It's been a whole decade plus since I last posted here. I have been an increasingly mute spectator to unfolding horrors of our times - in large part due to the utter impotency of individual or collective actions, however passionate, intense, dedicated, to re-ignite a disappeared social, national or global conscience, awaken discernment or even larger concern of humanity in goodness and the righteous, as equally as the intolerable - in this case, the open, prolonged, globally condoned massacre of an entire people of Palestine - young or old, men, women, children - just no one spared. No home, hospital, schools, roads, farms and orchards spared. No water, food, power, medicine, shelter from the unending bombardment to kill and eliminate forever a people who only ask for their right to live in peace , with self-determination of a free people.
The decimation of Gaza has been on my mind continually and with it the whole question of "Why?"
I think of the whole Palestinian issue, or for that matter, even the Ukraine war, as very revealing of the trajectory of fundamental human (reverse) development. It appears that the macro reflects the micro - as societies get more and more fractured into agglomerations of merely individuals - without anchoring into social values or concerns, or even a given moral compass to stabilize against uncertainty of time and age - materialism has rapidly replaced the social safety net where every individual sets out to accrue and squirrel away the most for their individual future needs. This accumulation of wealth, property, material goods that appear more permanent than relationships, and are born out of fear of no safety net, has blind sided the collective from pursuing more real and permanent values like deep ties to nature, culture, roots and humanity as a global family.
Demoralising and distancing of human values from individual self centred, comfortable, ego-centric lives....
This was written in Nov 2024, incomplete and therefore not posted. Today, more than 6 months later, the massacres continue unabated, lands are cleared relentlessly, and a whole people are eliminated, openly with a brazen impunity, viewed daily across the world, on screens at homes, on mobiles across continents while we all carry on with our normal lives with no tear in our heart or tears from our eyes.
However, as of today, July 5, 2025, this is no longer possible - to avert our gaze. Yesterday the UN Rapporteur's special report on Israel's "Economy of Genocide"( summarised here) implicated many global corporations including Amazon, Google, Microsoft, booking.com, Airbnb in participating and explicitly capitalising from the ongoing Israeli slaughter of palestinians in the occupied territories. I am horrified and devastated - the enemy is not longer out there, but inside, embedded in my daily life. I am aghast at my own personal complicity in the ongoing slaughter, by subscribing and thereby supporting these monstrous gigantic inhuman machineries of vast unspeakable human tragedies of needless death & destruction, purely for financial profit.
I say therefore " Not in My Name" and unsubscribe from Google, Amazon, Booking.com & Airbnb where I have individual presence, to no longer be associated with them. I recognise that this is merely a small token- but it's a little that I now have to do.
This will be my last blog here as it's a Google site. Over next few days I will find alternative communication platforms, to completely transition myself out of all association with any of the above entities. It need not always be easy, if it is also to be right.
Thank you for taking interest in my life here at "I Witness"and various other threads of it at parallel journeys.
