South Africa Lays Out Genocide Case vs. Israel at World Court in The Hague

South Africa’s Justice Minister Ronald Lamola addressed the court at the opening of the hearing.

RONALD LAMOLA: Madam President and distinguished members of the court, it is an honor for me to stand here in front of you on behalf of the Republic of South Africa on this exceptional case. “In extending our hands across the miles to the people of Palestine, we do so in the full knowledge that we are part of a humanity that is at one.” These were the words of our founding president, Nelson Mandela. This is the spirit in which South Africa acceded to the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Crime of Genocide in 1998. This is the spirit in which we approach this court as a contracting party to the convention. This is a commitment we owe to the people of Palestine and Israelis alike.

As previously mentioned, the violence and the destruction in Palestine and Israel did not begin on the 7th of October, 2023. The Palestinians have experienced systematic oppression and violence for the last 76 years.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: That was South Africa’s Justice Minister Ronald Lamola addressing the court at the opening of the hearing. South Africa lawyer Adila Hassim was next. She began by citing Israel’s bombing campaign in Gaza in her opening argument.

ADILA HASSIM: For the past 96 days, Israel has subjected Gaza to what has been described as one of the heaviest conventional bombing campaigns in the history of modern warfare. Palestinians in Gaza are being killed by Israeli weaponry and bombs from air, land and sea. They are also at immediate risk of death by starvation, dehydration and disease as a result of the ongoing siege by Israel, the destruction of Palestinian towns, the insufficient aid being allowed through to the Palestinian population, and the impossibility of distributing this limited aid while bombs fall. This conduct renders essentials to life unobtainable.


Yet as South Africa made clear, self-defence can never justify action that amounts to genocide.


The planet-warming emissions generated during the first two months of the war in Gaza were greater than the annual carbon footprint of more than 20 of the world’s most climate-vulnerable nations, new research reveals. via Guardian. This war will kill us all!!

AG2022_2030755a or Every day, piecemeal evolution

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The day, with all its pain ahead, is yours.
The ceaseless creasing of the mourning sea,
the fluttering gamboge cedar leaves allegro

Derek Walcott


Some people, born inside out, are prone to unravelling.

Among our vestigial traits: coccyx, wisdom tooth, death.

Every day, piecemeal evolution. Soon I will be pure wonder.

You step into the river of your history, wrinkle, step out.

Fruit is the fruit of the tree; rot is the fruit of the fruit.

Annelyse Gelman, Conch

AG2023_1034175a or le désir du néant

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“Chercher à s’anéantir dans son œuvre n’est pas toujours un signe d’humilité. Même le désir du néant peut être une vanité…”

“Je le laissai et allai provoquer la nuit parisienne, son incandescence, ses flots de bière, sa joie pure, ses rires purs, sa drogue dure, ses illusions d’habiter l’éternité ou l’instant.”

The Most Secret Memory of Men by Mohamed Mbougar Sarr

AG2023_1078357a or lies within something of another nature

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Untitled (Field Guide; “what’s not found at once, but lies within something of another nature”) ii, 2023. Graphite, colored pencil, gesso, enamel paint, gouache, collage, pigment print on paper. 75 x 54 cm

Denise Levertov, “Pleasures”. (I like to find/  what’s not found / at once, but lies …)


Hard luck and trouble
Been my only friend
I’ve been on my own
Ever since I was ten

[…]

You know wine and women
Is all I crave
A big legged woman
Gonna carry me to my grave

[…]

[Chorus]Born under a bad sign
I’ve been down since I began to crawl
If it wasn’t for bad luck
I tell ya, I wouldn’t have no luck at all[Outro]Yeah, I’m a bad luck boy
Been havin’ bad luck all of my days, yes

Dreaming or invent instruments that allow us to do politics at that level

Emanuele Coccia offers us his reflections on fashion, ecology, and transforming city/home. (Exhibition-Magazine, 2021(?))

This pandemic has shown us a kind of corporeal continuity between all human beings. This is a big deal because it’s a physical and sensible consciousness that we recognized in a single, selfsame flesh. It’s the first time that there has been a global event where everyone is aware of at the same time with a unification of bodies and consciousnesses. Everything that we had created to produce politics became obsolete: nations no longer make sense. We are truly on a single planet, and we will have to invent instruments that allow us to do politics at that level. This is true for the current question of vaccination. Everything that we have produced was conceived for a fractured world. The progressivist discourses – the “true left” – are those which will allow us to understand how to find a non-imperialist way of living together, which is at the level of this self-evident truth and this shared suffering. This virus has definitely closed the door on the political and cultural experiment of the 20th century. All of the current debates about identity are not very interesting. They are battles defending territory which has already been conquered. The great battles of the future are elsewhere I think.

Coccia with Sophie Abriat

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We only need design because we are born without having either the experience or the idea of happiness. This is why we spend the rest of our lives observing, touching, measuring the world and tasting it to understand what makes us feel good. In this way, we also explore our body and our mind. This continuous exploration of self and the world in search of happiness is what we call dreaming. And design is the ambition or claim that there is a method in the way we dream, and the attempt to give a single name to all possible forms of happiness.

[…]

Actually, what interests me most is not to observe the present, but to explore what in the present is already working on shaping the world of after tomorrow. And not tomorrow, which is always a consequence of today, but after tomorrow — the kind of future that is not yet predictable and that is unrecognisable compared to the present. That is precisely why it can afford to coincide with an ancestral past. The most radical form of exploration for this should be in dreams: the dream is already an exploration, and being able to explore the dreams of others is the most important faculty for any creative. So much more than observation, dreaming is the most powerful tool of exploration.

A Take On Fashion: Emanuele Coccia