politicaldino454

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Palestinian Genocide: Displacement part 1

Nearly two million Palestinians, almost the entire population of Gaza, have been displaced since October 2023 (14).

On 13 October 2023, Israel ordered all Palestinians in Gaza City and its surrounding region to move southward, across Wadi Gaza. The separation of ‘north’ and ‘south’ Gaza crystallised into a fortified and de facto internal border roughly two kilometres north of Wadi Gaza, known as the ‘Netzarim corridor’. It is important to note that the displacement of Palestinians since October 2023 occurred from the comparatively water-rich north to the arid south, and from the more fertile east to the dunes along the shoreline to the west (see Chapters 4, 3: Destruction of Agriculture and Water Resources, Displacement).

There are historical echoes to this displacement. Throughout the 1948 war, the Israeli military attempted to push Palestinians from north to south and across the border to Egypt. The Israeli military was unable to dislodge the Egyptian army from the road between Rafah and Gaza, thus Palestinian refugees remained in this sliver – or ‘strip’ – of coastal Palestine. Approximately 70% of the Gazan population of 2.3 million are refugees, expelled into Gaza by Zionist paramilitary organisations and the Israeli military from 247 Palestinian trading towns, farming villages, and localities along the southern coast of Palestine, subsequently destroyed by the Israeli military(15). By the time a ceasefire between Israel and Egypt was reached at the start of 1949, roughly 200,000 Palestinian refugees were trapped in an enclave slightly larger than 1% of Mandate-era Palestine with a prewar population of 80,000 (16).

In 1952, Israel demanded of the UN and Egypt that the Palestinian refugee population in Gaza be moved to Egypt’s Western Desert(17). In the early 1950s, Israeli raids on the Palestinian refugee camps and on Egyptian forces in Gaza led the UN and Egypt to make plans to relocate Palestinian refugees

sources located in source:

14. 1 Ibrahim Dahman, Tim Lister and Eugenia Yosef, ‘Almost entire population in Gaza now displaced amid fresh Israeli offensive’ (CNN, 6 July 2024 <https://www.cnn.com/2024/07/06/middleeast/palestinians-displaced-gaza-israel-intl/index.html > accessed 24 September 2024.

15. Walid Khalidi, All That Remains: The Palestinian Villages Occupied and Depopulated by Israel in 1948 (Washington D.C.: Institute for Palestine Studies, 1992), 127. Salman Abu Sitta, ‘Mapping my Return’, in All that Remains (1992: xvii–xx), Walid Khalidi, relying onthe Palestine Index Gazetteer (1945) and the Village Statistics (1945), both compiled by the British Mandatory authorities, listed 418 depopulated and destroyed villages. However, Salman Abu-Sitta’s figures list a total of 531 localities, these includes 77 destroyed Bedouin villages in southern Palestine (p.71). Ilan Pappe, in The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine, discusses the origins of this Israeli policy.

16. The paragraph above has many sources, regarding numbers of villages destroyed and of refugees expelled into Gaza, see Salman Abu Sitta, Mapping My Return: A Palestinian Memoir (The American University in Cairo Press 2016) especially but not exclusively, 26-28, 263. The destruction of villages to avoid Palestinian return has been discussed in Benny Morris, The Birth of the Palestinian Refugee problem, 1947-1949 (Cambridge University Press, 1988), 132-196, specifically the destruction of wells were discussed in Benny Morris

& Benjamin Z. Kedar‘Cast thy bread’: Israeli biological warfare during the 1948 War (Middle Eastern Studies, vol. 59 issue 5, 2023), 752-776.

17. Benny Morris, Israel’s Border Wars: 1949-1956; Arab Infiltration, Israeli Retaliation, and the Countdown to the Suez War (Clarendon Press, 1997), 88

[politicaldino454]

Life of a Racehorse

Introduction

Beneath its glamorous façade, commercial horseracing is a ruthless industry motivated by financial gain and prestige.

What is concealed from the television-viewing punter and champagne-sipping patron are the unremitting challenges the racehorse is forced to endure often in its very short life.

The suffering starts at a very early age. At approximately 6 months, it is separated from its mother and the training for racing begins. The average racehorse will race for less than 3 years before being discarded. (1)

The Stud

This unnatural cycle is achieved through adjusting temperatures, artificially lengthening days through the use of lighting and injecting drugs such as ‘prostaglandins’ into the female. When they reach fertility - often only weeks after giving birth, mares are forced to stand for a stallion in order to produce another foal for the following season. Under natural conditions, mares normally produce a foal once every two years.

Separation

Thoroughbred foals are separated from their mothers at approx. 6 months of age. The foal then commences a training regime and is generally fed a high protein diet to prepare it for sale and future racing.

The foal will be “broken” - meaning it will be taught to comply with human commands through learned helplessness techniques - which compels the horse to obey due to fear, pain or both. The horses that rebel against the oppressive training methods will be forced even more harshly into compliance. If they fail to comply, they will be deemed rogue horses and discarded.

The mother (brood mare) is taken away and prepared for the birth of her next foal. She will be pregnant for more than 90 percent of her life. Brood mares are mostly discarded once their stud days are over. Studs will often demand breeding horses be killed when they are discarded to prevent breeding by future owners.

Yearling Sales

Most of the money in horse racing is not made through racing but by breeding. A sire or dam that produces winners on the track becomes extremely valuable. Redoutes Choice, for example, Australia’s leading stallion has demanded as high as $330,000 per serve and serves up to 190 mares in a season. [2] Each year approximately 13,000 foals are born in Australia [1] and many thousands are sold at sales like the yearling sales.

Foals born with the right attributes are looked after extremely well. However, minor deformities can render a horse worthless and may mean a very early death. Some cosmetic deformities may be operated on or treated but this risks further injury to the young horse.

To make the foals more attractive to bidders at the yearling sales, horses are subjected to a regime of exercise, a high protein diet and sometimes drugs to increase their appeal and profitability.

It is not uncommon for yearlings to be purchased for a price in excess of $50,000. In April 2006 at the Sydney Easter Sales a yearling was sold for three million dollars. (4)

It is also not uncommon for horses at thoroughbred sales to be bought for only a few hundred dollars and killed for meat, either for human consumption or pet food.

Training

Once sold, the yearling becomes the property of the owner or syndicate whose motivation is to see a profit. In reality, less than two percent actually do.

In preparation for its first race, the yearling will commence a training regime, which will place enormous stress on the immature skeletal frame and make it prone to early breakdown. This causes many lower limb ailments and injuries including fractures, pulled ligaments and strained tendons. Many horses suffer injuries well before their first race.

As running at high speeds over long distances is not natural to horses, many show resistance to conventional training methods. As a result, pain and fear are used to force the horse into submission. Various devices and methods, some legal and some illegal, will give the horse no option but to comply to the demands of the trainer.

Racing

Though illegal in Australia, some will have their injuries masked by drugs which will enable the horse to race a little longer until the injuries worsen and the horse inevitably breaks down.

Fact: The average career of a racehorse is less than 3 years

Race horses are mostly confined to a stable where they will spend up to 22 hours per day unable to socialise with other horses; their only reprieve being training. In this artificial environment, many horses will develop symptoms of neurotic behaviour like wind sucking (grasping an object by the teeth and sucking in air) and weaving (swaying the head, neck and forequarters from side to side) They will also suffer from many common illnesses like stomach ulcers and respiratory diseases.

Discarded

The fate of racehorses after racing is one of the industry’s dirtiest and best-kept secrets.

Keeping an unviable racehorse is not an option as their owners seek to make a profit at all costs. Their lives are cut short by greed as they are discreetly disposed of.

Many are sent to saleyards where most are bought by knackeries; the owners extracting the last few dollars out of their investment. Some racehorses are sold as cheaply as $150.

In some cases, studs and racing stables have arrangements with knackeries and horse brokers and sell them directly on request.

While some ex-racehorses find loving and caring homes, the vast majority will be killed after their careers come to an end.

References: [1] Australian Racing Fact Book 2010 [2] Racing and Sports 15th April 2007 http://www.racingandsports.com.au/breeding/rsNewsArt.asp?NID=102673 [4] Dynamic Syndications News 20/4/2006

[politicaldino454]

ok last thing. but what people fundamentally need to get through their heads is the significance of gaza fundraisers not being the same as like mutual aid when you're helping someone get groceries, because it is a genocide. there is insane deliberate scarcity and prices are unmanageable, because there is nowhere nearly enough for everyone, so only people who can pay can eat. and what positioning individual fundraisers as the only course of action does is quite simply give a tiny percentage of random people whose fundraisers take off the ability to pay those prices while thousands of others can't. and every one of those thousands of people without a fundraiser is suffering through the same inconceivably horrific reality. it is giving a few completely desperate people out of hundreds of thousands a slightly more favorable position in a horrific war economy of imposed scarcity. and what grassroots community kitchens do is try to mitigate in some small way that inconceivable hierarchy of who can pay and who can't, by stretching ingredients as far as they can last to cook meals at large scale and give them out at no cost. and obviously people are still going to send money to their friends and families because this is hell what else are we supposed to do but please just think about that before promoting endless individual fundraisers as somehow the most ethical way to help

[politicaldino454]

Dear students,

They didn't steal slaves.

They stole scientists, doctors, architects, teachers, entrepreneurs, astronomers, fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, etc.

And made them slaves.

Sincerely, Your Ancestors"

[politicaldino454]

#nativeamerican #indigenous #jingledress #sioux #cree #culture #dancing ...

[politicaldino454]

I hope you enjoyed Swordtember this year :} this is the time where I turn out my hat and ask for tips if you’ve enjoyed! Rent is due tomorrow, any support means the world.

You can give me a one off tip on Ko-Fi!

Or support my patreon to fund my art long term!

To everyone who supports me, thank you. So so much. These swords are my gift to you, and I am honoured you let me do this as a career ❤️

[politicaldino454]

personally it is a very chilling experience for me to witness 'socially progressive' usamericans on here hardcore defending their imperial status quo aka supporting demparty even in the face of them essentially commiting (alongside israel) the most televised genocide in our history. one thing to read about such chauvinism in theory/historical non fiction; the other to see it in action.

[politicaldino454]

Fuck off, lol

[politicaldino454]

Wtf. This needs to be made illegal.

Why the fuck does this keep happening? Does there need to be a unit in teacher lisensure school on not making your black children re-enact slavery?

[politicaldino454]

That should sit with people. What's going on in Lebanon, right now. Doctors, nurses, EMTs, everybody at a hospital waiting for the influx of the injured... And no one comes. Because the bodies are being vaporized. There's no one to take. Not even a chance to try to save anyone. That's... That's dystopian on a level I had not considered before this. That's inhuman. That shows a lack of... It's like they're not even people. They don't even wanna give anybody the dignity of having someone to put away. Like they're trash that they don't even need to think about. And I know they've been returning ashes to people in Gaza and that's horrific but... Vaporized? Like... Into atoms. There's nothing. There one moment and stardust the next. A blink. That's... Fuck Hell, I need to see these war criminals face punishment here on Earth.

[politicaldino454]

[politicaldino454]

Mr. Bone Spurs Long History Of Disrespect Towards The US Military

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[politicaldino454]

website Resoures:

https://www.cali.org/the-elangdell-bookstore