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Is there any chance she can visit Rupert Murdoch while she's at it?

Liz Truss visited the queen at Balmoral and she was dead within hours.

Liz Truss visited Washington DC and Kissinger was dead within hours.

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Occupation & Colonialism: How It's All CONNECTED, Aaron Mate Catches COONS

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Turtle cat

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To the corporate news media in the USA, the rally in London on Saturday was not a pro Hamas rally it was a pro Palestine rally, because no decent person agrees with either the decades long systematic slaughter of thousands of Palestinian people, nor do they agree with the bombardment of Palestinian civilians or denying them the things they need for survival. Just as importantly, we don't agree with certain journalists and political commentators trying to strip the Palestinian people of their humanity.

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If our leaders are stupid enough and irresponsible enough to take us into World War III, then I hope the fucking bastards burn just like the rest of us.

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Today, I heard a British Home Secretary give a speech that I believe might have been well accepted in 1930s Germany.

As a queer, disabled person living in the UK, I'm scared. I'm scared for myself. I'm scared for members of other minority and vulnerable groups. I'm scared for people who come here from unsafe countries, to find themselves vilified, detained, and then deported.

I'm afraid for those who dissent, when the self-proclaimed 'party of free speech' bundles peaceful (and really rather quiet!) hecklers out of the hall if they speak up against the hate the Home Secretary is spouting from the podium. I'm afraid for those who would protest, when the Police are using powers that haven't even legally come into force yet to stop coaches on the suspicion their passengers may cause 'disruption', assured they have the backing of a Home Secretary who calls them 'the thin blue line'. I'm afraid for all of us, when she claims the Human Rights Act might have been called the 'Criminal Rights Act'.

Full text of the Home Secretary's speech here, if you can stomach it:

And here's the story about the heckler (actually another prominent Conservative):

Please do reblog, so that people know how bad it's getting here.

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Someone needs also to explain why the term 'activist' has such a negative connotation, when most of the time activists fight against injustices and try to right the wrongs in the world.

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On Daenerys, Colonisation and Race Discourse within the ASOIAF Fandom

This has been on my mind for a good long while and honestly, as much as I would like to leave discourse in the pits, it has been bugging me intermittently over the past few weeks.

Far too many of you get on here and call people who like the fictional dragon-riding family, neo-Nazis and that sentiment is so prevalent, that white people feel comfortable telling me a black woman that I am a neo-Nazi for rooting for Daenerys Targaryen. I am upholding neo-Nazi power fantasies for wanting to see a little girl live at the end of a story. I am a neo-Nazi for wanting to see the rape survivor have the family she aches for and children with the man (or men) she loves.

Then, those same people go on spiels about how the systemic erasure of those who sing the song of the earth and other old races is not colonialism. That their removal from their home is not displacement but an agreement between two equal parties. The fact that the only place where those who sing the song of the earth exist in the present timeline is north of the wall, surrounded by the bones of their dead, is not a travesty. That the expulsion of the old races from their home isn't that bad and should not be condemned. 

Instead, people argue, completely seriously, that the harm that the First Men and Andals have caused is centuries in the past, so essentially the slate has been wiped clean. The logical leaps that are required to arrive at such a boneheaded conclusion are truly mind-boggling, and those who make such arguments are not good people. 

I am unsure how one could read those books and come away with the impression that the old races do not mourn the loss of their home. I am unsure how one could read The Last of the Giants[1] and Ygritte’s reaction to both the song and Jon’s dismissal of the ethnic cleansing of the giants then believe that the old races and the free folk have moved past their displacement. 

In Westeros, from the Wall to the broken arm of Dorne, they all speak one language despite the fact they are all different ethnicities and they all landed on the shores at different times. That is not the case in Essos, we have been introduced to at least six languages and in A Dance with Dragons, Tyrion notes that the Valyrian spoken in the Free Cities has evolved into nine distinct dialects, and they are well on their way to becoming different languages.

How would a continent as large and diverse as Westeros maintain its hegemony over the people if not for forced assimilation, discriminatory practices and violence? 

The circular logic gets even more blockheaded when you factor in the fact that Daenerys is far from the only white character in the books. She is not the only character who wishes for home. She is not the only character who draws strength from her ancestors, her bloodline and her magical creatures. 

Cersei draws strength from her family’s iconography, and the Stark children (Jon included) all draw strength from their direwolves, their home and their blood. Sansa, Arya and Bran wish to return home and their home was built on the indiscriminate murder and displacement of the indigenous peoples. Their home is built on centuries of rape, murder, exclusionary practices and sexual slavery. 

However, if we give that nonsensical argument that time erases crimes air; the Starks, Lannisters and Tullys are warring to settle personal grievances in the present timeline. As a consequence of that war, thousands (a modest guesstimate) of small folk, minor nobles and even some major ones have been raped, tortured, maimed and killed.

Despite all this, no one writes meta after meta about how Sansa and her siblings must surely die for justice to be had for those who sing the song of the earth, the free folk, the giants and all the old races that fled beyond the wall.  

People write meta about Cersei and how she must die, but those are typically more misogynistic nature. They typically argue that she must die not for the “crime” of being Lannister, but for the “crime” of being Cersei and “ruining” Jamie. 

I would not mind criticisms of Dany and her peace-focused approach to ending slavery because the approach is naïve and she gives the slavers far too much ground. However, she is learning, growing and self-critiquing. At the end of A Dance with Dragons, she has decided to embrace fire and blood, her knight is breaking the false peace which is a necessary step forward.

What I find offensive is people saying that she should have planned better before she abolished slavery. And that the death, violence, and sickness that arises from her quest to eradicate slavery is somehow worse than the death, violence, and sickness that already existed in Slaver’s Bay. 

This argument often downplays the horrific conditions and suffering that exist(ed) under the slave system in Slaver's Bay. Such arguments are often in poor taste and prioritise the lives and comforts of the slavers more than the people they have enslaved.

I would not mind criticisms of Dany if people applied that same critique even-handedly. The same people who believe that Jon and Bran have done much to rectify the evil that their ancestors perpetuated believe that Dany has not done anything to right the wrongs of her ethnic kin. They praise them for the non-existent steps that they have taken, but in the same breath, they condemn Dany for not being able to immediately end the plague that is slavery. 

It is perfectly alright to not like fictional characters, no law requires you to like certain fictional characters over others. However, what is not right is making broad accusations about those who do, it is beyond the pale. It is disgusting, and annoying, and trivialises real-world issues to score cheap points against fictional characters.

Equating the survival of a teenage survivor to the restoration of a fascist house or neo-Nazi power fantasy when such designations do not exist in the world of ice and fire is strange behaviour. Saying that the teenage survivor will eventually be manipulated and raped (again) before ending up dead on her manipulator's blade is also strange behaviour. 

Dismissing the horrors of colonialism, especially when the text shows you that the involved parties are still affected by it, is not normal and often veers into real-world imperialism apologia. While criticism and analysis of characters and their actions are valid and even encouraged, it is essential that we do not resort to sweeping generalisations about other people and that we keep criticisms of characters grounded in the text. 

[1]  

Ooooooh, I am the last of the giants, my people are gone from the earth.

The last of the great mountain giants, who ruled all the world at my birth

Oh, the smallfolk have stolen my forests, they’ve stolen my rivers and hills.

And they’ve built a great wall through my valleys, and fished all the fish from my rills

In stone halls they burn their great fires, in stone halls they forge their sharp spears.

Whilst I walk alone in the mountains, with no true companion but tears.

They hunt me with dogs in the daylight, they hunt me with torches by night.

For these men who are small can never stand tall, whilst giants still walk in the light.

Oooooooh, I am the LAST of the giants, so learn well the words of my song.

For when I am gone the singing will fade, and the silence shall last long and long.

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remember how I wrote The Prince?

[very, very quietly] ᴵ'ᵐ ʷʳᶦᵗᶦⁿᵍ ˢᵒᵐᵉᵗʰᶦⁿᵍ ⁿᵉʷ

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I can’t stop laughing at this 🤣😂🤣

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One of the few things that racist has said, that I actually agree with.

“Healthy citizens are the greatest asset any country can have.” ― Winston S. Churchill

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) reported that:

“The sickness absence rate in the UK in 2021 rose to 2.2%…this is the highest it has been since 2010, when it was also 2.2%.. An estimated 149.3 million working days were lost because of sickness or injury in the UK in 2021, equivalent to 4.6 days per worker.”  (ONS, “Sickness absence in the UK labour market:2021", 29/04/21)

A year later and the ONS reported sickness rates up to 2.6%, the highest level since 2004. The number of working days lost was 5.7, the main cause of sickness absence being “minor illnesses”.

This year, 2023, the number of days lost is 7.8. the main cause of sickness absence being STRESS.

“The Chartered Institute of Personnel & Development (CIPD) analysed sickness absence and employee health among 918 organisations representing 6.5 million employees, with 76% of respondents reporting they had taken time off due to stress in the past year.”  Guardian: 26/09/23)

The cost of living crisis, the deliberate rundown of public services, insecurity of housing tenure, increased workload, excessive working hours, and rising poverty all contribute to what we now recognise as Broken Britain. This is having an affect on the mental wellbeing of our citizens.

Rishi Sunak and his government are quite  literally making the nation ill: it’s time for a change.

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I saw this on FB today and I wanna try and express something about it. Like, you know the curbcutter effect? Where when curbcuts are put in it benefits everyone (bicyclists, people with baby strollers etc) and not just disabled people?

There is also whatever the opposite of the curbcutter effect is. And this is that.

This isn't just anti-adhd/autism propaganda... this is anti-child propaganda.

Kids have developmentally appropriate ways that they need to move their bodies and express themselves and sitting perfectly still staring straight ahead is not natural or good for ANY CHILD.

Don't get me wrong, I was punished unduly as a kid for being neurodivergent (and other types of kid will ALSO be punished unduly for it... Black kids come to mind) and thus UNABLE to perform this -- but even the kids who ARE able to perform this type of behavior are not SERVED WELL by it. They don't benefit from it.

This is bad for everyone.

The idea that bc some kids may be capable of complying with unfair expectations, those expectations don't hurt them... is a dangerous idea. Compliance isn't thriving. Expectation of compliance isn't fair treatment.

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The one thing about the whole Russell Brand fiasco, the one thing that no one seems to be talking about, no matter which side of the fence they are on, is the fact that the law really needs to change around the 'age of consent' in the UK.

If people are legally classed as children in the UK, then 16 is too young to be the age of consent. The legal age of consent should be 18 at the minimum, no younger.