Dead Man Walking ...
... or how the western military industrial complex condemned the entire population of the Gaza Strip to death whilst their bought and paid for politicians deny any knowledge ...
I watched The Green Mile the other night. As anyone who’s seen it will agree, it’s a great movie … long, but gripping. Full of characters you love and one you love to see meet a deserved and shocking fate at the hands of a gentle and innocent instrument of unworldly power. The plot is an allegory written by Stephen King, the master of a great yarn and an allegorical magician. The story focusses on a huge southern black man John Coffey (like the drink but without both “e’s”) who seems to have “special educational needs” as we would call it today. He is blamed for the deaths of two little girls and the power of the American penal system of the 1930’s descends on him with ultimate force and total ignorance and deafness to his feeble attempts to explain how he “couldn’t bring them back”. Condemned to death by means that only the USA could invent, Death’s Electric Embrace … the electric chair, he is imprisoned, awaiting execution on “The Green Mile” a.k.a. death row. Enter Percy Wetmore … the sadistic, power obsessed nephew of the Governor of the state, in which Cold Mountain Penitentiary imprisons the condemned Coffey. Percy is small, weak, immature and deeply insecure and uses cruel behaviour to mask his own vulnerabilities. His family connection offers him impunity, which allows Percy to act with ever increasing violence, to the point when he procures that one of the inmates suffers a prolonged and hideously painful and destructive execution.
But fate catches up with Percy in the end when John Coffey (who is a metaphor for the ignorant conscience of the world) delivers a telling coup de gras upon him … ruining Percy, both physically and mentally.
Why does The Green Mile strike such a chord at this time? As allegories go, it presents powerful symbolism, reflecting the dystopian, topsy-turvey world we’re living in. The warders, who maintain a barbaric system of punishment (despite their better instincts) which shows a pitiless disregard for the weak, instead choosing to make examples of them; the young, vulnerable Percy, who believes that his path to power and influence is paved with acts of fetishistic aggression, sadism and unrestrained violence; and John Coffey … the conscience of humanity: confused, vulnerable, ignorant and slow to learn … but who, ultimately, must triumph (albeit a pyrrhic victory for the condemned man [or is he representative of something else?]).
How Gaza walks the mile
There is another parallel … as the characters of Percy and John are introduced to the viewer, Percy alerts the watching inmates of Cold Mountain Penitentiary to the fact that he leads a “Dead Man Walking”, the classic turn of phrase used when referring to death row inmates entering “the mile”, as it is commonly known. All its inmates are condemned to death. In many cases (if not most) they know not the day or time of their death and must wait on the row, at the convenience of the penal authorities and the Governor.
Watching an episode of “The Stream” on Al Jazeera this morning, I was reminded of the phrase - dead man walking. Why? The panellists were discussing the long-term effects of the genocide in Gaza. The interviewees included a toxicologist with experience of the toxicity of the conditions which perpetuate in Iraq, following the 2003 war, when the USA and UK relentlessly and without cause (as public enquiries later proved) bombed a terrified Iraqi population into submission, and an expert in mesothelioma - the cancer caused by the inhalation of dust, produced when asbestos is disturbed.
At the time of recording, Gaza has been turned into 37,000,000 tonnes of rubble, of which 800,000 tonnes represented asbestos, which was used in the building of property in Gaza, long after the toxicity of the material was known to the world. As the expert put it … in the UK, building materials containing asbestos were banned 25 years ago and yet after so many years, patients are presenting with the first symptoms of “asbestosis” as it used to be known, after limited … often single events of exposure to the material. Mesothelioma is a cancer which the programme told us, kills 60% of victims within one year of diagnosis. A pitiful 8% live five years after receiving news of their sentence.
In Gaza, the asbestos is everywhere, whipped up by the slightest breeze, or blown through what remain of the streets, when the latest air strike crushes another building. The Palestinians, enduring the most prolonged and ceaseless onslaught Israel has ever executed on a population in all its (too many) years of existence. I am reminded that the IDF is a coalition of three terrorist groups (the Haganah, Irgun and Lehi (also known as the Stern Gang, Hitler’s pen pals in the Middle East) who were proscribed by the UK government and were responsible for the worst acts of terrorism ever perpetrated against Britons: including the bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem. The IDF is now hellbent and has already done enough to kill every person who has been in Gaza during the genocide (and that, poetically, includes possibly more of their own people than Hamas and IJIP killed on 7 October 2023); it will just take a little time for all of the means to present themselves).
This morning AJ reported that milk formula is unavailable to mothers in Gaza. Due to the enforced malnutrition suffered by everyone, nursing mothers are unable to produce milk to feed their babies … and so they will die … starving to death, without the understanding to know why … why their mothers fail to support the life in their bodies … why, despite their cries, no one seems to realise that they just want to be fed … or given a drink.
The babies who starve at this early stage of life will be counted as fortunate to have been martyred, before the full horror of their potential existence becomes apparent. Asbestos, yes, is a death sentence which, as if they were on The Green Mile, might be executed in ten, fifteen, or twenty-five years; but it is just one of the toxins and the toxic effects which will plague the territory of Gaza, until the effects of climate change (accelerated by the relentless campaign of genocide, which has seen 100,000 tonnes of ordnance [equivalent to 18 times the volume of ordnance dropped on Vietnam by the USA in the entire Vietnam War] dropped, on an area which is smaller than 25% of Greater London, in 20 months) make the region as a whole, unable to sustain life.
Silica, which enters the atmosphere when concrete is pulverised, will cause silicosis, pulmonary and testicular cancers, cardiovascular diseases. As internal scarring, caused when airways and blood vessels are abraded by silica (like glass, or sand particles) hardens, it becomes impossible to breath, or arteries thicken and no longer pump blood.
Metals with varying levels of toxicity, from lead and mercury, which lead to birth abnormalities (in Iraq the frequency of birth abnormalities recorded in 1995 was 1.73 in 1000; after the Iraq war, this figure was 23 in 1000) to chromium and cadmium are now at such levels in Gaza, that their toxicity will cause far higher incidence of abnormality than has been recorded in Iraq and unless the culprits are forced by John Coffey (humanity) to clean up their mess, then it would likely be centuries before a woman might safely give birth, in Gaza.
These metals, as the people of Flint, Michigan know, also cause developmental issues in children raised in an area of contamination. The main water source in Flint was polluted with lead and it was only when the incidence of learning difficulties throughout the city’s children (particularly boys) leapt to an alarming extent, that people took notice. It was still several years before the water source was changed and the population was able to drink relatively clean water from the faucet, by which time the majority of the harm had been done.
Where lead and mercury are metals which have been present in weapons for many years; and the harmful effects of such metals are now well known, modern weapons contain increasing amounts of lethal metals which even when they are not ingested directly upon impact, will be found in any water supplies, in land and in food for decades. The weapons which have been supplied to Israel by the western military industrial complex: by General Dynamics, Northrup Grumann, Raytheon, BAE Systems, Rheinmetall and other major corporates, predominantly for the benefit of our pension funds and for the wealthiest 1% of the western world’s population, contain … in addition to lead …
depleted uranium (DU) which due to its heavy metal toxicity and the radiation it releases has long-term health effects including cancers of all kinds and kidney failure;
tungsten, which is poisonous when inhaled or ingested, causes respiratory issues and long-term health issues;
cadmium which, like DU, causes cancers of all kinds and kidney failure;
beryllium - lightweight but strong which has its very own chronic beryllium disease and which also causes lung cancer.
Medics in Gaza report the immediate effects of these weapons. Armour piercing tank rounds, artillery shells, hellfire missiles shot from Apache helicopters, anti-tank guided missiles and bombs dropped from F16’s and F35’s, contain what are known as “penetrators”: millions of perfect, tiny tungsten or depleted uranium cubes which are packed into these munitions so that on impact, they are distributed in order to cause the greatest possible damage to the built environment and injury to the people who inhabit it. One English doctor reported how a single tungsten cube, millimetres in diameter, which lodged itself under the skin of a victim, had resulted in what he claimed would likely be permanent paralysis of his arm and shoulder.
Given the amount of ordnance that has been dropped on Gaza, there is no hope that a population lacking the technically sophisticated equipment which would be available to the USA and Israel, will be able to cleanse the environment of the debris and harmful substances deposited by the genocidaires. It’s almost enough to make you feel relief that the victims of snipers at the GHF food traps will die a swift and relatively pain-free death. Birth defects, developmental problems related to starvation in the womb and out of it, the post-traumatic shock of war and the metal and other toxins is likely to condemn every single person in Gaza to a Gideon’s Chariots related death. When this will occur, no one knows, save to say that the chances of a baby born in Gaza being healthy at birth, developing without defects and living three score years and ten, are zero.
The only consolation which remains for those of us who watch, impotently from abroad … who like a Greek chorus, are there to bear witness as opposed to affecting any change to the drama … is that those members of the IGF (Israeli Genocidal Force) who have played the role of judge, jury and executioner, may themselves, whilst actors in this tragedy, ingest sufficient quantities of airborne toxins to cause their own painful and prolonged demise. Might they also have sufficient time left to regret their own barbarity? Is it even in the psyche of the average Israeli to experience regret?
Perfidious Albion
In other news …
In the High Court in London, yesterday, in the case brought by Palestinian Human Rights group, Al-Haq and Amnesty, against the UK Government of Kier Starmer, a bench of justices produced one of the most perfidious judgments of modern legal history.
Throughout the hearings the two humanitarian NGO’s had presented vast swathes of evidence, to establish that a genocide is taking place in Gaza. In UK law there is a test known as the reasonableness test: the test, essentially is as to whether a man (or woman) riding on the top deck of a London Transport red bus, would believe a fact pattern to be true if it were presented to them. The Al-Haq and Amnesty evidence file by any standard of reasonableness, was irrefutable. The UK Government however argued that in every one (but one) of over 400 incidents detailed in the prosecution’s case, it was unable to establish whether the Israeli “Defence” Forces, had targeted innocent human beings, when they attacked the civilian population of Gaza in the period between 7 October 2023 and the end of June last year. The UK Government stated that they had asked the IDF to confirm, in each individual case, whether or not it had meant to kill an innocent victim, or were actually targeting a Hamas fighter (here I pay the Government the compliment of assuming that it wasn’t suggesting that anyone in the Hamas ministry of agriculture, is a legitimate target … a mistake made by the BBC, of course). The IDF had been unable to confirm whether or not this was the case. Given this failure the UK Government’s stated legal position is that it is unable to confirm or deny that a genocide is occurring in Gaza.
Amongst the incidents cited in evidence by Al Haq and Amnesty, were those of toddlers slain by Israeli snipers, with perfect pairing of “kill shots”: one through the chest and one, through the head; and the death of Hind Rajab - the five year old, who was calling the Palestinian Red Cresent, as she sat in the back of a car with the bodies of her aunt, uncle and cousin, when an Israeli tank strafed the vehicle with over three hundred and fifty rounds, some of which were armour piercing; this, after it had shelled the PRC ambulance that had arrived to rescue the little girl, burning the medics to death in their seats.
When Al Haq and Amnesty failed to convince the Court of the presence of genocidal intent with such evidence, they approached their claim that F35 parts should not be exported to Israel, under UK Government armament export licences. The Government claimed that to stop such a flagrant breach of its Rome Treaty obligation to prevent a plausible genocide from being an actual genocide, would compromise global security. It also made clear by its statements, that there were matters which the Court could determine, and that there are matters which are “best left to Parliament”, where the Government commands a substantial but diminishing majority.
The Court acceded to the Government’s wishes and a government in which the Prime Minister, Sir Kier Starmer and the Attorney General, Lord Richard Hermer are both honoured former Human Rights QC’s (now KC’s) skipped merrily from the Court, with their credibility in tatters but their power to do genocidal harm, uncurbed, realising what an obliging bench of Judges they’d enjoyed.
Now if I have failed to convince you that the current “conflict” in Gaza is no war, but a genocide and that all the evidence can be found in the details and volume of the armaments deployed by Israel on the Strip, then you are as slow as John Coffey (like the drink but without both “e’s”). If you have an ounce of his humanity then you will do something to convince those in power to end the genocide, to sanction the State of Israel (and not just a few, performatively vile individuals) before, like Percy, it can do worse, and to deliver up Netanyahu, Gallant and any other bad actors for whom the ICC might issue warrants, up to the Hague … including the deaf, blind and increasingly speechless, Sir Kier Starmer.
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