Racism is not Xenophobia, it is not Anti-Semitism: all three are global working class issues.

What is the intended impact of an education system that does not teach the true origins of White vs Black Racism nor reveal the long awful history of anti-Semitism, both of which are European origin invented weaponised hatreds?
It is precisely because most people think of Racism as a personal flaw, a petty hatred, a weakness rather than understanding Racism as the social weapon system that it is, created by the Ruling Class, that Racism persists within Western Democracies.

We need to up our game.

#ToryRacism

Racism is a weapon designed by the ruling class to divide the ruled.

Anti-Semitism has always been a scapegoating weapon, invented and used by Christian Rulers down the centuries. It too divides the ruled.

In this blog I will lay out the facts on Racism in particular as they exist. Racism, in the form of White Supremacy, was invented.

Racism and Slavery in the British Colonies of the Americas did not happen over night. In the same way that Brexit did not happen in the few years around the Referendum. Brexit started the day the UK joined the Common Market.

Racism and Slavery in the American colonies were carefully inculcated over two generations, close to 50 years of constant effort, bit by bit, starting from a place where African and European indentured workers worked side by side, were freed at the end of their indenture, given land and integrated into the working free community as equals the bosses worked their political grooming operation to the point where European folk classed themselves as superior to all African folk, by natural and divine right and were willing to enslave African folk in the most brutal fashion, in huge numbers, simply because they were African, inferior in every way. A lie carefully nurtured to divide a working class against itself. Racism is a weapon devised by the bosses to disunify the workers. Racism is learned. Racism is not a biological or psychological dynamic, even though there are biological and psychological dynamics at play, it is an outcome cultural conditioning. It is true that our brains and sub-conscious cognition systems are attuned or primed to notice difference and to be alert to difference, however this is a baseline function of pattern analysis that is largely determined by experience and culture. Thus before the grooming of the workers into 'us' and 'thems', African and European worked sided by side, and saw each other as 'us' and saw the owners as their 'them'. The owners sough to change that. and by creating a different set up of us and them, with Europeans in general as 'us' and Africans in general as 'them'.

Racism is a global working class issue.

It predates the Industrial Revolution and it had a profound effect on the way the Industrial Revolution played out. Racism and Xenophobia are quite distinct. Xenophobia is much, much older. Racism is a recent invention.

THIN LIZZY: PHIL LYNOTT, BRIAN DOWNEY,GARY MOORE IN 1974. 

PHOTOGRAPH: MICHAEL PUTLAND/GETTY

Thin Lizzy, a successful working class rock band from Dublin, Ireland : emblematic of working class folk comprised of African and European, side by side. The Human Race as one race.

Nelson Mandela at the Rivonia trial, tried for Treason by the Racists

"You'll never kill our will to be free!"

coreluminous · RACISM IS A WEAPON

I wrote a song about this: Racism is a Class War Weapon.

Racism is a class War Weapon

Most working class folk probably don't know that Racism (white skin good superior, black skin bad inferior aka White Supremacy) was invented by British Colonial Plantation owners, the Colonial Oligarchs, to get European indentured workers and African indentured workers to hate on each other so that they would not unite to take on the oligarch rulers in the British Colonies of the Americas in the mid to late 1600s.

The Colonies imported labour, most often as indentured workers - workers who would work for a fixed term, and be released upon completion of that term, and these would include Africans and Europeans, who often worked side by side. Freed Africans and Europeans became part of the culture of the Colonies. The turnover of labour was high, conditions were pretty tough and those who survived tougher than nails. Those that made it through were often given land on the edges of the colonies, where only the hard nailed could survive and thrive. They formed an advance guard of colonial expansion. There were in the early decades of the British Colonial conquest, expansion and development of plantations quite a few violent uprisings of indentured workers - conditions were often brutal and profoundly unfair even in terms of indenture agreements - European and African workers joining together to attack their oppressors, sometimes with help from Native peoples. These rebellions led to the owners becoming very concerned that their grip on power was vulnerable, that they were at risk - they were the few facing the many. They needed to figure out a way to divide the workers, to set them apart as different classes. The resorted to the old strategy of favour one group at the expense of the other. And so they had to define the groups. This led to the definition of The White Race, as the starting point.

They had to established the legal concept of Race by defining the White Race in legislation. Race and thus Racism was invented as a weapon to to be deployed against working class Europeans and working class Africans who had previously worked side by side, as equals in the oppressive system of indentured 'employment' that supplied labour to the plantation owners. Race and Racism were invented by British Christian plantation owners, using the Bible as a foundational text to justify discrimination, as it defined one group as spiritually and morally superior to the other, by the word of God. This was followed through with incremental legislation that placed limitations on African citizens, removing various rights from them and conferring advantages to European workers, bit by bit.

Then when they had convinced enough of the European workers they were innately superior humans than Africans, they then institutionalised and legalised Slavery. With that it followed the slaves would from time to time attempt to escape such oppressive situations, given that there was a vast wilderness into which they could go, where they could possibly find a niche. Laws were passed to arrange for paid groups of volunteer Europeans to give chase to the fleeing slaves and bring them back to their owners, dead or alive. These posses are the very roots of grass roots policing in the colonies and in the USA.

If you didn't know that.

It is not your fault.

Now you do.

Here's some of the evidence, in just over half an hour of viewing.

Xenophobia is not Racism. There are two other threads in the Racism discourse that need to be addressed. The first is the idea that tribalism, othering is an innate human trait, and for this modern neuroscience is routinely enrolled as evidence of innate othering at the unconscious level when subjects, usually from developed countries, are tested in various laboratory experiments that show faster than thought reactions to different skinned faces. What these tests do not do is cover egalitarian based cultures - there is no known testing of egalitarian people for these kinds of tests. So at best we can say in the modern culture where Racism and othering is common, we see hyper-fast reactions at the unconscious level to skin colour, and given the cultural background that is to be expected. We cannot assume that there is an innate behavioural dynamic that feeds into othering, racism, adverse tribalism. The second thread is that Racism is a personal flaw, that the Racist is somehow inferior to the non-Racist. I think this is wholly inaccurate. It is another form of dehumanisation. We can so readily dismiss the other person, the 'Racist', without asking how did that person learn to be Racist? We truly need to understand what Racism is and what othering is contextualised with awareness of egalitarian evolutionary behaviour as a dominant form of social behaviour for the human species for the past 80,000 years if not longer - I cite 80,000 years because that is the time span of Australian Aboriginal culture. It is more likely that egalitarian behaviour is much, much older than that culture. Racism is learned behaviour.

Irish hating English is Xenophobia, not Racism. It does not emerge naturally within Irish children - we are not born at birth with such a hatred. We are taught it.

Irish wanting only Irish in Ireland is Nativism, it is not Racism. That too is not something we are born with. We are taught it. Who plants these ideas and concepts into young minds that become adults habituated to such feelings of animosity? Why would they do such a thing? Who created the State? Which few exercise power that influences the situation of the lives of the many? What is the State? The State is an institution of power, that operates a leveraged power system over a population within a defined boundary. The State as we know it, by origin, was rooted in violent hierarchy systems, within which slavery, serfdom, and other forms of coerced labour working for a ruling class were institutionalised and under which the workers have struggled for centuries to regain human dignity, the dignity removed by their violent oppression. That is a historical truth. That truth presents as a historical struggle, the struggle to be fully human, to be free from oppression and as Paolo Friere puts it, free from the perceived need or desire to oppress others.

The power politics of Capitalism and Neo-Liberalism, of Communism, and of the Industrial Hierarchy in general are oppressive systems where a small class of people exercise powers that affect and afflict the majority in ways the ordinary find impossible to counter. The ordinary person cannot change interest rates, determine average wages, dictate to bureaucracies how they ought be treated start or stop wars.

Modi, Johnson, Bolsonaro, Trump, Netanyahu, The Saudi Rulers, Biden, Xi, Putin, Musk, Bezos, Patel, Hancock, Murdoch (I can list a few from the polities I am most familiar with, you readers will have your own lists) and all the others, so many of them, hundreds of thousands of individuals who wield immense systems of leveraged power and who are so assured in their own minds of their entitlement to use that power and who cause harm, rather than prevent harms, are operating a system that is oppressing the majority - inequity has adverse effects on everyone within any society that maintains inequities. To oppress and to be oppressed are both dehumanised conditions for any human to find themselves in. We can see this all around us.

Dehumanised in different ways, oppressor and oppressed must be liberated for all to find peace.

Education needs to be honest, precise and transparent. Race is a social or cultural construct - there is no genetic or biological delimiting dynamic that can be identified as establishing Race as a biological reality. The question for workers, wage earners in general is why do the owners devote so much effort to get workers to disengage from solidarity? What is it that the owners fear so much that they behave so cruelly towards the entire community of workers?

Children ask "Why?" because they really want to know in order to understand.

Any kind of a lie by way of an answer is abusing their trust and it undermines their integrity, thus it is best to say "I do not know." when one does not know, rather than make up some story for the child to believe.

Kindest regards Corneilius "Do what you love, it is your gift to universe."

Everything the Israeli State is doing, it learned from The British Empire and the English Ruling Class.

Everything the Israeli State is doing, it learned from The British Empire and the English Ruling Class.

Let's start with an accurate and honest history of Palestine, The Ottoman Empire, the British Empire, Russia, Jews, Europeans and Muslims.

Haviv Retig Gur speaks on the History relevant to the situation in Palestine.

Be aware that Rettig Gut is a Zionist. That said he cites the historical background archive materials quite accurately, albeit drawing his own interpretation from all of that to stake out an apologia for the Zionist project. In this he also challenges Zionists to think again.

Watch the whole video, it has tons of insight and citations, and speaks involvement of outside powers in the history of Israeli Zionism, including Soviet Russian support for Israel in the 1948 through to 1967. Zionism has been patronised and weaponised by different empires for different reasons. This is honest history, and it adds understanding to anyone wishing to understanding.

In brief outline, he explains when and why the Ottoman Empire

saw the threat of Zionism in 1880s, already. He explains how the British Empire came to exploit Zionism as a long term weapon. The Ottoman Empire was 'beaten' by the British Empire and her European allies in WWI

They became the new Empire over the entire Arab polity. Zionism was aided and abetted in the fist instance by The British Empire at the The Ottoman Empire, who ruled Palestine as a province, as part of that large Empire, during WWI. And so, it was then aimed at the entire Arab polity, in the guise of the Zionst Israeli State. The British Empire funded, trained and armed the Zionist Militia to suppress the Arab Revolt. He also explains the mistakes made by some Palestinian leaders, in allying with the Nazi Germans, against the British and Zionists, leading

up to WWII. 

He then proceeds to describe events, from WWII through the Arab revolt through to the formation of the State of Israel, equipped with a fully professional organised military machine, on the march of conquest.

~

Preventing Arab solidarity is designed to prevent another Empire emerging, sitting on all the known Oil reserves outside USA. This is why the British support Israel

to this day. Long term management of natural resources in the area or region formerly covered by the Ottoman Empire requires Arab divisions. Hence the support of Saudi Arabia and the dehumanisation of Iranian polity. The division

of the Arab polity succeeded.

As much as the British, Americans and others, the Arab polity must acknowledge their errors and divisions that escalated violence all the way through, from then to today, before a peace solution to the Middle East is possible. 

Israeli Zionist conquest must be pushed back by the solidarity, globally. And that means standing up to the Empires. We at home in the each of the Empires face that essential task. It is ours, as it is of every people ruled by a corrupt class, a so-called elite, the ruling class.

~

Irish History understands Palestine.

I am reposting parts of this important Irish Times article, because it reveals an aspect of the Israeli colonial project that is frequently and conveniently ignored. An inconvenient truth, that predates WWII. And it reflects Irish experience, insight and understanding and, yes, a bias, as a colonised people who struggled for freedom for centuries. The Israeli colonial project has very little to do with Religion, Religion is a veil, a cover story. It is an economic and political project. Zionism is a manipulation, with religion and religious bigotry and oppression deployed a veil, a distraction and an excuse - the excuse of The Holocaust emerged after WWII. Even without that horrific criminal depraved massacre of millions, Zionism was already well on its way to conquering land in Palestine. The project the British Empire pursued from 1915 onwards, and still pursues, is the task of preventing any Arab solidarity that might unite and emerge as a singular polity, an independent economic model, with the vast wealth of Oil and emerge as a competitor to the British Empire or more correctly the Oligarchy of the old Empire, the Wealth Cabal that continued in spite of public theatre of 'loss of Empire'.

I urge readers to go to the Irish Times article and read it in full. It's a very useful stepping stone towards a more honest study of the roots of the Israeli project.

British Military Power in Ireland 1920s.

https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/books/winston-churchill-sent-the-black-and-tans-to-palestine-1.3089140

Winston Churchill sent the Black and Tans to Palestine

1937: Arab civilians being searched by British Military personnel in Palestine. Photograph: Getty Images

British politicians who waged war in Ireland used the same tactics and forces in Palestine - and a Dubliner was in charge during the Naqba.

"Douglas Duff had been stationed with the Black and Tans in Galway before moving to Palestine. His memoirs make clear that he brought a great deal of bigotry with him. Referring to the Palestinians of Haifa, he wrote: “Most of us were so infected by the sense of our own superiority over these ‘lesser breeds’ that we scarcely regarded these people as human.”

Officers who had served in Ireland played a prominent role in quelling protests by Palestinians against the expropriation of land where they lived and farmed. Raymond Cafferata, for example, had been part of the Auxiliaries during the Irish War of Independence. In 1933, he headed a contingent of foot police at a Jaffa demonstration which had been banned. A baton charge that he ordered was commended by British administration in Jerusalem for being “magnificently executed” despite how numerous Palestinians were shot dead during the protest.

Later in the 1930s, a full-scale Palestinian revolt erupted. Grattan Bushe, a legal adviser to the Colonial Office, warned that “repression by force is repeating the mistake which was made in Ireland”.

His warning was ignored; military commanders were assured that they could take “whatever measures are necessary”.

The measures were to include demolishing much of Jaffa’s old city, imposing collective punishment on villages with rebels in their midst and mass detention in labour camps.

The Balfour Declaration’s purpose was to form a “little loyal Jewish Ulster in a sea of potentially hostile Arabism”, according to Ronald Storrs, “the first military governor of Palestine since Pontius Pilate” (his words).

Not everything went to plan: the Zionist movement fell out with and, in the case of two groups, waged a campaign of guerrilla warfare against Britain in the 1940s. Storrs’ comment nonetheless encapsulates how the British elite viewed their nearest colony and the Middle East through the same lens."

Everything the Israeli State is doing, it learned from The British Empire and the English Ruling Class. 

Divide, by disabling civility, to maintain position. There are, we are told, a lot of Israeli citizens caught up in the violence, waging mob war upon each other on the streets and it is being exacerbated by online grooming and religious demagoguery as a deliberate ploy by the Netanyahu power base to counter the emergence of a unified opposition. Generating lateral violence within Israel itself, in order to dissuade fragile alliances is a tactic well within the scope of the Netanyahu power base. An ideologically diverse group of parties opposing Netanyahu, who is known to be corrupt, looked to be progressing slowly but surely towards a government supported by Ra’am (United Arab List), a conservative Islamist Arab party. 

In a moment of crisis it is possible for any well funded actor to produce and disseminate material in a   grass roots amygdala hacking campaign. But last-minute election hackings and strategically timed document leaks are more than just a media game. They are many textbook examples of how psychological operations can be applied to serve not only warfare, but whatever we call those illegal, malicious and democracy-threatening information influence activities. This includes not just hacking and leaks, but how this information is used in addition to fake news and other forms of illegitimate manipulation.

Political grooming operations generally have two purposes: to change people’s behaviour, alter their perception and make them react, or to have them not react. These reactions are largely based on emotions, which have always been at the core of all information-psychological influence.

How many British citizens understand the current Military involvement of the British Government in violence across the Middle East?

In a recent article Mark Curtis explores the 'erased' reality of that involvement as it stands today.

"As violence escalates in Israel and Palestine, we take readers through the expanding military relationship between the UK and Israel, which has been erased by the British media. The deepening alliance involves UK military training of Israel for combat, joint exercises, arms deals, as well as intelligence cooperation.

The UK’s new military strategy, released in March, states clearly that “Israel remains a key strategic partner”. 

Months before the importance of the relationship was spelled out, the military chiefs of the two states signed a cooperation agreement “to formalise and enhance our defence relationship, and support the growing Israel-UK partnership”, according to the Israel Defence Forces (IDF).

Following the agreement, Britain’s ambassador to Israel, Neil Wigan, tweeted he was “delighted”, saying it would “further deepen our military cooperation”.

What is in that agreement is secret and has not even been formally acknowledged by the UK government. But Israel lobby group Bicom (the Britain Israel Communications and Research Centre) has written that the two militaries are “integrating their multi-domain capabilities in maritime, land, air, space, and cyber and electromagnetic”.

Nobody knew.

Just as in Brexit Britain, political grooming gangsters worked feverishly to exacerbate fear and insecurity, to nurture dislike into petty hatred, all of which feeds into internal extremism and lateral violence. If one's primary source of knowledge of the people of Palestine and Israel is what one reads in the News Press and consume via broadcast TV News or your online bubble, then it is all too easy to fall for the caricature, the poll that pretends to describe what all those other people one has never met really think, the meme that triggers a fear or bias. There are many Israeli's who oppose the oppression, and a majority of Jews globally oppose the violence, even if they support the concept of a Jewish haven, a Jewish homeland state as part of an imagined two state solution. A significant part of the global Secular Jewish community do not support the concept of a singular Jewish State - they oppose a Religious State on principle. It is a mixed bag, and the danger of caricature and stereotype is that it blurs all of that. The Israeli project is always precarious because it does not stand on reason, evidence or rational governance. This is true of all Empire, conquest and colonisation projects, and is a constant of the history of civilisation. Bully cults are inherently unstable. Intergenerational Trauma

The cycles of intergenerational trauma persist in large part because the occupants of the institutions of power, a class of people who are powerful because they actively dominate within the institutional political and economic power framework, work diligently to pass the positions of power onto the next generation of carefully groomed mentees and heirs, to assure that the historically powerful class, as a class, continues to dominate. They behave as they do with callous disregard to the welfare of whole populations: be it Modi, Bolsonaro, Johnson or Netanyahu or Koch, Rinehart, Mercer or any member of the global gang of kleptocrats their primary concern is their obsession with the power to rule, at the expense of the socially critical task of healthy governance. Their obsession with the maintenance of their power at all costs, as a personal and institutional dynamic, corrupts everything they touch.

Johnson is fond of telling us he wanted to be Prime Minister as a child hood projection into his future. It's personal with him. Pathology always is. When leaders leave office in tears - Nixon and Thatcher for example - it is because they have internalised the Power of the institution as if it was their own personality, part of their psyche. Why do I write about all this stuff?

I write (in spite of knowing that I am a tiny, impotent citizen, powerless to make any material change to the prevailing situation) because I feel so strongly that we, the decent people, the innocent majority caught in the cross fire of hierarchies of violence by accident of birth that places us on one side or the other, until we reject those attributions out of awareness, will always, once we are aware, resist oppression because we want to live well, to live peacefully. We realise that we are not designed by evolution to be bullied, nor are we designed to be bullies. We want to live well, to love and be loved, to nurture our communities children, to watch them grow into graceful adults in healthy environment, to see them love and be loved, to take pleasure in their joy and creativity. That is the deepest human urge. It is an urge I will never cede. What should I? I see that urge in the Palestinians, in the Aboriginals, and in the Ashaninka, the Awa, the Yanomami, in the San and the Sami, I see that urge in the Uyghur and the Han, in the Japanese, the Korean and the Russian peoples, I meet it in the Irish, Welsh, Scottish and English people. I see that urge everywhere. It is a global movement. A human universal that is older that civilisation. The urge to live well, to love, to nurture - Humankind. 

In the long run, the project of the Hierarchy of Violence Culture is a dead end. It is culturally, emotionally, psychologically and in evolutionary terms a dead end for dead beats.

Mars as a hoped for escape bolt hole? Is that the best Bezos and Musk can come up with? Really? How very sad, how utterly unimaginative. How bleak!

We ordinary, healthy folk will never cede the will to be free from oppression. We will recover and make our home safe again. We feel the call of healing and recovery deep in our bones. The Palestinian and the Aboriginal alike want to live in peace, as neighbours rather than as victors. Most of us human beings want to live well, as neighbours, in cared for communities.

The past 12,000 years of cultures of hierarchic violence do not compare well to the millions of years of evolutionary mutual aid. Why aren't mainstream Jews supporting Palestinian Human Rights? "There are no doubt both similarities and differences between the systemic racism in the U.S. and that in Palestine/Israel. Nevertheless, while the murder of George Floyd at the hands of a white American policeman produced a huge reaction from white Americans, there has been little empathy in Israel or among American Jews for the plight of Palestinians and the violence they face at the hands of Israeli soldiers and security forces. 

The insistence of the Zionist movement on a Jewish state and their denial of the equality of Israel’s own Arab citizens and the inalienable rights of Palestinians in the occupied territories make it nearly impossible for there to be a reaction like that which followed the killing of George Floyd. 

While most Israelis are totally opposed to a one-state solution (which would dilute their idea of a majority Jewish state), perhaps only when it becomes clear that this is the path they are pushing Palestinians toward will it be possible to find a historic compromise. 

Source : https://www.mei.edu/publications/why-arent-mainstream-israelis-and-american-jews-supporting-palestinians

For Palestinian citizens in Israel to experience equality and those in the occupied territories to acquired statehood will require a dramatic change. A historic compromise is unlikely until Israelis and their supporters experience a major change in attitude — one akin to what white Americans seem to be going through right now. 

In the same way that white Americans are finally beginning to acknowledge the systemic racism in American society and discuss ways of addressing it, Israelis need to acknowledge the humanity and rights of Palestinians."

Prince Harry, the Hierarchy Cult and you and I. My two previous blog pieces refer to a) Prince Harry and his comments on intergenerational trauma, and how important that subject is for all of us and to b) the psychology of hierarchy of violence culture and how that afflicts us all. The Israeli colonial conquest story is very much all of that.

Intergenerational Trauma and the psychology of hierarchy of violence culture.

The Israeli 'problem' stems from historical trauma that remains unresolved, flowing from one generation to another and intensifying hatreds making matters worse. Political and economic violence perpetrated by hierarchy systems. Jewish communities have been violently oppressed and harmed by Christian Hierarchies for centuries - always as political scapegoats, an unjust scapegoating - and the adults and children of those communities have always been innocent: they just happened to be living where they were. They were picked on, victimised by the prevailing localised hierarchies of power as part of political machinations in this or that territory. The Jewish Diaspora is a cloth woven of the thread of refugee communities seeking shelter from violent abuse. That history is real.

Institutional Christianity and Islam, and other religions have so often sat side by side, walked hand in hand with Organised Hierarchies of Violence, as political power institutions, that they are almost impossible to separate. Every reform movement within Christianity bar the Quakers, the Amish and a few others has become embroiled in the Political Hierarchy of Violence Cult.

Institutional Islam has had it's wars with Judaism too, and even more so with Christianity as a competing Empire system. And yet in Palestine, in the 1920s, Jews, Christians, Muslim and Secular Arabs all lived as ordinary citizens, cheek by jowl, in communities without hardened edges, as they had done for centuries. Friends, neighbours, lovers and colleagues.

It is a deliberate behaviour of Hierarchies of Violence that them must groom as much of the population as they can at the earliest stages to enrol the people who live there by accident of birth into the habituation to the hierarchy as their natural background - this is a big part of this problem. Who teaches children to follow this or that leader, and why? Right now, the Israeli Institutional Hierarchy of Violence system, supported by the US and UK Institutional Hierarchy of Violence Systems are operating a genocidal policy against the Palestinian people, their land tenure, their polity. It cannot be justified because it is so deeply rooted in injustice : "I have a gun, get off your land or I will kill you." This pattern of colonialism is common across the Earth in these times. That cult of Hierarchy, of entitlement to violence and domination, is the problem. Israeli State violence is part of that cult. The British Empire was part of that cult, and still is. That is why the English Parliament supports Israel and legislates the permits to supply Israel with weaponry, it is why they sabotaged Corbyn from within the Labour Party as they savaged him in the News Mefia. Hierarchy Culture has to operate vast indoctrination systems, effectively grooming entire populations, aware that some few see through the conditioning. They have to find ways to dismay, demean, exhaust and otherwise suppress those who see through the cultural grooming. The people who are groomed and conditioned are not sheeple - they are mostly decent people who are innocent victims, and whose best interests are served by understanding how the grooming functions and helping each other see it and then move through it. The Israeli state learned it's trade at the feet of the British Empire. Of course, this lead to me writing a song. A song about home, about good decent people returning home, having been evicted by gun and blade.
The chorus is the Israeli and British Violence singing their song of the taking of land by force, the verses are the voices of the Palestinians - Muslim, Christian, Jewish and Secular - who were evicted, those who remained, those being evicted today, by violence.

 They are also the voices of every colonised people, every pre-conquest culture. Their voices continue, and at the end of this song they outlast the voices of the colonial violence - this is my way of pointing out the futility of the Israeli project of extinction of a people, my support of the people, my hope in their eventual return and justice and peace restored.

Every where an indigenous people are being intruded upon by conquest the invaders must be stopped, as soon as possible. 

coreluminous · Get Off Your Land (We Have the Guns)

Lyric: get off your land, we've got the guns get off your land, we've got the jets get off your land, we've got the bombs run! run! run! run! They came here, reached out their hands, they WANTED TO BE NEIGHBOURS they bought our lands, They said they were friends, Friendship never ends, they started to sing a DIFFERENT SONG This land is our land, promised by God we will improve it, turning the sod That's when it all went wrong they started to sing a DIFFERENT SONG it Was planned that way from the very start to disarm us, charm us, infiltrate our hearts, set us at ease, built a secret army to do as they please they started to sing a DIFFERENT SONG This land is our land, promised by God we will improve it, turning the sod they started to sing the invaders SONG The day came, they declared their state army SWARMED our village, WE HAD NO hate ordered TO LEAVE, we took WHAT we could CARRY they chased us from our homes, who heard our voice then we started to sing another song this land is our land, we've lived here forever, we were wiling to share it, they said never, that's when we knew we'd have to be strong. we'll return to our land, we have great heart we'll return to our homes, we will restart we will live in peace, we will live in love we will beat back your conquest, when push comes to shove we are good people, no matter what you say, we are Palestinian, we are here to stay Apartheid is a war crime, we all know the world is awakening, and time will show conquest and empire will always fall the original people always walk tall pride in our humanity, strong in our heart we will not be erased, the return must start the Naqba was a turning point, that plan that must fail our resistance is eternal, the wind in our sail.. we are good people, no matter what you say, we are Palestinian, we are here to stay we are good people, no matter what you say, we are Palestinian, we are here to stay we are good people, no matter what you say, we are Palestinian, we are here to stay.

Kindest regards

Corneilius

"Do what you love, it is your gift to universe."

Prince Harry and Intergenerational Trauma

A short note on Prince Harry and his comments about intergenerational trauma, his family, the Royal Family as an Institution and the media response to his comments.

"I don't think we should be pointing the finger or blaming anybody, but certainly when it comes to parenting, if I've experienced some form of pain or suffering because of the pain or suffering that perhaps my father or my parents had suffered, I'm going to make sure I break that cycle so that I don't pass it on, basically.

It's a lot of genetic pain and suffering that gets passed on.

I started to piece it together and go 'okay, so this is where he went to school, this is what happened, I know this about his life, I also know that is connected to his parents so that means he's treated me the way he was treated, so how can I change that for my own kids?"

I think Harry is doing us all a service. I think as a parent he is being honest. I think he is taking his responsibility to his children's future seriously, thoughtfully, compassionately. I think he is taking his responsibility as a public voice seriously too. I think his compassion is real.

And it's not just about Harry, nor is it about his family (which he did not choose). It is about all of us. Do not let media narratives distract you.

Harry, Meghan and Archie : photo credit, Press Association.

Imagine the changes in social policy that might emerge if trauma informed approaches percolated into the deliberations within Parliament and our NHS, our schools, our Police Forces and our Prison systems, into how we resolve homelessness and much else besides. 

There is so much work to be done.

Harry is using his voice, his public presence and status to give some public space to the awareness that intergenerational trauma is a social and material dynamic that is very real, has profound effects on all of us as people and it has an effect on our culture.

Whilst he discusses this in very personal terms, and whilst his discussion relates to and involves members of his own family there is another element which is much more important - the element of this that is for the whole population to consider.

What does intergenerational trauma mean for us, in our lives, in our family lines, our communities?

Would we or could we do things differently if we were trauma informed?

"I argued then that the study of psychological trauma is an inherently political enterprise because it calls attention to the experience of oppressed people. I predicted that our field would continue to be beset by controversy, no matter how solid its empirical foundation, because the same historical forces that in the past have consigned major discoveries to oblivion continue to operate in the world. I argued, finally, that only an ongoing connection with a global political movement for human rights could ultimately sustain our ability to speak about unspeakable things." ~ Judith Herman in Trauma and Recovery

I think that as a society, as a culture and as individuals and families, we all could benefit to some degree to look at whether or not intergenerational trauma has played a role in our lives, in the lives of our families and perhaps become more aware of the possibility that it has, and that as such, more compassion and understanding can grow that leads to less trauma effects as we grow into the future.

I would say too that in my opinion, those in the media who took Harry's words on this to be an attack on his family or an attack on a much loved institution are wrong to assume that position - they are not doing either any service by castigating Harry so.

I have written a bit about intergenerational trauma previously, and it is a subject I have spent some time looking into from a personal perspective and as a societal dynamic.

Unresolved trauma has a way of playing out in our lives, families and communities, and in the history of nations and ethnic histories. What remains unresolved continues to create distortion in behaviour.

Topically as I write, this weekend the Israeli State's 75 year mistreatment of Palestinian  people comes to mind. The impact of the invention of  Institutional legalised Racism as a tool to divide European and African indentured workers in the British Colonies of the Americas which was the precursor to legalised slavery of Africans comes to mind. The trauma associated with Misogyny is ever present.

The political violence perpetrated by violent governments against citizens seeking accountable democratic governance, in Colombia and Myanmar, and in so many other places comes to mind.

Libya, Syria and Yemen. Northern Ireland. We see the effects of intergenerational trauma writ large.

The football hooliganism last night, of some Rangers and Celtic 'fans' in Glasgow's centre contrasts with the peaceful protest that blocked a hostile environment deportation of asylum seekers, refugees from a traumatised land. 

These are all societal level dynamics that afflict so many lives, and because the dynamics of intergenerational trauma remain unresolved, they persist.

It doesn't have to be that way. Cycles of adverse behaviour can be ended.

We can do this.

Thank you, Harry, for lending your voice to this story.



Kindest regards 

Corneilius

"Do what you love, it is your gift to universe."

Psychological Climate Change : Hierarchy of Violence Culture is the Problem.

A God that can send you to Hell is a violent God. A God that says he, she or it  loves you and can still send you to Hell, is a gaslighting God. Such Gods are always, always projections of violent people. 

Hierarchies  of Wealth, Power and Violence are cults, they are mafia cults.

I have written much about Hierarchy of Violence as a cult, a culture - in opposition to Humanity as a species that evolved through co-operative alloparenting and mutual aid. The culture is the probem, not the species. 

I know this much, I am not the problem. Me not fitting into this society is a healthy response.

Would we or could we do things differently if we were trauma informed?

"I argued then that the study of psychological trauma is an inherently political enterprise because it calls attention to the experience of oppressed people. I predicted that our field would continue to be beset by controversy, no matter how solid its empirical foundation, because the same historical forces that in the past have consigned major discoveries to oblivion continue to operate in the world. I argued, finally, that only an ongoing connection with a global political movement for human rights could ultimately sustain our ability to speak about unspeakable things." ~ Judith Herman in Trauma and Recovery

The News is not helping, is it?

The news media is full of a myriad of stories, images and  narratives - more commonly biased and less so objective - and we see that violence erupts once more as Israeli State Mechanised Warplanes bomb the prison of Gaza, where people have nowhere to run to, for safety; we see the outcome of reckless policy on COVID19 in UK, USA, Brazil and India as wave after wave of infection surges; we are all aware of the intrusion into and colonisation of 'undeveloped lands inhabited by older indigenous cultures; Myanmar's youth resist the Military oppression of their new-born democracy... there's a lot going on.

The truth is not being told.

Meanwhile, for 1.8 billion people, across East Asia, Oceania and elsewhere zero community transmission strategy is protecting their lives and livelihoods in large measure.

What is the climate within which all this is happening, and can we change that?

Music helps me ground myself when facing all of this. Here's two songs in particular, that emerge from the Irish experience, that I find particularly resonant. They humanity of both songs, and of their writers is a beauty to me.

~

Fergus O'Farrel with Interference sings 'American Townland'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K7-3iAnG5Ls

Lyrics:

"American townland

Snow in Iceland

Russian farmland

And the sword of Islam

The state of new Israel

Remembers Belsen

Now there's sand for Palestine

And grass for Israel

Won't you settle down, stop fighting for your gods...

Oh, settle down, stop fighting for your gods.

They can't hear you now, not with the noise of your guns.

Once were towering steeples

Now there's a soaring eagle

A crescent moon and a rising sun

Our prayers ascending, but what good will they bring?

If all that's willin' is more and more killin'

Won't you settle down, stop fighting for your gods...

Oh, settle down, stop fighting for your gods.

They can't hear you now, not with the noise of your guns.

The mountains of Mourne

The county Cork I was born in

This dirty old town

Where the rain's always fallin'..

Our prayers ascending, but what good will they bring?

When all that's willin' is more and more killin' 
~

What a beautiful song, so movingly performed. Fergus O'Farrell died young, aged 48. His career was blighted by his health, he suffered from Muscular Dystrophy - his body of work is immense, intense, beautiful and worthy of all praise in and of itself. 

For me this song speaks to the inhumane cruelty and ultimate futility of Religion, when Religion is used as a reason to wage wars of colonisation. It also speaks of a deeply felt empathy and a humane view. It is an historical song.

It sits comfortably with Damien Dempsey's song Colony, a fierce rebuttal of the colonial mindset and a resounding song of defiance. This song makes the hair stand on end, and is as strong a heart beat of the humane as any.  Here's the writer, on why he wrote the song, for whom he wrote it.

Here's the full song, off the album. When Damien sings this, the crowds no sing with him, and the atmosphere is electric, everyone in the room is on point, fully alive to the meaning of the song, and our place in history with it. Bearing in mind that the Palestinian people, the Aboriginals of Australia, the Ashaninka of Peru and Brazil, and many, many others all live with the oppression upon them, and resist and defend their lands and rights as best they can with little in the way of support from the rest of the world. Justice is still a long way off.

Colony Lyrics: 

I sing the song of the colony

How many years and you're still not free

And your mother cries and you ask god why

Greed is the knife and the scars run deep

How many races with much reason to weep

And your children cry

And you ask god whyAnnie, she came from Dunlavin Town

The TB came and killed her family all around

Population booms

Eleven in two rooms

Katie she came from down Townsend street

Ten in a bed and no shoes on their feet

1916 came

They played the patriots game

Freddy, he came from the Iveagh flats

Tenement slums and infested with rats

Sleeping on damp straw

Trying not to break the law

Thomas, he came from Kilmaine in Mayo

Semi starvation was the only life you'd know

In a two room shack

Then jailed in Letterfrack

I look to the east, I look to the west

To the north and the south, and I'm not too impressed

Time after time

After crime after crime

They raped, robbed, pillaged, enslaved and murdered

Jesus Christ was their god and they done it in his name

So he could take the blame if it's not all a game

With bible in one hand and a sword in the other

They came to purify my land of my Gaelic Irish mothers

And fathers, and sisters and brothers

With our own ancient customs, laws, music, art

Way of life and culture

Tribal in structure

We had a civilisation

When they were still neanderthal nations

We suffer with the Native American, the Indian in Asia

Aboriginal Australia

The African people with their history so deep

And our children still weep and our lives are still cheap

You came from Germany, from France, from England

And from Spain

From Belgium and from Portugal

You all done much the same

You took what was not yours

Went against your own bible

You broke your own laws

Just to out do the rival

But did you ever apologize

For the hundreds and millions of lives

You destroyed and terrorised

Or have you never realized

Did you never feel shame

For what was done in your country's name

And find out who's to blame and why they were so inhumane

And still they teach you in your school

About those glorious days of rule

And how it's your destiny to be

Superior to me

But if you've any kind of mind

You'll see that all human kind

Are the children of this earth

And your hate for them will chew you up and spit you out

You'll never kill our will to be free, to be free

You'll never kill our will to be free, to be free

You'll never kill our will to be free, to be free

Inside our minds we hold, hold the key.

These two songs hold for me the sense of resistance that is deeply humane, that reaches for peace, knowing that although we are vulnerable, we are decent, we are lovers and builders of healthy community at heart and the bullies are bullies. They are not healthy people. Rulers are not healthy people. Colonisers are not healthy people.

Hierarchy of Violence Culture

From the many stories of the Bible, and before, going back 12,000 years or so, through the many Empires as they fought for territory and dominance, through to the invasion of Ireland in 1159 (I am of Irish ethnicity) and onwards as the Crusades and Islam swung back and forth, to the destruction of the Taino of the Caribbean, and the people's of South America, in 1492 onwards, to the British Colonies on what we call North America built by and for religious refugees, that stole land from Native people, and then destroyed them, utterly to the various Colonial excursions across Asia and elsewhere, pastors and merchants, armed to the teeth, through to the scramble for Africa, to the Nazi occupation of Eastern Europe where Jews and others were slaughtered in their millions 'to make room' for the German Reich, and on through to today, where yet again the Palestinian people face the brutality of colonial warfare designed to extirpate them from their native homes.

Ireland cannot adopt a zero community transmission strategy to protect it's people in large part because of the partition, (and because it's own ruling class are as venal as rulers anywhere else).

The dominant neighbour, the English government rejects zero community transmission strategy, even as ZCT is proven to protect the lives and economies of 1.8 billion people across East Asia and Oceania and elsewhere, and prevent new variants from emerging, and this places of the British Isles at risk. It could so easily have been avoided.

These are the ill effects of a thousand years of overlordism.

Who rules the English people?

Ireland is still partitioned - those old wounds are still painful, and the political interference still blatant.

What the Israeli state has done and is continuing to do the Palestinian people for the past 75 years, the Normans did to Ireland for 800.

Do the Palestinians have to go through the same?

PROMISED LAND 
a poem by Michael Rosen

  A family arrived and said they had papers  

to prove that his house was theirs.

No, no, said the man, my people have always lived here,  my father, grandfather .... and look, the garden,  my great-grandfather planted that.

No, no, said the family, look at the documents. 

There was a stack of them.

Where do I start? said the man.

No need to read the beginning, they said,

turn to the page marked ‘Promised Land’.

Are they legal? he said, who wrote them?

God, they said, God wrote them, look - 

Here come His tanks.

Both groups of colonisers cited religion and culture as their justifications for their behaviour. There's always a justification rooted in entitlement and supremacy. It is always a logical fallacy.

Conquest, Occupation and resistance.

Palestine - where the act of self defence and resistance, a legal right agreed upon by the all Earths nation states, is punished by full on ethnic cleansing, social, cultural and military war fare, and where that constant punishment of an entire population has been and is still supported by the USUK political ruling classes and is enabled by the EU and UN who play the role of bystanders, even as millions of ordinary citizens in all these countries oppose the violence of the Israeli State, and are also saddened by the violence of the resistance. The Palestinian people should never have been put into that position that they needed to resist war, occupation and colonisation.

What use is there in all of this killing? 

What futures are nurtured by so much blood and gore?

I understand Faith, the way people grow up with the Faith of their parents and grandparents, never consciously chosen, always internalised through habit and thus integrated into sense of self -  I understand the psychic trap that otherwise decent people fall into, when the Institutional and Political Power of the religion is harnessed in warfare. That is an abuse of Faith.

Unicorns against masks is yet another similar faith dynamic that pollutes responsible behaviour in the midst of a pandemic.

I detest those who build that trap, who ensnare the decent, the innocent, the children, generation after generation, just to maintain an institutional power base. They are to me the most abusive of people, bullies without pause, they liars and charlatans.

And I have no easy, simplistic answer on how to free the innocents from the trap. I was entrapped myself a number of times. It was honesty that finally freed me.

But this I know - these traps must  be unset, be they religious, ideological, nationalist or genderist, and the innocent must be allowed to grow free. We have to find ways to ceasing indoctrination of defenceless children that lead to the kinds of extremism we are seeing in Israel and Saudi Arabia, in USA and elsewhere.

The Psychological Climate Issue.

Climate change is one thing, the global Pandemic is another as is the conquest and colonisation of lands already long inhabited by  people who nurtured that land - be it Palestine or the Amazon Rainforest -  and the psychological climate of hierarchies of violence culture is part of the problem and the puzzle to be resolved that all of these present.

What is happening in Israel, what is being done to the Palestinian people is emblematic of what this hierarchy of violence cult is doing to all of us, to humanity, and we the humane must find ways to stop it in it's track. 

The train of hierarchy of violence must be halted, and we must disembark.

What is happening in England and India, and elsewhere, what is being done to the people by the reckless policies of the ruling factions in regards to COVDI19 is emblematic of what this hierarchy of violence cult is doing to all of us, to humanity, and we the humane must find ways to stop it in it's track. 

The train of hierarchy of violence must be halted, and we must disembark.

We must do this, we must commit to doing, even if we do not know how that is going to work out. It is not merely the success of the project that drives this - it is integrity.

Ani Di Franco has a song, Inside Out, in which she sings "We are all citizens of the womb." This is true.

This line inspired me to write this poem.

A SONG FOR THE CHILDREN OF PALESTINE AND ISRAEL

The push, the release
the squeeze, the belief
in letting go - we both
surrender to the next life
as in the new world

I arrive to the softness of
the strange dry air,
something unknown to me,
the pulse of my mothers heart
the thumping with which I have
for nine months lived
- all of my life thus far -
oh the relief of hearing that sound again
having been briefly, yet intensely
separated from that
fundamental pulse.

I gaze with all my body,
all my soul
and we catch each other,
before I reach to feed.
and oxytocin mediates the adrenaline
I am born, and we are clean, together...

My fathers deep voice rumbling in peace and joy,
amazement and bliss.

Being born is the art of the eternal welcome.

 Mind and body
one ingenuous zone of love,
head to toe I know
that my love of life,
this desire to nurture,
the qualities
we see
and feel in each other,

and we are recognised,
for these are the echoes,
these are the dreams
that are essential
above all else.

Nurture love,
tend the garden

Blessings are
these tears of love,
these peals of laughter
like a silken glove
held and yet unrestricted.

And then the flags, the tanks, and the shelling?

This tragedy is pathology,
the loving is all gone,
the culture says no breast-feeding in public,
it's more important
that you learn your Nations song!

Booooom!

~

What to do?

The first things that must be done is that states that organise violence on the scale that USUK and Israel and Russia and others do must be inhibited from doing so by their own populations - and in that populations across the Earth  must find ways to build solidarity and generate material support for each other in achieving this. We are in this together.

It is for the British population to control their State and Oligarchy who interfere in other countries.

It is for the American population to control their State and Oligarchy who interfere win other countries.

It is for each countries population to assert our right to self govern - it is not the  exclusive right of any ruling class,  no such right exists. The ruling class rules by might and leveraged power and that is, in this 21st Century, wholly illegitimate.

This means we must as people in humane, informed  intelligent solidarity take control of the democratic legislatures and write the laws that will control these powers and forces, and thus make them safe for people everywhere.

We need to do this just to get to the position where we can deal with Climate Change, Environmental Pollution, Air Particulate Pollution and poverty.

Climate change demands a psychological change among all democratic electorates.

We need peace to be able to work on Climate Change in meaningful ways.

Kindest regards 

Corneilius 

"Do what you love, it is your gift to universe."