do it by reading books or by meeting and talking to different kinds of people, and let’s get out there in 2024 and try to talk to the probably 25% or so who still think what they get from the television and their newspapers is ‘information’.
No one person can save the world. No one campaign group or political party can save the world. If that’s what you’re trying to do, you’re going to be depressed going on delirious most of the time. Nobody is likely to see a local, national or global government made up entirely of people we 100% agree with but maybe if we all work on it to the best of our ability, we can save reality, we can learn enough to stop believing others when they tell us who our enemies are so they can start wars. Then, we’ll be free to support those who are in a position to make a difference on the world stage.
The US-driven, dollar-driven perpetual conflict narrative is dying. We can help it on its way to the grave by studying different countries and cultures, by actively learning all the things the US narrative is designed to drown out.
Resolution for 2024
Learn, discuss, campaign, repeat.
Good luck, and see you out there somewhere!
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Dear Reader,
Times are hard, and so the articles on this site are freely available but if you are able to support my work by making a donation, I am very grateful.
Cheers,
Kay
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Kay Green 