Category: Settler Saturday

PCRF communiqué

Date: October 14, 2023

A Humanitarian Catastrophe Unfolds in Gaza – An Appeal to the International Community

A catastrophe of unprecedented proportions is unfolding in what many refer to as “the most densely populated territory on earth”…the Gaza Strip.  Over the course of the last week, Gaza has plunged into a deep trail of destruction and unimaginable human suffering. The non-stop Israeli military bombardment of the civilian population in Gaza has now claimed over 1800 innocent lives, one-third of whom are children.  Over 500,000 people have been displaced and are seeking shelter in UN schools that have reached capacity. The IDF ordered one million people to evacuate northern Gaza for the south within 24 hours (as of yesterday, October 13th) in anticipation of an Israeli ground invasion.  This is being done without guarantees of safety or return to their homes, and what international legal experts say amounts to the forced transfer of inhabitants in violation of international law.

Essential resources like electricity, water, and food have been deliberately cut off, pushing the civilian population to the brink of desperation. The deliberate severing of vital services such as electricity, water, and food has magnified the suffering of Gaza’s people. Hospitals are overwhelmed and unable to provide adequate medical care due to the lack of medical supplies, electricity, and clean water. Emergency medical aid is being denied entry, ambulances are being bombed and vehicles carrying aid are being targeted by airstrikes. The urgent intervention of the international community is critical now more than ever.

In the face of this grave humanitarian crisis, it is imperative that the international community responds with unprecedented urgency and determination. The situation demands decisive, immediate action to alleviate the immense suffering of the over 2 million people trapped in a 140 sq. mile territory, roughly twice the size of Washington, D.C.

PCRF joins other humanitarian organizations and people of goodwill in calling on the international community to provide immediate humanitarian aid, intensify diplomatic efforts for an immediate ceasefire, ensure accountability for violations of international law, and actively support Gaza’s reconstruction. Silence in the face of such tragedy is complicity, and the time to act is now.

For any inquiries, please contact: Steve@pcrf.net

To Donate to PCRF’s Gaza Relief Efforts,  go to our website at www.pcrf.net

The Palestine Children’s Relief Fund (“PCRF”) is a 501(c)(3) Federal Tax-Exempt U.S. Organization that provides free medical care to thousands of injured and ill children annually who lack local access to care within the local healthcare system in Palestine and other countries in the Middle East.

I’ve donated to PCRF twice, once a couple of years back and once in the last week. My donations were miniscule but I made them.

If you would prefer to donate in North America to try to stop this mess, here’s an interesting alternative.

so sad for Buster

The cone doesn’t actually come off until tomorrow morning. After the cone shenanigans when he was neutered, Jeff with my cooperation is being a stickler for following the vet’s instructions. Sutures are out at least so he’ll be less itchy. He healed like a total champ.

Here’s an interesting article about Indigenous accomplishments in Australia, dating all the way back to the dreamtime.

I’m helping look after Ryker tomorrow.

I won’t talk about it in public, but I did something very stupid yesterday and made myself barf again. Jeff knows about it.

Booked a mammogram for August. Still have not been able to get hold of the doctor’s office but hopefully they’re open today.

What do I do today?

Same thing I do every National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, Pinky, reread the report recommendations, give thanks for the Treaty 6 source of my family’s health and wealth, and financially support Indigenous heritage language learners.

I’m certainly not flying up into Indigenous people’s timelines and asking for cookies.

(‘same thing I do every night Pinky’ is a quote from Pinky and the Brain, a cartoon)

Robot Chicken and Alex Jones

  1. after years of saying we would, Jeff and I are finally rewatching Robot Chicken to make a goodies reel. Jeff, we need to include the danceoff, I changed my mind.
  2. Picture if you will a man who lies for a living. After 9/11, he fused the internet as we mostly now know it to lies about how 9/11 was a ‘false flag’ operation. Many people mostly on the right decided that there was no way 9/11 could have happened UNLESS high government officials and the standard issue global cabal had CAUSED it to happen; this man made money selling dietary supplements (which are also bunkum) to the people who took comfort in this worldview. Many millions of dollars of income later, he said that the shooting deaths of a bunch of children in a school shooting (Sandy Hook) was a false flag operation. That those kids didn’t die. Now, those kids did die, and even though the man who lies for a living knew they didn’t die, and said they didn’t die because people who are against the right to carry guns wanted to change the laws, his attitude toward the truth was not all that great, so the parents sued him for defamation.
  3. he lost. Total amounts owing along the lines of $50 million. Two more lawsuits in a similar vein are coming. His total net worth is in the vicinity of $150 Mil.
  4. perhaps he lost but he’s still very popular, as per “What does the Internet Think” website. 
  5. and in case you think this is bullshit, I give you Lee Pace’s results from the same website, BECAUSE NO ONE IS INDIFFERENT TO LEE PACE (ALSO I DO NOT APPEAR ON THIS WEBSITE LOL I CHECKED):
  6. while he was losing his lawyer’s employee accidentally (OR DID SHE LOL) sent two years’ worth of text and email messages from his phone to the plaintiffs’ lawyers. The lawyers promptly asked the January 6 committee if they wanted the messages, which was truly inconvenient for the man who lies for a living.
  7. and his ex wife Kelly probably will be getting them too. She is – quite rightly – in a custody battle, and now his utter unfitness to have access to his children will soon be a matter of public record. She calls him “truly mentally ill” and a danger to society but what the hell else can you expect from an ex wife hunh?
  8. to recap, Alex Jones is a foam-flecked liar, and now he will be paying for it. It won’t stop him, and he’ll fundraise on it, but at least someone slowed him down for two seconds and between his wife, his involvement with the January 6 traitors and the Sandy Hook parents his wealth will get a shellacking.
  9. Watched ‘Prey’ which is a new film in the Predator franchise GODDAMN I LOVED IT. It’s set in Comanche territory in 1719. The French are the bad guys, just like life’s supposed to be (this is a family joke, not reality.)
  10. That dog was not trained. They had to use that dog because it’s very close to what an Indigenous dog would have looked like at the time, so holy shit the director had to put up with a lot from that dog.
  11. A version completely in Comanche is available.
  12. Watched the new Minions movie. It had a few good laughs and was about standard for the franchise.
  13. I’m feeling quite a bit better, but the weather’s gone hot again so the next couple of days will probably be uncomfortable.
  14. There’s a cat rescue outfit in Vancouver which would rather EUTHANIZE a cat that adopt it out to a transgender person. Infuriating, like it’s a REASON.
  15. 1207 words on new section, still going very slow also worked on fanfic ‘landslide’
  16. Watched the Frontline about the people living in Kharkiv for the first three months after the Russian invasion. Very scary, moving and the people there seem admirable in their resolve. The impact of the war on the elderly and disabled is just gross.
  17. For settler saturday consider a donation to Indigenous language revitalization.

Recovering

Jeff is fine, but it wasn’t a fun extraction. Codeine is good to have if you need it.

12011 words. Things are about to take a turn.

I’ve done my brain exercises this morning. Strangely, I feel better when I do; less foggy, a little more awake.

In honour of Settler Saturday, please support Mari. That’s her paypal link. She is Ojibwe, disabled, the main breadwinner in her household, a writer of some note and @wordglass on twitter. TEETH SHOULD BE COVERED BY UNIVERSAL HEALTH INSURANCE and that concludes this post.

The Hul’q’umi’num’ word for heron

smuqw’a’

closest I can render in IPA (a colonial tangle if ever there was one, but the only thing that helps) it’s

Some dialects it’s smoke-wa, no soft ‘th’ at the end.

I spent part of the morning listening to what my consulting animal is called in many Indigenous voices; from the homophone of ‘Paul’ (yup, some solh temexw languages call a heron a word that sounds like ‘Paul’ which is funny to me) to the rolling assemblage of stately consonants and vowels that is the Kanien’kéha word for heron.

Okay so a little about Ukraine

Alex’s drawing in the correct colours.

It is reported that a swarm of bees killed 3 Russian soldiers. It’s propaganda, most likely, but great propaganda.

Just watched a two minute video of two technically sane but very risk-friendly Ukrainians driving through their EXTREMELY RECENTLY LIBERATED town, catching sniper fire from Russian stragglers, stopping in the middle of the street to talk to two pedestrians with much the same plan (we stuck our heads out to find out what’s going on in our own fucking town! sez they), saying fuckitifwediewedie, admiring the stuff that’s still burning, saying that Russians are evil cowards, and speaking so casually about being fired on you’d think they were entirely fearless. (Then one says, no expression in his voice, “I’m fucking losing it.”)

It’s being reported that Putin travels with a small army of doctors and that he has thyroid cancer. Once again propaganda, but it sure cheered up a lot of Ukrainians.

AND ON A COMPLETELY DIFFERENT NOTE

Pontifex HAS APOLOGIZED FOR THE HARM DONE TO INDIGENOUS PEOPLES in what is now Canada BY THE CATHOLIC CHURCH.

I fucking NEVER thought to live to see this day. The Indigenous delegation in Rome is in a state of mind you rarely see publicly. The generally expressed sentiment is that healing is now possible in a way that it simply was not before. I wept like a fool when I heard.

 

brekky at Fraser Park Restaurant

I had the two slice french toast and two cups of their excellent coffee. And their weird but yummy homemade swossages.  Website.

It’s rainy and windy, not an elegant day at all. Certainly not as bad as poor Britain yesterday, lashed by 90 mile an hour winds and some of the scariest airport missed approaches I’ve seen in a while, trees over and bins in the next county and people racing sitting on skateboards while holding shopping bags and getting blown down the sidewalk.

FINALLY got Mary’s letter in the mail.

I have a three day list of tasks in front of me, let’s see how much I can get done now that I have something resembling energy and mood.

Doreen Manuel a Secwépemc woman made these beaded kicks and they are amazing. Support your Land Water Protectors today!

Missing women

I honour and mourn for all the Indigenous women and girls taken and murdered.

I long for justice and for the hearts and minds of the police – who are not seriously investigating these murders – to be cleansed of racism and bigotry.

I hope for healing and strength for the survivors.

I acknowledge my role in dismantling and eradicating power structures of violence and colonization.

I uphold Indigenous joy and rage, not just their oppressors’ narrative of sorrow, and the lands and living cultures Indigenous peoples embody.

many ripe swears

The PPC is just about the worst political party in Canada; Maxime Bernier is a racist POS, and I can only thank my neighbours that I have NOT HAD TO LOOK AT A SINGLE PPC CANDIDATE SIGN ANYWHERE IN BURNABY SINCE THE ELECTION STARTED.

FOR WHEN THE LINK DISAPPEARS:

Lisa Steacy September 15 2021 News 1130

VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – A Vancouver People’s Party of Canada candidate has been distributing flyers comparing B.C.’s vaccine card to residential schools, and outraged Indigenous leaders are demanding accountability.

The flyer says it was “authorized by the official agent of Renate Siekmann,” who is running in Vancouver-Quadra— a riding that includes the Musqueam First Nation. The image of children outside of a residential school is overlaid with the text, “Discrimination is wrong: No vaccine passport.” In B.C., people need to show that they have received one dose of the COVID-19 vaccine in order to access non-essential businesses like restaurants, movie theatres, and gyms.

BC Assembly of First Nations (BCAFN) Regional Chief Terry Teegee says the comparison is deeply offensive, and trivializes the genocide of Indigenous people in Canada.

Ratcatcha

Buster caught a teeny weeny rat outside the building this morning, then took it inside and either ate it or let it go. Hopefully it’s not curled up dead someplace, I find dead rat odour to be one of the most trying things psychologically.

Storm Ida had a few things to say about rats too.

If the link disappears, apparently the storm drowned almost every rat in NYC.

That’s what happens when you get too much water. How about just enough?

Above noted link is about how reintroducing water to a dried out river in Tucson has had stunning ecological effects. I prefer dragonflies over rats.

Ever notice how white ladies love to steal Indigenous ancestry?

WHERE IS YOUR KOKUM, KIES. I prefer people who don’t lie about their ancestry over rats.

 

Thank you Gaia for the inspiration

So before I turn you over to my latest creation, and the tune hasn’t stabilized so I likely won’t post it today and even more likely will never post it.

Spoken is italics, everything else is sung

what a spanner ( OMG
what a spanner Jesus threw
what a spanner – oh my God
what a spanner Jesus threw

well of course you can say
that science got there first
‘cause of course, you know science,
always making shit up, not wrong am I
the fact is that I know
for sure
religion came first

cause whenever I hear stories
of bears watching the sunset
and animals of different species helping each other
because it’s built-in
after that I think
‘you know, religion obviously jammed through that cognitive door first, yippee’
and where does that leave us

what a spanner ( OMG
what a spanner Jesus threw
what a spanner – oh my God
what a spanner Jesus threw

and of course I think some more
and if Jesus wasn’t born
there wouldn’t be a Bible
which its adherents raise
as proof of their devotion
consider the religion
from which the Bible sprang

Hey, they didn’t fucking proselytize
and that’s when my bell got rang

Across the earth Indigenous
had practices specific
to all the places that they cared for
in balance and pacific
but when the Bible said to go
and preach to all the nations
Jesus underwrote some wars
and war on all relations

Christians know
this mortal sin
However much
they hide it
We were crushed
in a conqueror’s fist
Til Gaia’s truth*
defied it

I’m leaving Islam out of this shitkicking because I wasn’t raised in a Muslim country. Even though I’m an atheist I’m ethnically Christian.

*That would be science, folks, in case my creaky metaphor didn’t make sense. The working together of science and Indigenous cultural and religious practices is one of the ongoing great stories of the 21st century.

land ack

For the waters, skies and lands of sohl temexw I give thanks; for the people and creatures and the rivergrass; for the eagles and herons and ducks; for everything that moves in its own life, I give thanks; for the ancestors of all the salish peoples who shared its bounty and their children who rise, I give thanks, for the rocks which seem permanent and are not, I give thanks, and I offer my gratitude in the brilliant morning for the privilege of walking and flying and rolling and paddling here.

burgers and shakes

I am very much enjoying the diminution of the heat.

Listening to some of my fave music on Youtube this morning

 

I prefer the extended remix Shriekback. 

More ‘new wave’ – the Headboys Experiments

Owl and Cat and Catalonian rock and roll

And who could forget this Animusic classic. I must have played this a hundred times the year it came out.

Ah, Sloan…. the floaty guitar over the ominous bass, the restrained emotion of the video.  also the THIS AIN’T POLY IT’S CHEATING vibe

 

 

Emergency Management BC didn’t even try to CALL OR CONTACT the local Indigenous in Lytton and environs until 24 HOURS AFTER THE FUCKING FIRE WIPED OUT THE TOWN

fuck systemic racism, sincerely

 

we got Burger Heaven burgers and shakes yesterday

 

one massive ball

Part of genocide is thinking that one Indigenous person from x point in Canada is like an Indigenous person from y point.

After all these years CBC still thinks that ‘the Indigenous community’ is a convenient monolithic block. It speaks with one voice, sees with one eye, dances with one foot, etc etc. Please don’t roll up Indigenous communities in one mass for your own convenience.

This is me in response to the CBC talking about ‘the Indigenous community’ response to finding 215 murdered children in Kamloops.