This is a Hospital

 

Pride/Christopher Street Day March in Tübingen

We're just back from attending the Pride/Christopher Street Day March around the streets of the Old Town in Tübingen. It was a powerful, peaceful and joyful occasion, 'awash' with rainbows in their different iterations. Thousands marched. Interestingly, Tracy and I were among a very small number of 'older people' who marched, but given this is a university town, that's probably not surprising. But it would have been nice to see a few more of our generation showing their support. Plenty watched on from the sidelines.

As the violence of the war in Ukraine shatters lives and communities on a vast scale, and threatens so many others, this was a demonstration of what peace, love, tolerance and respect might bring. It was worth noting a committed political 'intersectionalism' present across the procession, with anti-capitalist and anti-fascist flags, songs and mantras echoing out between the buildings. We always accept these in their peaceful iterations. For us, anarchism and peace are inseparable, and we support only pacifist approaches to even complex problems. And joy, camaraderie, community, and the peaceful benefits and inclusiveness of 'queer revolution' sang to us.

Though different groups represented different political and communal aspects of the queer community, there seemed an overwhelming sense that the exploitation, greed, profit and oppression that arise from capitalism, which is so readily yoked to various versions of fascism (in overt and hidden guises), need to be resisted. Capitalism and climate change. Capitalism and arms production. Capitalism and inequality. To link identity, gender and sexual liberty with a move away from the selfishness of capital and power/hierarchies seems essential to us. I am not speaking for all marchers, of course, but that's just one strong impression we took with us as we walked with the community.

What was equally refreshing about the march is that such unity spreads a sense of safety through the communities which we hope will endure. Only a couple of weekends ago, the inaugural Christopher Street Day March in the neighbouring city of Reutlingen was violated by anti-gay counter-protesters who extended their rightwing bigotry to violence and attacked marchers after the parade. It was so important for community to come together today to show such violence will be resisted by increasing presence, by affirming rights, and by denying it any say in how people are or will be. We send our support to those who were assaulted in Reutlingen, and stand by the LGBQTI+ community in every way. Further, we send our respects to the organisers of the march and other events celebrating queerness in all its manifestations, and further out from Tübingen to the world, where minorities suffer egregiously. In solidarity. 

Here are some images from today (taken by Tracy):

And by way of saying farewell, I add a 'sonnet' I wrote the other day after being yelled at in the street. It says something, I think:

Shout

I am walking from the bus stop to the flat

when a couple of 'young blokes' passing

in a car slow down and shout abuse at

me. I turn and study them — curving

around a corner they slow further

and shout again. I shake my head and disappear

down a lane-way, wondering if I will

find them waiting at the other end.

This happens to me around the world

for no obvious reason. I don't get their angle.

This weekend Tracy and I will march

in the Pride Parade to show our support —

there have been harassments and counter-marches

by conservatives here. We will sing but won't shout.

John Kinsella

Against War and War Propaganda in its Myriad Forms

Euphoric Hero Dysphoria

 

Each hero latched onto

in order to manufacture

more heroes, to pick up

more arms supplied by

‘allies’ whose industries

of arms and related items

(‘supplies ‘) make a killing

justified by the economic

trickle-down effect so bills

can be paid and consumer

items purchased as if good

conscience had anything

to do with that euphoric

hero dysphoria a president

or high command would urge

on would embody as bodies

on streets in trenches by churches

and where trees or even fields

of wheat grew as the seasons

still managed to function

until recently, until metaphors

once again fell into line,

rushed to serve death.

 

            John Kinsella

 

Another Pacifist Poem

 Battle is Not Spectacle It’s a Catastrophe

 

‘Nor did anyone note with care that it was the same island; nor in the night did the Doliones clearly perceive that the heroes were returning; but they deemed that Pelasgian war-men of the Macrians had landed. Therefore they donned their armour and raised their hands against them. And with clashing of ashen spears and shields they fell on each other, like the swift rush of fire which falls on dry brushwood and rears its crest; and the din of battle, terrible and furious, fell upon the people of the Doliones.’

            (from The Argonautica Book 1, trans R. C. Seaton, 1912)

 

 

Blown back by the winds of our making,

they clash with enemies conjured

 

from darkness. Dawn will show bloody

truisms — neighbour slaying neighbour,

 

or people who might have been friends

slaughtering under orders. On the beaches

 

of their imaginations, the dead drift

through the tyrant’s dream — part smog,

 

part oil, part bloody earth, and the strange

intangible nature of torn flesh. War

 

laps at the cold waters of the summer

resorts. Weapons are made to be used.

 

The dying are heard in and around

the cities and people can only lament

 

while still living, streaming away or sheltering

in underground rail stations, masked

 

against the pandemic. The clash — rigor

mortis of empire-craving, and the media’s

 

feeding frenzy, networks embedding

to bring more than images to screens,

 

to frenzy around violence then regret

the cascading losses. And the news

 

that no epic poet could contrive to embellish

the story — the invading army has taken

 

Chernobyl, concrete cradle of unbirth,

monument to spectres that fall across borders,

 

called with impunity and reassurance,

summoned from its eternal sleeplessness,

 

full of self-praise as the reactor core

maintains its rage. And now its makers

 

have it back in their care. Sarcophagus.

Strategies of the exclusion zone. A tree

 

shivers, a bird is dead before it can land,

barely symbolic among seemingly

 

familiar terrain. Terrible. Fell. Furious.

 

 

            John Kinsella

 

 

In Full Support of Ukraine and Against Violence On EVERY Level

I condemn the invasion of Ukraine by the military forces of the Kremlin and the tyrant Putin. This horrendous abuse of human rights and human dignity is deplorable on every level. As a committed pacifist, I firmly believe that non-violent resistance and protest are the most effective way of countering this abuse of life. Meeting violence with violence will mean more violence, more suffering. Total and utter refusal to do what the militarists demand is, to my mind, the only effective answer. 

I send my support and solidarity to all those in Ukraine who are under attack or under threat. I also send my support to those peace protesters in Russia who face arrest with their every objection and refusal to be part of a tyrant-driven Kremlin agenda of extending power and occupying country in order to enhance imperial obsessions. To the people peacefully resisting this, you are not and never will be forgotten. We are with you.

Taking up arms only means more death and increases the wealth of military profiteers. I am disgusted by Germany breaking its own 'restraints' to supply weapons to the conflict (though this is unsurprising, given Germany is an exporter of arms), and also by Australia for doing the same (also unsurprising, given it's a nation working hard to increase its role and influence in the world armaments trade). This is, of course, part of the increasingly right-wing urges of a right-wing Federal government that aims to project itself into global politics as a 'middle ranking power'. The disgraceful AUKUS pact, the drive for nuclear-powered submarines, the push to make the Australian military 'less woke', and the increasing push for military-related activities in Australian universities, are all part of this. 

The decision to send 'lethal aid' (an oxymoron if ever there was one) to Ukraine is part of the death cultism of right-wingism. The Russian power-elite shares a similar worldview, but with a 'stronger' military behind it. Violence leads to more violence. Send humanitarian aid in every way possible; aid should be life-affirming and not death-making in nature and intent. Peaceful aid will mean the preservation of life. 

Lethal Aid

 

There’s no point even placing

scare quotes around this.

In the frenzy for death to show

resolve where death is,

 

the Australian government

will send its devices of death

into the killzones, will feed

death so when death

 

comes to its end, a supplied

by Australia logo will light

up the graves, a small

if not discreet claim,

 

a reminder of assistance

rendered, of death’s compassion

for death. The invaders

will recognise it as kin

 

to their own way of thinking.

An aid to memory, of aid rendered.

 

 

            John Kinsella

In Opposition to the State Arms Manufacturing Conference

So, the Western Australian state government wants to join the arms race with gusto. See here.  This grotesque participation in the manufacturing and distribution of death is normalised and familiarised with little opposition. Some people are peacefully protesting at the venue today, but the mainstream media seem to have no problem with this deathcult war-profiteering event. In fact, the local newspaper writes it up under 'manufacturing'!

Graphology Spectre 24: against the arms industry

The deadline for making firebreaks is upon us —

demarcations to prevent death finding its way in.

The deadline for making firebreaks is upon us —

and as we finish the job arms manufacturers play with fire.

The deadline for making firebreaks is upon us —

and Defence West gambols with notions of Westernising death.

The deadline for making firebreaks is upon us —

firebreaks that won’t stop the attack they call ‘defence’.

The deadline for making firebreaks is upon us —

so the State and its profiteer-cronies can send fire outwards.

The deadline for making firebreaks is upon us —

while in the casino-resort the gamblers in death deploy semantics.

The deadline for making firebreaks is upon us

while the ‘arms conference’ fine-tunes and sanitises death.

            John Kinsella

Against Australia's Arms Industry

I write this as an expression of absolute disgust at and resistance to the Australian government's push towards becoming a 'top ten' arms manufacturer (see). That is the politics of murder. And, furthermore, I write against Australian universities accepting research money directly or indirectly from those connected with arms industries anywhere (see).

Graphology Subtracter 3: global/local

Australia dreams (in its substitutions) of its small arms manufacturers

becoming big arms manufacturers — an artisanship of the many,

the splendour of giving tools of power to ‘allies’.

A bunch of Australian universities are already paving the way

for knowledge endowment — ethics committees and components

for nuclear weapons as close as investment in intellectual freedom.

Yesterday we saw a quenda cross our path — or we crossed its path —

in the broadest daylight. What wasn’t out of kilter in its world?

Such investment intermediaries of life — the expansion of ‘opportunities’,

the denials, the codes of conduct guiding professional outcomes.

            John Kinsella