Thursday, December 30, 2010

Colonial-Settler Cancer

Metastasis is a complex series of steps in which cancer cells leave the original tumour site and migrate to other parts of the body:

Metastasis in Palestine: "In October 1977, a month before Egyptian President Anwar Sadat's famous visit to Jerusalem to proclaim his desire for peace, the settlement of Halamish (pop. ca. 1,000) was implanted on the hillside opposite al-Nabi Saleh. Since then - in parallel with the never-ending 'peace process' - Halamish has expanded from its original foothold in a Jordanian police fort to occupy nearly half the historic lands of al-Nabi Saleh. The remaining village lands are mostly on the north side of Road 465, which runs on the floor of the valley separating al-Nabi Saleh from Halamish. In December 2009 settlers from Halamish expropriated the natural spring of 'Ayn al-Kus on the south side of Road 465. Several weeks later, Halamish settlers burned down 150 of al-Nabi Saleh's olive trees near the spring." (The problem is the Israeli occupation: al-Nabi Saleh, Joel Beinin, jadaliyya.com, 20/12/10)

Metastasis in Australia: "In 1829 the first white man came to the Barka and conferred on it the name of Darling. Over the ensuing years a number of explorers came and went through the land, and an overlanders' route for cattle and sheep was opened up along the Murray River. The tribesmen were not always seduced into complacency with tomahawks of European manufacture and other baubles, and sometimes objections were raised, as gradually even the arid fastnesses of their outer lands came under the white man's scrutiny. In the course of time they experienced something of the perfidy of the white boree, who came in likeness to the spirit ancestors of their dreaming, but was sometimetimes less than honourable in his dealings with the tribes. Trouble inevitably flared, especially after the squatters moved in to 'sit down' on the black man's land, and it was found that spears were no match for the lethal power of bullets. The invaders were insatiable in their greed: the greed of the squatters for land, of lecherous whites for the women of the Barkindji, of rapacious employers who bought the reluctant services of the dark people with grog." (Lament for the Barkindji: The Vanished Tribes of the Darling River Region, Bobbie Hardy, 1976, p ii)

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