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writingwithcolor · 11 months

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Conlanging Issues: A Compendium

NOTE: This question was submitted before the Nov 1, 2023 reopening and may not adhere to all rules and guidelines. The ask has been abridged for clarity.

Most of my questions are about linguistics. […] One of the major locations in my story is a massive empire with cultural inspirations ranging from North Africa in the far south to Mongolia/Russia in the far north […] The middle region is where the capital is and is the main root of culture, from which Ive been taking inspiration from Southwest Asia […], but most notably southern regions of India. I've tried to stick to the way cities are named in Sanskrit-based languages but added the names of stars to the front (because the prevalent religion of this region worships the stars [...]). So Ive ended up with names like Pavoprayag, Alyanaga, Alkaiduru, Alcorpura, Cygnapete, etc. Is this a consistent naming system or should I alter it in some way? The empire itself is named the Arcana Empire since [...] each act of my story is named after a tarot card [...]. Another region in my story is based more on parts of South China and North Vietnam, so I've tried to stick to names with a Chinese origin for that. I understand the significance of family names in southwest [sic] Asia, so I wanted to double check [...]. They have only two short given names. Based on the birth order of the child, the first half of the name comes from the fathers family and the second half from the mothers family. It is seen as disrespectful not to use both names because using only one is seen as denouncing that side of your family. Thus I have names like Su Yin, Dai Jun, and Yi Wen for some of the characters from this region, and the city itself that they are from is named Bei Fen. On the other hand, Im having further trouble naming characters. […] Ive been trying to give my human characters names from real human cultures to distinguish them from the website-generated names of say, orcs, elves, dwarves, etc, but I think I should change many of the names Ive used to be more original and avoid fracturing real world cultures for the sake of my worldbuilding. […] Im still very weak in the linguistics area (even after four years of French, sigh) and am having trouble finding where to read about naming patterns so I can make new ones up. I read your naming guides but am still having trouble on where to start for specific languages. […] Im trying to look into Sanskrit, Turkish, and Persian specifically.

You're Going Too Broad

In my opinion, you’re casting too wide a net. You mentioned looking into Sanskrit, Turkish, and Persian to develop fantasy names. These languages are very different from one another, so unless you’re using them separately for very different parts of your world, it will be hard to draw inspiration from them in a way that makes sense. You’re taking on a huge amount of research in order to worldbuild cultures that span a massive geographical area (basically all of North Africa and Asia?) and have very little in common. Are you sure you want to take on that task?

I could see it being more manageable if most of your story is set in a small region of this world, which you will then research in depth to make sure you’re being as specific as possible.

Taking Persian as an example, you’ll have to decide whether you want to use Old Persian, Middle Persian, or Modern Persian. Each of these comes with a different alphabet and historical influences. They’re also associated with different periods of time and corresponding cultural and social markers. Once you’ve decided exactly when and where you want to start from, you can then expand the borders of your area of focus. For example, if you’ve decided to draw inspiration from Achaemenid Persia, you can then look at the languages that were spoken in the Achaemenid Empire. A quick Google search tells me that while Old Persian was the empire’s official language, they also used Aramaic, Akkadian, Median, Greek, and Elamite (among, I’m sure, many many others and many more regional variations). Further research into each of these will give you ethnic groups and bordering nations that you can draw more inspiration from to expand out your worldbuilding.

Don’t forget to make sure you’re staying within the same time period in order to keep things consistent. It’s a lot of work, and this is only for a small portion of the continent-spanning worldbuilding you’re trying to do.

You can get away with painting the rest of the continent in broad strokes without too much depth if the story doesn’t go there and you don’t have any main characters from those parts of the world. Otherwise, you’ll need to put this same level of detail into your worldbuilding for the area with Turkish-inspired names, and again for the area with Sanskrit-inspired names, and so on.

I know this isn’t what you were asking, but I honestly have a hard time helping you figure out where to start because your ask is so broad I don’t quite know where I would start myself. So, this is my advice: focus down on one region and time period and go from there. Feel free to write back once you’ve picked a narrower focus that we could help you with.

- Niki

So there’s logistical issues in regards to your naming system for southern China-coded regions. One issue is history: mainly on how there is not simply one language in China but multiple due to having a lot of ethnic groups and the size of China. South China in particular has different dialects and languages than the North as seen in this map of Chinese languages and dialects. There’s also how historically Mandarin was not the official language until 1913 in China and historical China saw vast changes in territory dependent on the dynasty. Before then, Mandarin was primarily a northern Chinese language based in Beijing while southern China had its own languages, dialects, and dynamics. Not to mention, historical China saw an evolution of language just like English has Old English, Middle English, Early Modern English, and Modern English. For instance, Vietnam was once part of China during the Tang Dynasty and at another point, it was not part of China.

-Mod Sci

If You’re Borrowing Whole Words or Elements, Research More

The other issue is inconsistency with the cultures you’re deriving this conlang from. In regards to “two given names,” the Chinese name I was given was one syllable and then I would have a last name that was also one syllable. There’s also how not every family is perfect. Not every marriage is sanctioned and some children may come from single parents. Some families may not cooperate with marriage and sometimes children may be abandoned with unknown parents. There does not seem to be contingencies for these names under this conlang system.

The main problem with conlangs is that one needs to truly understand the languages one is drawing from. Tolkein managed to create conlangs due to training in linguistics. Mandarin is already a difficult language with multiple tones, and trying to use it for conlangs without knowledge of how Mandarin works or a good foundation in linguistics is just a Sisyphean endeavor.

-Mod Sci

Four years of French wouldn’t have taught you about linguistics as a science or anything about the language families you’ve listed - Indo-Iranian, Sino-Tibetan, and Turkic, nor any Asian naming conventions. I agree with Niki that you need to narrow down your research.

Pur/pura means city in Sanskrit (ex: Gurdaspur, Hoshiarpur). Prayag is a place where pilgrimages are done. Naga isn’t a place name in Sanskrit (google says it means snake), nagar is and it means town. X Nagar is a very common name for places (Ex: Rajinder Nagar). Many cities in Karnataka have names ending in uru (Bengaluru, Mysuru, Mangaluru, Tumakuru, etc) but the language of Karnataka is Kannada - a Dravidian language and completely different family from Sanskrit (Indo-Aryan). I’m not sure where “pete” came from. “Bad” and “vaal” are common suffixes for places too (Ex: Faisalabad, Allahabad). A disclaimer that I do not speak Sanskrit, I speak Punjabi, which is a descendant of Sanskrit and in the same linguistic family (Indo-Aryan languages).

- SK

Also, This Is Not…Really Conlanging.

Hi OP. Linguistics refers to the science of studying how languages work, not the discipline of learning languages. And nothing shows that gap more than how you have thus far approached constructing fictional languages and toponyms.

The reason why Sci and SK have a lot to say about your place names is because they don't resonate—you have borrowed whole words into your toponyms (place names) from a variety of languages—without an accurate understanding of what these words mean, how they’re pronounced, where they’re derived from—and expected them to work together. I suggest you read the links below on why conlanging is not as simple as choosing some languages and mashing their IRL words together:

Why Using Random Languages Wholesale in your Fantasy is a Bad Idea

Pitfalls of Mashing Countries and Languages in Coding

In your city names, for example, you’re using star names from multiple languages that use different sets of sounds represented by different sets of historical spelling rules. “Cygn-” and “Arcana” stick out like a sore thumb—the fact that one “c” is /s/ and one is /k/ is an obvious flag that they are Latin-derived English borrowings. This is because spelling rules were created in Middle English to make sense of the mix of “c” pronunciations across words of Indo-European origin due to a historical split called the Centum-Satem division. This is a phenomenon that is very specific to our world history, and to the history of English at that. Ironically, in your attempt to avoid stock fantasy names (which also often fall into the Latin-derived English pit), you are taking the exact same approach to naming.

Like Niki said, your selections are far too broad to code under a single umbrella. Do you expect that whatever language that city name came from runs the full gamut of sound inventory & spelling variety that spans multiple continents and hundreds of languages? Because that’s not how languages work. (And yes, I mean hundreds. Indigenous languages and linguistic diversity are a thing. See Niki’s note about just the languages in Persia. And nation-states bulldozing over those languages and pretending it’s just one language is a thing. See Sci’s note about China.) I haven't even talked about the variation in morphology (how words are formed) or syntax (sentence structure).

Please just read or re-read my guide on “naming conlangs” in this post and start from there.

~ Rina

PSA ON CONLANGING AND FANTASY NAMES:

For fantasy language asks submitted after Nov 1, 2023, the asker must indicate that they have read Mod Rina’s conlanging posts linked in FAQ 2 (Guides and Posts by Topic) of the Masterpost under the question “How do I make a fictional language for my story?” While this is an older ask, we are posting it as an example to our followers.

Per our new rules, any questions that can be directly answered in or extrapolated from the FAQs, or questions that indicate that the relevant resources haven’t been read, will be deleted with a note in the Deletion Log explaining why.

As always, if this post was helpful or educational to you, please consider tipping the relevant mods: SK, Niki, Sci, and Rina.

Edited for terminology errors

#asks #naming #languages #linguistics #Persian #Chinese #South Asian #worldbuilding #coding

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vyorei · 9 months

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I got distracted with this email set up I found, I'm dropping it here for you all

Take these emails:

[email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected]

Take this subject:

South Africa VS Israel in the ICJ.

Take this letter:

Dear Madam President and esteemed panel of Judges,

I hope this message finds you well and resolute. My name is [your name], I am a concerned citizen of [your country]. I am reaching out to you with a sense of urgency and sincere apprehension which prompts me to break my customary silence.

I have always held the belief that individuals in positions of authority, such as yourself, harbour the best interests of humanity at heart. However, recent developments in the Middle East and the global response to them have stirred doubt in my convictions, compelling me to express my concerns directly to you.

As I explored the International Court of Justice's website, I took solace in the fact that it consists of "independent judges, elected regardless of their nationality from among persons of high moral character." With this understanding, I address you regarding the impending South Africa v. Israel matter, the provisional measures hearing of which is scheduled for Thursday, 11th and Friday, 12th January 2024.

I am sure that you are acutely aware of the gravity of the case before you, and I believe that your ability to discern the truth, resist external pressures, and deliver a just judgment is foremost on your mind. The Genocide Convention, a cornerstone of international law, was established in 1948 as a commitment to 'never again' allow atrocities akin to those committed by the Nazi’s in WW2. 152 states out of 194 nations of the world honourably signed up to the convention. It is a testament to our parents and grandparents that their generations committed to a set of standards that constitute the basic principles of right and wrong, which underpin the fabric of the world we live in and form the basis of the lives most of us are lucky enough to lead.

The very fact that the responsibility of adjudicating on this case has fallen upon your shoulders underscores a disheartening truth – the failure of existing systems of checks and balances within the international community. It is disconcerting that national interests have tainted the operations of our global systems, allowing the mass killing of civilians to persist without intervention. I find this reality appalling, as do countless citizens around the world who have expressed their horror through protests on the streets of cities across the globe.

The upcoming case is a litmus test for humanity's commitment to the solemn pledge of 'Never Again.' Generations have been educated about the horrors of the Holocaust, and this case challenges us to live up to the principles we profess. It is a stark reminder that the values we hold dear are being tested in real-time, with devastating consequences.

In March 2022, the International Court of Justice ordered Russia to immediately suspend military operations in Ukraine and ensure that affiliated units take no further steps in furtherance of the military operations. Despite this intervention, an estimated 10,000 civilians have tragically lost their lives in Ukraine since Russia's military operation in 2022. Moreover, and by comparison, the death toll in Gaza has already surpassed 22,000 since October 2023, with a staggering 70% of the victims being women and children.

We find ourselves in a world where trust in global institutions is eroding rapidly. The International Court of Justice, in particular, cannot afford to make an erroneous judgment in the South Africa v. Israel genocide case. A misjudgement in this matter would not only underscore the ICJ's ineffectiveness but also prompt scrutiny regarding its autonomy from nation-state political influences, potentially compromising the esteemed moral character of the individuals involved.

In 1945 we celebrated Winston Churchill as the leader that brought the world together in war to put-down the threat of Nazi Germany and the horror it inflicted. That war claimed over 50 million lives. We do not wish to celebrate a wartime hero again; we wish to celebrate new heroes who averted a war by presiding over justice without fear or favour.

I humbly beseech you to approach this case with the utmost diligence, impartiality, and commitment to justice. The eyes of the world are upon you, and the outcome of this particular case will reverberate through history, shaping perceptions of the ICJ's impartiality and moral standing.

Yours sincerely,

[your name]

Email that shit and do your part, we are fucking obligated as living beings on this planet.

#free gaza #free palestine #gaza strip #irish solidarity with palestine #palestine #gaza #news on gaza #al jazeera #boycott israel #israel #ICJ #International Court of Justice #South Africa VS Israel #Genocide Convention #World Health Organisation #Al-Awda Hospital #Jabalia

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mariacallous · 6 months

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Faruk Fatih Özer stood in front of a passport control officer at Istanbul Airport, a line of impatient travelers queuing behind him. He pulled his face mask below his chin for the security camera. Surely he was nervous. The 27-year-old had unruly black hair, a boy-band face, and a patchy beard. Normally he overcompensated for his callow features by dressing in a pressed three-piece suit. But this spring day he wore black trainers and a navy-blue sweater hastily pulled over a white polo shirt, as if he had dressed in a dash. A small backpack was slung over his right shoulder. He looked like someone who could have been going on a last-minute day trip—or someone planning to never come back. At 5:57 pm on April 20, 2021, the guard stamped his Turkish passport and Özer shuffled through the crowd to Gate C, a flash drive containing a rumored $2 billion (£1.6 billion) in crypto stashed in his belongings.

After Özer’s plane reached Tirana, Albania, at 9:24 that night, he checked into the Mondial, a popular 4-star business hotel in the capital’s commercial district. A couple of days later, he looked at his social media accounts. A mob was very angry with him: Customers couldn’t access their money on the exchange Thodex, where he was founder and CEO, and people were accusing him of absconding with their funds.

Özer posted a public letter to his company’s website and his social accounts. “I feel compelled to make this statement in order to respond urgently to these allegations,” he wrote. The accusations weren’t true, he said. Thodex—which had nearly half a million investors and $500 million (£400 million) in daily trade volume—was investigating what Özer claimed was a suspected cyberattack that caused “an abnormal fluctuation in the company account.” Assets would be frozen for five days while Thodex resolved the issue. This was terribly bad timing for the big business deal he said he was en route to make: selling the company, or so he had told some employees and his brother and sister before he left. All would be made right. “There will be no victims,” he promised. “I personally declare that I will return to Turkey within a few days and ensure that the facts are revealed in cooperation with judicial authorities and that I will do my best to prevent users from suffering.” Of course, there was this possibility too: He was in the midst of pulling off the biggest heist in Turkey’s history.

Before dawn the day after Özer posted the letter, police squads fanned out across Istanbul and public prosecutors opened an investigation. Law enforcement arrested 62 people, including Thodex employees at all levels of the company—and Özer’s older brother and sister, Güven and Serap. Interpol issued a red notice, a request for law enforcement worldwide to find and “provisionally arrest” Özer pending his extradition to Turkey. Search teams deployed across Albania, Montenegro, Kosovo, and North Macedonia. There were reported sightings of the dark-haired young man across Tirana, rumors that he had gone to a poultry farm, that an executive from the Albanian football league was sheltering him. Soon, the Albanian police arrested people accused of aiding and abetting him. But no one seemed to know exactly where Özer was.

Özer had vanished at a particularly precarious time in crypto’s annals: In the weeks leading up to his disappearance, so-called rug pulls—when a cryptocurrency exchange or altcoin developer absconds with investors’ funds—had crypto investors around the globe flabbergasted. The CEO of Mirror Trading International, a crypto trading company based in South Africa, defrauded users of more than $1 billion, then skipped town; TurtleDex, an anonymous decentralized finance storage project on Binance, reportedly vanished with $2.4 million; another decentralized finance project, Meerkat, reportedly fleeced investors out of $31 million (of which they paid back 95 percent). Blockchain analysis firm Chainalysis ranked rug pulls as the primary scam of 2021, accounting for 37 percent of all cryptocurrency scam revenue that year, up from 1 percent the year before.

Thodex was at the top of that roster, and nearly every major outlet from Bloomberg to Newsweek published headlines like “Turkish Crypto Exchange Goes Bust as Founder Flees Country” and “Turkish Cryptocurrency Founder Faruk Fatih Özer Seen Fleeing Country With Suspected $2 Billion From Investors.” CoinGeek called it “the biggest scam in the digital asset industry in 2021.” The New York Times’ headline read, “Possible Cryptocurrency Fraud Is Another Blow to Turkey’s Financial Stability.” In Turkey, the country I now call home, people were reeling: For years, crypto had been built up—largely by Özer but by others too—as a way out of economic volatility. Now it seemed like just another way to lose your life savings. But something felt off to me, like the whole story wasn’t being told.

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rebeccathenaturalist · 2 years

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How to Identify Morels

Originally posted at my website at https://rebeccalexa.com/how-to-identify-morels/ - Click here to learn more about the How to Identify article series.

Name: True morels (Morchella spp.)

Range and typical habitat(s): Widespread throughout temperate North America, Europe, New Zealand and Australia; less commonly reported in South America, Asia, and coastal Africa. Morels are commonly found in wooded areas, and many species grow primarily on soil; these may have symbiotic (though not necessarily mycorrhizal) relationships with trees and other plants. Other morels, such as M. importuna, are saprotrophs that happily colonize dead wood, to include mulch used in landscaping. At least one, the white morel M. rufobrunnea, may be capable of both lifestyles. Morels are exceptionally difficult to cultivate, and no large-scale cultivation method has been developed as of this writing.

M. americana

Both deciduous and conifer forests may be homes to morels; yellow morels tend toward deciduous, while conifer forests are more likely to feature black morels. A wide variety of tree genera may be associated with morels include but are not limited to Pseudotsuga, Pinus, Abies, Quercus, Fraxinus, Alnus, and Castanea.

However, the half-free morels–M. punctipes (seen below), M. populiphila, and M. semilibera–may have a small space between the bottom edge of the cap and the stipe. The cap has a honeycombed appearance, with surfaces deeply pockmarked with cavities surrounded by brittle ridges that crumble into fragments when crushed. Colors vary, and morel species are often grouped together by cap color; black morels have a dark brown to black cap, while yellow and white morels are more tan to cream.

M. punctipes, cut in half to show hollow centers, and only the upper portion of the caps attached to the stipes. Photo by Chase G. Mayers, CCA-4.0

The stipe may be lightly textured, and is usually lighter in color than the cap, often white, cream, or pale yellow depending on species. Cutting a morel’s stipe open reveals that it is entirely hollow inside. A mature morel is generally around three to six inches high, though larger specimens have been found.

M. americana with the top removed, showing the hollow interior.

A vintage illustration shows three morels, to include one cut in half to display the hollow center; the mushroom in the lower left is a false morel (Gyromitra esculenta).

Other organisms it could be confused with and how to tell the difference: There are multiple groups of mushrooms that look similar enough to morels to cause confusion; given morels are a popular edible mushroom, consumption of some of these lookalikes has caused serious illness on numerous occasions.

V. bohemica; note that the bottom edge of the cap is not attached to the stipe, and that it has more of a wrinkled appearance than honeycombed. By NeoSporen, CCA-SA-3.0.

Members of the genus Verpa look similar to half-free morels in that the bottom edge of the cap is not attached to the stipe. However, when cut in half the half-free morels have more of the upper portion of the cap attached to the stipe; Verpas only have the very tip attached. Outwardly they do look quite similar to morels overall, often having a conical cap with a honeycombed texture; some may have less distinct cavities and a more “lumpy” appearance rather than honeycombed. The cap of the Verpa is generally smaller in proportion to the stipe than on mature morels. The stipes of young Verpas are full of soft, fluffy hyphae, but they become hollow like morels as they mature.

V. conica, showing one cut in half. Note that the cap is only attached to the stipe at the very top, and there is still some fungal hyphae tissue in the center of the stipe. Photo by Jeff Riedenauer (Tamsenite), CCA-SA-3.0.

Like morels, they are considered by some to be edible when thoroughly cooked. However, one study purports that V. bohemica is also toxic, having the same sort of toxins as the false morels I’ll discuss below. Some field guides recommend avoiding the other Verpa species as well due to potential inedibility. Both Verpas and morels fruit in spring, and may sometimes be found in the same area. As someone who would like to become an old, rather than bold, mushroom hunter, I recommend skipping the Verpas and sticking to the true morels, just in case.

A false morel (Gyromitra spp.); notice that instead of looking like a cone made of honeycomb, it resembles a raisin or a brain on a stalk.

False morels, in the genus Gyromitra, are a more notorious morel lookalike. Several species contain significant levels of gyromitrin, a compound that when boiled or consumed hydrolizes into monomethylhydrazine, a chemical used in making rocket fuel. Consumption may cause gastrointestinal distress, neurological symptoms, kidney and liver failure, coma, and failure of the respiratory and circulatory systems. The most severe cases result in death within a week after consuming false morels. Some species have more gyromitrin than others, and it’s likely that the compound can build up over time in people who eat false morels on a regular basis. While there are purported methods used to reduce or remove gyromitrin from false morels, as a foraging instructor I do not recommend consuming any Gyromitra false morels due to the risk of severe illness.

G. californica. Note that the stipe is not completely hollow inside, but has several cavities divided by fungal tissue. Photo by Alan Rockefeller, CCA-SA-4.0.

So how do you tell the difference? Where true morels look like honeycombed cones, false morels look like brains, oversized raisins, or piles of worms. If you cut a true morel open the stipe will be completely hollow, but the interior of a false morel may have multiple smaller chambers or be completely solid. It is exceptionally important to make sure you get a sure identification on whatever species you are picking, as true and false morels fruit in spring, and sometimes in the same areas.

M. angusticeps

Anything else worth mentioning? Morels are definitely one of those mushrooms you want to cook thoroughly before eating, as raw or undercooked morels can cause gastrointestinal distress. Also, if you hang around mushroom foragers long enough, you’ll hear all sorts of advice–some of it conflicting–about when and where to find morels. It’s true that they fruit in spring, starting in lower elevations where it warms up sooner, and then higher elevations as spring temperatures continue to rise. South-facing slopes that warm up faster with sunlight may also see earlier fruiting. And, of course, places that burned or were logged in the last year or two may see a bumper crop of morels the following spring. Many patches of morel mycelium only last a few years, so the place you found morels one year may not fruit the next.

Beyond that, it’s best to study up on the species of morel that grow in your area. Find out what sorts of habitats they like, if they’re associated with any particular trees, whether they are responsive to burns and other disturbances, and whether there are any toxic look-alikes that grow nearby.

Further reading:

The Great Morel

Mushroom Expert: Morchellaceae

Tom Volk’s Morel Page

Mushroom Appreciation: Morel Mushroom

Did you enjoy this post? Consider taking one of my online foraging and natural history classes, checking out my other articles, or picking up a paperback or ebook I’ve written! You can even buy me a coffee here!

#morels #mushrooms #fungi #fungus #mushroom hunting #mushroom foraging #foraging #wild foods #wild mushrooms #mycology #biology #nature #outdoors #forest #poisonous mushrooms #edible mushrooms

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mr-president · 9 months

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Do you know of any petitions or email scripts to call for support for South Africas genocide case against Israel? I'm from the US and I've had trouble finding anything.

i do!

Here are the emails of:

President of the ICJ, Joan E Donoghue (United States): [email protected]

Vice-President Kirill, Gevorgian (Russian Federation): [email protected]

Judge Mohamed Bennouna (Morocco): [email protected]

Judge Ronny Abraham (France): [email protected]

Judge Georg Nolte (Germany): [email protected]

Judge Dalveer Bhandari (India): [email protected]

Judge Patrick Robinson (Jamaica): [email protected]

Judge Yuji Iwasawa (Japan): [email protected]

Judge Nawaf Salam (Lebanon): [email protected]

Judge Mohammad Bennouna (Morocco): [email protected]

Judge Peter Tomka (Slovakia): [email protected]

Judge Abdulqawi Ahmed Yusuf (Somalia): [email protected]

Judge Julia Sebutinde (Uganda): [email protected]

Judge Hilary Charlesworth (Australia): [email protected]

Judge Leonardo Brant (Brazil): [email protected]

Judge Xue Hanqin (China): [email protected]

And here is an email chain, taken from twitter here! They have more specific copy-pastes, like calling the ICJ “Madam President” or “Vice President, but the general one is below!”

Subject: Urgent Concerns Regarding the impending matter of South Africa v. Israel with the ICJ

Dear Honourable Judge [JUDGE NAME HERE]

I hope this message finds you well and resolute. My name is [Your Name], I am a concerned citizen of the [Your Country]. I am reaching out to you with a sense of urgency and sincere apprehension which prompts me to break my customary silence.

In an age where mainstream media faces scepticism due to perceived biases, the global community has been witness to Israel's actions in real-time through various social media platforms such as X, TikTok, and Telegram. Enclosed with this letter, you'll find compelling evidence pointing towards Israel's culpability in intending to commit genocide and engaging in genocidal military actions, among other alleged war crimes.

We find ourselves in a world where trust in global institutions is eroding rapidly. The International Court of Justice, in particular, cannot afford to make an erroneous judgment in the #SouthAfrica v. #Israel genocide case. A misjudgement in this matter would not only underscore the ICJ's ineffectiveness but also prompt scrutiny regarding its autonomy from nation-state political influences, potentially compromising the esteemed moral character of the individuals involved.

Yours sincerely,

(Insert Name)

Also, here’s a bigass link about what’s being done and what you can do

And here’s a link where you can search for protests near you (remember, never give your personal information away if you’re going to a protest—don’t announce it publicly or nothing, yadda yadda):

hope this helps :D!

#palestine #free palestine #gaza #ceasefire #south africa #icj hearing #israel #free gaza #jerusalem #icj #international court of justice

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pixxeludigitaltechnology · 11 months

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Best Website Builder for Shopify - Pixxelu Digital Technology

Pixxelu Digital Technology recommends Shopify as the top website builder for creating e-commerce websites. It offers user-friendly tools and features for successful online store management.

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killa-trav · 2 years

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Vettel leads race in sports nutrition

Sebastian Vettel has become the lead investor in a British sports supplement brand that has raised £1.2 million to commercialise its plant-based formula.

Bill Ronald, chairman of the Fever-Tree drinks mixer brand and a former Mars executive, is also investing and is becoming chairman of BACX, which is based in Oxford.

Vettel, 35, the four-time Formula One world motor racing champion, said he had been introduced to the supplement two years ago by Antti Kontsas, his long-time performance coach, as they explored ways to improve the driver’s hydration and energy levels during races.

“We were always looking for the next thing to get fitter and in terms of supplementation,” Vettel said. “A big one has always been fuelling during a race because it’s quite complicated in the car, you have all the G-forces. Antti brought this product along. I tried it out at home first, during exercising and training, and it worked. I felt good and energised and shortly afterwards put it in my drinks bottle.” Unlike with other products, Vettel had no stomach pain later.

He said the consumer market for BACX was broad: “It is not like this is the perfect product for Formula One drivers. This is the perfect product for anyone who cares about their wellbeing, who is active. It doesn’t need to be extreme sports.”

BACX was founded in 2020 by Jason Baits-Tomlin, a former Gallaher and Japan Tobacco International executive, who came up with the idea after breaking his hip during an endurance bike race in South Africa in 2016. He developed the formulation as part of studying for an executive MBA at the University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School.

Baits-Tomlin, 49, said that like Vettel he had suffered side-effects from using existing sports drinks and powders and had decided to develop a natural formula using plants.

The brand’s “Performance Fuel” concentrate is sold via its website and soon will be available on Amazon. “We will then transfer the tech into a sports drink that will be launching in the summer,” Baits-Tomlin said. He expects to the product to be launched in Germany, Italy, France and Spain this year and hopes to raise another round of investment from venture capital in 12 months’ time.

Other sports stars to have gone into business have included Chris Froome, the cyclist and four-time Tour de France winner, who has a stake in Hammerhead, an American start-up that makes cycling computers, and Chris Smalling, the former Manchester United defender now playing in Italy, who co-founded ForGood, an investment firm backing environmental start-ups.

BY RICHARD TYLER VIA THE TIMES

#occasionally i venture the business section of the times #and was pleasantly surprised w this today #sebastian vettel #sebfluencer era #also obsessed w the fact that he keeps mentioning the no stomach issues #red bull gives u wings?? more like red bull gives u the shits

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rjzimmerman · 6 months

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Excerpt from this story from DeSmog Blog:

With its unparalleled purchasing power and exacting demands, fast food has long shaped agricultural systems in the United States, Europe, and China. But as major American fast food brands, like KFC, expand into so-called “frontier markets,” taxpayer-funded development banks have made their global expansion possible by underwriting the factory farms that supply them with chicken, a DeSmog investigation has found.

In all, the investigation identified five factory-scale poultry companies in as many countries that have received financial support from the International Finance Corporation (IFC, the private-sector lending arm of the World Bank Group), the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), or both since 2003, and that supply chicken to KFC. A sixth company has benefited from IFC advisory services but has not received financing.

A review of press accounts, financial disclosures, and the companies’ websites shows this support aided these firms’ KFC-linked operations in up to 13 countries in Asia, Africa, and Europe.

In Kazakhstan, both banks helped a Soviet-era poultry factory become a KFC supplier. In 2011, the IFC lent poultry company Ust-Kamenogorsk Poultry (UKPF) invested $2 million in refurbishing housing for chickens, among other projects. In 2016, the EBRD made a $20 million equity investment in the company’s parent, Aitas, to finance the construction of a new facility to raise and process poultry. In 2018, two years after announcing the financing deal, UKPF revealed it had become a supplier to KFC in Kazakhstan. The EBRD sold its stake in the company in 2019.

In South Africa, the IFC helped one KFC supplier bolster its operations across the region. In 2013, the bank loaned Country Bird Holdings $25 million to expand existing operations in South Africa, Botswana, and Zambia. Country Bird supplies KFC in all three countries, as well as Mozambique and Zimbabwe. Three years later, in 2016, Country Bird also became KFC’s sole franchisee in Zambia.

In Jordan, the EBRD’s technical support and a 2015 loan worth up to $21 million helped poultry company Al Jazeera Agricultural Company upgrade its facilities and expand its retail presence. Al Jazeera claims to produce half the country’s restaurant-sold chicken. It includes the local franchisees of KFC and Texas Chicken (known by its original name, Church’s Chicken, in the U.S.) as clients.

With this Global North-financed fast-food expansion comes a host of environmental, social, and health concerns in regions often unprepared to field them.

“It’s so clear that these investments are not consistent with any coherent notion of sustainable development,” Kari Hamerschlag, deputy director for the food and agriculture program at Friends of the Earth US, told DeSmog.

Providing Financial Security for Fast Food Suppliers

Both the IFC and the EBRD are financed primarily by the governments of developed countries for the benefit of developing countries. The IFC was founded in 1956 under the umbrella of the World Bank Group to stimulate developing economies by lending directly to businesses. Founded in 1991, the EBRD was formed to support Eastern Europe’s transition to a market economy. Since then, it has extended its geographic reach to include other regions.

Development banks often finance companies and projects in regions that more risk-averse commercial banks tend to avoid. The idea is to help grow a company’s operations and lower the risk for private sector investors.

Both of these development banks’ investments cover a range of sectors, including manufacturing, education, agribusiness, energy, and tourism. Because large agro-processors, such as poultry companies, can transform bushel upon bushel of local crops into more valuable products, like meat, they make especially attractive clients.

The world’s largest restaurant company, U.S.-based Yum! Brands, owns KFC, and calls the fried chicken powerhouse, which oversees more than 30,000 locations across the globe, a “major growth engine.”

#development banks #fast food #food production #agriculture #farming

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tieflingkisser · 4 months

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Why are America’s elite universities so afraid of this scholar’s paper?

The Columbia Law Review website was temporarily shut down after it published a Palestinian human rights lawyer’s article proposing a new way to understand Palestinian life under Israeli rule

When the Palestinian human rights lawyer Rabea Eghbariah arrived at a Manhattan cafe on Thursday afternoon, he had just learned that his article had been reinstated in the Columbia Law Review. After a weeklong censorship controversy, the prestigious journal’s website was back online, too. The law school journal’s faculty and alumni board had shuttered the website for most of the week rather than publicize Eghbariah’s 105-page article, titled Toward the Nakba as a Legal Concept. In it, he proposed a new framework to explain the complex, fragmented legal regimes governing Palestinians. He wanted to bring the word Nakba – which translates from the Arabic as catastrophe, and is better known for describing the displacement and dispossession of Palestinians in 1948 – to the center of a new legal conversation.

[...]

He had worked on his contribution for almost half a year, finding a home for it at the Columbia Law Review after a shorter web piece he had written for the Harvard Law Review had been blocked at the last minute. He was proud of his scholarship but found it dangerous that the content of his article had become secondary to what he saw as the manufactured controversy of its censorship. “Now, we have to debate about my right to say what I want to say instead of debating about what I actually said,” he told the Guardian. “I felt convinced by my work if it’s generating this repression,” he said. Ultimately, the story led to headlines in major newspapers, and a PDF of the article was posted widely on social media, getting far more readers than is typical for legal scholarship. “People can see through these authoritarian tactics and reject them. The censorship in this case is actually counterproductive.”

[...]

Different legal systems apply to Palestinians living under Israeli rule or in neighboring Arab states or elsewhere. “It’s kind of a system of domination by fragmentation,” he explained. “We become trained in doing these legal gymnastics, and flipping from one framework to the other, without sometimes even reflecting about the nature of this.” To articulate that fragmentation in his legal research, he realized he needed a new terminology. Just as the genocide convention emerged after the Holocaust, and the word apartheid entered everyday speech amid South Africa’s systemized segregation, Eghbariah was finding that analogies to other seemingly comparable situations were insufficient. In the article, he argues that the term Nakba, in use by Palestinians for decades, encapsulates the layered and overlapping legal entanglements of Palestinian life in the absence of self-determination. The Nakba of 1948, he says, is not a historical artefact. His grandparents survived the Nakba and it informs Eghbariah’s research. Like many Palestinian scholars, he views Israel’s war on Gaza as part of a continuing Nakba to destroy Palestinian life on the land Israel seeks to control. “It’s an organic framework that has been developed in Palestine to reference the ramifications and ongoing nature of the Nakba of 1948,” Eghbariah said. “What the genocide moment and discourse did to that is that it actually made me think about it in legal terms.” The article lays out the concept, and as he develops the idea further in his dissertation, he hopes it could have practical ramifications for outstanding disputes over matters like Palestinian property rights and the status of refugees. This is how laws in the US have often developed: scholars put out a new approach in a law review, practitioners try it out, and it can lead to case law or legislative efforts. “Those ideas get refined in the process,” Diala Shamas, an attorney with the Center for Constitutional Rights, told the Guardian. “It’s provocative, and it’s exactly what scholarship should be doing. It’s exactly what Palestinian scholars need to be doing.”

TOWARD NAKBA AS A LEGAL CONCEPT

download the pdf

#palestine #free palestine #news

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lgbtqiamuslimpedia · 1 year

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Al-Fatiha Foundation

Al-fatiha foundation was an international queer muslim focused organization based in USA. Al-faitha advanced the civil,political & legal rights of LGBTQ+ Muslims.It was founded in 1997 by a Pakistani-American muslim gay man Faisal Alam .

Type : Non-Profit

Founder : Faisal Alam

Purpose : Raising awareness on LGBTQ+ muslims,combatting muslim homophobia

Headquarter : USA

Chapters : Al-Fatiha had 15 chapters in USA,UK,Canada,South Africa.Al-Fatiha also had offices in UK,South Africa,Spain,Turkey.

Website : www.al-fatiha.org/

History of Al-Fatiha

Al-fatiha foundation was founded in November of 1997.Initially it started as an internet listserve.The org. had members from 25 countries, & by October 1998 had developed numerous in-person chapters. Al-fatiha foundation first opened its office in New York.Al-fatiha helped to established a largest queer muslim network.Al-fatiha was a member of Global Queer Muslim Network.

Al-fatiha members hosted international retreats & conferences annually for LGBTQQIA+ Muslims.

Al-fatiha's first International Retreat for LGBTQ Muslims was held in October of 1998.

Al-fatiha convened the 1st American LGBTQ+ conference “Creating a Community,” for LGBTQ+ Muslims,LGBTQ+ people from muslim backgrounds.

Al-Fatiha organized conferences which took place in Boston, New York and London in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and focused on issues such as the reconciliation of religion and sexual orientation.

In 2003, Al-faitha & Salaam Canada co-hosted the ''Salaam/Al-Fatiha International LGBTTIQQ Muslim Conference'' in Toronto.

The last conference of Al-fatiha was held in 2005 in Atlanta,GE.

International Queer Activism:

Through the first International Retreat for LGBTQ Muslims of Al-fatiha,the participants officially decided that the muslim community needed an international org. to address their concerns.

Since 1998, the Al-fatiha foundation has expanded significantly, with 15 chapters located in the United States, United Kingdom,South Africa and Canada.Furthermore, Al-faitha foundation opened its offices in UK,Canada,Spain, Turkey,Jerusalem,South Africa.The Al-fatiha-UK chapter is currently known as Imaan. Al-fatiha South Africa chapter is currently known as The Inner Circle/Al-Fitrah Foundation.

The Al-Fatiha Foundation has received extensive media coverage in the United States and around the world. Many LGBT newspapers and publications have written about its activities, featuring the organization and its members in The New York Blade, Southern Voice, The Advocate, Out Magazine and Diva Magazine, among others. Mainstream publications such as The New York Times and The Washington Post also have covered Al-Fatiha’s activities. Featured abroad in Bangladesh,India,South Africa & the Far East, Al-Fatiha has been on radio programs such as BBC and National Public Radio.Al-fatiha's extensive media coverage brought visibility on Queer Muslims globally.

Closure of Al-fatiha:

Al-fatiha foundation was highly criticized by other islamic conservatives & radicalists.In 2001, Al-Muhajiroun, an international organization seeking the establishment of a global Islamic caliphate, issued a fatwa declaring that all members of Al-fatiha foundation were murtadd (apostate).The organization Al-Muhajiroun also demanded death of Al-fatiha's members.

Due to constant death threats and fear of getting shunned by their muslim communities, many members of the Al-fatiha still prefer to be anonymous so as to protect their identity.While Al-Fatiha worked to combat homophobia within Muslim communities, it also felt it faced the challenge of seeking to avoid provoking an Islamophobic reaction among non-Muslims.

After the organization's founder, Faisal Alam, stepped down, subsequent leaders failed to sustain the organization.It began a process of legal dissolution in 2011.

#queer muslim #lgbtq muslim #gay muslim #bi muslim #trans muslim #transmuslim #Homosexuality in Islam #Queering Muslim #lgbt muslims

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