rigorousintuition.ca

[AlicetheKurious]

Last night, I watched in disbelief the reports from Gaza.

The reporters were using battery-operated lights for their cameras, and stood in a halo beyond which was the kind of darkness -- and silence -- few people have experienced since before the industrial revolution.

Images filmed earlier, in daylight, showed entire neighborhoods flooded with raw sewage, as the pumps in the water treatment plant stopped working, due to a lack of fuel.

Drinking water has become dangerously toxic. Children, already weakened by malnutrition, suffer from diarrhea, kidney diseases and many other debilitating effects, all preventable, deliberately inflicted on them by Israel's malice, for the sole reason that they are not Jewish children.

After a day of crowds waiting in line for some precious bread, by nightfall the bakeries were empty: no more flour, no more fuel, no more bread. Those lucky enough to have bread, rushed home to feed their families by the light of equally-precious candles.

80% of Gazans are dependent on UNRWA for their food. UNRWA announced that they might be obliged to stop distributing food as early as Wednesday, due to the Israeli closures.

In the freezing cold, overcrowded hospitals, patients and their families prayed that the equipment that kept them alive, would continue to receive electricity. They prayed that the hospital would have the medicines they needed. Their prayers were unanswered. Already, dozens of patients have died as a direct result of Israel's deliberately genocidal policy.

I saw hospital rooms lit by candles, screaming children being treated in the dark by doctors, as their parents tried to help with lights from their cell-phones.

While the zionist killers whine about missiles fired from Gaza, which have caused a total of 19 Israeli casualties in more than seven years, Israeli missiles, war-planes, bombs and tanks have caused thousands of Palestinian deaths, destroyed thousands of homes, roads, the main electricity plant, Gaza's airport, hospitals, schools, and essential government buildings. They have left almost a quarter of a million human beings permanently crippled, while destroying the infrastructure that would have allowed their families to care for them properly.

They have stolen hundreds of millions of dollars from these desperately poor people, they have destroyed precious agricultural crops, Gaza's almost 3,800 factories have shut down for lack of fuel and access to the outside world, and they have prevented donors from coming to their rescue.

Israeli prisons are filled with Palestinian political prisoners and innocent civilians, including children, all of whom are tortured, most of whom have not been charged with any crime.

Never before, in the history of humankind, has an ethno-supremacist state deliberately perpetrated a murderous siege against 1.5 million human beings solely because of their ethnicity, in full view of the world.

Never before, has the world watched and listened in real time, as an entire people was ethnically-cleansed so that their land and resources could be stolen by foreign settlers, with the settlers viewed as the victims, and the victims viewed as the aggressors.

Never before has one side been guilty of so many specific, documented, severe violations of law, and yet been hailed as a democracy and a civilized, peace-loving nation, and received so much material, political and military support from the world's democracies.

Never before have so many otherwise decent people, living in free democracies, been so genuinely afraid of speaking out against atrocities committed by a state against civilians, for fear of being labeled racists.

Never before.

[judasdisney]

Very well-said. Thanks.

[sunny]

My God.

Do they all have to die for the world to finally wake up to what is happening?
_________________
QUESTION EVERYTHING, for fucks sake

[antiaristo]

Alice,
Here in Spain the main evening news showed footage of a young boy in Gaza. He was in hospital, and he needed a ventilator.

His father sat next to him, handpumping his lungs.

[Seamus OBlimey]

[ninakat]

This is just beyond belief. I'm sickened and disgusted at the viciousness of the Israeli gov't.

Video report from Al Jazeera:

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article19130.htm

[chlamor]

Blackouts.
Layla Anwar, An Arab Woman Blues

January 21, 2008

It is late here, I want to fall asleep...

I switch off the small table lamp next to my bed. The obscurity is total. A thick black curtain envelops the room.

I close my eyes, the darkness gets even thicker, like a heavy thick veil...

I plunge my head into the pillow. I hear myself breathe. I feel my heartbeat. I hear the obscurity.

I am wide awake in the darkness.

My body says "am tired, let me go"...and my mind replays those images, waking my body up, every time it dozes off...

I get up, turn on the computer, my mind is very alert, my body drudging behind...

I want to chase the pictures away. But I can’t. They have followed me into the darkness of my room, tugging at my sleeve, shouting "Wake up, wake up, you can’t go to sleep." And here I am.

A boy not older than 12, paralyzed and totally dependent on a breathing machine.
The machine has stopped. No electricity. A total blackout.

The whole family takes turns pumping air manually to keep him alive. A vigil of artificial air.

Hospitals in total darkness. Children, adults, the elderly, anyone relying on a life saving machine is right now, as am typing this, in his/her agonizing moments...

The place – Gaza.
The people – The Palestinians.

My mind takes me to other images.

Sudan - A gathering strongly condemning. "Where is your democracy?" shouts one. "This is criminal" shouts the other...

Egypt – "Open the Rafah border now." "We don’t need Bush’s democracy." "Enough"...

Jordan – Many holding a candle vigil sitting on the cold grounds, in the heart of the night. A spontaneous gathering of protest. Several kids holding the Palestinian flag, and a picture of SADDAM HUSSEIN right next to it. They gathered from Baqa'a, Al-Wahdat, East Amman, West Amman, Zarqa... and carrying his picture? Why do you think this is so?

"Why are you here?" asks the TV anchorman.

"I want people to become aware and stop this carnage" replies a 10 year old.

"I am here because I support the children of Gaza" says another 12 years old.

It is very cold out there, it is well past midnight.

Compare those kids to yours – can you do that? There is no comparison.

A few politicians appear, they talk the usual nonsense. They say "the Arab governments have to intervene in this humanitarian crisis."

Excuse me?

Did the Arab governments intervene when 500’000 Iraqi children died due to 13 years of the most brutal sanctions ever?

Did the Arab governments intervene when Iraq was bombed senseless and left with no electricity and no water for over 5 years now?

Did anyone apart from a few voices here and there, utter anything against the squeezing into death of the Iraqi population?

Until today, we get one hour max of electricity per day. If you have the means you buy fuel for a generator and you get 4 hours of electricity per day. And even that is considered too much by some. Like the asshole who wrote to me and said. "Well you have 3 to 4 hours, why are you complaining?"

We have been in a blackout for over 5 years...

I remember every time we could find candles to buy or those cheap kerosene lamps that suffocate you in the night, we felt we found a treasure.

Batteries for flashlights were like diamonds.

Did anyone ask after the thousands of Iraqis young and old dying in hospitals with no electricity?

Did anyone care about the kidney patient relying on dialysis, or the crippled relying on a breathing machine?

NO ONE gave a fuck.

And NO ONE gives a fuck today.

Because today was like yesterday and is like tomorrow.

17 years of genocide, a slow sure genocide and no Arab government gave a damn. No Muslim government gave a damn.

A population that went down from 25 million or so to 20 million, 5 million less and no one still gives a damn.

No, quite the contrary.

You found Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia and the rest... rushing to its further annihilation.

You found so-called Muslim countries like Iran and its thug proxies like the Hezbollahs of this world, not only keeping a total silence about it but worse, training more of them in the art of killing.

You found the international community shrouded into deafness.

And you found the so-called left snoozing away, resting their heads on tombs and dead bodies...into a deep sleep.

What happened to Iraq is happening to Gaza and to the whole of the Palestinian cause.

What happened to Iraq WILL happen again in Lebanon, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia...

Enough of your slogans, vile people.

Enough of your theories and your analysis.

Enough of your buying into clichés, banners and false flags.

Wake up. Wake up!

Wake up just like am awake right now.

Wake up like those 10 years old, fully awake in Sudan, Egypt and Jordan...

Wake up from the blackout you have fallen into, like some drinker who can’t hold his drink. Wake up from your amnesia, your indifference, your apathy, your complacency...wake up!

How many more Palestinians and Iraqis will it take for you to nudge you out from your slumber?
How much more blood and wasted innocent lives will it take you before your alarm bell rings?

How many more Iraqs and Palestines do you need?

How much more inter-cleansing does it take ?

You run like sheep after more banners and more slogans...

Look at the REALITY you bastards.

Look, look, look...

Why do you think I am still up writing ?

I want to slap with you this REALITY.

But as usual, you prefer slogans...easy made slogans, handy solutions made of WORDS.

You carry them like a key around your neck, but you can't open the fucking door.

And the door stares at you. And you can’t. You are paralyzed in the obscurity.

The darkness of a blacked out DEAD BRAIN.

You still hope that someone else will deliver or save...

You still hope that Mubarak, Abdallah, Khaddafi, Assad, Nasrallah, Ahmadinajad, Abbas, Hanieh, and God knows who else will deliver...and save.

You are fucking dumb.

You are worse than fucking dumb. You are a lazy, treacherous lot.

Stay in the obscurity.

Rot there.

But the little ones carrying the flag and the picture know it better than all of you put together.

They are sitting in the darkness, in the heart of the night, but they see.

Whilst you are not only deaf, but also blind.

Gaza, Baghdad, are in darkness.

Yes they are blacked-out.

Blacked out from your minds and hearts

You only allude to them when convenient, when it pays off...

The Enemy , we know who he is, who they are...

But do you see the rest ?

Do you see You ?

Do you see how your mimicking like monkeys, got us to where we are at ?

Of course you don’t. And you hardly ever will.

Gaza, Baghdad are in darkness.

And you are in total obscurity.

Stay asleep. Do stay asleep.

Your presence is like your absence.

Nothing.

Black, pitch black.

A blackout.

http://arabwomanblues.blogspot.com/2008/01/blackouts.html
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Liberal thy name is hypocrisy. What's new?

[§ê¢rꆧ]

This is so sad it makes me want to scream

[AlicetheKurious]

[brainpanhandler]

To focus on any one ongoing instance of man's inhumanity to man is by definition to ignore all the other contemporaneous examples. Tragedy is all around me. Who is going to argue about degrees of tragedy... My suffering is greater than your suffering and that sort of thing? I live in the most affluent country in the history of humanity and yet all around me are silent tragedies taking place.... families making decisions between paying the heat bill or paying for grandma's operation; children being beaten, abused and spiritually destroyed in a never ending cycle of violence; cold hearted insurance companies denying necessary medical care in deference to their share holders' desire to buy another, bigger yacht... maybe these sorts of tragedies are not so gruesome, are not so stark, not so plainly abhorrent and plain old wrong and inhuman, but are the stakes any less? Right now the temperature hovers around zero outside. Where are the homeless, mentally ill folks I see wander my neighborhood in warmer weather right now? I know of one that sleeps under a freeway overpass in a makeshift shelter.

Everywhere I look there are people in dire neeed. Everywhere I look there is another crisis looming. Everywhere I look the criminals seem to be able to rob, lie, and murder with impunity. Ya know what it makes me want to do? Go to sleep. That's right... go to sleep. Sometimes I just wanna crawl back into my apartment after 10 hours at work, lock the door, pull the shades, turn off the cell phone, shut down the lap top, turn off the fucking cable tv, crawl under my covers and sleep. And yes, that's horrible... I know it's horrible. If I can't suffer the pangs of conscience how would I hold up under real suffering and deprivation? I am not comparing my crisis of conscience to any actual suffering, but nonetheless, if I truly opened my heart to all the suffering of the world I think that would be the end of me. Maybe that would be for the best.
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Do not wubba me or I will wubba you

[parel]

[sunny]

Gazans flood through Egypt border

Gazans have suffered shortages for months


Crossing the border
Tens of thousands of Palestinians have surged into Egypt from the Gaza Strip after masked militants destroyed parts of the border wall.
Gazans rushed to buy food, fuel and other supplies that have become scarce because of an Israeli blockade - aimed at stopping rocket attacks from Gaza.

Egyptian police took no action to stop people crossing.

Egypt's President Hosni Mubarak says he allowed Gazans in to buy food, but Israel urged Egypt to restore security.

Correspondents say the breaching of the border is a security concern for Israel, as Egypt is a main source of weapons for the militant groups in Gaza.

We want to buy rice and sugar, milk and wheat and some cheese

Ibrahim Abu Taha,
Gaza resident


People then packed into cars and donkey carts, or crossed the border on foot, to buy essential goods.

Among them was Ibrahim Abu Taha, a father of seven, who told the Associated Press news agency: "We want to buy rice and sugar, milk and wheat and some cheese."

One Gaza woman told the BBC as she crossed the border: "We're going over there to our family. They're all there. I haven't seen [them] for 10 years."

Hamas plea

President Mubarak said he had allowed the Palestinians to come in.

GAZA BLOCKADE
17 January: Israel seals border following rise in rocket attacks
20 January: Gaza's only power plant to shuts down
22 January: Israel eases restrictions
22 January: Egyptian border guards disperse Palestinian protest against closure
23 January: Border wall breached


Gaza's rocket threat to Israel
'Wartime' on Israeli border

He said he had told Egyptian troops to "let them come to eat and buy food and go back, as long as they are not carrying weapons".

Israeli foreign ministry spokesman Arye Mekel said his government was concerned about the chaos.

But in a BBC interview, he added: "It's the responsibility of Egypt to ensure that the border operates properly according to the signed agreements."

In recent months the border has been mostly sealed, in an understanding between Israel and Egypt.

The militant group Hamas, which has controlled Gaza since last June, had urged Egypt to open its border over the past few days.

The territory has been short of fuel and other essential goods since last week, when Israel imposed the blockade.

It was eased slightly on Tuesday to allow some fuel and medicines through.

War of words

Wednesday's scenes at the Rafah crossing come a day after Egyptian police used water cannon to break up a protest there by Palestinian women.

Also on Tuesday, Israeli and Palestinian envoys clashed at the United Nations Security Council in New York during a debate on Israel's blockade.

The council was considering a call for Israel to allow humanitarian aid to enter Gaza freely.

The council debate had been requested by Arab and Islamic states amid a growing international outcry at what the European Union termed the "collective punishment" of Gaza's 1.5m residents.

Some council members have been pushing for a compromise resolution, condemning the rocket attacks and recognising "Israel's rights to self-defence", but also urging the Israelis to lift the closure.

However Israeli representative Gilad Cohen denied that Israel was violating international law.

"It is the duty of all states to ensure the right to life and safety of its people, especially from vicious acts of violence and terrorism," he said, adding that Israel would "ensure the humanitarian welfare" of Gaza.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7204029.stm
_________________
QUESTION EVERYTHING, for fucks sake

[brainpanhandler]

You can write 10 million letters.....if that makes you feel better.
_________________
Do not wubba me or I will wubba you

[AlicetheKurious]

It was so exciting watching the thousands of people flowing through the border with Egypt, while the Egyptian soldiers stood aside and let them in.

I cheered out loud, and raised my fist. It seemed to raise itself.

Men, women and children, most walking but some in donkey-drawn carts, rushed to the stores on the Egyptian side, buying food, water and medicines. Some store shelves were completely cleaned out, but nobody seemed to mind.

Once they had what they needed to survive, they went back across the border.

No fuss, no muss. They're not planning to die just yet: they have a nation to liberate.

Fuck the Israelis.

[ninakat]