#Global south

[from-the-notebooks]

Game designer explaining how he stopped piracy in Brazil by localizing his $10 game to be 65% off in Brazil. When he made it more fair, the people there were happy and willing to pay this is how things should be

if you moralize to people in the global south about piracy youre going to hell btw. no atonement no take backsies. guaranteed hell forever permanently.

[kropotkindersurprise]

Michael Parenti on the extraction of wealth from the so-called Third World by Western Capitalism. [video]

[hussyknee]

[probablyasocialecologist]

[hihereami]

yeah

[sayruq]

In Oct, European leaders lined up to support Israel's war on Gaza. By that point, hundreds of Palestinians had been killed in airstrikes. There was a worry among some officials that by doing this, they will end up alienated from the global south

That fear has come to fruition as countries like Bolivia cut diplomatic ties, South Africa took Israel to the ICJ, Yemen has blockaded the Red Sea (is now regularly attacking American and British warships), Malaysia has banned all Israeli ships from its ports, etc.

Here's the latest example. The EU organised the Indo-Pacific Ministerial Forum. It was a disaster for many reasons (7 European foreign ministers didn't bother to show up) but the important issue was Gaza

Simple put Israel, the EU and America will not escape accountability for what they've done to Gaza

[butterfly-95]

I think people need to realize that it was sheer luck that they have been born in developed countries with decent living conditions, away from the threat of war or civil conflicts. It is by pure coincidence at times that you end up being a citizen of a developed country, rather than one with an impoverished population experiencing man-made (because it is man-made in this day and age) famine, diseases that have been long eradicated or war (be it a civil conflict or due to selfish interests of developed nations who profit from these, at the cost of civilian lives). You could have been born into these conditions.

The point is: NO ONE should ever be made to witness the horrors of war, famine, poverty, disease or any other trauma inducing situation in which they have no free will or say about its outcome.

[favroitecrime]

[littlenaughtygarden]

Focus Congo is an organization based in the DRC and Germany that helps get aid and resources to the people of The Congo. They're currently raising money to send two containers full of medical supplies, medical machinery, clothing, shoes, and household materials.

They've only met 18% of their goal. PLEASE donate if you can and share this widely so they can get aid to the DRC. 🇨🇩💛

[sudensk-the-stallionist]

I find it certainly very interesting how the USA was slowly seeking to "tie up the loose ends" ever since the end of the Cold War, country by country. And time and time again it showed how USAmerican alliances and geopolitical decisions are, mainly when referring to the Global South, extremely opportunistic. It is really interesting how what was seen as Islamist extremists (rightfully, although in USAmerican fashion the critique of this extremism was covered with a thick coat of Islamophobic paint) in ISIS were enemies of the USA by 2015, but then the same ISIS remnants became the main base of support from the entire USAmerican government and media in the recent Syrian Civil War continuation. Or how Saddam and even Assad (the father, not Bashar) were supported, in different levels, by the US government prior to it "tying up the loose ends" after the Soviet collapse; every single relationship between the US and a country in the Global South is marked to the bone with opportunism, and this can be seen with the extent to which the USAmerican government seeked to "tie up the loose ends" in Afghanistan, Libya, Iraq, Syria, and still trying to do it to Venezuela, Iran, North Korea, and, to a lesser extent due to greater hardships in this task when compared to others, Russia-Belarus. It does, however, seem like the decaying prevalence of the USAmerican empire over the Global South as "multipolarity" grows is already paving the way for bigger threats to the continuation of the pro-US and pro-EU status quo. Although not all anti-USAmerican struggles in the world are particularly socialist, it is very clear that some new doors are being opened for socialism here. But we can only remain hopeful. If only we wouldn't need any more Afghanistans, Libyas and, apparently, now Syrias to pave this way. But alas, Global South liberation will come as the USA-EU axis decays, even if during this path we may have to handle both the continuation and expansion of massive attacks by the imperial core to our nations and the erratic attitude of nationalist "anti-imperialist" bourgeois attempts to co-opt the proletarian struggles for national liberation. I don't really do much seriousposting usually, mainly due to me just ending up getting very simplistic, idealistic and repetitive, but, yeah. Just a thought.

[fireheartwraith]

Hello everyone. Climate change and lack of infrastructure has cause severe floods in the south of brazil and thousands of people are displaced or missing. If you can help, please do, especially those who use dollar or euro. You don't know far your money can take us

This tweet has a video showing how absurdly fast the water rose. Image if this was your home, completely taken by water in under three minutes. Imagine if you had children, elderly, disabled people living here. What would you do in this situation? What can you even do?

Most of the state is now underwater, and the parts that aren't don’t have power or water. Getting prescription meds and other necessities like hygiene kits and food is difficult because capitalism sucks. The military police are protecting supermarkets because the people are hungry and taking the food. Mind you, the food will spoil anyway. But god forbid people don't go hungry.

And in the midst of this chaos, public transport still isn't free. People are charging to rescue folks. So people can only be rescued by helicopter because of the currents. There are people debating whether or not they should leave pets to die.

And the government has done basically nothing. It is the government's fault, everyone knows this. The money that was supposed to go to preventing something like this simply doesn't exist. The people organizing rescues are distributing resources are the people themselves. Influencers have been doing more to the cause than the government at this point.

Some people were bringing up Madonna because the flood hit the night of her show, and they were saying the money she received should have gone to the affected people. And so she donated 10 MILLION reais. It is utter madness. There are bodies floating in the water people have to wade through.

If you can do something to help, please do

Here's a link to donate to an ngo that is feeding the displaced people

Paypal: Fathiele14@gmail.com

Edit: Floods are also displacing people in the northeast, literally on the other side of the country. The situation is dire. Remember, you are closer to being a climate refugee than being a billionaire. If I find where you make international donations to help Maranhão I'll share it here

[alwaysinbetweeninsaneandinsecure]

Please help this family get to safety. The situation in Sudan worsens every day. Please give what you can & reblog this post!

[hussyknee]

Vajra Chandrasekera is a Locus and Nebula award-winner and has been short-listed for a Hugo Award this year. You can find his Tumblr here: @adamantine and his twitter here: @_vajra

[afghanbarbie]

The sex-based apartheid against women in Afghanistan cannot be reduced to, "Afghan men saw Afghan women enjoying freedom and got mad, so they established extremist religious governments to stop it." I am really tired of seeing this misconception and oversimplification spread around by leftists, liberals and feminists – it's racist, and simply not fucking true.

The majority of Afghans want a secular government and for the oppression of women to end. The Taliban represent a minority of Afghanistan's people. The deterioration of Afghan society – in particular, women's rights and freedoms – directly results from decades of foreign intervention, imperialism and occupation. Afghans did not destroy Afghanistan, the United States did, and the USSR paved the way for them to do so.

Had Afghanistan never been treated like a pawn in the games played by imperialistic powers, had we not been reduced to resources, strategic importance and a tool for weakening the enemy, extremism would have never come to power.

An overview of Afghanistan's recent history:

The USSR wanted to incorporate Afghanistan into Soviet Central Asia and did so by sabotaging indigenous Afghan communist movements and replacing our leaders with those loyal to the USSR. The United States began funding and training Islamic extremists – the Mujahideen – to fight against the Soviet influence and subsequent invasion, and to help the CIA suppress any indigenous Afghan leftist movements. Those Mujahideen won the war, and then spent the next decade fighting for absolute control over Afghanistan.

During that time period, known as the Afghan Civil War, the Mujahideen became warlords, each enforcing their own laws on the regions they controlled. Kabul was nearly destroyed, and the chaos, destruction and death was largely ignored by the United States despite being the ones who caused and empowered it. This civil war era created the perfect, unstable environment needed to give a fringe but strong group like the Taliban a chance to rise to power. And after two decades of war, a singular entity taking control and bringing 'peace' was enticing to all Afghans, even if their views were objectively more extreme than what we had been enduring up to that point.

When the United States invaded Afghanistan in 2001, they allied with the same warlords that had been destroying our country the decade prior and whom they had rallied against the Soviets – these are the people that made up the Northern Alliance. The 'good guys' that America gave us were rapists, pillagers, and violent extremists, no better than the Taliban. And that's not even mentioning the horrible atrocities and war crimes committed by American forces themselves.

So, no, Afghan men did not collectively wake up one day and decide that women had too much freedom and rush to establish an extremist government overnight. No, this is not to excuse the misogyny of men in our society – the extremists had to already exist for Americans to fund and arm them against the Soviets – but rather to redirect the bulk of this racist blame to the actual culprits. The religious extremism and sex-based apartheid would not be oppressing and murdering us today if they hadn't been funded and supported by the United States of America thirty years ago. And despite all the abuses and restrictions, many Afghan women prefer the Taliban's current government to another American occupation. I felt safer walking in Taliban-controlled Kabul than I did being 'randomly searched' (sexually assaulted) by American military police in my village as a child.

Imperialism is inextricably linked with patriarchal violence and women's oppression. You cannot talk about the deterioration of Afghanistan without talking about the true cause of said decline: The United States of America. Americans of all political views, including leftists and feminists, are guilty of reducing or outright ignoring Western responsibility for female oppression in the Global South, finding it much easier to place all blame on the foreign brown man or our supposedly backwards, savage cultures, when the most responsibility belongs with Western governments and their meddling games that forced the most violent misogynists among us into power.

(Most of this information comes from my own experience living as an Afghan Hazara woman in Afghanistan, but Bleeding Afghanistan: Washington, Warlords and the Propaganda of Silence covers this in much more detail. If you want more on the Soviet-Afghan war and Afghanistan's socialist history, Revolutionary Afghanistan is an English-language source from a more leftist perspective)

[capacle]

A game that says 'Yes' more

Alright folks, here it is:

🌟Everspark🌟

This is my answer to the question:

'What if we stripped everything off of heroic fantasy TTPRGS and kept only the vibes?'

The story behind this game starts 30 years ago…

I remember my first RPG experience. The art, the setting, the idea of being a hero in a fantasy world that we discovered together—it all seemed magical.

But very soon the cracks started to show.

A disconnect between the promise and the experience delivered by the game.

It took me more than 30 published games to give this one a go, mostly due to self-consciousness ("Really? Another fantasy heartbreaker?")

But I had to do it.

I had to know—what if we could actually live the promise that those book covers sold?

What if we could offer new players the experience they think they will have with that one game, without the frustration of a ruleset that says 'no' all the time?

That’s how Everspark was born.

I want to provide those carefree, belly-laugh-filled, let’s-play-pretend moments of rolling dice, casting imaginary spells, and coming up with all sorts of shenanigans.

A great choice if you want to introduce the hobby to newcomers, or play with your kids (or parents!)

I want to reignite that original spark that first attracted us to these kinds of games and never left us—the Everspark, if you will.

You get to tell epic tales, celebrate nat-20s, lament nat-1s, and spend some quality time daydreaming about dragons.

The system is super simple: You roll a d20 and 'eyeball' the result to see if you get a critical, regular or mixed success (or failure).

Besides that, there's only a quirky little mechanic involving drawing stars on sticky notes that covers everything else you need.

You can play solo or in a group, with or without a GM.

There are 8,000 possible character combinations, and you can make one in 20 seconds.

The game is very welcoming to foreign material, like settings, adventures, monsters, weapons, spells, and more!

All the art is by the amazing Ray Olli (and during the campaign, you can have your own custom character illustrated by him!)

Look at that:

And, if nothing else has convinced you so far, you can play as a Capoeira Capybara:

Everspark is funding now, and I'd appreciate your support and enthusiasm!

Please share it with anyone that wants to try a rules-light, vibes-full heroic fantasy tabletop game!

Make an indie designer happy today! 😊

[sayruq]

Prof. Jeffrey Sachs:

The United States stands completely isolated globally for supporting Israel in this massacre... The world looks at the US aghast. The US stands alone with Israel... This is the worst foreign policy imaginable.