View source for Document:Meeting the Gaze of the Ghost in the Rubble

{{Document
|title=Meeting the Gaze of the Ghost in the Rubble
|type=Article
|publication_date=28 February 2024
|source_name=Bella Caledonia
|source_URL=https://bellacaledonia.org.uk/2024/02/28/meeting-the-gaze-of-the-ghost-in-the-rubble/
|authors=George Gunn
|image=Ghostly_Gaze.jpg
|image_width=300px
|subjects=2023-2024 Israel-Hamas War, Keir Starmer, Lindsay Hoyle, Ukania, Rishi Sunak, Infosys, BP, Gaza Strip, West Bank, East Jerusalem
|description=Meanwhile the ghost still looks out from the rubble of [[Gaza]]. Her stare searches across the ocean of our conscience like the beam of a lighthouse. The ghost in the rubble asks of us all: why can we not stop this madness and feed the people?

}}
It is obvious that the [[Labour]] and [[Tory]] MP’s do not watch TV. Or inter-act with [[social media]]. Last week, on the 21st of February and again on Monday 26th February, they proved themselves immune, to the point of fireproofing, to any humanity. They could not have done what they have done if they had watched hundreds of clips of dead children. Men with their limbs blown off. Babies whose faces are covered in burns. Mothers cradling white-shrouded children. They did not notice the two women carrying buckets walking past a bombed out building looking for water. They did not see the ghost in the rubble of [[Gaza]]. A pale Madonna-like figure sheltering in the chaos of death under a shattered concrete floor and behind two collapsed concrete pillars. They saw nothing. Felt nothing. They turned away and continued with their parliamentary chicanery. So much self interest is the dark water of corruption and cruelty. It is the ocean in which we all will drown if we turn away. If we do not look. If we do not see these two brave traumatised women and do not give them water. We must meet the gaze of the ghost in the rubble.

Outside invasion, destruction and slaughter, as humans, we have to continue to believe that the world is beautiful and that the raw material of the world is susceptible to examination by human reason. But human reason is important only if it contributes to the highest development of the individual human being and in so doing improves the stock of our shared human society. Did [[Keir Starmer]] believe he was contributing anything to human reason or society other than to his short-term [[House of Commons]] fix? It is obvious that the Commons Speaker [[Lindsay Hoyle|Sir Lindsay Hoyle]] has not seen these two desperate women passing, has not heard the melancholy rattle of their empty water buckets, has not seen the ghost in the rubble, did not have the [[Palestinian people]] in his thoughts when he rejected the [[SNP]]’s request for an emergency debate on [[Gaza]] on Monday 26th of February 2024. By this very action he has rendered every apology and post-event stated reason for the previous Wednesday’s Commons stitch up as being a lie. On the other hand all his previous denials of pressure being applied on him by [[Keir Starmer]] to change parliamentary rules and [[Keir Starmer]]’s denials of this pressure, are now seen as exactly what happened. Everything they say and do is the opposite of the truth. The truth is what the ghost in the rubble sees.

As the great [[Palestinian]] poet [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahmoud_Darwish Mahmoud Darwish wrote:]{{QB|
:“I am from there. I am from here. I am not there and I am not here.” He was referring to [[Ramallah]]. It also applies to the Scottish MP’s in Westminster. It applies to [[Scotland]] within the [[Union of Ukania]]. We are neither here nor there.<ref>''[https://www.stopwar.org.uk/article/ukania-and-palestine-an-interview-with-lindsey-german/ "Ukania and Palestine: An Interview With Lindsey German"]''</ref>
:If the Conservative and Labour parties of [[Ukania]] had any real political intelligence they would be preparing for [[Scottish independence]], not denying it. But deny it they do. Where does this denial get them? What do they gain from it? Snug in [[Edinburgh]] the Scottish Unionists may crave, for deeply disturbing reasons, the perceived order of the [[Ukania]]n constitutional settlement, as they understand it, as opposed to the anticipated disorder of constitutional change, which they fear and refuse to understand at all.
:It is up to those on the side of independence to remind them that prisons and concentration camps are equally ordered. Quite simply we have to assert our right to freedom – sovereignty, self-determination – if we are not to lose it entirely. If being certain, coupled with being right, was a profession then in the realm of the ''sàr cheannardan'' (great leaders) of Unionism that vocation is full.
:There is no room in the Union Hall of red, white and blue for the questioning doctors of doubt or the curious advocates of an alternative. The door to this Faculty is closed and locked and the key is lost.
:The Scots are barred from entry. In so doing the ''cinn arda'' (high heads) of Unionism treat the Scots as criminals because a majority of them declare their inalienable right to govern themselves. This desire, to the Faculty of Unionism, is proof of guilt.}} 

But as events in the [[House of Commons]] on Wednesday 21st February 2024 proved, and the refusal of the Speaker to grant the [[SNP]] an emergency debate on Monday 26th has compounded, this negative sentiment no longer holds, for as [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Butler_Yeats John Butler Yeats] said of [[Ireland]] in 1903, and it is true of [[Scotland]] today:{{QB|
:“she is sufficient into herself”.
:As are the people of [[England]], who are a fair and proud people, even if most of them are depressingly ignorant of the fact that their political masters are the beneficiaries of universal thieving and the ill-gotten gains accrued from the violence and blood spilling possession of twenty four per cent of the Earth’s total land area.
:If the true nature of the [[Ukania]]n Empire and how it came to be was taught to English children then they may not be so hostile to [[Scottish independence]] in later life. It is little wonder that the contemporary inheritors of this historical destructive conquest, those who occupy the seats of governance in Westminster, those who are “there” and “not there”, are so reluctant to condemn those who follow in the modern world a similar financial path to their pirate ancestors.
:There is money to be made. [[Israel]] in [[Gaza]] being the latest.}} 

Last year, just two months before [[Rishi Sunak]] opened hundreds of new licences for oil and gas extraction in the North Sea, an IT firm, [[Infosys]] founded by his father-in-law and in which his wife has a major share, signed a $1.5 billion deal with energy giant [[BP]] to drill for natural gas in [[Gaza]]. [[Israel]] is already adequately supplied with crude oil, but lacks natural gas and scientific evidence suggests that there are trillions of cubic feet of it under the [[Gaza Strip]] and just off the coast in the [[Mediterranean Sea]]. Clearing all the [[Palestinians]] out of [[Gaza]] to somewhere – anywhere – [[Scotland]] as one right wing [[Zionist]] suggested last week – and raising the place to the ground makes good business sense for [[Israel]], [[BP]] and [[Infosys]]. Who wants a ceasefire when there is work to be done and money to be made? Just as in 2003 a rictus smiling [[Tony Blair]] reassured everyone, teeth gleaming under the TV lights, that the invasion of [[Iraq]] was “most definitely not about oil”. 

The reality was somewhat different. As [[CNN]] reported on 15th April 2013:{{QB|
:“From [[ExxonMobil]] and [[Chevron]] to [[BP]] and [[Shell]], [[the West]]’s largest oil companies have set up shop in [[Iraq]]. So have a slew of American oil service companies, including [[Halliburton]], the Texas-based firm [[Dick Cheney]] ran before becoming [[George W. Bush]]’s running mate in 2000. The war is the one and only reason for this long sought and newly acquired access.”}}

There are other invasions to profit from, other colonisations to justify. For the uaislean cinnidh (clan aristocracy) of [[Ukania]] the past is the place they look to for justification. It is where their Empire resides. But the past is a subjective place where everyone you meet, if you journey there, can justifiable say, like [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahmoud_Darwish Darwish:]{{QB|
:“I am from there. I am from here. I am not there and I am not here.”
:In [[Scotland]] we have to face the truth about ourselves so that we can move forward. [[Scottish Referendum|The 2014 referendum]], [[2016 EU Referendum|the Brexit referendum of 2016]], [[2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine|the terrible invasion of Ukraine]] and now [[2023-2024 Israel-Hamas War|the wholesale destruction of Gaza and the massacre of her people]]: these are the recent historic gales and bundles of human debris that push our [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angelus_Novus Angel of History backwards into the future.] The ghost in the rubble bears witness.}}

It is difficult to write about the on-going collective punishment being inflicted upon the people of [[Gaza]] by a war-crazed genocidal [[Zionist]] regime without some human touchstone of comparison. Most people in [[Western Europe]] live in homogenised urban and city environments where news, culture, history, even nature itself, is but a click or a screen stroll away. This alienation from experience and reliance on and frustration with technology was beautifully captured by the [[American]]-[[Palestinian]] poet [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hala_Alyan Hala Alyan,] when she wrote in ''[[The Guardian]]'' on 28th of January this year:{{QB|
:“My fingers moved like their own orchestra: the swipe, the tapped bright pink heart icon, the hungry scroll through stories. This was during the ceasefire and the stories were about what was being discovered: clips of destruction, people finding their dead.”
:The mass removal of a population native to their ground for centuries, the destruction of their homes and livelihoods and the demeaning of their culture and history is an unthinkable experience for many.
:In the North of [[Scotland]] we only have to look back 210 years when we experienced the same horror; different in scale and from a different century but nonetheless the effects can still be seen and felt today. In Caithness and Sutherland 1814 was known as The Year of the Burnings or ''Bliadhna na Losgaidh'', with, on one occasion, a witness in the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strath_of_Kildonan Strath of Kildonan] reported seeing 250 crofts on fire from a single vantage point. As many as 15,000 people were forcibly and violently cleared from the 1.5 million acre estates of the Countess of Sutherland and her husband, the Marquess of Stafford, later to become the [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_of_Sutherland Duke and Duchess of Sutherland,] so that the land could be let to sheep farmers.
:It is because of our history that we in the North of [[Scotland]] can share the pain and horror currently being experienced by the [[Palestinian people|people of Gaza]] and by the people of the [[West Bank]] and [[East Jerusalem]] once the [[Israelis]] turn their tanks on them. Here we know where the ghost in the rubble comes from – she comes from [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strath_of_Kildonan Kildonan.] The same two women walked through the fires during ''Bliadhna na Losgaidh'' (Year of the Burnings), looking for water. I am from there. I am from here.}}

The [[Labour Party]] owe their beginnings to Scots like [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keir_Hardie Keir Hardie] and [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cunninghame_Graham Robert Cunningham Graham.] Their support came from the shipyards on the Clyde and coal fields of Fife. Now they are a hollowed out party and where their heart should be is an emptiness and rootlessness. This emptiness allowed the Speaker to say “No!” to the [[SNP]]’s request for an emergency Commons debate on [[Gaza]]. Did this parliamentary refusal, this democratic denial receive the same febrile response from the [[House of Commons]] or attract the same blather of press coverage as the stooshie the previous week? No it did not. A minute on ''Reporting Scotland'', a story in ''The National'' and that was about it.<ref>''[https://www.thenational.scot/news/24145218.lindsay-hoyle-denies-snp-fresh-debate-gaza-ceasefire/ "Lindsay Hoyle denies SNP fresh debate on Gaza ceasefire"]''</ref> So we return to the safe and secure matrix of the past where the normality is the two party domination, where interlopers like the [[SNP]] are not welcome – they are the barely tolerated strangers, ragged foreigners, the banditti, camping in the Royal deer forest, all the way from [[Gaza]] and [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strath_of_Kildonan Kildonan,] soon to be moved on by [[The Met]]. 

What happens in the [[House of Commons]] is not real politics. It is the result of gestures – hollow gestures with no shape to them and no conviction behind them. [[Keir Starmer]] is all impulse and energy but with no purpose other than achieving power. This is a dangerous thing. It is how wars start and how people get killed. Yet, sadly, there is nothing new here. The blue, the brown and the black shirts have all been worn by similarly hollowed out individuals who enter politics as one thing and become another along the way. Whoever wears the shirt, no matter what colour it is, what they do is close us in as a society and administer our dreams of freedom into dust. They have no idealism, only materialism: oil, gas, money. 

Meanwhile the ghost still looks out from the rubble of [[Gaza]]. Her stare searches across the ocean of our conscience like the beam of a lighthouse. Whether you believe the search for [[social justice]] is grounded in basic universal human nature, or whether you think that both justice and human nature are constructs that vary with changing social, economic, political and historical contexts, the women of [[Gaza]] are still looking for water. The ghost in the rubble asks of us all: why can we not stop this madness and feed the people?

==References==
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