hussyknee

[hussyknee]

In essence, the Democrats understand that their steadfast support for Israel, amid its genocidal actions in Gaza, is morally indefensible. Yet rather than face this disquieting truth or recalibrate their policies, they shift the blame outward, a gesture designed not to confront but to externalize their own failing. There is another paradoxical gesture woven into this narrative—the tension of elevating Palestine to the level of an electoral liability, while simultaneously evading the profound reckoning that such an acknowledgment demands, in terms of policy. In attributing their defeat to Gaza, these liberals, perhaps unintentionally, concede—even if only for a fleeting moment—that Palestine wields a disruptive force powerful enough to unsettle their carefully structured worldview. It is a tacit admission of Palestine’s significance, though one they are unwilling to fully confront or allow to permeate their ideological framework.  However, the political landscape being what it is, mainstream Democratic strategists are unlikely to openly acknowledge that Palestine played an important role in their defeat. Such an admission would not only expose the hypocrisy in their professed values but also demand a reevaluation of their foreign policy—a policy steeped in imperial ambitions that will now clash with sensible electoral politics. In other words, to recognize this would open a Pandora’s box, forcing the party to reckon with contradictions they’d rather keep under wraps.

[hussyknee]

*attempts to switch to a different song after playing the new Hyperfixation Auditory Stim Song™ 5 times in a row*

*is still thinking of the Song™*

*realizes I'm wearing headphones and the only one judging me is me*

*switches back to Hyperfixation Auditory Stim Song™ and plays it 5 times and 1 more because nobody can stop me*

[hussyknee]

We are trying to be safe, but unfortunately there is no safe place. We are all targets. You know we could die at any moment, and I was not here with you. Life is more difficult than you can imagine, but we do not give up. I will protect my daughters and keep them warm from the cold and not let them sleep hungry. I will do everything I can. I promised them that I would I will fight for them

@dailyquests @daily-spooky @dabwax @dankar-camoran @catchymemes @candydragon1994 @ecothroat @an-elegant-void @2spirit-0spoons @your-local-non-binary-friend @zigcarnivorous @zvaigzdelasas @catchymemes @athena5898 @charmcoin @tododeku-keeps-me-alive @hehemechief @halimaidmf @sealsdaily @snapscube @tamarrud @tamamita @tackygayclown @taeisegg

@rainy-fog @mistress--kanzaki @cephaloph0re @vague-humanoid @mysharona1987 @littlestpersimmon @ot3 @one-time-i-dreamt @itwashotwestayedinthewater @yekkes @undeadscenequeen @t-ablog @tamamita @remnantglow @retrogamingblog2 @effinbirds @everythingfox @feluka @fuckyeahmexico @snapscube @dabwax @gothhabiba @gatheringbones @hustlerose @jayjay-thejet-plane @killy

[hussyknee]

It hasn’t been easy for many who have come before them. Twenty-six years ago in Nagano when women’s hockey debuted as an official Olympic sport, some media coverage focused more on the sexual orientation of the players than the competition.

But relationships among athletes are slowly gaining a normality in women’s pro sports. In 2021, married couple Allie Quigley and Courtney Vandersloot won a WNBA championship with the Chicago Sky, and they are just one of many couples in the league. 

Women’s sports is undergoing a transformative expansion — new leagues, more money and investment, increased media coverage — and the story of teammates as couples is only going to become more common.

“I've always been the hockey player. But I have a wife and I can be myself. People are coming to the rink and saying thank you for allowing me to be myself,” Poulin says. 

If Poulin has helped make Stacey a better hockey player, Stacey has assisted Poulin in living her most authentic life. 

And in a lot of ways, they have become bigger than the game.

Their late-September wedding at Le Peaches and Cream in Low, Que., is described by many of the 192 family members and friends who were in attendance as the perfect day. Poulin and Stacey both call it “the best day of their lives” — an epic celebration of life and love, the culmination of a relationship that began in 2017 when they locked eyes while swimming at a Team Canada event at Blue Mountain in southern Ontario.

Stacey had just competed in her first world championship, Poulin a decorated champion many times over. They were teammates, but they didn’t really know a lot about one another. 

“A few of us decided to go skinny dipping in the pool at 2 a.m.” Stacey says. “The two of us looked up into the sky at the same time and we saw a shooting star. Our eyes met and we asked each other if we just saw that. Nobody else in the pool saw it or knew what was going on but we saw it. For the rest of that night it was a weird feeling. I had a feeling.

“We always go back to that moment. Even in my wedding vows, that was the thing —that she was the wish I had always dreamed of and I didn’t realize it until now.”

and they were linemates... everybody stop drop and read this article on laura stacey and marie philip-poulin

[hussyknee]

what I wish people would understand about fundraising for gaza is that while everyone is desperate and I would never say not to fundraise for or donate to individual families-- I currently fundraise to support multiple friends' families-- the overwhelming narrative I see on Tumblr that the best and most ethical thing you can do is send money to individuals and there is no option for anything else is so so incredibly damaging and inadvertently lends support to the marginalization and distrust of any remaining communal social infrastructure. the sameer project, which you should donate to, talks about this in a recent video they put out. the situation in gaza is unimaginable and everyone is in need of a huge level of support, and yet this fundraising discourse by well-meaning people in the west that donating money to individuals is the only moral way reproduces societal divides wherein resources are directed to people who speak English, who have relationships with people outside of gaza, and who have internet access while hundreds of thousands are left behind.

there ARE non-ngo locally based grassroots initiatives working to meet those needs however they can, and your small donation goes a lot further with them because they are able to buy food/water/supplies in bulk at a reduced price and reach more people with less money. again I'm not saying people shouldn't fundraise for individuals because these initiatives are so limited and many people cannot access them -- but as an example, the group I fundraise with is currently serving people fleeing north gaza who are starving and have nothing, and when we fundraise enough to do cash aid distribution there's so much need that our partners can only distribute 100-200 per large family. and then I go online and see people who have absolutely no understanding of this context at all exclusively working towards raising tens of thousands for just a few people when evacuations haven't been possible for months. it's good to do whatever you can but please consider how this narrative being reproduced among westerners trying to help that there are no other options has the potential to damage groups working towards equity and wider reach however is still possible

[hussyknee]

I need your donation urgently, friends.

My tent was bombed inside Al-Aqsa Hospital and we were forced to move to Al-Nuseirat 😭☄️☄️☄️😭😭

As you know there is no safe place they bombed our tent 🔥⛺️☄️💔💔😭😭🍉🍉🙏❤️

For the second time, we don't know where to go. I was injured in my foot and my father was injured and his condition is critical.

We do not know where to go, my family and I. Our situation is difficult. ☄️😭😭😭We have become homeless. Please donate and save my life and my family’s. Please. ☄️⛺️🔥😭😭😭

This is what they do to us, they burn tents over our heads and brag to the world. 😭😭😭☄️⛺️🔥🔥🔥Please save our lives. Look with your own eyes at the amount of pain we are exposed to.

😭💔💔💔💔💔

https://gofund.me/93f3480d

@aimasup

@ameeraayman3

@a-shade-of-blue

@helloworld112358

@donatacci-blog

@freegameplanet

@gazavetters

@abeeandabear

Your donation saves my life and my father's life. Don't hesitate to donate 10 euros and you can save our lives.

https://gofund.me/93f3480d

[hussyknee]

I need to your donation urgently

My children are dying of hunger and pain save what is left of our lives💔😭😭

Help me buy medicine for my child, clothes and a tent so that I and my children do not lose their lives💔😭😭

I was living in a tent inside Al-Aqsa Hospital and my tent was bombed and burned💔💔⛺🔥🔥 and I and my children remained in the street. I do not have a tent or a mattress or anything.Not even a place for me and my children 😭😭

This is the lava of fire that fell on me and my children. My tent burned and my children burned. 💔⛺🔥⛺🔥🔥

This treatment is almost non-existent. There is no treatment and I need to buy it for my child. Its price is very expensive, about 400 dollars. 💔😭😭😭

My child burned in front of my eyes and my tent too. Imagine, my dear, your child is burning in front of you and you cannot buy him treatment. Save my child’s life. 😭😭😭💔💔

I am calling on your human conscience to help me buy medicine for my child, treat his burns, 😭🔥⛺🔥and buy a tent to shelter us from the bitter cold of winter. My children need your donations. Save what is left of the children’s lives.🥶🥶💔😭😭

Imagine, my dear, that your child does not sleep at night because of pain and hunger. My children are dying from pain and hunger. Please donate to me and my children. Please, your donation will make me happy and will save my children. Donate $20 and save my children's lives so I can buy them medicine and food.💓💓

@gazavetters

@heystephen

@whitechadwarden

@a-shade-of-blue

@gazaboovintage

@khanger

@palesttino

@palestinianliberator

@nourtella

@freehologramreview

@gaza

@canadian

@tumblrbot

[hussyknee]

I'm remaking a post because the other one isn't contextually sound. I don't have enough money for food, transportation, basically refilling my wardrobe from nothing to...something, toiletry, and daily basic needs. I've been dealing with auditory hallucinations, paralyzing anxiety and traumatic reaction in addition to still severe OCD so I don't even have the space to do the freelance work that could help me gather some parsley. I'm asking for financial help, especially to those that can afford to help those that are more than distressed wherever they are without losing too much.

PP: ccd4t@virginia.edu

K0-fi

FUNDRAISER (AS OF WRITING THIS POST 28$ COLLECTED

[hussyknee]

every time i see someone call kirk and spock the oldest ship, i'm filled with the urge to go "hmm actually the holmes and watson girlies have been here for a hundred years now", and i refrain because i know the natural conclusion of this game is gilgamesh and enkidu

[hussyknee]

That video of Vivek Ramaswamy giving that speech about Israel at the Republican Jewish Coalition is soooo interesting to me but specifically the part he says about “abandoning the myth of a two state solution” because he’s right, it is a myth but also he’s literally saying the quiet part out loud. When Palestinians outright reject the two state solution, we’re blamed for being the obstacle to peace rather than recognising Israel has no intention of ever pursuing a 2ss. Obviously the intention/reasons behind when Palestinians say it vs when someone like Ramaswamy says it is different

But this is also a great example in the difference between Repubs and Dems. While Dems will still be unwavering in their support for Israel, they’ll talk about pursuing a path towards a two state solution whilst allowing Israel to prolong its occupation and prevent any establishment of a Palestinian state. Republicans on the other hand save us all the theatrics and talk about peace and straight up say they support Israel’s policies of doing whatever it wants

[hussyknee]

whenever a white woman says “i see you and i hear you, but” it just feels like a microaggression

[hussyknee]

Okay, let's get one thing straight: the JVP never murdered Tamils. That's all JR Jayawardena's propaganda. He did Black July, the '83 genocide of Tamils that ignited the 26-year Sri Lankan Civil War.

When JR swept into power with the nation's first super majority, he established the Executive Presidency, stripped Sirimavo of her civil rights, aligned with the US and threw open the economy, doing nothing to absorb the shockwaves for the poor and working class that up to that point had formed the backbone of the failed self-sufficient policies of the socialist government. This obviously led to starvation level poverty among the rural poor and labourers, especially in the South, and trade unions and Marxist protest groups rose up. JR responded by hunting them all like dogs. His PM Premadasa was especially known for murdering trade unionists.

He also increased the militarized presence in the North and East by passing the Prevention of Terrorism Act of 1979, the single most enduring curse on democratic freedom in this country. Ostensibly to crack down on Tamil militant groups, in reality it unleashed a reign of terror by cops and army, escalating rapes, kidnappings and murders of Tamils in far greater numbers than seen since the '58 Gal Oya riots. This obviously caused the a stronger armed response by separatist groups like the LTTE, which is what JR wanted. He used the LTTE's killing of the 13 Sinhalese soldiers to deliberately inflame the Sinhalese all over the country, bussing in mobs and making the army aid and abet them to burn thousands of Tamils alive. Obviously, groups like the LTTE swelled overnight as a consequence. Again, a win for the militarized state and the powers it gave the Executive.

JR then killed two birds with one stone by framing the JVP as the instigators of the genocide. Sirimavo had banned the party after their first insurrection in '71, but JR revoked it as a populist measure just to spite her when he first came to power. Now, he banned it himself. This forced the JVP underground and to take up arms once more— another win for the military state. Ranjan Wijeratne and Gamini Dissanayake, JR's personal Goebbels and Himmler, along with his PM Premadasa, wanted a "Jakarta Method" cleansing of all communists and unleashed another reign of terror against Sinhalese youth in the late '80s. Their death squads and black sites claimed upwards of 60,000 lives, including school children, most of them for offenses such as pissing off a government spy and refusing to have sex with a cop.

But make no mistake, the JVP wasn't much less ethnonationalist than the two major parties. In fact, the South's sense of disaffection and resentment directed against the elites was also turned on what they saw as "special dispensations" for Tamils to occupy it by achieving higher education and government positions. Even then, there existed a tentative Marxist solidarity between the JVP and Tamil militant groups who exchanged weapons against the SL Army, the Indian Peace Keeping Force, and the LTTE, which was trying to purge all the other Tamil factions as their competition. However, once the JVP joined politics in '93, they spent the next ten years nurturing nuclear racists like Wimal Weerawansa and throwing in with the saffron mob (Buddhist priesthood).

The JVP did have a special grievance against the LTTE specifically. When Ranasinghe Premadasa became President after JR in '89, he decided he wasn't going to fight a bunch of militants in two fronts, especially considering he had to figure out a way to kick out the Indian Peace Keeping Force. (The IPKF were supposed to be Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Ghandi's emissaries sent to mediate between the government forces and the LTTE. In reality, they turned out be a band of out of control terrorists that preyed on civilians worse than either). Therefore Premadasa made a truce with the LTTE to join the Army and run out the IPKF, but also enlisted their help cleaning up the JVP cadres in the East and Central Provinces. The Army and LTTE were very chummy up until Premadasa caught and killed JVP Leader Rohana Wijeweera in November that year, even as other Tamil militants were supporting the JVP. The LTTE rewarded Premadasa's machinations by assassinating him in '93.

This does not excuse the JVP marching against Ranil's peace package offered to the LTTE in 2004 and fully backing Mahinda Rajapaksa's push to launch a "final solution" military offensive against the North. By doing that, they became fully party to the 2009 Tamil Genocide that killed upwards of 170,000 civilians in the North and East. Even though they were one of the first to defect from the Rajapaksas five years later, and has been a consistent thorn in the Rajapaksas' side ever since, none of it was out of recognition of their war crimes or concern for the ongoing ethnic cleansing and persecution of the North and East. I don't ever expect Tamils to forgive that, and the NPP winning the Tamil and Muslim areas actually broke my heart a bit, especially given how the Sinhalese on social media spewed hate at them for failing to vote for AKD in the Presidential election.

On the other hand, the NPP is the only party that didn't run on a racist platform since...2015? 2010? Which is the literal bottom of the fucking barrell, and also no small thing considering the fact that Sinhalese Buddhist chauvinism has been most non-minority parties' bread and butter from the beginning. Their every rally and parade have been bolstered by the most virulent saffron jackals they could find, and even SJB party leader Sajith Premadasa, who was supposed to be the minority-friendly option against the Rs, decided to court their favour in both elections. (Apples, trees, etc.) The NPP is the only party that attempts some separation of church and state (or temple and state, as it were), paying only lip service to the niceties of our wannabe-theocracy.

Also, not for nothing but Dr. Harini Amarasuriya was the director at the Open University of the program that teaches about the Tamil genocides, Tamil struggle, Sinhalese Buddhist historical revisionism, the creation of the ethnostate, the violence of the military state et al. She's one of the reasons I began to support Tamil resistance. Now she's in a party surrounded by racist ballsacks who can't be arsed to provide translations for Tamil speakers. (For the thousandth time, I appreciate your intentions but, woman. What are you doing?)

Like, I excused them not campaigning in the North and East in the Presidential election because I believe they didn't have the funds, but the General?? Bussing in people from other provinces in their Northern rallies? Not having a single Muslim in their Cabinet? It's not great to be passive about your racist past and lack engagement with minorities in your ostensibly non-racist present, but to start out your super majority government that way when they voted for you is completely inexcusable. I am, quite frankly, worried. They've also said they're leaving the Prevention of Terrorism Act alone (which I thought might just be trying not to rock the boat before the General—the JVP was literally hunted and massacred under the PTA, what the fuck) and have said nothing about demilitarizing the North and East, when the harrassment and persecution of the civilians there are getting ever more dire.

I don't believe they're going to rain hell down on minorities the way the other two parties have historically, because they've made a concerted effort to distance themselves from that kind of MO. It is, after all, a reason they won the Muslim and Tamil vote, a bar in hell as it is. But completely ignoring a wounded and ailing demographic is also as a great a violence. So I don't know. But I think the worst outcome is simply that nothing changes for Tamils, rather than more mob violence and harsher military response. Both have always been circuses for the government to distract from the lack of bread, and now we can't afford either.

Edit: okay, so I might have been a bit unfair and misinformed about their efforts in Jaffna. The NPP's candidates seem to be well chosen by both the party and the electorate, and now-party leader Bimal Rathnayake has spent a good amount of time and energy on Jaffna. And there are two Tamil Ministers in the Cabinet. The quality and focus of the representatives have changed in the North and East just as much. Here's hoping they receive the solidarity and allyship they need to make real change for their constituents.

Trying to explain what the fuck just happened in Lankan politics today.

The leftist party has won 159 seats out of 218 in the Parliamentary elections. The single biggest landslide win since we broke from the British and achieved universal franchise in 1948.

Any party achieving a super majority in the executive and legislative is, objectively speaking, bad. It disables checks and balances, which is a catastrophic thing for any democracy, and the only two other times it's happened for us has irrevocably eroded the fabric of civic rights and democratic freedom. Also, the reason the NPP won the North and East is that the colonized, genocided and subjugated people there have no faith in electoralism anymore. The way this government has engaged minority issues has been utterly abysmal and now they've been rewarded for it.

On the other hand:

The winners. Are all. Grassroots. Candidates.

We have voted out every single career criminal that's been barnacled into the Lankan political arena since before I've been alive. The fascist party has only three seats. The other fascists didn't win a single seat. The neoliberal legacy party won none. There are only forty people in Parliament that represent any sort of dynastic political legacy. After 76 solid years of nothing but political dynasties.

This is barely five years after the Rajapaksas swept in and absolutely glutted the Parliament with their family members and cronies end to end.

This is the illegitimate interim government we had for most of the last 18 months. We literally, physically, chased the Rajapaksas out of the country and this fucking demon set up a puppet government just so he could finally sit in that goddamn chair and be the despot he'd always dreamed of in exchange for letting them all come back. He's now gone. His entire circle is gone.

THEY ARE ALL FUCKING GONE.

In US terms, just imagine the entire GOP and the worst of the Dems destroyed and purged from Congress and Senate, the Green Party in control of all three branches of government, an unmarried abortion rights activist Vice President, and the Dems reduced to barely 20% of the House. Five years from now, when Trump's GOP has control of everything.

This is my anthropology professor. She joined politics from the small nascent leftist coalition to help keep the government accountable. She's now the Prime Minister and the most popular Parliamentary candidate in the nation's history.

On the other hand— the woman who helped make me a radical anarchist and literally helped write a book on political dissent and resistance...now is the state.

But there are so many women in Parliament! We had the lowest female representation in a South Asian Parliament and some of them were from the list of seats reserved for parties rather than elected ones. Most were either anti-feminist conservative embarrassments, widows and daughters of elite politicians and neoliberal shills. It's still only an increase of a few percentage points but now we have elected academics, feminist advocates, activists! THERE IS A REPRESENTATIVE FOR MALAIYAHA TAMILS IN THE CENTRAL PROVINCE FOR THE FIRST TIME IN HISTORY AND IT'S A YOUNG WOMAN! This is the plantation community that still live in conditions closest to the slavery the British forced upon them two hundred years ago!

I'm like. Completely mindfucked. To be very very clear, these people are not Marxists or anything near; they're mild social democrats who would only be threatening to like, USAmerican liberals, who are now center-right. The actual chances for radical reform are still quite low, and the opportunity for further erosion is extremely high.

On the other hand:

What the fuck.

Sometimes living through historical events is really damn amazing.

[hussyknee]

Further notes on the NPP:

They're a coalition of milder leftists formed around the former Marxist party, the JVP. The JVP started life as Maoists, and when forced underground, led two insurrections—one against the corruption of the USSR-aligned socialist SLFP government in '71, and one against the US-aligned neoliberal UNP government in '87, that the state turned into a horrific bloodbath. The government lifted the ban on the JVP later and they ran for elections in '93 with a much more scaled back platform and has been peaceful ever since. However, both the two major parties have used the intervening decades to somehow hold the JVP solely responsible for the bloodshed and Red Scare the shit out of the country, painting them as dangerous commies behind any and all labour union strikes, waiting to ignite another bout of anarchy. All the while continuing to perpetuate political violence and thuggery themselves.

I'm no fan of the JVP myself, given how racist and violent they were (raping, murdering and sending death threats to journalists and civil servants aren't gonna sell me on your glorious revolution fam) but the historical revisionism and anti-communist propaganda has been unreal and enraging given that their crimes were exponentially bloodier and horrific. (The JVP killed maybe 6000 people. The government killed 60,000–80,000, most of them complete innocents. They massacred school children.)

The formation of the NPP was an attempt to move away from all this JVP baggage (as racist, violent, working class "rabble rousers") to a more inclusive, softer, soc-dem brand that emphasized its intellectuals and western-identified liberalism ("class consciousness", racial reconciliation, women's and LGBT rights). The new PM Dr. Amarasuriya pretty much personifies the latter. In reality they're combining the social liberalism of the neoliberal party and the fiscal liberalism of the socialist party. Best of both worlds but nothing very radical.

(And yeah there's a veeeerry big element of classism and colonial bias in that rebranding. But it worked Ig. There was no way in hell the JVP would have come out on top now otherwise.)

But when all is said and done, it's extremely satisfying that a guy that started political life as a hunted public university kid from a working class family, watching his comrades being disappeared, tortured and burned alive in tire fires including his own cousin, is now leading the nation. Fortunately he was too young at the time to have done anything very heinous.

* Also FYI: The post-independence socialist government, for all its many fuck-ups, has left us with a bedrock socialist infrastructure that would be political suicide to overturn (free education and universities, free healthcare, public transport, power, water supply, subsidized fuel, fertilizer and co-operatives etc. All of these would be great if we had the money and non-corrupt leaders to run them effectively. As a consequence, our politics will always be way left of whatever the blue hell is going on in places like the US.

Trying to explain what the fuck just happened in Lankan politics today.

The leftist party has won 159 seats out of 218 in the Parliamentary elections. The single biggest landslide win since we broke from the British and achieved universal franchise in 1948.

Any party achieving a super majority in the executive and legislative is, objectively speaking, bad. It disables checks and balances, which is a catastrophic thing for any democracy, and the only two other times it's happened for us has irrevocably eroded the fabric of civic rights and democratic freedom. Also, the reason the NPP won the North and East is that the colonized, genocided and subjugated people there have no faith in electoralism anymore. The way this government has engaged minority issues has been utterly abysmal and now they've been rewarded for it.

On the other hand:

The winners. Are all. Grassroots. Candidates.

We have voted out every single career criminal that's been barnacled into the Lankan political arena since before I've been alive. The fascist party has only three seats. The other fascists didn't win a single seat. The neoliberal legacy party won none. There are only forty people in Parliament that represent any sort of dynastic political legacy. After 76 solid years of nothing but political dynasties.

This is barely five years after the Rajapaksas swept in and absolutely glutted the Parliament with their family members and cronies end to end.

This is the illegitimate interim government we had for most of the last 18 months. We literally, physically, chased the Rajapaksas out of the country and this fucking demon set up a puppet government just so he could finally sit in that goddamn chair and be the despot he'd always dreamed of in exchange for letting them all come back. He's now gone. His entire circle is gone.

THEY ARE ALL FUCKING GONE.

In US terms, just imagine the entire GOP and the worst of the Dems destroyed and purged from Congress and Senate, the Green Party in control of all three branches of government, an unmarried abortion rights activist Vice President, and the Dems reduced to barely 20% of the House. Five years from now, when Trump's GOP has control of everything.

This is my anthropology professor. She joined politics from the small nascent leftist coalition to help keep the government accountable. She's now the Prime Minister and the most popular Parliamentary candidate in the nation's history.

On the other hand— the woman who helped make me a radical anarchist and literally helped write a book on political dissent and resistance...now is the state.

But there are so many women in Parliament! We had the lowest female representation in a South Asian Parliament and some of them were from the list of seats reserved for parties rather than elected ones. Most were either anti-feminist conservative embarrassments, widows and daughters of elite politicians and neoliberal shills. It's still only an increase of a few percentage points but now we have elected academics, feminist advocates, activists! THERE IS A REPRESENTATIVE FOR MALAIYAHA TAMILS IN THE CENTRAL PROVINCE FOR THE FIRST TIME IN HISTORY AND IT'S A YOUNG WOMAN! This is the plantation community that still live in conditions closest to the slavery the British forced upon them two hundred years ago!

I'm like. Completely mindfucked. To be very very clear, these people are not Marxists or anything near; they're mild social democrats who would only be threatening to like, USAmerican liberals, who are now center-right. The actual chances for radical reform are still quite low, and the opportunity for further erosion is extremely high.

On the other hand:

What the fuck.

Sometimes living through historical events is really damn amazing.

[hussyknee]

I replied to @aelfwyn and @homosociallyyours the comments but I'm going to C+P them here because y'all USAmericans need to stop seeing yourselves as an exceptional kind of monster. As a settler colony, the dynamics are more complex, but being conditioned to put race solidarity above class interests isn't a uniquely white thing. It's a colonial thing that's shared by the majoritarian population of most nations in the Global South because our countries are colonial borders that we inherited. Once the Europeans fucked off after 200 years or so, suddenly there's a former administrative border that's 70% Group A and 30% Group B. Group A then consolidates power by genociding the shit out of Group B, colonizing their land. And then any yahoo from Group A can get their fellows to sacrifice their own class interests by promising to keep Group B in their place. Cue decades of separatism and militarization, keeping the country in a state of emergency that leads to an autocratic government and eroded democratic freedom.

Basically, post-colonial Global South nations like us have inherited the same violence you see in white settler societies like the US, Israel, Australia, except for the part where y'all get rich by keeping half the world in war and poverty lol. But the exploitation, war mongering and refugee crises created by that end up empowering your own fascists and creates an untouchable elite class that wreaks havoc even among the settlers at home— which is where most of the West is at now. You experience the same violence we do, but only in the end stages of colonialism.

This is why for Sri Lankans, watching the US and the West the last few years gives us déjà vu. You know how the US ousted Trump in 2020 but then the Dems were such a bunch of out of touch crony capitalists that betrayed all the minorities that turned out for them and allowed the hatred of immigrants and Muslims to became so widespread that Trump is now back in charge with control of House, Senate and Supreme Court? That happened to us in 2019.

(Putting in bullet points so you can follow easier.)

– The Rajapaksas came to power in 2005 by promising what Sinhalese Buddhists call "ending the civil war" and the rest of the world calls "the 2008 Tamil Genocide". They were all but worshipped as saviours of the nation and became a political dynasty on a wave of rabid entho-nationalist fervour.

– However, they put paid to all that loyalty and goodwill over 10 years of Marcos-level corruption, extra-judicial terrorism, embezzlement, nepotism, fraud, civil rights suppression, and autocratic rule.

– When Mahinda Rajapaksa tried to amend the Constitution and contest for the Presidency a third time in 2015, even his own home district turned out to oust the lot of them in favour of a coalition govt.

– This coalition was created between a splinter faction of the Rajapaksas's ethnofascist socialist party led by diet racist Maithipala Sirisena (nicknamed My3) and the minority-friendly neoliberal Opposition led by Ranil Wickremesinghe.

– (He is known for despotically sitting on the party leadership pot for 40 years while unable to shit.)

– This ramshackle entity was called the "Yahapalanya" Government ("Good Governance"...government) No one really trusted or liked it but they were the "lesser evil" compared to the Rs.

– (Yes, our left-wing is fiscally liberal and socially conservative and right-wing is socially liberal and fiscally conservative. The kind of situation Tankies cannot compute. But honestly the difference between them is that neoliberals sell national resources to foreign investors and pocket the money and the socialists accrue foreign debt for national infrastructure that they then rob at both ends. They're both varying levels of ethnonationalist union-busters.)

– The neoliberal policies of the Yahapalanya coalition began to rebuild the economy. But they ignored the poor and working class who were struggling and starving, ignored the minorities that were being terrorised by ethnofascist mobs, and generally reminded everyone how much they were the same kind of incompetent, corrupt, crony capitalist assholes. Pointing at dollar rates, industry gains and the rise of the gig economy while the majority of poor still can't put food on the table isn't a winning argument, especially while scamming the Central Bank and protecting your own crooked MPs. (Stop me if any of this sounds familiar.)

– They still might have won a second term, especially after the Rs jumped the gun in 2018 and attempted a Parliamentary coup by getting President My3 to defect back to them. That put the Rs back in disfavour, but much less so than they were in 2015.

– But the coup led to Yahapalanya's My3-Ranil hell marriage falling apart once and for all.

– Amid the disarray, the Rs got a bunch of ISIS radicals from nowhere to orchestrate the worst terrorist attack we've ever experienced on Easter Sunday 2019, that the Yahapalanya govt failed to prevent out of sheer shocking incompetence.

– (Anyone with a brain knew they were behind it the minute the bombs went off, but no one can accuse the average voter of having one when the alternative is the opportunity to scapegoat a minority).

– The My3-Ranil coalition proceeded to completely bungle the aftermath, refusing to resign from either government or their respective party leaderships, going after any and all Muslims as hard as the Rs ever did, and mud-slinging at each other instead of taking responsibility.

– Gotabaya Rajapaksa, Mahinda's brother and Defence Minister who was in charge of the Tamil genocide during his Presidency, became the rallying cry of the nation

– The neoliberal party (UNP) got sick of Ranil and realized they'd never win another election under his leadership with the entire country howling for his blood. All but a handful of them walked out from under him and formed their own party, the SJB, which stood as the Opposition.

– Meanwhile, the Rs created their own party, absorbing most of the socialist legacy party (SLFP), and made the SLFP itself a minor coalition partner under My3—thus effectively dismantling the two-party legacy of 75 years.

– The new neoliberal party SJB, lacking the structure and generational support of their parent, couldn't find its own ass with both hands and a mirror on a stick. And so Gotabaya Rajapaksa swept to a landslide Presidential win in 2019 virtually unimpeded on the wave of racist, Islamophobic hysteria.

– That's right, we hated Tamils and Muslims so much we elected Mahinda's barely-leashed attack dog that his own brothers feared, who was known to disappear political dissenters and feed them to crocodiles. (No, really. He did. This is a guy who has a shark tank in his house. Fuckin' James Bond-ass villain.)

– This was followed by a super majority for the Rajapaksa party in the 2020 Parliamentary elections, only the second in our history. It installed former President Mahinda Rajapaksa as Prime Minister, glutted the Parliament with Rajapaksa cronies and yes-men even worse and allowed them to introduce Constitutional amendments that basically made Gota all but king.

– Gota then disregarded all his advisors and his brother and proceeded to completely bankrupt the country via massive fraud during COVID. Within two and half years, our treasury was completely empty. We had no fuel, food, medicine, we went into 7 hour brownouts in the middle of a heatwave, people died in miles-long queues for essentials and cooking gas, the country ground to a stand still.

– This is why in April 2022, one of the most massive sustained country-wide citizen protests in the world erupted in Sri Lanka. Apparently the Sinhalese Buddhists that brought these fucks to power could stomach genocide, war crimes, tortures and murders of journalists and activists, scapegoating, terrorizing and witch hunting minorities and busting unions, but when the urban middle class SinBuds can't feed OUR children is when we have enough.

– The govt repeatedly brutalized protestors for weeks until the working class and poor finally snapped and burned down several dozen of their houses, including the Prime Minister's mansion. It was only then that PM Mahinda resigned and Parliament dissolved. (I say again, protest only works when you're prepared to resort to violence as the alternative.)

– Then instead of resigning himself, Gota went to fucking Ranil, who in 2020 had failed to win his own seat in Parliament and was only there because of a Constitutionally reserved seat for the UNP.

– After twenty fucking years being enemies, Gota made a deal that allowed Ranil to be PM again in exchange for heading an interim coalition govt with the Rajapaksa party.

– Ranil got the urban liberals to turn on the poor and unions by waving a return to stability and fuel resupply in front of them, which made the protests break down.

– Predictably, nothing got better.

– A few weeks later, hundreds of thousands of Sri Lankans travelled to the capital during the fuel crisis. They came hanging off trains, loaded on top of trucks and buses, and even on foot. They all physically stormed the President's mansion and forced Gota to flee the country.

– While Gota was flying around like panicked bird trying to find a country without an extradition treaty and the Lankans lit fireworks in celebration, Ranil forced a Parliamentary vote that made him Executive President once Gota resigned, and created another interim govt.

– HE GOT THE LIBERALS TO BETRAY US AGAIN.

– He had the military crack down on protestors (firing tear gas from helicopters!!), making arrests, allowed all the Rs and their cronies to come back yet again, and refused to call elections for another 18 months.

– (I personally became suicidal over it and it's why I will kill liberals on sight. They are the worst kind of maggot in creation, a knife hovering over the back of every left-wing push for change.)

– Ranil being Ranil he fucked over the "stability"-minded libs for the second time as well.

– By the time he was forced by the Supreme Court to call elections, the entire country was furious and sick to death of the entire two-party clown show and all the career criminals on both sides of the fence.

– The left-wing 3rd party coalition the NPP, that formed around the nucleus of the former Marxist party, the JVP, was the only one that rose in people's estimation. They were the only one that had stayed on ground zero of the protests with unconditional support for the unions and students without trying to co-opt them. They had run on an anti-racist, truly progressive platform, promising to crack down on corruption in 2020 and had been reduced to just three seats, but those three seats were occupied by charismatic, erudite, canny and organized MPs free of scandal. They were literally the only feasible option by virtue of being the only one that wasn't a disorganised, flaming dumpster fire run by crooks.

– But even then, 30 years of Red Scare was so effective that JVP leader Anura Kumara Dissanayake (AKD) is the only one to become President without an over 50% majority in the first preferential vote.

– AKD dissolved Parliament immediately and announced General Elections, operating until then with a Cabinet that only comprised the three seated NPP members (himself, my professor, and Vijitha Herath, that ended up beating her as the MP with the most preferential votes in any election. Boo.)

– The bunch of incompetent nepo babies in the Opposition SJB further alienated, enraged and disaffected even the ones that had turned out for them six weeks previously—

– —so that at the General Election, every single district turned red. The whole country has never turned any one colour in our 75 years of universal franchise. Even people who predicted a 2/3rds majority are shocked. Apparently the Tamils and Muslims of the North and East are just as sick of their own representatives.

So now we're in this new era of what-the-fuck where we can apparently expect things of our elected representatives other than "please don't fuck us over too badly", but it remains to be seen whether any long term lessons will stick.

Basically, if you live in the US, you can also look forward to this kind of thing if Trump burns the whole place to the ground in less than 4 years, along with the GOP. Sooner or later it will be the white liberal's turn to be eaten, and that is when the left will be able to rise up and answer fascism with violence. Nick Fuentez's house got burned down so you can already see it starting to happen. All you had to do was get white women on your side.

Also the reason our protestors weren't massacred like others have been historically, and how Bangladeshis were this year, is because enough of the military and police personnel were also disaffected that they decided they weren't paid enough for this and even joined the protestors in the end. At some point, even the enforcers of the elite must realize that they are the working class. The army and cops that protected Sheikh Hasina in Bangladesh did not, and it did nothing to deter the student protestors that led the charge. Students of public unis here were also the ones who were our vanguard. Student leaders are the great white hope of society and every time we let the state throw them to their dogs we're letting ourselves get eaten alongside them.

Trying to explain what the fuck just happened in Lankan politics today.

The leftist party has won 159 seats out of 218 in the Parliamentary elections. The single biggest landslide win since we broke from the British and achieved universal franchise in 1948.

Any party achieving a super majority in the executive and legislative is, objectively speaking, bad. It disables checks and balances, which is a catastrophic thing for any democracy, and the only two other times it's happened for us has irrevocably eroded the fabric of civic rights and democratic freedom. Also, the reason the NPP won the North and East is that the colonized, genocided and subjugated people there have no faith in electoralism anymore. The way this government has engaged minority issues has been utterly abysmal and now they've been rewarded for it.

On the other hand:

The winners. Are all. Grassroots. Candidates.

We have voted out every single career criminal that's been barnacled into the Lankan political arena since before I've been alive. The fascist party has only three seats. The other fascists didn't win a single seat. The neoliberal legacy party won none. There are only forty people in Parliament that represent any sort of dynastic political legacy. After 76 solid years of nothing but political dynasties.

This is barely five years after the Rajapaksas swept in and absolutely glutted the Parliament with their family members and cronies end to end.

This is the illegitimate interim government we had for most of the last 18 months. We literally, physically, chased the Rajapaksas out of the country and this fucking demon set up a puppet government just so he could finally sit in that goddamn chair and be the despot he'd always dreamed of in exchange for letting them all come back. He's now gone. His entire circle is gone.

THEY ARE ALL FUCKING GONE.

In US terms, just imagine the entire GOP and the worst of the Dems destroyed and purged from Congress and Senate, the Green Party in control of all three branches of government, an unmarried abortion rights activist Vice President, and the Dems reduced to barely 20% of the House. Five years from now, when Trump's GOP has control of everything.

This is my anthropology professor. She joined politics from the small nascent leftist coalition to help keep the government accountable. She's now the Prime Minister and the most popular Parliamentary candidate in the nation's history.

On the other hand— the woman who helped make me a radical anarchist and literally helped write a book on political dissent and resistance...now is the state.

But there are so many women in Parliament! We had the lowest female representation in a South Asian Parliament and some of them were from the list of seats reserved for parties rather than elected ones. Most were either anti-feminist conservative embarrassments, widows and daughters of elite politicians and neoliberal shills. It's still only an increase of a few percentage points but now we have elected academics, feminist advocates, activists! THERE IS A REPRESENTATIVE FOR MALAIYAHA TAMILS IN THE CENTRAL PROVINCE FOR THE FIRST TIME IN HISTORY AND IT'S A YOUNG WOMAN! This is the plantation community that still live in conditions closest to the slavery the British forced upon them two hundred years ago!

I'm like. Completely mindfucked. To be very very clear, these people are not Marxists or anything near; they're mild social democrats who would only be threatening to like, USAmerican liberals, who are now center-right. The actual chances for radical reform are still quite low, and the opportunity for further erosion is extremely high.

On the other hand:

What the fuck.

Sometimes living through historical events is really damn amazing.

[hussyknee]

(alt included)

Link to Video. (Please help Panda make money.)

Video description and transcript under the cut.

Description: TikTok video by The Panda Redd. Re-enactment of final scene of Under the Hood. All roles played by Panda. Setting is a dark basement lit only by a hanging light bulb.

Transcript.

Jason: *holding gun on Bruce* "Bruce, I forgive you for not saving me."

Batman: *glares silently*

Jason: "But why? Why on God's Earth—" *hits Joker across the face*

Joker (tied to a chair): *cackles*

Jason: "—is HE still alive??"

Joker: "AHAHAHAHAHHAHA!"

Batman:

Batman: "I'm sorry, d'you want me to be serious here or—?"

Jason: *in disbelief* "YES, Bruce! I want you to be serious right now! If he had done what he did to me to you, I would've done nothing but search the earth for this pile of death-worshiping garbage!"

Joker: "I love you too, Sugar Plum."

Batman: *holds hands up* "Okay, yeah, I get that, totally, I get that. Um. Have you tried?"

Jason: "Excuse you?"

Batman: "Have you tried to kill him yet?"

Jason: *to Joker* "Is he being serious?"

Joker: *also confused* "I'm gonna be honest with you, Junior. I don't know."

Jason: "Got it. Great." *turns back to Batman* "What the fuck does THAT mean?"

Batman: "Okay, so no, you haven't. Cool. Do it."

Jason:

Jason: *lowers gun* "What."

Batman: "Do it, cap his ass. Shoot him."

Joker: "I'm gonna go with Junior here, and say: what?"

Jason: "You want me to shoot him?"

Batman: "I want someone to shoot him! Give me the gun, I'll do it!"

Jason: *mutters, brain blue screening* "What is going on right now? This should a lot harder than it is."

Batman: "C'mon, son! You decapitated like eleven people three days ago! Fuckin' do it!"

Joker: *turns to Jason quizzically* "This has gotta be some sort of test, ri—" *Jason fires. Joker lands on the floor lifeless, eyes still open.*

Jason: "There, you happy? Jesus. Was that so hard? All of this time and it was THAT easy!"

Batman: "I don't know what you're talking about "easy". There's nothing there." *nods at floor*

Jason: "What the fuck is that supposed to—" *looks down at floor where the Joker was lying*

Floor: *is devoid of Joker*

Jason: *stares*

Floor: *continues to be sans anything but carpet*

Jason: "What the fuck?"

Batman: "Yeah."

Jason: "WHAT THE FUCK?"

Batman: "Take as long as you need with this."

Jason: *looking around frantically* "I just shot him! He hit the floor! What the f—"

Floor: *is just vibin'*

Jason: "Where the fuck did he go??"

Batman: "See that shit? That shit right there happens every fucking time!"

Jason: "There's not even a blood stain! It's just gone!"

Batman: "Yeah, like two days after you died, I chased him into a helicopter where he got shot like six times. The helicopter exploded and crashed into the ocean. And his body was gone before Superman could find it."

Jason: "Oh my God. I don't understand how this is even fucking possible!"

Batman: "He's like a cryptid! I don't fucking get it!"

Joker: *disembodied laughter*

Jason: *freaked out, turning in circles trying to find him* "Oh my God!"

Batman: "THAT OMINOUS SHIT HAPPENS TOO! I DON'T KNOW, DUDE!"

Jason: "Dude. Fuck whatever's going on here, that's some fucking bullshit."

Batman: "Thank you! Finally someone gets it!"

[hussyknee]

Me when I remember the corruption and discrimination in my country: 🙄🙄🙄

Me when I remember every full moon is a public holiday in my country: 🥰🥰🥰

[hussyknee]

What the fuck is ""foreign aid"" and """upliftment""""??? Bitch you owe us trillions in reparations???