The Laboratory of Our Future Pt. II

A while back, I invoked the memory of Charles Bowden and one of his books, The Laboratory of Our Future. The book, to be brief, is about Ciudad Juarez and its exploitation post-NAFTA. It was, as Bowden said, a testing ground for how we might exploit people, and the limits to which we could do so. It's the full equation behind colonialism at work. Put another way, this is one of many real-life examples of Foucault's Boomerang: that which the empire throws at its colonies will inevitably come back to be implemented against its citizens.

This is pertinent to us not just because of Foucault's Boomerang, but because it is emblematic of the old (but true) saw that we are, all of us, fighting one fight. Any cause you take up, any battle you join, is just another front in the one, single conflict of liberation. Thinking that we are fighting separate fights is a method of sowing distrust happily used by the powers that be to ensure we stay divided.

With that said, let's talk about Palestine and Israel.

Israel Trains All The Fuckheads You Hate

As Cop City slowly (well, not that slowly) turns into Cop Nation, it's important to remember that Cop City is very, very much influenced by Israel's settler-colonial project. The very idea of Cop City comes from a model city meant to reflect an urban environment within Gaza. This model was constructed in 2005, And before you get too far into that idea, the very way that US cops fight in cities is based on techniques gleaned from Israeli training, meant to enforce the aforementioned settler-colonial project.

The subjugation of Palestinians is very much in play here in the United States and elsewhere abroad. The brutality that you see on display day in and day out in Gaza can and will be used against you. And while we should never let slip from our minds for a moment that Israel is committing genocide, we would do well to remember that Israel has treated Gaza like a prison for decades, its police and military forces act that way, and they promulgate this to US police departments, including ICE.

When Derek Chauvin knelt on George Floyd's neck for nine minutes and twenty nine seconds, he was using an Israeli technique. Broken-window policing and stop-and-frisk are Israeli policies, employed ostensibly to control crime but in reality just ways that the state can flex its muscle. Our police travel to Mini-Gaza to learn how better to implement crowd-control techniques and conduct counterinsurgency–which is truly wild when you think about it. Our police are training in counterinsurgency, to combat whom, exactly? Well, us, all of us, of course–when we finally break.

In addition, Israel develops surveillance and AI technology in partnership with dystopian joke companies like Palantir. Palantir provides predictive policing software in the states, while it provides AI tech to Israel–perhaps kin to the Israeli "Lavender" which was used to determine tens of thousands of targets for the Israeli war machine among the Palestinian number. Meanwhile, Microsoft, Google, and Amazon all support the occupiers under one auspice or another.

Israel's Genocide Costs Us In CO2

You would be forgiven for not linking expressly the immensely destructive and murderous bombing of Palestinians with climate change, but within the first two months of Israel's response to October 7th, Israel had burned up 281,000 metric tonnes of CO2. The article will tell you that exceeds the annual carbon footprint of more than "twenty of the world's most climate-vulnerable nations." Two months of bombing alone–not their other emissions, not the drafting of their AI. Just the bombs they dropped in two months.

In over one and a half years of their extermination campaign, Israel has pushed more carbon into the atmosphere than the annual contributions of over 100 countries. For those keeping score at home, the United Nations counts only 195. Put another way, the massacre of Gazans exceeds the yearly output of half the world. At a time when we are teetering on the brink of runaway climate change (I am of the opinion that bell has already been rung, but let's pretend it hasn't) this conflict, denuded of all other context, remains world-endingly important.

And, quietly, there is the matter of the rubble and reconstruction of Gaza, when that finally happens. Concrete releases CO2, and its creation and the construction therewith is also CO2-intensive, as it is a heavy building material that requires a lot of energy to transport. Nothing about this conflict is so much as negligible for the climate–that we aren't treating it like the crime against humanity that it is, is itself criminal.

The Billions

We have given Israel, since its colonial inception, over $300 billion in aid, most of that military in nature. We have a standing agreement to give them $3.8 billion a year until 2028. In the course of only one year of this conflict, we have given Israel nearly $18 billion. This is, roughly, what we spend in a year in disaster relief here at home. And yet, eight months since Hurricane Helene hit North Carolina, thousands are still without homes. Because the government chooses to abet a genocide before helping its own people. And just because I want you to see the contrast, we have given around $300 million–with an m–to Palestine as of October of last year. How much of that actually reached Palestinians in need, I do not know.

I could list all the ways we could better spend this money–because $18 billion houses the houseless in America, and it goes a long way toward feeding everyone hungry in the world. But talking about how the United States misspends its money is an endless subject and not terrifically relevant.

What is relevant is that we are caught in a doom loop. The US gives Israel money, Israel trains our cops, we get our heads kicked in, we keep paying taxes, Israel gets more money, Gazans are starving because our government is bitterly corrupt, the genocide helps to ensure we all cook via climate change, repeat.

The Boomerang

And in case it isn't clear, The United States and Israel are tied so closely that I think we can effectively consider everything in play in Gaza as in play on our soil in a matter of years. Drones that lure people out of hiding with the screams of children? Gathering hungry folks into one place with the promise of flour and then shooting them? Sniping kids, sniping unarmed, wounded people? Give it time. What power sees work, power will adopt.

I also want to make it clear that were this not the case, were it somehow not all one related conflict, the boomerang false, and the genocide in Gaza not materially affecting you, right now, it would still be an atrocity. It is an atrocity–and it shouldn't need to be brought to our doorstep for us to remember and fight against it. Give when you can. It is all one fight, and we're all in it together.

*Note that this was written before things popped off in LA–the people fighting on the ground there I think know and show that we are fighting a single conflict, worldwide.