Don't Read This

(if you don't want to destroy your comfortable Western liberal lifestyle)

Because, admit it - you are addicted to Amazon, and yes, that includes friends at the back who boycott Amazon, because of BDS or other more general objections, but use the wider internet (aka Amazon Web Services, the beast that fuels MOST websites), and who shop at Whole Foods Market, which is actually - Amazon.

Hello there, and let’s talk about Amazon.

But first, let’s talk about Abdelfattah Abusrour, a friend who lives in Aida Camp, a refugee camp established by the UN in 1950, when Palestinians from 27 villages in the west of Jerusalem and the west of Hebron were pushed out / ethnically cleansed of their multi-generational homes, and ‘forcibly displaced’ en masse to tents and underground caves on the far side of Rachel’s Tomb, as seen from Jerusalem, as a temporary measure.

They were told - by the United Nations - that it was a temporary stopgap before their imminent return to their villages, but the reality is, they’re still in Aida.

The UN tried to force them out of tents and into pre-fab housing in the same location in 1952, but they refused, because they were like, no - you said we can go home soon. It felt like a trick, that if they accepted the pre-fabs, they’d forgo the chance to go back home, so they stayed a second icy cold winter in tents and underground caves, holding out for the fulfillment of the UN’s promise, that they’d go home, or at least go back to a ‘real’ place, i.e. the vicinity of the ancient olive groves and ancient vineyards of their lives, the places they knew and loved, the familiar scents of mulukhiyah and goats, the fields of barley. All of that.

Never. Happened.

In 1953, some of the families cracked, understandably, and one by one, everyone said okay to the pre-fabs, and after that, continued to build on top of them, or to pull them down and start again with cinderblocks and concrete, until Aida became the beloved warren of tiny alleys and tall, slightly wonky home-made buildings that it is today.

Up to code, it is not - electric wires are precariously draped, while a grapevine sprouts in the drips of temporary plumbing that’s cracked under pressure, and reaches for the other side of the alley, dangling its grape clusters in memory of a time it was free.

It’s a place of magical cohesiveness and warmth, with a young, politically-aware, and internationally-connected community making world-class art, basically seeded and led by my friend Abdelfattah Abusrour, who you’ll recall I’ve mentioned earlier.

His son was arrested and taken to jail in November, without charges from the military court that came and got him. But that’s another story for another day, in fact, I’m not going to go any deeper into Abdelfattah’s story, or his son, or any of the many creative people who call Aida home. Not now, but yes, in the future we’ll unpack these stories, and there’ll be a podcast too, because there’s such a culture of beautiful resistance in this camp, a phrase that was coined by Abdelfattah in the 90s.

For now, let’s refocus on AMAZON, and what Aida has to do with this behemoth, and sadly how this article is going to mess with your lifestyle choices in New York or LA, if you’re a person with a conscience. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Here’s the first of many inter-related things.

There’s a machine gun pointing at the gate to the camp, which in itself is a public art sculpture, with a massive Key of Return on top of the lintel, as a quick Fck You to any passers-by who may have forgotten that the residents of Aida were promised that the camp was a temporary stopgap, before their return to their homes, which they STILL have the old keys to the old doors that are long-gone in space, but still present in their memories and dreams.

There’s a gun pointed at this gate, the one with the giant key on top.

The gun is enhanced by AI, basically a human operative chooses a target, and the AI locks onto their face, and from that point on, the human can sit back and smoke while the machine gun takes over the rest of the job, much improved, because the AI won’t drop the task, or make a mistake regarding the exact target it’s locked onto.

But it doesn’t have any conscience, obviously, and it won’t necessarily kill the target. It usually won’t actually. Usually the AI is programmed to simply pick out the limbs, and spare the life, so the target might find themselves alive, but with all four of their limbs being repeatedly shot by a conscience-less robot, armed to the teeth.

The Key of Return gate is next door to the UN building by the way, like right next to it which is why it’s universally known as the United Nothing.

That, and the original lie.

Amazon Web Services runs the AI, which is one of many reasons why this article is going to mess up your life if you read it all the way down to the obvious conclusion.

Want to boycott the robot in the gun? It’s basically impossible, and this is why it’s a SYSTEM of oppression, because you and I are inside the system, and there’s no way out unless you go naked, grow everything you eat, and unplug.

Not to be a nihilist, as I do believe being honorable and doing everything we can is what we must do. It’s the only thing we CAN do, having seen the images coming out of Gaza. The only way to get through life with any kind of self-esteem and ‘self-love,’ as opposed to loving you self with a blindspot to your complicity and inner fascism.

Do you want to be in a codependent relationship with yourself? Are YOU, in fact your own narcissist, dating your own ‘echoist’ in some weird gaslit blindspot? Would you find it easier to love yourself, would the love flow effortlessly, if you did the right thing when faced with a phone full of genocide porn, and try to do a little thing like boycotting products made by companies that are helping out with the genocide?

Is this actually not about YOU? Is it about our children, or the next generation, or is it about Allah, or animals, or the bare minerals blown up on Gaza beach, or the ocean as she washes up the Houthi’s heroes, and seeps into the freshwater table under the strip of land that was famous worldwide for its strawberries only a decade ago, with Marks and Spencer serving them up in tiny plastic tubs of sweet deliciousness, but won’t be growing anything at all for the foreseeable future, due to the saltwater ruining it all.

Sorry, not sorry. We are all grappling with this systemic conundrum, except for those who are not - and that would be anyone who hasn’t taken the time to look at the handy BDS list of companies we need to attempt to boycott, even if it’s basically impossible to boycott Amazon.

And, Google, who are also embedded deep in the shit-rich, triadic quagmire of Israeli offense, spies, and lies, otherwise known as the military, intelligence, and propaganda machine so intense, that it has it’s own name. Hasbara is astonishingly intense.

Don’t get me started about Google…

As for not using Google, good luck with that. Except if you’re in China.

Avoiding Ahava is much simpler (basically don’t use personal care stuff that depletes minerals from a finite source, e.g. the Dead Sea), and avoiding Sodastream is pretty basic too (Drinkmate and Ninja both inject bubbles into beverages without ejecting Bedouins from land their ancestors have herded for millennia, in order to make that cute machine, that makes drinks taste less sweet by the time you’ve finished reading this sentence; sorry about that.)

BDS is a horror show that brings into focus the reality that Gaza is the gaping wound of the global interconnected and inescapable capitalist system, and that you’re a ‘rat in a cage,’ for reals.

Whatever choices you make, more barriers appear.

Amazon and Google are names for two of these impenetrable barriers.

Amazon Web Services (AWS) powers almost everything, and Google powers, basically, the other bits. Shopping at Whole Foods, using gmail, are things you can control, but probably won’t, because it’s not impossible but it is annoying to avoid them, and our inner voices are very small when faced with such sacrifices, and the very real lack of any effect they’ll have compared to, say, a massive employer choosing to take their trade elsewhere, or the US government or a bank sticking it to the man, which they kinda sorta no longer are, with corporations like Amazon now existing.

They’re the new ‘man’ we would like to stick it to, but genuinely can’t do more than a clenched fist as we stomp past Whole Foods and get that bar of chocolate at the hippy coop instead, or maybe get fired up enough to start our own damn co-op, if we’re deep into the anti-BDS path, which I’m gonna guess, you’re not.

Project Nimbus is the name of ‘the cloud beast’ the Israeli Zionist military machine uses to kill the kids, which is why Nimbus needed to be ‘expanded’ by Amazon Web Services, and also why it was an excellent investment opportunity for the murderous capitalists at Google, who didn’t give a f*ck about the kids when presented with the opportunity to make a quick buck expanding Project Nimbus.

Every checkpoint, and every watchtower, has mapped the faces of every human whose cheeks have felt the sweet, warm air of Palestine. It’s all inside the AI, and that AI is a hungry cloud beast, powered by operatives intent on locking onto targets.

Or in the case of the newer upgraded AI guns trained at the gate to Hebron, they’re on their own now, zero operatives needed. They have all the data inside their AI guts, and if a face matches one of the ones on the list, they’re dead. Automatically taken out, it’s a done deal. Never misses. So far, not got a false match either.

The scans don’t fail, and the bodies are invariably toast in seconds. Efficient fascism.

‘Battle Tested’ tech ready to ship to other oppressive, brutal regimes worldwide, and potentially that means your very own neighborhood in the near future, which might be the personal inspiration you need to actually check the BDS list and do the thing.

But it goes both ways, of course, with Israeli companies supplying Amazon with 80% of its drones, the ones that deliver the crap you ordered online. At least, it was 80% of Amazon’s aircrafts in 2019, but my guess is it’s probably more by now.

It didn’t start with Aida’s AI, or Hebron’s upgraded version, in fact it didn’t start with any of this. It started with the invasion of Gaza in 2014, when the AWS-fueled system started illegally scanning everyone’s biometrics at every check point, automating the weapons, and spying on us in every way (I assume by the AI reading this article, also).

We are stripped down to our underwear by the robot, who knows more about us than our own mothers. It removes every one of our garments, and peels back our skin and sinews and our opinions, wallets, dating patterns, favorite color, and shoe size.

AWS fortifies Pegasus also, including a lesser know part of the program known as the Wolf Pack. This is a database of faces, names, fingerprints, and tracking - the Wolves know every Palestinian’s movements, and dip into our phones and laptops every time we’re close to a data harvesting point. Next time you order something from Amazon, reference this moment, and reflect on how our lives are diminished by their probing eyes as we make our way in shared taxis or private cars from our families to work, to the gym, to our recreational pursuits. It’s basic manners not to have robots tracking, unless you also bought the lie, and assume everyone’s a ‘terrorist’ when clearly, we’re just whoevers trying to live our lives as best we can, like everyone else.

So good luck with this. Good luck with boycotting Amazon. Maybe you’ll buy less at Whole Foods, maybe not. Maybe you’ll just watch Netflix, but there’s ‘Jack Ryan’, and all kinds of enticements, and you’re just one insignificant human, how does it make a difference in the real world, and so you find yourself indulging a little here, and a little there, and in reality it’s true - we are all part of a system, that system is going to eat us up, and our entire planet, and Palestine is simply one open wound in a gaping, global-sized hole, but it’s the wound that I personally care about, and the ONLY genocide in your own control sphere, that’s DIRECTLY being perpetrated with US, EU and UK bombs, i.e. your taxes, so this is why YOU need to care about this specific genocide.

And doing everything you can to stop the genocide, and to resist your complicity is a beautiful way to bear WITNESS, and to rise above despair, and to unhook your boat from colonialism even if you’re living on someone else’s land, like the Native people of New York or wherever you may be in the US. By doing what you can, whether it’s the act of protesting in the streets, or getting rid of Amazon Prime, is a reclamation of the power of SHARED humanity. It’s a responsibility that goes with the insane amount of softness YOU get from the brutality of companies like Amazon exploiting the blood and skin of Palestinians, directly.

You getting a chocolate bar, while a kid in Hebron gets the AI robot. There’s a line from one to the other, they are connected, but you can do something to break it.

Also, cancel your Amazon Prime, and let this org know.

Again, I did say at the start that this article was going to mess up your life, apologies again, and I’m not sorry at all. I’m glad you’re connecting the facts with emotions, and this will also benefit your mental health. It’s good for you to understand how it works, and your own powerlessness, at the same time as not being a nihilist, and boycotting everything as much as you can, because you will feel better also, and you’ll meet other people who see the world with clarity, and face injustice with courage, and act justly, accordingly, in alignment with their rooted metrics for humanity and self esteem.

Thank you for choosing your own humanity, over a weakened sense of power as you move through your privileged spot on the globe while we’re getting scanned.

The inner voice saying don’t bother is the voice of the system.

You know it makes sense to deeply, wildly care.

In fact, nothing else makes sense.

Do no harm.

For real.

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