STARVATION
“Many new tyrants keep a copy of Mein Kampf in their drawer; it could still come in handy, maybe [NOW] with some adjustments or the substitution of some names.” ( Primo Levi, 1986)
1
This food i eat
sticks in my throat
the inedible thoughts
of monsters must surely
torment me
sleepless i sleepwalk
through
this nightmare
fooling myself
all is well and
safe and sound
in a wicked world
with little wonder
left.
This food i eat
i cannot swallow.
These sleepless nights
storm restlessly through
my dreams
just like the ghosts
of what could have been
but now will not nor ever
can nor will be
no more.
“NEVER AGAIN”, they whispered.
2
This food i refuse to eat
still sticks in my throat
the thoughts and nightmares
of others
endlessly torment me.
What food i have already eaten
i cannot swallow.
In sleepless nights
this question of “Humanity”
wakes, still-born, but
only in my dreams.
3
This child with no belonging…
This mother soon to be without her child…
i see them walking alone now
bare ribs pointing in accusation
at the Dark
like a signpost to the City of Savages!
the Towns and Houses
of Criminals and Murderers!
this Country of Lawlessness!
these Continents of Ballistic Missiles, Lies,
and Bullshit.
There can be no forgiveness
for this food i have stolen
from these children’s lives.
4
Who would live
in such a tormented mind
such a merciless world,
walk such poisoned paths
give birth over and over
to this one endless catastrophe?
This is now a question of Power and Profit
…no longer
a People who do not really exist,
are not really here (they tell us)
their cries at night mute like
an orchestra with its arms amputated
its voices strangled
its dreams all left hanging from this rope
called History.
5
What’s ‘human’ about any of this
(i ask myself)
mindless, myopic, murder
the thoughts, playthings and toys
of these terrorist-soldiers?
Even our own words must now bend
under the whips the monsters
are already writing our history
with.
6
In the distance
soft music still papers the walls
of this Luxury Ghetto called
“The West”
this cancerous empire
of greed and delusion
who never once said “sorry”
until they had eaten more than their fill,
who never once said “thank you”
for the food they have stolen,
the lives they have buried in mass graves
the bodies buried or burnt or hidden from
sight.
This is not Gaza, not Palestine
but Paris and London and Berlin,
these are the well-fed-citizens in New York
no longer falling from their arrogant Towers.
7
And here, comrades, is the last signpost
on our weary way far
far from civilisation
and whether you know it or not
in fire and body-parts and
with this imaginary food
i see
falling
from the sky
all we can hear now
in feast or fierce famine
is
the
end…
This. Is. The. Fucking. End…
séamas carraher
29 July – 20 August, 2025
https://seamascarraher.blogspot.com/
IMAGE
Forced starvation in Gaza
From RTE News, August 6, 2025
( “Fair-Use” – as per art. 5.3(a) use for illustration for teaching or scientific research, to the extent justified by the non-commercial purpose;
* art. 5.3(c) press reviews and news reporting;
* art. 5.3(d) quotations for the purposes of criticism or review;)
Alternative Quote
“If those are the kind of people
that go to heaven you can send me to hell lord”
– from ‘Suicide Note from
a Cockroach in a Low Income Housing Project’ (‘Puerto Rican Obituary’) Pedro Pietri Reads
“In 1979, Pietri came out with an LP entitled “Loose Joints” (Readings)
UPDATE-GAZA
“Between 30 and 31 July, 105 Palestinians were reportedly killed. At least 680 were injured along the convoy routes in the Zikim area, in North Gaza, and the Morage area in southern Khan Younis, as well as in the vicinity of the GHF sites in Middle Gaza and Rafah.
…In total, since 27 May, at least 1,373 Palestinians have been killed while seeking food; 859 in the vicinity of the GHF sites and 514 along the routes of food convoys. Most of these killings were committed by the Israeli military…
…Each person killed or injured had been desperately struggling for survival, not only for themselves, but also for their families and dependents. Meanwhile, increasing numbers of Palestinians are dying from malnutrition and starvation, including children, older people, people with disabilities and the sick or injured…
…Intentionally directing attacks against civilians not taking direct part in hostilities and intentionally using starvation of civilians as a method of warfare by depriving them of objects indispensable to their survival, including wilfully impeding relief supplies, are war crimes. If part of a systematic or widespread attack on the civilian population, these may also constitute crimes against humanity. The cumulative impact of these incidents, humanitarian access restrictions and Israel’s military conduct in Gaza suggest that Israel is inflicting on Palestinians in the strip conditions of life increasingly incompatible with their continued existence as a group.”
Related
Chris Hedges: “The genocide is almost complete. When it’s concluded it will not only have decimated the Palestinians but will have exposed the moral bankruptcy of Western civilization…”
He continues:
“This genocide will haunt us…
it will echo down history with [the] force of a tsunami…
it will divide us forever…
there is no going back…
and how will we remember by not remembering
once it’s over all those who supported it…
all those who ignored it…
all those who did nothing will rewrite history
including their personal history.
It was hard to find anyone who admitted to being
a Nazi in postwar Germany or a
member of the Ku Klux Clan once
segregation in the southern United States ended…
a nation of innocents…victims even…
it’ll be the same…
we like to think we would have saved Anne Frank
…the truth is different… the truth is, crippled by fear
nearly all of us will only save ourselves
even at the expense of others…
but that is a truth that is hard to face.
That is the real lesson of the Holocaust.
Better it be erased…
Chris Hedges – The Last Days of Gaza – June, 2025
References (Text)
Primo Levi Quote (edited): Conclusion to (Italian) I sommersi e i salvati… “The Drowned and the Saved is a book of essays by Italian-Jewish author and Holocaust survivor Primo Levi on life and death in the Nazi extermination camps, drawing on his personal experience as a survivor of Auschwitz (Monowitz). The author’s last work, written in 1986, a year before his death, The Drowned and the Saved is an attempt at an analytical approach, in contrast to his earlier books If This Is a Man (1947) and The Truce (1963), which are autobiographical. “
‘The Drowned and the Saved’ (Wikipedia)
“Never again”
“… is a phrase or slogan which is associated with the lessons of the Holocaust and other genocides. The slogan was used by liberated prisoners at Buchenwald concentration camp to denounce fascism.”
a signpost to the City
of Savages
Is there any other possible understanding now of Zionism and its role in our collapsing-World?
Marwan Bishara: [2:20] “This is a special kind of criminality. This is a psychopathic criminal that orders the killing of a journalist and they’re not denying it. They are not denying it… And [2:47] for that man to be the prime minister, the longest serving prime minister in Israel, who has been responsible for the genocide in Gaza, who is indicted for war crimes in Gaza. This Benjamin Netanyahu should not be allowed to be on the loose.”
Five Al Jazeera journalists killed in Gaza by Israel’s ‘psychopathic liar’: Marwan Bishara
This is now a question of Power and Profit
‘How the military-industrial complex captured US democracy | Business of War’
“…two weeks into the Gaza genocide, one of the world’s largest weapons companies, General Dynamics, is holding its quarterly call with investors” ‘Israel, Hamas, has created, you know, additional demand. We have this 106 billion request from the president. Can you give us some general color in terms of areas where you think you could see incremental acceleration in demand?’ The forecast for the American corporation is looking good.”
Al Jazeera (Video) – August 9, 2025
This is now a question of Power and Profit / Luxury Ghetto
The Congo Free State, …was privately owned by King Leopold II, the constitutional monarch of the Kingdom of Belgium…” Leopold extracted a fortune from the Congo…
Under his regime, millions of Congolese inhabitants, including children, were mutilated, killed or died from disease and famine. In addition, the birth rate rapidly declined during this period. Estimates for the total population decline range from 1 million to 15 million, with a consensus growing around 10 million”
Wikipedia- Leopold II of Belgium – Congo Free State
MOST BRUTAL: King Leopold II – Congo Massacre
“The lure of incredible wealth took a back seat to humanity where violence, torture, and even murder were the price of profit.”
[6:47] “People were literally worked to death.
[8:04] “The black soldiers were also not paid very well so they were allowed to rape and pillage as part of their compensation.
“[10:01] “In [Peter] Forbath’s own words: ‘The baskets of severed hands set down at the feet of the European post commanders became the symbol of the Congo free state…”
Forgotten History – June, 2025
are not really here (they tell us)
“A land without a people for a people without a land”
“Historian Rashid Khalidi concurs with Said [Edward], interpreting the slogan as expressing the Zionist claim that Palestine was empty…”
A Land without a People for a People without a Land – Wikipedia
these are the well-fed citizens in New York
no longer falling from their arrogant Towers
‘How the Rich Develop Un-Human Relationships (w/ Rob Larson)’
“So if a principal wants to feed her Shih Tzu brazed beef tenderloin steaks every night the butler should serve it up with a smile if the principal is in Palm Beach and wants to send his jet to New York to pick up a bottle of Chateau Lour from his Southampton cellar the butler makes it happen no questions asked…”
Chris Hedges Channel – July 2025
‘Why You Should Hate the Rich Even More (w/ Rob Larson)’
Chris Hedges Channel – June 19, 2025
(…&) these are the well-fed-citizens in New York
no longer falling from their arrogant Towers
“You cannot decimate a people, carry out saturation bombing over 20 months to obliterate their homes villages and cities, massacre tens of thousands of innocent people, set up a siege to ensure mass starvation, drive them from land where they have lived for centuries and not expect blowback. The genocide will end… the response to the reign of state terror will begin, if you think it won’t you know nothing about human nature or history
… does anyone expect Palestinians to act differently..?
… how can they not hate those who did this to them…?
…what message has this genocide imparted not only to Palestinians but to all in the global south..?
“It is unequivocal you do not matter… humanitarian law does not apply to you …we do not care about your suffering the murder of your children… …you are vermin, you are worthless, you deserve to be killed, starved and dispossessed
…you should be erased from the face of the earth to preserve the values of the civilized world…”
Chris Hedges – The Last Days of Gaza – June 2025
this Luxury Ghetto called
“The West” / this cancerous empire
of greed and delusion:
“…Does anyone expect Palestinians to act differently?.. how are they to react when Europe and the United States who hold themselves up as the vanguards of civilization backed a genocide that butchered their parents, their children, their communities, occupied their land and blasted their cities and homes into rubble… how can they not hate those who did this to them..? what message has this genocide imparted not only to Palestinians but to all in the Global South..? it is unequivocal you do not matter, humanitarian law does not apply to you, we do not care about your suffering, the murder of your children; you are vermin, you are worthless, you deserve to be killed, starved and dispossessed… you should be erased from the face of the earth to preserve the values of the civilized world…”
Chris Hedges – The Last Days of Gaza – June, 2025
(…&) this cancerous empire
of greed and delusion
“Shatz draws a pointed parallel between France’s brutal counterinsurgency in 1950s Algeria and Israel’s response to the surprise attack of October 2023 by the Palestinian resistance.
…The rhetoric of Israeli officials, too, echoed the dehumanising language of colonial warfare.
Shatz cites Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant’s declaration that “We are fighting human animals,” noting how chillingly it confirmed Fanon’s observation that “when the colonist speaks of the colonised, he uses zoological terms,” reducing the oppressed to a “bestiary” of subhumans.
…Meanwhile, Western political establishments, so quick to invoke moral principles in other conflicts, have “done little to end Israel’s slaughter, when [they haven’t] been moved to defend it”.
In Shatz’s framing, the Gaza War has revealed a world order “cut in two,” much like Fanon described during the Algerian War. On one side, colonised peoples and their allies demanding justice; on the other, imperial powers and their apologists justifying colonial atrocities in the name of security.
…Yet Shatz does more than castigate Israeli colonial violence. He also tackles a thornier question, one that has provoked intense debate amongst readers and activists: How should we view the violence of the colonised in this conflict?
In Fanon’s own words, which Shatz cites, it was “logical” that “the very same people who had it constantly drummed into them that the only language they understood was that of force, now decide to express themselves by force”.
Even the gruesome celebratory aspect, the fact that some Palestinians exulted in an attack that killed non-combatants, would not have surprised Fanon, Shatz notes.
In the zero-sum moral universe of a colonial war, Fanon wrote, “good is simply what hurts them most”. The oppressed may invert the coloniser’s own values, coming to see their enemy’s suffering as their own reward.
All of these points demonstrate Shatz utilising Fanon’s psychological and political insights to contextualise the rage underlying the revolt in Gaza. He refuses to join the chorus that simplistically demonises Palestinian resistance as “terrorism” divorced from context.
Instead, Shatz validates the root causes and the emotional logic of the uprising: decades of humiliation made the eruption of violence inevitable, even “logical”.
In this regard, he stands firmly in the anti-colonial camp, underscoring the justice of the Palestinian struggle and the profound culpability of the Israeli state for creating the powder keg that finally blew.
Middle East Eye – Frantz Fanon
What Frantz Fanon can tell us about the West’s colonial war in Gaza
“In this video, Gill emphasises how reading Fanon today, more than 60 years after his death, strikingly echoes the struggles of Palestinians under Israeli settler colonialism, particularly in terms of the violence deployed by the settler army and the dehumanisation it inflicts on the colonised.”
Middle East Eye – February, 2024
“From Gaza to the Red Sea, on all fronts the West is now unmasked as a lawless killing machine in terror of losing control. Genocide, starvation and war, defended with Olympic-level diplomatic double-speak, are its only answers to the fact that the Global South, and the nations of the Middle East (if not their leaders) no longer wish to live under US hegemony.” (Joe Gill)
Middle East Eye – February, 2024
See Also
Paulo Freire who “Due to the 1964 Brazilian coup d’état, where a military dictatorship was put in place with the support of the United States, Paulo Freire was exiled from his home country, an exile that lasted 16 years…”
Paulo Freire: “Never in history has violence been initiated by the oppressed. How could they be the initiators, if they themselves are the result of violence? How could they be the sponsors of something whose objective inauguration called forth their existence as oppressed? There would be no oppressed had there been no prior situation of violence to establish their subjugation.
Violence is initiated by those who oppress, who exploit, who fail to recognize others as persons—not by those who are oppressed, exploited, and unrecognized. It is not the unloved who initiate disaffection, but those who cannot love because they love only themselves. It is not the helpless, subject to terror, who initiate terror, but the violent, who with their power create the concrete situation which begets the “rejects of life.” It is not the tyrannized who initiate despotism, but the tyrants. It is not the despised who initiate hatred, but those who despise. It is not those whose humanity is denied them who negate humankind, but those who denied that humanity (thus negating their own as well)…
Paulo Freire – Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Chapter 1) – Wikipedia
(…&) this cancerous empire
of greed and delusion
Jeremy Corbyn: Europe’s “Colonial Mentality”
6 Colonial atrocities of the 20th century – Turkey Public Broadcast Service
the lives they have buried in mass graves
the bodies buried or burnt or hidden from
sight.
Along Many Others:
‘Findings of Che’s remains, a fact that shocked Cuba’
“a victory over those who, by hiding the corpses of Che and his comrades-in-arms in the Bolivian war, tried to silence the example of rebelliousness of the Cuban Revolution and a show of loyalty and gratitude for the sacrifice of the man known here as the Heroic Guerrilla”.
Cuba’s Rep Office Abroad – February, 2023
‘Ché Guevara funeral – Ceremonia de inhumación de los restos del comandante Ernesto “Ché” Guevara’
Patrice Lumumba
“Lumumba was forcibly restrained on the flight to Elisabethville on 17 January 1961. On arrival, his associates and he were conducted under arrest to the Brouwez House, where they were brutally beaten and tortured by Katangan officers, while Tshombe and his cabinet decided what to do with him.
Later that night, Lumumba, Mpolo, and Okito were driven to an isolated spot where three firing squads had been assembled that were commanded by Belgian contract officer Julien Gat. The orders to murder Lumumba were given by Katangan leaders. The last stage of the execution was personally undertaken by the Belgian contracts led by Police Commissioner Frans Verscheure. Lumumba, Mpolo, and Okito were put up against a tree and shot one at a time. The execution is thought to have taken place on 17 January 1961, between 21:40 and 21:43 according to a later Belgian parliamentary inquiry. Tshombe, two other ministers, and four Belgian officers under the command of the Katangan authorities were present.
The bodies were thrown into a shallow grave.
The following morning, on orders of Katangan Interior Minister Godefroid Munongo, who wanted to make the bodies disappear and prevent a burial site from being created, Belgian Gendarmerie officer Gerard Soete and his team dug up and dismembered the corpses, and dissolved them in sulfuric acid while the bones were ground and scattered.”
Patrice Lumumba – Final Days , [Disappearance] & Assassination
DRC: Patrice Lumumba’s remains return home
Patrice Lumumba: The U.S.-Backed Assassination of Congo’s First Democratically-Elected Leader: former CIA agent John Stockwell talking about the CIA’s plans to assassinate the prime minister of the Congo
[7’43”] “…The CIA had developed a program to assassinate Lumumba … the program they developed… the operation… didn’t work they didn’t follow through on it… it was to give…poison to Lumumba and they couldn’t find a setting in which to get the poison to him successfully in a way that it wouldn’t appear to be a CIA operation…
…And instead they had the chief of station talking to Mobutu about the threat that Lumumba posed and Mobutu going out and killing Lumumba… having his men kill Lumumba
Related Articles
A un año del asesinato de Berta Cáceres en Honduras: una impunidad campante
Al conmemorarse un año de la muerte de la lider indígena hondureña Berta Cáceres, las ONG hondureñas e internacionales reclaman que se haga justicia
Tunisia: End Use of Excessive Force; Free Political Prisoners
Tunisians demonstrate against Tunisian President Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali in Tunis on January 14, 2011. © 2011 Reuters (New
Gaza/Israel: la Corte Internacional de Justicia dictamina contundente opinión consultiva
Este 22 de octubre del 2025, la Corte Internacional de Justicia dictaminó su opinión consultiva relacionada a las obligaciones de Israel como Estado Miembro de Naciones Unidas, de cara a sus acciones militares insensatas en Gaza, incluyendo la suspensión unilateral de la ayuda humanitaria
