ISSUE 01: STATE(D) VIOLENCE
ABOUT
T E-Y
T E-Y is an artist and editor living in Buffalo, New York. The first piece in this work is excerpted from the forthcoming OINMENT WEATHER: Insurgent Poietics for Desperate Times (CLOAK.wtf 2025). The second piece is from the wider project that book is culled from.
MEM(ENT)O
Antonio Guterres gives a speech at the Rafah border crossing / He is not allowed to enter Gaza (by whom?) and decries the deliveries made by only 34 trucks to the besieged enclave / During a speech to reporters, flanked by security personnel, Guterres states It is time to silence the guns / His published speech does not include the comment made to reporters during the Q&A: We don’t have the power to stop [the war in Gaza], I appeal to those who have the power to stop it to do it
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Three frames apart / Walking—four men on / the bulldozed road—the IDF vehicles have evacuated / A drone stalks the men / They have come to check on their homes / In previous days, neighbors had gone to check on their homes / Some neighbors have been reported to have found bodies of relatives in bombed out cars—a previous incident report has documented this, though the memory has faded with the onslaught of recurrent atrocities / There is no way these men could have been deemed enemy combatants / The footage is too graphic for Al Jazeera to distribute, but is leaked and distributed widely on social media / For about a minute, the aerial eye frames us, watching four men walking on the bulldozed road. The IDF vehicles have evacuated the area. A drone stalks these four men, though they cannot see it nor hear it—despite their weariness. They have come to check on their homes. It is not clear viewing the footage if these four men are going to or leaving the area. The drone—possibly a Hermes 450 (SENTINEL IN THE SKY) equipped with SPIKE missile—launches its payload. Between three frames, the men are gone.
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Rubble’s distance and patched green / The way we cleared the path / The same day as Guterres speech, the United States puts forth, and is defeated in this attempt, a UN Security Council resolution calling for an immediate ceasefire in Gaza. Algeria, China, Russia all vote against the resolution, while Guiana abstains. Linda Thomas-Greenfield, US ambassador to the UN, states that Russia and China merely want to see the United States fail. She makes no comment on the numerous resolutions for ceasefires in Gaza put forth by other Security Council member nations, all of which were vetoed by the United States, as represented by Thomas-Greenfield. On her confirmation to her position in 2021, Thomas-Greenfield exclaimed Diplomacy is back / Per the official transcript of her nomination hearing, China is mentioned 265 times, with an interesting instance of such by New Jersey Senator Bob Menendez (who is currently under numerous federal indictments for influence peddling, having received hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes from foreign governments): I am also concerned by the way China has sought to increase its role at the United Nations and in other international organizations, not because China does not deserve an appropriate role commensurate with its presence on the world stage, but because of its attempts to pervert and distort the core values that make the U.N.'s work so important. China's efforts to insert Xi Jinping's thoughts into U.N. resolutions has undermined the U.N.'s commitment to human rights. This is the same leader responsible for what the State Department has determined to be acts of genocide committed against 1.8 million Uyghur men, women, and children in internment facilities. / Do the math / Gaza is mentioned zero times. Palestinian issues, however, appear roughly 38 times. Here is Ambassador Thomas-Greenfield’s response to a question put forth by Senator James E Risch, as supplement to proceedings (Thomas-Greenfield likely having answered these questions at a separate time):
Shortly after this question, Risch continues by citing Public Laws 101-246 and 103-236, which prohibit federal funding from/to UN organizations that support membership status by Palestine as represented by the Palestinian Liberation Organization (and its subsequent derivatives, as the US Title Code has been amended). Israel appears in the transcript roughly 139 times. Jew/ish appears 3 times. Muslim appears 10 times. Terrorist/ism appears 12 times. Jerusalem appears ten times. The United States decries the UN denial of Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights. Syria appears 45 times. Control of the strategic Golan Heights region provides Israel an added measure of security from the turmoil next door.
ALF
In some schools of math 1+1=0 / For a long time I was blind to— / This is the way it began, that extraordinary night, the night he came (that last one’s from Alf, pilot episode) / Flashes of light were needed cheaper than the effects bulbs could render, so we used photonegatives on a micro-scale to render the ideation of a flash for the viewer / Static switch / Sudden shift / I’m on an archeological expedition inside a television / Read my lips / worked appositionally as a catchphrase for an Alien Life Form and a US President / the deviations can prove dire consequences / Vladimir Putin wants to assure the world he has no intention to place a nuclear weapon in space / So the first nuclear anxieties really were just that / “the first” / If one wants to believe their generation exists on the horizon of apocalypse, one must use contextual evidence from previous generations and their experiences in order to scaffold their theory (that is proof) / Nuclear anxiety—taught to me and many others in school as an aspect of living then / becomes a new benchmark to push us further into (hopefully a) confirmation (bias…) / Duck and cover was a thing to laugh at—so imagine what do we think, there’s some way out? / Jeff Bezos and his bunker / Mark Zuckerberg Maui Compound (2023 - ) / This is what they want to tell you / Duck and cover / So, soon, you can expect to see heavy blankets worn before x-rays sold as convertible picnic coverture-cum-death-blast shield / only 400$ and not payable in digital installments / We order twelve for our bunker / You can sell anyone on a safety dream
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From the horizon of romance / no klaxon / to the remainders of war / We will write letters before we leave to share with our favorite businesses / Books / Weapons / Embryos / Livestock / These are only some of the things transported on our highways / It was the art of the poet to name their punches / In the United States, citizens celebrate (somewhat) the passage of an infrastructure bill to update their rapidly decaying roads, bridges, highways, and airports / In Israel overnight between the 21st and 22nd of February, a paramilitary excursion by State forces obliterates a roundabout in the West Bank