Child. Cold. Death

“…in Slow Motion” - 2

Global Rights

1

This one here, this bitter cold

that travels far deeper than bones

nameless and dead and lined up

like old shoes

 

in queues and breadlines for

the entertainment of oligarchs

and other

most-murderous-monsters

 

this here cold

is colder even

than the hatred bred in

the dark and in the dungeons

of these deadly Gringos

and Demagogues.

 

Every day it crawls from the airwaves

and the snooping Internet of the Spies

towards the small toes and still-beating

hearts of babies

 

born

on the wrong side

of a history

that never knew

a right side... [Contd.]

                   8 Month-old baby dies of extreme cold, Gaza

“Death in slow motion”: “Israel has committed 738 violations of the ceasefire agreement between October 10th and December 12th, including 358 land and air bombardments, the killing of at least 383 Palestinians, and the injuring of 1,002 others, according to the Government Media Office in Gaza, and the Palestinian Health Ministry. That’s an average of six Palestinians killed daily in Gaza, down from an average of 250 a day before the ceasefire… The genocide is not over. Yes, the pace has slowed, but the intent remains unchanged. It’s slow motion killing.” [4:43 – 5:31]

Chris Hedges: Rebranding Genocide  – December 20, 2025

Why Winter is Killing Gaza's Children

UNRWA Situation Report #204  - 14 January, 2026 

"Between 7 October 2023 and 6 January 2026, according to the Ministry of Health (MoH) in Gaza, as reported by OCHA, 71,391 Palestinians were reportedly killed in the Gaza Strip and another 171,279 injured."

"How can you bear the frozen death

of even one small child

and not go mad with rage or grief?

How can you bear it..." [5]

Global Rights - Human Rights 

 Gaza ‘CEASEFIRE’?

“Death, in Slow Motion”

or...

 “Happy” “New” Year, 

Gaza…

 “Borrowing the words of Indian writer Arundhati Roy, ‘I tell you, another world is not only possible. She is on the way. And on a quiet day, I can hear her breathing. I hope you can hear her, too.’” Francesca Albanese

Global Rights 

 1

What better way to bury our dead

than plant their silence

in fields filled with words like flowers

freed from the lies of thieves and murderers

with their highly-paid diplomats

of greed and famine and fear?

 

What better way, now, to lift this

mountain of rubble we carry on

over-burdened shoulders

(our collective history of shame and

cruelty and carnage)

than to dance with the “laughter of children”

chasing their amputated feet out

far beyond these endless nightmares?

 

The days pass.

Yet day after day

the crazed-soldiers still come.

The people keep on dying.

As if Death could not ever find enough food

to feed on the lives and dreams of so many…

 

Shad Hammouri

“I stand in front of you today

coming from a long struggle

with the blood of those we've lost

over a struggle

that has lasted for over a hundred years...”

 

The days have passed

… as if all the Dead

could somehow open their mouths,

release the pain, their unfinished farewells,

this unfinished silence of broken bodies trapped

beneath the 2,000-pound-MK-84 U.S. bombs

 

“…a struggle that has culminated

into a moment of genocide

where even getting one loaf of bread into Gaza  

requires changing the whole of the geopolitical order.”

 

while the businessmen and the real-estate-men,

rub their greedy hands with glee

“in Israel, where social media and news

channels routinely chortle over the suffering

of Palestinians” (Chris Hedges)

…as if their plans and bank balances

could bring 20,000 children back to life... [Contd.]

"…as if their plans and bank balances

could bring 20,000 children back to life."

Full Poem & Related Links 

December 12, 2025 - Palestinian Casualty Figures

Since the “Ceasefire” (October 11, 2025)

 

Total deaths: 383

Total injuries: 1,002

Bodies recovered: 627

 

The Overall Toll Since October 7, 2023

 

70,373 Palestinians killed, among them

Children killed: 20,179

171,079 Palestinians wounded, among them

Children injured: 31,754

Women injured: 20,179

(Daily Casualty Report – Gaza, December 11, 2025)

IMEMC News - December 12, 2025

 

Shad Hammouri

“I stand in front of you today

coming from a long struggle

with the blood of those we've lost

over a struggle

that has lasted for over a hundred years...”

 

 “…a struggle that has culminated

into a moment of genocide

where even getting one loaf of bread into Gaza  

requires changing the whole of the geopolitical order.” 

 

The Hague Group: Six Measures to End Israeli Impunity | 5-Minute Summary  

Chris Hedges

 “in Israel, where social media and news

channels routinely chortle over the suffering

of Palestinians..."

Chris Hedges: Rebranding Genocide
 

“And for a future that awaits me amidst the rubble of life.”

Donya Abu Sitta, Palestinian writer and medical student, Gaza, Palestine

Donya Abu Sitta - Substack, December 17, 2025

 After Gaza

Global Rights

After Gaza i can no longer kiss

my dead children goodnight

because they are still in-hiding

from monsters buried beneath

tons of rubble stored in

too-many-inhuman minds 

for millennia.

 

After Gaza my neighbours are armed

with flags and inventories of the ones

we must destroy.

 

After Gaza – not just America but

all these countless States of Disrepute

died

- of Darkness – and Fear - and Greed.

 

After Gaza no one has any right

to talk about themselves, their achievements

or the war crimes they call “Holocaust”

and “defending yourself”.

 

After Gaza

– “from the River to the Sea”

?

?

?

 

There is Nothing

after Gaza

 

…not where we sit

in our delusions of “ceasefire”

and “civilisation”.

 

This is where they will bury us.

 

They are planning to bury us.

 

After Gaza it is easy to see

we are no longer needed.

 

My heart used to cry for the Palestinian people

then they came for the rest of us.

 

Before my sleepy-speechless granddaughter

falls asleep, she asks us:

 

“where were you, when all the Jews and the

Palestinians

(Native Americans, Herero and Nama, Armenians…)  

were massacred?”

Where were you, where were you?

 

Where are we now?

 

After Gaza - I have no answer.

 

i smile at her calm militant eyes

knowing

after Gaza - there is

no longer / not yet

an answer.

 

séamas carraher

winter solstice, 2025

Global Rights - References & Links 

"You need to study Gaza and history. If you live in the global north, you will get to peer out at the horror. But slowly this horror as the climate breaks down will migrate home turning us into Palestinians. Given our complicity in the genocide, it’s what we deserve. Empires, when they feel threatened, always embrace the instrument of genocide”  

Chris Hedges [10:46 – 11:07]

Rebranding genocide – Chris Hedges Channel – 20, December, 2025

 O, Lord of Hatred

Gage Skidmore - CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

- after Listening to Steven K. Bannon’s “War Room[s]”

Global Rights

1

O Lord of the Fascist underbelly

the morning after the storm cleared all

the leaves from the trees and a million

starving refugees were washed down

the gutters into a soulless sea.

 

O, Lord of the men & women in

the Business of Banks and Billionaires

with their poisoned currency.

 

O Lord of Corruption,

this lord of Chaos and Deceit

now “weaponised”...

 

Oh, listen, listen carefully, 

because 60 million Mercenary Millionaires

fear the Scourge of Democracy

(confronting the Terror of their Technology)

…but not the screams of dying children

in all the Gaza’s of our worst nightmares.

[contd.]

 

Full Poem & Related Links

FOR THE PRESENT?

“Fascism in power is a compound, a powerful amalgam of different but marriageable conservative, national-socialist and radical Right ingredients, bonded together by common enemies and common passions for a regenerated, energized, and purified nation at whatever cost to free institutions and the rule of law. The precise proportions of the mixture are the result of processes: choices, alliances, compromises, rivalries. Fascism in action looks much more like a network of relationships than a fixed essence.”

Excerpt From: Robert Paxton –“What is Fascism” (PDF)

And

“In a column that appeared online on Jan. 11, 2021, Paxton wrote that the invasion of the Capitol “removes my objection to the fascist label.”

Trump’s “open encouragement of civic violence to overturn an election crosses a red line,” he went on. “The label now seems not just acceptable but necessary.”

Robert Paxton: “It’s the real thing. It really is.”(in his 2021 Newsweek column)

Is It Fascism? A Leading Historian Changes His Mind.

“Robert Paxton thought the label was overused. But now he’s alarmed by what he sees in global politics — including Trumpism.” Elisabeth Zerofsky – October, 2024

#MakeAntiFascismGreatAgain