Queen Elizabeth 2
Requeiscat in pace, Rest in peace, Lilibet
Laurence “Larry” Marley's funeral was delayed for three days as the RUC refused to allow British military displays at the graveside and formed a heavily British armed cordon around his Ardoyne home. There was intense rioting in north and west Belfast due to the delay. Finally, the police compromised and the funeral took place with thousands of mourners following the cortege, which was preceded by 35 armoured RUC Land Rovers, to the Republican Plot in the Milltown Cemetery. According to Gerry Adams (legendary leader of Sinn Fein, now Sinn Fein is Party Leader in Ireland, thanks to Mary Lou MacDonald– an Irish woman who fought for her life about Ireland and Palestine), Marley's funeral witnessed the largest "display of Republican support since the hunger strikes" in 1981. Marley was described as having been determined, unselfish, possessed of a resourceful intelligence and a readiness to help his friends and fellow volunteers.
Bloody Sunday, or the Bogside Massacre, was a massacre on 30 January 1972 when British soldiers shot 26 unarmed civilians during a protest march in the Bogside area of Derry, Northern Ireland. Fourteen people died. The Catholic priest Edward Daly waving a blood-stained white handkerchief while trying to escort the mortally wounded Jackie Duddy to safety. Jackie finally died, one of 14 killed.
This is just 2 from the zillion how painful Irish about the British Empire.
Video circulating online shows Shamrock Rovers fans chanting in celebration at what is understood to be Dublin’s Tallaght Stadium, when Shamrock Rovers facing Djurgarden IF (Europa Conference League—last season AS Roma wins the competition). “Lizzy’s in a box,” they sang to the tune of the KC & the Sunshine Band song, Give It Up. Derry people on the streets in celebration. People are seen gathering on the streets, leaving their cars in the middle of the street and even climbing roofs in celebration abruptly after QE II passed away.
To Oprah Winfrey, Meghan Markle (alongside Prince Harry), with tears, said there was concern within the royal family about her baby's skin tone. Archie Harrison & Lilibet is white skin like their father Harry. Even after get disrespect by Buckingham & QE, Meghan use nickname QE to her baby: Lilibet.
People being surprised about Irish people and Black &/ Afro-American finding common ground over the Queen reminds me of what a member of the IRA said about being honored by New York City. Can't be any hope for the global fucked of the earth without unwavering solidarity with black power. Whilst the Irish famine did not occur under Queen Elizabeth's reign - what we are witnessing on Irish - Black - Brown - Palestine - Entirely Africa - Palestinian in latest 72 hours is a collective trauma. Unresolved trauma can become generational. Colonisation is a trauma.
This Queen was an imperial monarch. Her coronation was an imperial event that evoked what some hoped would be a new Elizabethan age for what was still a very large Empire. As the head of that empire she symbolised its racial order of white supremacy. Her reign, like the crown littered with jewels 'gifted' from the colonies (as an example: Koh-i-noor, Burmese Ruby Tiara, Grand Duchess Vladimir Tiara), took its wealth and authority from centuries of colonial subjugation. For some Britons she connected them to that imperial past in ways that made them proud. For others it was a source of pain or shame. As the empire, and the attempt to make Europe fill the gap left by it, fell apart the Queen became the head of a United Kingdom which itself began to disintegrate with decolonization and Brexit. She became a symbol of Britain's precarious and shrinking place in the world. The other big hope at her coronation was that she could revive the family romance of the monarch after the Abdication Crisis. Yet, as viewers of the Crown know, her family was just like everyone else's: full of tension, resentments, affairs and broken marriages. As head of the royal family and the Anglican Church she could not make the center hold. She was much more effective holding on to her enormous personal wealth than the church was but she neither restored faith in the sanctity of the family or the authority of the church.
Ultimately her reign was one in which royalty was reduced to becoming part of a new culture of celebrity. She made it that way embracing radio and television, and jet-set tours, to reach 'her' peoples around the restyled Commonwealth. And yet the so often distasteful and often ugly stories that circulated around her family (take your pick: adultery, sexual abuse, racism, corruption) reduced the monarchy to just another very, very rich celebrity figure with a global audience, thanks for every series about life of Buckingham too. It is hard to know whether the inevitable avalanche of mourning and reporting in the days and weeks ahead speaks to the way the monarchy still matters for many Britons.
It was in that transitional age, between the loss of England’s last continental possession (Calais, in 1558) and the foundation of its first permanent colony in the New World (Jamestown, in 1607), that the English state adopted the two-part strategy that would define it, and subsequently the United Kingdom, for the next centuries. First, play off European powers against each other to prevent the emergence of a continental hegemon with the strength to cross the Channel; and second, use the peace and stability that first strategy guaranteed to turn towards the oceans, and the acquisition of the naval supremacy needed to establish, and maintain control of, a global merchant empire.
Elizabeth, or Lilibet, very long to live so she saw reign ⅓ of the world under British Empire, then she died (Balmoral, Scotland) in the country in years ago declare a referendum, and maybe 1 year from now re-intend to set another referendum to “divorce” from British Empire. Lilibet was born when the British Empire conquered ⅓ of the world, and 4 days before died, India surpassed England to be 5th biggest GDP (US, China, Japan, and Germany in 1-4). The (shocking) wins by Sinn Féin in Ireland really worried the inside of Buckingham, not only Downing street 10. Britain Monarch, once conquered 82% of the land earth, if Ireland united with North Ireland because consequence (Sinn Fein) won, cornered the UK to be smaller again — and smaller again if Scotland divorce from Buckingham.
The DUP (anti Protocol) being too hardline means support seeps to Alliance (not anti Protocol), which means Sinn Féin (not anti Protocol) wins most Assembly seats in North Ireland. So DUP won’t join power sharing until the UK Government (Liz Truss) tears up the Protocol. Sinn Féin not only leads in Ireland. SF won 27 seats to become the largest party in NI & will now be entitled to nominate a first minister - a first for a nationalist party. In the wake Queen Elizabeth passed away, we’re witnessing the impending and I think now inevitable collapse of the United Kingdom. Irish were marginalized by Britain/the United Kingdom for 8-9 centuries, and not only killed each other. So, Irish, in North Ireland and Ireland, adn Scotland, have a wholeheartedly feeling to “another nation who was destroyed by Britain”: Palestine. A leaf of Shamrock united them.
March 1, 1981, five years after the Special Category Status was ended, an Irish republican prisoner, Bobby Sands, began a hunger strike to demand the restoration of political status. Other republican prisoners joined him in the hunger strike at staggered intervals. Ten of them, including Sands, died.
After Sands’s death on May 5, the 66th day of his strike, Palestinian prisoners in Israel’s Nafha prison smuggled out a letter in support of the Irish hunger strikers. It read: “We salute the heroic struggle of Bobby Sands and his comrades, for they have sacrificed the most valuable possession of any human being. They gave their lives for freedom.”
There had been several hunger strikes by Palestinian prisoners before this and many more since. Five Palestinians have passed away while on hunger strike and dozens have come close to death. Thousands of Palestinian prisoners have participated in what Palestinians call “the battle of empty stomachs”, either alone or en mass, over the years.
The similarity between the inhumane practices suffered by Irish political prisoners in the past and the inhumane treatment of Palestinian prisoners today serves as a reminder of this long history of solidarity between two countries plagued by settler-colonialism British Empire. On the cover of A Shared Struggle is a photograph of Palestinian women carrying signs that read Nafha, H-Block, Armagh, One Struggle; it is an image that speaks volumes about Irish-Palestinian solidarity.
While much of this world was fading by the time Elizabeth II acceded to the throne aged 25 in 1952, it is striking how much of it endured well into the first years of her reign. At the time of her coronation the following year much of the western littoral of the Indian Ocean still belonged to the British Empire: from what is now the United Arab Emirates via Oman and Yemen to Somalia, Kenya and Tanzania. In Africa one could travel by land from the Sahara to the Cape without leaving British colonies and dominions. The Empire still encompassed such colonies as Malaya (now Malaysia and Singapore), Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), Cyprus, Malta and Nigeria. Most became independent only in the 1960s.
To be sure, that old imperial world lived and lives on in certain aspects of British life. The experience of the maritime empire shaped the fabric of the country, much of which remains today. To a foreigner visiting with fresh eyes, perhaps the most immediately obvious thing about Britain is the fundamentally and distinctly Victorian-Edwardian-Interwar character of its cities, buildings and institutions.
Great Britain hails from maritime history, it is deeply ingrained in the nation’s DNA. The laws on land are different from those on the high seas, where the ever-changing conditions of wind and weather call for adaptability and flexibility.” The Queen’s stoical and reserved manner made her a yet-better personification of such aspects of the country’s image and self-image. Cultural, linguistic and historical links to the former territories of the Empire embodied by the monarchy probably helped Britain adapt to a diverse, multi-ethnic population – including large numbers of arrivals from those former colonies – better than most other Western countries.
Yet the longer the second Elizabethan era went on, the more distant that old Britain and that old world it inhabited became. The colonies won their independence, the country integrated with the European continent, imperial-era industries gave way to services and new socio-economic divides, a stoical maritime national demeanour gave way to something more individualistic and raucous. The old imperial economic networks proved of relatively modest commercial use (India today imports more from Belgium than from the UK). Progressive social change brought a long-overdue questioning of whitewashed narratives about the British Empire and the many dark chapters of its history. Brexit, an expression of that distinctiveness Kielinger and De Gaulle identified, is yet to generate the buccaneering national renewal promised at the time of the 2016 referendum. National identity and sub-identities, including the future of the very Union that had built Britain into a global power, have come under new stress as the spectre of fragmentation looms.
No surprise that the public showed greatest ambivalence towards the Queen in the 1990s, the decade of the supposed End of History and of a new post-Thatcher, Cool-Britannia-shaped (and it turned out, hubristic) burst of national self-confidence. It is similarly logical that her popularity would roar back as the turmoil of the 2000s, 2010s and the early 2020s turned the country back to, not nostalgia per se, but a re-engagement with the questions of where it had come from, what it used to be and what it ought to be now. Elizabeth II was a last defence against a sort of nation-level, post-imperial phantom limb syndrome, that experience of sensation in parts of the body no longer attached. Probably the closest we will ever come to world peace. All different cultures coming together in the name of systemic trauma to absolutely roast the shit out of the colonizer queen .
An end of an era, then. But also the affirmation of the passing of an era that largely took place decades ago. This moment will be marked ceremonially over the coming days in tributes and the pageantry of the coming funeral and coronation.
Once that is past, however, and the reign of King Charles III (and new PM Liz Truss) is firmly underway, a time of national reassessment and readjustment surely looms, and facing reality: Liz Truss’s proposed energy price freeze for UK households risks running out of control, topping the £197 billion estimated, and Jacob Rees-Mogg was named as the UK’s Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, a crucial role in charge of the on-going energy crisis, and UK taxpayers will be on the hook for as much as £200 billion to cover the cost of Prime Minister Liz Truss’s plans to contain energy prices. A network of beautiful, healthy trees spreading across the UK might end up being the queen’s greatest legacy yet. Members of the Cabinet will have their first meeting with the King just days after Prime Minister Liz Truss formed her new government.
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Hanya 15an menit sebelum laga Europa Conference League (tahun lalu/musim lalu yang menang AS Roma, yang itu lho Mourinho nangis terharu), Queen Elizabeth 2 (/ Lilibet, Lizzi, Isabel) wafat. Kebetulan ada salah satu laga ECL yaitu Shamrock Rovers ☘☘☘☘☘☘ vs Djurgarden IF (Swedia), hasil akhir 0-0.
Berlangsung di Dublin, fans Shamrock saat laga berlangsung berteriak2 gembira dengan bernyanyi2, sorry banget, "Lizzi in the Box, Lizzi in the Box" (Ratu Elizabeth di peti jenazah).
3 hari lalu, klub sepakbola lainnya yang juga memakai logo daun Shamrock / Oxalis, yaitu Glasgow Celtic ☘☘☘☘☘, bermain melawan juara bertahan Champions League yaitu Real Madrid di Celtic Park. Tentu saja, lebih2 karena melawan juara bertahan, berbagai fans Celtic mengibarkan bendera Palestine padahal yang mengibarkan warga/fans Celtic orang Caucasian Catholic pun. Laga lainnya, Benfica melawan Maccabi Haifa (level Champions League juga), fans Benfica mengibarkan bendera Palestine.
Klub olahraga lain, yaitu Basket, yaitu Boston Celtics, juga memakai logo daun Shamrock☘☘☘ atau daun Oxalis. Tentu orang2 tidak lupa Boston Tea Party: warga Boston (kulit putih yang sudah lama di amrik) bersama Indian, melawan kapal2 Inggris yang berlabuh di pelabuhan Boston, dan membuang teh yang diangkut kapal Inggris ini, sebagai perlawanan tidak mau dipajaki lagi kerajaan Britania. "no taxation without representation.”
Tidak semua warga Amerika berduka atas wafatnya Queen Elizabeth 2. Utamanya afro amerika, mereka sangat mungkin bodoamat. Bertahun lampau, gempar interview Oprah terhadap Meghan Markle - Pangeran Harry. Salah satu potongan cerita yang pilu, entah siapa yang berbicara, tapi Markle berkata seorang dokter atau staff Monarki mewakili bertanya (*sangat mungkin mewakili Queen Elizabeth 2) " apakah anak yang lahir dari rahim Markle berkulit hitam. 2 anak Meghan Markle dengan Pangeran Harry kebetulan tidak berkulit hitam. Meghan Markle tidak ikut ke Puri Balmoral Scotland untuk jenguk QE 2 jelang ajal dan hanya Harry yang berangkat.
Hanya 22 negara yang tidak pernah dijajah Kerajaan atau Monarki Britania. Inggris bisa lebih lama lagi menjajah (sebagian kecil) Indonesia andai tidak terjadi tukar guling Bengkulu - Singapore. Dari dulu Belanda memang menyedot sampai habis area yg dijajah dan, maaf banget, eks daerah asli yang dijajah Belanda jauh lebih miskin dibanding yg ditukar guling dengan Monarki Britania. Satu lagi yang ditukar guling VOC (*karena masih VOC yang jajah, belum kerajaan belanda) adalah Banda - (kini kita sebut) NYC, area pengontrol 50 Trillion dollar keuangan dunia dan total GDP negara bagian NY adalah 6 Trillion dollar. Banda kini cuma tanah kenangan, bandingkan dengan gemerlap NYC. Sesinting itu Belanda menyedot Banda, juga Bengkulu yang jelas ga sebling-bling Singapore. Seserakah itu Belanda.
Salah satu potongan kecil, dan kebetulan benar2 terjadi saat Queen Elizabeth 2 masih hidup (& masih muda), yaitu 22 Juli 1946. Usia Elizabeth masih 20 tahun dan belum resmi memegang tahta. Pemboman yang direncanakan elit militer Israel, utamanya oleh Menachem Begin, yang kemudian menjadi PM. King David Hotel bombing. Total 91 orang tewas, 41 dari warga Arab dan 28 dari warga Inggris. Salah satu elit tentara Israel yang diajak Menachem Begin, adalah Avram Avramovitz, salah satu leluhur tidak langsung Roman Abramovich, eks pemilik Chelsea, klub satu-satunya di London yang juara Champions League.
Pemerintah Inggris (Clement Atlee saat itu menjadi PM) dan Monarki Britania terkesan membiarkan itu tragedi demi kemudian memastikan Israel berdiri sebagai negara. "Dikorbankannya Caucasian demi hal lebih besar" ikut dikutip di series Homeland, persisnya episode 12/terakhir untuk musim/season keempat. Konteksnya, saat itu Haqqani, pimpinan Taliban, berhasil membunuhi 1 CIA (diperankan Nazanin Boniadi) dan belasan staf kedubes AS untuk Pakistan. Homeland season 4 ditutup dengan ucapan bahwa tragedi di Kedubes AS di Pakistan dibutuhkan agar Haqqani jadi simbol terkuat Taliban dan bisa meredam perang antar faksi di Afghanistan. Dar Adal (Islam-America, kepala divisi Contra Intelligence untuk CIA, diperankan F. Murray Abraham) mempersuasi agar CIA tidak terlalu jauh membalas tragedi tersebut dan mengambil perumpamaan kejadian di Hotel King David.
31 Juli 2022 lalu, petinggi Taliban benar2 real life, namanya Haqqani, memberikan rumah untuk tempat berlindung ranking tertinggi Al Qaeda, yaitu Ayman Al-Zawahiri. Rumah tersebut pada 31 Juli diroket dengan memakai drone. Banyak sekali kejadian peperangan yang, entah kenapa, diramalkan sejak lama oleh series Homeland. Perang Rusia - Ukraine juga diprediksi di Homeland. Ayman dibunuh bukan semata memang bounty target Pemerintah AS pasca 911. Tapi salah satu pembunuhan, dikenal dengan Tragedi Camp Chapman (30 Desember 2009, masih suasana natal), otak langsung yang merencanakan pembunuhan-pengeboman adalah Zawahiri. 5 agen laki2 CIA, 2 agen wanita CIA, 1 agen Intel Yordania, 1 supir Afghanistan wafat. CIA sejak 2009 menjadikan Zawahiri target personal untuk dibunuh. Nyaris semirip Homeland dimana CIA yang dibunuh (Nazanin Boniadi) dibunuh.
Balik ke tragedi King David, saya ga yakin 28 keluarga besar dari warga Inggris yang tewas, mau berbelasungkawa atas wafatnya Queen Elizabeth 2: karena nyawa 28 warga Inggris dibiarkan tanpa benar2 diinvestigasi, demi agar negara Israel berdiri.
Kebencian sebagian warga Inggris sendiri. Sebagian warga Amerika (terlebih Afro America). Kebencian pihak2 yang memakai utamanya daun Shamrock sebagai perlawanan terhadap Inggris dan (utamanya) membela Palestine, karena Palestine dihancurkan Inggris demi berdirinya Israel. Kebencian 170+ negara (karena sekali lagi, hanya 22 negara yang tidak pernah sempat dijajah Inggris) warga eks jajahan Inggris, menyelimuti, atau membuat polar antara berbelasungkawa vs pihak yang bodoamat Queen Elizabeth 2 wafat.
Tentu saja dua film paling menggambarkan kebencian kepada Monarki Britania adalah The Braveheart (sisi Skotlandia) dan Patriot Games (sisi lrlandia). Jangan lupa bahwa Biden keturunan Irlandia.
Yang paling pilu, entah suratan takdir atau apalah, bahwa di The Braveheart, Queen Isabella (diperankan Sophie Marceau) nama nya dipakai dan kini dikenal dengan Queen Elizabeth. Elizabeth jika pakai pelafalan hispanik memang menjadi Isabel. Anda akan melihat berita duka cita di media2 memakai tulisan hispanik akan menulis "Isabel 2". Isabel sendiri, dalam silsilah Kerajaan Spanyol, adalah keturunan langsung Nabi Muhammad. Dan rumitnya, atau itulah takdirnya, dihancurkannya rezim Umayyah di Spanyol (*Andalusia) dilakukan oleh Ratu Isabella. Setidaknya keturunan langsung lainnya Nabi Muhammad sudah mengucapkan duka cita atas wafatnya Queen Elizabeth 2 yang juga keturunan langsung Muhammad: Raja Hassan, Ratu Rania, dan Pangeran Hussein dari Hashemite Royal of Jordanian (Negara Kerajaan Yordania). Hashemite akan lebih dikenal pelafalan Indonesia dengan Bani Hashim, bani silsilah Nabi Muhammad SAW.
Serumit itu bagaimana kita mencoba mengenang Queen Elizabeth. Saya beneran iri banget 96 tahun tetep kerja: 52 jam lalu dari mengetik ini menunggu Jumatan, Queen Elizabeth 2 secara resmi menjadikan PM Truss sebagai PM Inggris di Puri Balmoral Scotland. 2-3 Tahun lagi, akan diadakan (lagi) referendum apakah Scotland mau pisah dari Monarki atau tidak.
RIP Queen Elizabeth 2. Makin ironis lagi: 6 September, atau 2 hari sebelum tanggal wafat Elizabeth, seorang Irlandia, amat benci perang dan amat benci Inggris, dan berulang menciptakan lagu-lagu kebencian peperangan antara Inggris-Irlandia, lahir, meski sudah wafat 15 January 2018: Dolores Mary Eileen O'Riordan, vokalis The Cranberries, lahir 6 September 1971 di Ballybricken Irlandia, salah satu desa kecil yang hancur karena peperangan dan kebencian Irlandia pada Buckingham Palace.