What could you add?

For the entirity of my 25 years on this planet (and many more), the conflict in Palestine has rumbled on. It is pretty futile to imagine that I might have anything worth adding on the topic, given that I and innumerable others have throw in their tuppence over the years.

Yet those years adding up calls to you, doesn´t it? That´s more than 60 years without a homeland, and more than 60 years in refugee camps. Twice as long as I´ve lived (and too me it feels like forever, and I don´t live in exile, waiting for my right to return).

Traditionally, with every resumed offensive, the media´s memory resets to as limited a timescale as if necessary to absolve the Israeli government of responsibility. When they invaded Lebanon, we´re were supposed to imagine that neither Israel nor Lebanon had any history whatsoever that pre-dated the kidnapping of 3 Israeli soldiers. These days, we´re supposed to think that everything was peachy until one too many rockets wobbled their way over the border, instead of misfirings into some poor Palestinian farmer´s house.

Of course, throughout the ceasefire, as they have done throughout the last 60 years in fact, the Palestinians have been allowed to exist under sufferance, according to the whims of the Israeli state, their current whim being an open-air prison camps for 1.5m Gazans, as collective punishment for their decisions at the ballot box.

The thing is the Israeli ruling class never changes it up. They´ve a persuasive capacity that is all stick, the more we beat them over the head the better they will behave. There´s no carrot for persuading anyone that peaceful co-existence might be nice. The ceasefire saw the number of rockets launched at Israel decline. Even if you still think a lower level of attacks is completely unacceptable, surely, with a genuine desire for peace, you might take this as a good starting point for something better?

No. Best tear it up and create another generation of hate. So your citizens can live a little longer in fear and loathing, so they never question that perhaps their problems don´t only eminent from the enmity of their neighbours.

Fuck '09

It's only late Afternoon on the 1st and I'm already in a foul fucking mood. So by way of catharsis I thought I'd put down my top 10, "shitty things that will probably happen in 2009" list. So here it is:

(1) Barack Obama will be a war-mongering right-wing shithead. Come on, admit it, he's most of the way there already. He spent his entire campaign shamelessly pandering to AIPAC and the like, as well as promising to invest more in propping up Hamid Karzai's arsehole government in Afghanistan and as we speak he's responding to the killing in Gaza with a giant shrug of his shoulders. Yes, I understand that he operates under the constraints of what is politically possible within the American system. But that's the point isn't it. Why on Earth did everyone get so excited about changing the man who gets to do as he's told by the richest lobbiests and the Washington establishment.

(2) Ipswich Town will continue to be mediocre, despite unprecedented transfer funds for the clueless muppet who manages the club.

(3) Unemployment will expand massively. Pretty safe prediction that one. Call it a hunch, but I don't think the associated misery will result in any upsurge in support for a different kind of society, more likely just produce a wide new variety of obnoxious symptoms, like a rise in crime, anti-social behaviour, racism and fascism.

(4) I will continue to waste my time mimbling about the internet, watching TV and otherwise fucking about rather than putting any of my talents toward any meaningful endeavour that might actually lead to achieving something with my life to be proud of.

(5) Despite the massive upsurge in unemployment, the government will continue with its plan to attack those on various types of benefits, treating people in the most difficult circumstances as thieving scroungers, even though they get by on a income that most politicians would regard as akin to torture if they had to be on it themselves.

(6) There won't be any revolution this year. In fact if this year is anything like the last, the forces of good will not achieve a single notable victory, and everything will continue to go inexorably down the toilet as we approach environmental armageddon and economic apocalypse.

(7) My Spanish will continue to remain so mediocre as to prevent me from expressing myself with any degree of wit, charm and intelligence. This will partially be a result of me not fucking practising enough, and being too cheap to pay for lessons.

(8) All of the world's bastards will continue being simultaneously obscenely rich and obnoxious bitter towards the rest of us who actually make their money.

(9) I will continue eating and drinking too much, whilst not getting enough exercise and will descend inevitably into morbid obesity as I'm getting to that age. I'll probably end up taking up smoking again.

(10) There will be no peace in the Middle East. Obviously.