#the UN won’t even call it genocide

[thatweirdtranny]

how did the UN become such a joke

[fading-event-608]

Recently the syndicate of chemists in Lebanon has issued a statement warning people to not go near the blast sites due to alleged use of depleted uranium by Israel. (link - you need to scroll till the statement in Arabic). The screenshot of their statement on twitter was shared here on Tumblr and I’ve seen multiple people expressing scepticism regarding the source. Some people linked an article (link) from anti-Hezbollah 'democratic' newspaper 'L’Orient Today' to ‘fact-check’ - because of course they can’t read Arabic and are discontent with a twitter link.

This is my short summary of the article: they confirm that Israel has used Depleted Uranium (DU) weapons, not only in Lebanon but also in Gaza in June of this year and between October and December of last year. They establish a history of the use of Depleted Uranium, and include examples of its use in Iran in 2003. Israel doesn't directly talk about their use of DU, but neither are they hiding it - because there is no law that forbids the use of these bombs by Israel, there is no treaty regulating the use of DU weapons. There were several resolutions calling for a moratorium on the use of DU weapons in the UN and EU Parliament, the latest of which was in 2022, but these have failed to stop their use (those who have used them also includes both Russia and Ukraine). The article ends with an ominous addition that the Israeli army has been found guilty multiple times of using white phosphorus, which IS prohibited against civilians or civilian property under international law. (You probably can already tell that their defense is that they do not use it against civilians)

There is another article that was published in early September this year - LINK - I highly encourage you to read this one yourself, as it is quite short, especially when considering the amount of information it contains. As this one is more easily accessible, I won’t summarize it - please take it in yourself. I will say, however, that this article’s author, one Dr. Busby, worked with colleagues to conduct several investigations into the use of uranium-based weapons in both Lebanon and Gaza. In 2006, Dr. Busby asked his colleague to collect multiple samples from a crater left by what was suspected to be Depleted Uranium weapons. Samples from an ambulance air filter were also taken. Dr. Busby and company found not only the  presence of depleted uranium but also of Enriched Uranium. Here’s the paper: link.

Enriched Uranium. In 2006.

By 2024, all of the laboratories that Dr. Busby had used to Conduct the investigation have closed their doors either to him or in general. Busby’s letters to the UN, as well as papers detailing evidence of the use of enriched and depleted uranium are either dismissed or ignored, rendering it unlikely that there will ever be the “official” source for these claims that certain people now see fit to demand. And even if the UN did accept those letters and did push for ban of those weapons - would Israel comply? Genocide is ‘illegal’ under international law, and Israel still faces the case in ICJ, but what will that ICJ do if they rule that Israel is guilty? What would UN do if they accept evidence of Israel using uranium-based weapons? Scold them and write a fine?

The aspect of the deployment of nuclear weapons considered the most horrific is - and has always been - the fallout. The idea that all nuclear weapons would leave evidence - again, fallout - behind was born into the cultural consciousness through various cold war era PSAs, as well as other media inspired by these horrors, potential and otherwise. The weapons Israel is using here do not create fallout, however. But do not mistake them as harmless - they are still highly carcinogenic. They cause birth defects, as well as various other illnesses - mysterious illnesses, or at least mysterious until doctors attempting to treat them register that their patients have been exposed to enriched uranium, after which point the mystery goes away. 

In a sense, the horrors advertised by cold war PSAs and films like Doctor Strangelove, the promise of some explosive end brought about by some fool in the US pushing the wrong button - these serve to draw a veil over the continued use of nuclear weapons that have been ongoing since this technology was first harnessed for violence. This is a severe danger to the people of Gaza, and we can’t ignore it simply because we have developed in our minds too much faith in the loosest understandings of nuclear warfare.

I think many of you are familiar with a boiling frog story. The story goes that if you put a frog in a pot of boiling water, it will try to climb out. But if you put it in warm water and very slowly heat it, it will be so accustomed to the temperature it will eventually be boiled alive. It’s not very authentic, of course - in reality the frog will try to jump out as soon as it deems the water temperature uncomfortable. Just like you would try to get out of the bathtub as soon as it gets too hot for you or try to warm yourself up when you spend too much time outside in winter. 

But some of it still rings true. At what point will the UN, or ICJ, or some other white savior wannabe decide that Israel has done too much? What is that ‘too-much’ point that makes them try to protest, and what would that protest be?

As in case with Tumblr, it seems that the boiling point, in fact, has already passed and people grew accustomed to deaths of Palestinians. There are thousands of posts about the situation in Gaza, and the whole Palestine, Lebanon, Yemen, Syria… They get a lot of attention by both zionists and Palestine supporters. There are also hundreds of Gazans that came to Tumblr in hopes to escape the genocide by asking people to cover evacuation and survival costs. Do they get the same attention? Barely. Arguably zionists are more invested in interacting with those posts - they mass report them and harass Palestinians. And even if the fundraiser post gets a lot of attention, it does not necessarily translate into a lot of donations - people just assume that someone else will donate instead of them.

You can’t stop Israel all by yourself. You can’t convince the UN or try to progress the ICJ case by yourself. You can, however, do small acts that will contribute to Palestinian resistance. Go protest, go boycott, and please, please, please, go donate to Palestinian fundraisers.

Falastin’s family are under constant threat in Gaza. She’s been fundraising to save them since late June, and yet they’ve only recently gotten to just over 5% of their total goal - a little short of $10,000 USD. They’re still in Gaza, and still in need of funds for survival. The longer they are trapped there, the more they need - not just for food and water, but also for medicine, shelter, and clothes. Each time they’re displaced, due to inadequate time to pack, they lose more supplies, and their needs increase. Give what you can so that they can survive this, and please share their fundraiser as much as you’re able regardless of whether you can donate, just in case someone you know might be able to help. Not just here on Tumblr, on other social media, talk to your friends, coworkers, family, in group chats and in discord servers.

Please keep in mind conversion rates before donating:

10$ = 103 SEK

25$ = 260 SEK

50$ = 519 SEK

100$ = 1,038 SEK

[el-smacko]

Okay so take a trip with me.

I see the predictable take from the Israeli ambassador on the unceasefire

They suspiciously won’t let the UN investigate the 10/7 attack in which bodies were unrecognizably burned to the point that 10% were misidentified as Israeli and several attack helicopters delivered their entire payload indiscriminately (ie IDF standard operating procedure) But he goes on to say this

Which I found really interesting considering the number of Palestinians abducted by Israel even before October last year. I didn’t know exactly how those numbers compared so I searched very specifically “Palestinians abducted by Israel” and these were the results

The much smaller number of Israelis abducted by Hamas. I had to search the much more neutrally worded “Palestinians detained by Israel” to find

So to recap: Israel’s “hostage crisis” is much less severe than Palestine’s but is the only one allowed to be talked about with sympathy or outrage toward the perpetrators. This is what normalizing inhumanity toward so-called “terrorist” populations and mass detention results in—facilitating genocide.

[whitesinhistory]

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A post shared by Jewish Voice for Peace (@jewishvoiceforpeace)

@jewishvoiceforpeace:

Last night, the Israeli military dropped massive, 2-ton US-made bombs on Al Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in North Gaza, setting on fire over 30 tents with injured civilians inside. Real-time footage showed hospital patients, IVs still in their arms, being burned alive in their beds during the Israeli military’s attack, which killed at least four and wounded over 70.

Volunteer surgeon Mohammad Tahir, treating the victims in Deir el Balah, said many had burns on 60 to 80 percent of their bodies. “They won’t even make it to the ICU. They will die.”

This comes one week after Netanyahu cut off all humanitarian aid to northern Gaza, in an attempt to starve over 400,000 Palestinians sheltering there.

Meanwhile, the US is stoking regional war as the Biden administration announced yesterday it is sending an advanced missile defense system and 100 US troops to Israel, further entrenching its role in supporting the Israeli military’s violence.

The Israeli government, and the US-based organizations that support it, try to equate the modern political ideology of Zionism with the thousands of years-old religion of Judaism. We know the truth: The Israeli military’s actions are in opposition to Jewish values. Zionism was never about Jewish safety; and the Israeli government has used Zionism to justify 76 years of land theft and apartheid. Now, we are seeing in real time how Zionism manifests: in the slaughter of entire Palestinian families and over 75 years of colonization and land theft.

For over a year, the Israeli military has inflicted genocidal violence on Palestinians, and now Palestinians in Gaza report that the violence is at its worst, with those in the north posting their goodbyes, knowing they may be their final words as the Israeli military wipes out Palestinian life. This is a nakba happening in real time.

Despite US laws prohibiting providing weapons during a genocide, and the UN Human Rights Council’s call to halt weapons transfers, the Biden administration continues to arm Israel, ignoring the demands of a majority of Americans. The US government is complicit and must impose an arms embargo now.

[ghostofanonpast]

Finnish spoken word flash mob in central Helsinki, 5.3.2024. 150th day of genocide in Gaza.

plain text in English and Finnish under the cut:

ten thousand times more people

We stand here, 150 people, side by side

In Rafah, Gaza, there are 1.5 million

which is

1.5 million real people, as real, as human

as are standing before you now.

as we 150 standing here, as me and you,

in acute fear of death, in exodus, starving;

they live in tents

in the last place in Gaza

Nothing but fabric between sleeping humans

that was supposed to be safe.

and the bombs of Israel.

We stand here, 150 people side by side

The counselor of the Defence Minister of Israel has said that

150 days of acute mortal danger.

Bombs, bullets, white phosphorus that burns people alive and digs into their bones, famine,

"Israel needs to create a humanitarian crisis in Gaza. Gaza will become a place where no human being can exist."

and water shortages that Israel has caused on purpose.

Mothers boil water so their children think they are preparing food.

Two mothers are killed every hour.

And in North of Gaza

150 days.

when the flour trucks finally arrive, there are four of them

for 400,000 people.

On October 9th the Defence Minister of Israel said

Israeli soldiers open fire on people trying to reach the trucks.

"Gaza won’t return to what it was before. We will eliminate everything."

Meanwhile, the Finnish government is making arms deals with a murderer.

Five months of the most accurately documented genocide in history.

317 million euros is the price Finland is paying to Israel.

The International Court of Justice says: Israel must do all it can to prevent genocide,

Five months, during which five years is the most likely age to die in Gaza.

On the next day, Finnish minister Ville Tavio announces: Finland will cut its support to the UN-backed UNRWA,

including refraining from harming or killing Palestinians.

the aid group that millions of Palestinians rely on to stay alive.

In Rafah, Gaza there are 1.5 million

We stand here, 150 people, side by side

which is

ten thousand times more people

The people are so hungry that they try to make bread

as are standing before you now.

out of sand and hay.

and 11-year-olds become war reporters

There is nothing left of the houses they called home

when their friends are shot in the bread lines

Four out of five of the world's most badly starving humans are in Gaza right now.

or while playing, while flying their kites.

The remaining hospitals are filled with screams,

The right to nutrition is a human right, which Israel is actively denying.

not just of pain but of thirst.

It takes days for the next truck to make it through,

even though right behind the border

there are convoys full of food as far as the eye can reach.

Israel is systematically starving Palestinians to death,

babies, the elderly, the parents, the children driven from their schools.

Israel is turning away humanitarian aid and it knows: malnutrition will kill

or it will affect the health of every child for the rest of their lives.

The Palestinians are sleeping next to their loved ones, side by side,

We stand here, 150 people, side by side.

When you wake up tomorrow, more humans will have been killed.

so that if a bomb falls in the night, they will die together.

Rafahissa, Gazassa, 1,5 miljoonaa

Meitä on tässä, vieri vieressä, 150 ihmistä.

mikä tarkoittaa

1,5 miljoonaa todellista ihmistä, yhtä todellista, yhtä ihmistä,

kymmenen tuhatta kertaa niin monta ihmistä kuin meitä tässä.

kuin me 150 tässä, vieri vieressä, kuin minä, sinä

yötä päivää akuutissa kuolemanvaarassa, paossa, nälänhädässä

he asuvat teltoissa

On vain kangasta nukkuvien ihmisten ja pommien välissä

viimeisessä paikassa Gazassa, missä piti olla turvaa.

joita Israel pudottaa.

Meitä on tässä, vieri vieressä, 150 ihmistä.

150 päivää akuuttia kuolemanvaaraa.

Israelin puolustusministerin neuvonantaja on sanonut: “Israelin on luotava Gazaan humanitaarinen kriisi. Gazasta tulee paikka, jossa yksikään ihminen ei voi olla olemassa.”

Pommit, luodit, valkoinen fosfori, joka polttaa elävältä tunkeutuu luihin asti, nälkä, jano, jotka Israel on tarkoituksellisesti aiheuttanut.

Äidit keittävät vettä, että heidän lapsensa luulisivat heidän laittavan ruokaa.

Kaksi äitiä tapetaan joka tunti.

Ja Pohjois-Gazassa

150 päivää.

Kun jauhorekat vihdoin saapuvat, niitä on neljä 400 000 ihmiselle.

9. lokakuuta Israelin puolustusministeri totesi: “Gaza ei palaa ennalleen. Me tuhoamme

Israelilaiset sotilaat ampuvat rekoille pyrkiviä ihmisiä.

kaiken.”

Samaan aikaan toisaalla, Suomessa solmitaan asekauppoja murhaajan kanssa.

Viisi kuukautta historian tarkimmin dokumentoitua kansanmurhaa.

317 miljoonaa euroa, se on hinta joka maksetaan Israelille.

Korkein kansainvälinen tuomioistuin International Court of Justice sanoo: Israelin on lopetettava kansanmurhaan tähtäävät teot.

Viisi kuukautta, joiden aikana Gazassa viisi vuotta on todennäköisin ikä kuolla.

Seuraavana päivänä toisaalla, Suomessa ministeri Ville Tavio ilmoittaa: Suomi katkaisee tukensa YK:n alaiselle UNRWAlle

siis sille avustusjärjestölle, josta miljoonien palestiinalaisten henki riippuu.

Rafahissa, Gazassa 1,5 miljoonaa

Meitä on tässä, vieri vieressä, 150 ihmistä.

mikä tarkoittaa

Ihmiset ovat niin nälkäisiä, että leipovat hiekasta ja oljista.

kymmenen tuhatta kertaa niin monta ihmistä kuin meitä tässä.

Kotitaloista

ja 11-vuotiaista tulee sotareporttereita,

ei ole enää mitään jäljellä

kun heidän ystäviään ammutaan ruokajonoon

Neljä viidestä maailman nälkäisimmästä ihmisestä on nyt Gazassa.

tai kesken leikin, kun he lennättävät leijaa.

Oikeus ravintoon on ihmisoikeus, jonka toteutumisen Israel tahallaan estää.

Sairaalassa ihmiset eivät huuda pelkästään kivusta vaan myös janosta.

Kestää päiviä ennen seuraavan rekan pääsyä perille,

vaikka aivan rajan takana

niitä seisoo jonossa silmänkantamattomiin.

Järjestelmällisesti Israel näännyttää hengiltä

palestiinalaiset vauvat, vanhukset, vanhemmat, kouluistaan ajetut lapset

Israel käännyttää avun pois ja tietää: aliravitsemus tappaa tai se

vaikuttaa lapsen terveyteen koko loppuelämän.

Palestiinalaiset nukkuvat rakkaidensa kanssa, vieri vieressä,

Meitä on tässä, vieri vieressä, 150 ihmistä.

Kun heräät huomenna aamulla, lisää ihmisiä on tapettu.

jotta jos pommi putoaa yöllä, he kuolevat yhdessä.

[sissa-arrows]

Democrats expect people seeing the devastation of their people, complete erasure of bloodlines, while begging their government for a ceasefire and being ignored, to ignore the pain, suck it up and vote, but have no restraint in saying well “enjoy your deportation and camps” then. If the people of Gaza can face the end of their world with total and complete trust in God, who are we to just vote for the person who provides the bombs to their suffering, instead of saying no, we refuse your false choice & we place our trust in God. Democrats aren’t forgetting Palestinians exist, they are currently cheering on their genocide and demanding the U.S. keep funding it. Way more exciting for them that pretending nothing is happening.

Every single time when elections happen in the West, white people remembers that PoC exist.

They remember that we are registered to vote. And every single time their go to situation is to say “vote for the lesser evil because then it means we will get to pressure them more easily”. And every single time once 99% Hitler is elected instead of 100% Hitler* they don’t respect their part of the deal and actually call us out and hate on us when we have the audacity to protest to pressure them.

They will always blame people of color before blaming white people telling them “your lack of vote/your vote for this candidate who has no chance is the reason why the most evil won”. No the piece of shit won because people voted for him and because you refused to present us with an option who isn’t dehumanizing and killing us.

Regarding American democrats specifically they also have the audacity to tell people of color not living in the US to mind their own business. WE FUCKING WISH WE COULD IGNORE YOUR PIECES OF SHIT POLITICIANS BUT GUESS WHAT THEIR GENOCIDAL BEHAVIOR AFFECT US. When Biden lies and say he saw the 40 beheaded babies people in France quote him to me as a trustworthy source. When the US have the fucking right to veto UN resolution it affects all of us. When the US dehumanize us it makes it easier for the rest of the West to also do it. When we see children, women, men, just Palestinians being murdered in cold blood with the US cheering and those people look like us, have the same names as we do… if FUCKING AFFECT US.

Bitches go ��I don’t agree with what Biden is doing but I will still vote for him regardless” and when you say that’s called unconditional support they deny it. They are not even willing PRETEND to withhold their vote to put pressure on the democrats they think their strongly (not even that strong) worded letters in which they say they will vote for him no matter what will help. They pull shit like “actually politicians are more likely to listen to their voters” YES IF SAID VOTERS TELL THEM THEY WON’T VOTE FOR THEM ANYMORE BECAUSE OF THEIR SUPPORT FOR GENOCIDE.

But then it’s because they never cared. Voting out/keeping out the worst evil has never been about people of color rights it has always been about allowing white people to feel like they did enough. The same people who were protesting under Trump were/are silent when Obama was the one putting children in cages, when Obama was bombing the Middle East, when Biden kept putting babies in cage. It’s never been about us and about what won’t affect white people. Because at the end of the day the lesser of two evil doesn’t affect/barely affect white people while the worst evil does.

*: The 99% Hitler and 100% Hitler is a real quote from Twitter. White guy said “if your choice is between 100% Hitler and Hitler but 1% less evil your moral obligation is to vote for the second one.” Many white people agreed and people of color were like “WTF?! If your choice is between 100% Hitler and 99% Hitler your moral obligation is to fucking revolt and overthrow the government that put you in this situation”

They wonder how the holocaust happened while casually admitting that they have the moral obligation to vote for 99% Hitler.

[qqueenofhades]

Hey, I loved your post about queerness in historical fiction. I was wondering if you could help me find a better way to explain (or know of someone who could) to the white (usually male) fans of Tolkien who are currently losing their minds because in the series for Amazon they have cast Sir Lenny Henry (a black man) as a hobbit. It feels like the exact same argument that was dealt with when Anya Chalotra was cast as Yennefer for The Witcher. It just seems like only white people are screaming that the entire cast must be white in both the case of the Witcher and Middle Earth in order to be "historically accurate to the Dark Ages" when it's all fantasy. I'm a white person and I don't get it. It's really frustrating that the only way to convince them that people of color should be allowed to play characters who aren't evil-doers is to bring up the existence of the potato in both Middle Earth and The Witcher. In this most recent fight, I've been called all kinds of names (one dude keeps saying I'm racist when I haven't brought up race or anything like that) and it's ridiculous because Henry was cast as a Harfoot who were hobbits with dark skin that they claim means Mediterranean not Black.

Ooof. I admire your initiative, I really do, but also: there comes a point where all good-faith efforts are totally futile, because these people don't actually WANT their beliefs challenged, and there won't be anything you can do about it except to exhaust yourself. You can throw all the material or documentary evidence at them that you want, but it won't work, because racism, white superiority, and the assumption of a monolithically white medieval history are a helluva drug. They are eager to split ridiculous hairs like "dark skin means Mediterranean instead of black" because, well, racism, whether or not they want to acknowledge that. Because Mediterranean is at least European, whereas for them, Black is Bad, Inferior, or otherwise Unacceptable. This doesn't even get into the types who want to claim that Ancient Rome (which was rather notably, y'know, Mediterranean and North African) was actually lily-white, because even dark-skinned Southern and Eastern Europeans can't ultimately make the racist cut.

Tolkien himself obviously had problems with his depiction of race and racialized people (witness the Haradrim, "men from the South," being the only people of colour in the story and generalized as an indiscriminate evil force fighting for Sauron against the white/Northern European heroes). That's not to say Tolkien was actively racist (see: the letter he wrote to the Nazi German would-be publishers of The Hobbit, inviting them cordially to get fucked), but it does mean that he was steeped in the usual assumptions and expectations of a white upper-class British man in the 1920s and 1930s, and not least the mindset that the (white) rulers of the (nonwhite) British Empire were superior, morally correct, and the privileged resisters of "evil" political systems. (This isn't even getting into how Germany was admired throughout the long 19th century for its perceived cultural and social superiority, the American eugenics movement directly influenced the Nazis, a lot of people thought that Hitler's only mistake was being too obviously crazy, and America and Britain only actively entered World War II when their territory/perceived global power was infringed upon.)

White people tend to assume that if they personally don't hold discriminatory attitudes (and they usually do, just because that's what society has taught them for almost all of modern history), they can't be racist, and it's a personal insult to call them that. They know that Racism Is Bad, but likewise, it's always someone else's fault, not theirs. See the huge brouhaha over the supposed plan to teach "critical race theory" in American public schools, which is really just acknowledging that centuries of racism and discrimination have created a system that disadvantages people of color at every level. This is absolute heresy for today's right wing (which has become ever more extreme, reactionary, and historically amnesiac) to admit. They can admit historical racism, sometimes, maybe, only in demonstrably "bad" people, but as far as they're concerned, there was no lingering effect whatsoever, and it's "un-American" (read: anti-white supremacist) to insist otherwise. Land of the free! Everyone treated the same! Etc. etc. The continued inferior or disadvantaged life outcomes of people of color is, according to these types, simply a result of them not being motivated/ambitious/smart enough to fix their own broken circumstances. Those centuries of genocide, cultural destruction, use as literal chattel slaves, etc, has nothing to do with it.

If this sounds ridiculous: well, obviously, it is. But as reactionary mindsets have become troublingly normalized and social media has allowed people to spread both passively and actively racist content to unprecedented degrees, it has also leaked into media. The type of white-man-fan you're arguing with won't accept any "historically accurate" argument for the inclusion of non-white people, even as they're staking their own (bad) arguments on that hill. This is because they want to claim the sole privilege to create a nostalgic/imagined/fantasy space that looks just like them. Their underlying belief is that people of color never had any power or consequential role in history, and shouldn't have, so they don't want to see a space, even an explicitly fantastic/non-historical setting (like LOTR, The Witcher, GOT, etc.), where this is the case. Whether or not they want to say it, or even if they're aware of it, they feel that even if they've been unhappily forced to accept a small lessening of their cultural power just because we no longer automatically accept that white men get to run everything, they at least can take comfort in a (white) past. And now, or so they think, the "politically correct" types also want to ruin their racist fantasy comfort zone. They can't even escape from multiculturalism in media, as it too has become steadily more diverse.

Basically: it's racism, Jan. It's many levels of racism, you can't argue those people out of it, and you have to identify and understand that, especially since their favorite diversionary tactic will be the schoolyard maneuver of going, "no, YOU'RE the racist!!!"

(Also: "historically accurate to the Dark Ages" should tell you everything you need to know. These people know absolutely nothing about history, but that won't prevent them from weaponising it in defense of the perceived threat to their cultural and racial domination. Besides, yet again, fantasy universes have no claim to historical accuracy, and if you say that, I assume you just want to feel justified in creating a fictional universe where the only powerful/consequential people are white heterosexual western European-coded men, because you not-so-secretly wish it was still that way in reality.)

[favroitecrime]

This is a joke. The burning baby was a lie btw they ran through AI and surprise it was AI. So were the beheaded babies as said so by israeli soldiers on the scene themselves.

Hamas is merely a reaction to israel’s brutal occupation. If you didn’t want to deal with them, you shouldn’t have created them.

Saying Gazans have no homes is still not a lie cause those were hotels.

Again, those links *do* go to Humanitarian Orgs because they also provide proof of everything they buy and donate with the money. Besides, how do we confirm the money being given to these israeli links is funding healthcare and not the military?

israel has one of the best militaries in the world please let’s not pretend they’re weaker than Hamas.

The money from the UN, EU, & “Iran” is a joke because you just proved that Palestine receives nothing. Showing me Hamas as billionaires doesn’t negate the fact that Palestine still receives nothing.

I’ve watched the UN stand back and say nothing as this entire week Gaza has been massacred. Btw, these are some of the resolutions against israel.

They said don’t kill people. How horrible of them.

I don’t think “tunnels are under houses” is the defense you think it is for bombing people and displacing them. Nor bombing a school. A university. A mosque. A church. A synagogue. A refugee camp. A hospital. An ambulance. A journalist. But like okay.

israelis have been mandated to serve in the IOF once they turn 18 for years and I’ve never seen them complain about the Palestinians they kill, beat, or falsely imprison. And considering they keep electing governments who repeatedly have expressed their desire to annihilate Gaza, I think I know what they’re feeling. Also the telegram chat with them laughing about the martyred babies. Also them chanting to flatten Gaza. Also them calling for another nakba (while denying the first existed). Also them chanting ‘Death to Arabs’. Like idk I think I get it.

There are 4. israel bombed the one in Egypt. Saying “they should’ve left if they didn’t want to die” isn’t the dunk you think it is lol. Why do they have to leave for you to not kill them? And why should they leave when they know they won’t be allowed to return?

No, I stand by it they’re dropping bombs for funsies. The government said they’re going for a genocide. Some IOF soldiers admitted to not caring about precision. Bombing them *as* they were leaving also seems like dropping bombs for funsies.

Also, lol, no we left this bullshit deflection years ago. I said zionists. I said israelis. You do not get to out words in my mouth and say I said Jewish people.

I provided instagram accounts with actual footage from the people of Palestine and Gaza :). Those accounts do, in fact, have the video I reference where a settler with a gun walks right up to a Palestinian group and shoots one right in the stomach. I thought nothing justified murder?🤔 Lol, no, the settlers have been armed since forever and even then. Hamas isn’t outside Gaza. Who are you arming the settlers for? Palestinians not ruled by Gaza? Mmkay.

4 Palestinians in the West Bank were killed the day prior to the attack. Nearly 300 the whole year. You tear gassed and attacked Muslims in Masjid Al-Aqsa over some bs excuse. You shot a fucking two year old. Let’s not.

“Appalling how your lies run for so long” take a hike babe. People are dying as we speak I’m not debating the value of their lives with a freak who thinks they deserve to die because *checks notes* they didn’t leave their home and everything they’ve ever known.

And again the tag says “mine”. Like no babe this is mine. Stealing land and tumblr posts smh 🙄.

For the last time :)

It is not a neutral “conflict”. Palestinians don’t have:

an army

police officers littered around the streets fighting off attacking settlers

$3.8B funding from the US

bomb shelters

homes (hello they’re being evicted and bombed?)

immediate access to medical care (settlers are blocking ambulances and throwing grenades)

citizen acknowledgement from the government that supposedly wants to help them

means of defending themselves

the right to properly mourn (a funeral was recently attacked by settlers)

justice

Anyone who chooses to claim neutrality is choosing to claim the side of genocide. Neutral = complicit. The number of Palestinian deaths remains staggering and I promise, the occupying state’s numbers are nothing compared to it. Thousands more deaths and fatalities have occurred to the Palestinian people. When the death toll defers by roughly 9,000, I think it’s safe to say that the situation isn’t neutral.*

I repeat, if you are neutral, you side with genocide.

*x

As a bonus:

[bedbellyandbeyond]

Just A Little Chat

(Story Post)

Nathan could only practice for about an hour before he was completely spent. It took Dax roughly the same amount of time to run all the way around the lake, so he jogged up to where Nathan and Kent were sitting in the grass taking a break. “Ah, un petit repose…” Dax panted as he stopped by them. “How'd it go? I heard some howling.” “It's going alright,” Nathan said as he offered Dax his water bottle. “I brought out the wolf a few times, but I can't hold it very long.” “Thank you… That's good. I'm glad this is actually helping,” Dax said before he took a long drink of water. Kent didn't acknowledge Dax and just started picking at the grass.

“How was your jog?” Nathan asked. “Oh, it was alright,” Dax said. “But it's awfully hot out, isn't it? I didn't expect that at all…” Kent furrowed his brow. “It's not hot at all. It's like sixty eight degrees.” “I'm sorry, I don't speak American,” Dax said. “Probably about twenty degrees Celsius,” Nathan said. “And there’s a bit of a breeze.” “Huh, well I really worked up a sweat then,” Dax said, pulling his tank top in and out to cool himself. “I'm overheating…” “Maybe take a dip in the lake,” Nathan suggested. “No, I think I'm too exhausted,” Dax said. “I'm really out of shape… I'd probably drown.” “Go lie down,” Kent said. “I'm not taking you to no hospital if you faint.” “Of course not…” Dax patted Nathan's shoulder and then walked to the house. “Let's see if I can make it up the ladder…” “Be careful, please!” Nathan requested. “Maybe just lie down on the couch!” “Yeah, maybe. See you.” Nathan sighed as Dax went inside. “I hope he's okay,” he said. “Don't worry about that dildo, he's fine,” Kent said. “Runnin's good ‘round here. Good for the heart and lungs. He just needs to train up.” “So, he's gone from ‘limp dick' to ‘dildo' in your vocabulary,” Nathan commented. “How does that work?” Kent just ignored that. “Both of you are like twigs. Maybe cause all he feeds you is twigs. You need to eat more red meats.” “I get plenty, thanks. Dax is very respectful of my dietary needs,” Nathan said. “Transformations just really eat up a lot of energy. And I've never really been the bulky type anyway.” “Shame. Real men have muscles,” Kent said. Nathan decided to tease him. “Is that your taste in men, then?” “Shut up, I'm not like you.” Kent grit his teeth. “And it's not like it even matters. I’m gonna be here alone no matter what, so I can’t even think about things like that.” Nathan sighed. “You're not alone, Kent. The ‘black suits' you keep chasing off, you know they're just trying to help you. You should be taking this as a new beginning, not further entrapment. You're a free man. If you want to build relationships with people, now's the time.” The bear man shook his head. “I ain't been around people in years. You saw, I don't know all the fancy new gadgets, I don't get all this new internet stuff.” He sighed. “I'm just an animal and I made peace with that fact over a decade ago. I have to live my life accordingly.” Nathan looked at him. “But you want to see your kids, right? You want to be a part of their life?” “Yeah… I do,” Kent said. “But now I'm thinking you might be right… They're better off without me.” Nathan shook his head. “…That’s not true. I said those things in anger, but it's not true… They should meet you. They ought to know you.” Kent looked out to the lake. “This just ain't the way it was supposed to go. This weren't what I saw in my head.” Nathan looked at him. “How was it supposed to go?” Kent pursed his lips. “I figured I'd see you again. And I'd see my kids. And I'd want to raise ‘em, ya know? And I suppose since you gave birth to ‘em, we'd both raise ‘em. Maybe we could all be here. Raisin' ‘em. ‘Cause you and me, we're both animals. So are the kids. It'd be safer out here for us.” Nathan blinked processing all this. “…You expected me to bring the kids up here and move in with you?” “Don't say it like that, you’re makin’ it sound gay,” Kent said. “It is gay.” “It is not. You know what I mean.” “Two men raising the children they made together is pretty fucking gay, Kent.” “Shut up, I'm not gay!” Kent growled. “I like women…” Nathan tilted his head. “But you want to raise kids with me?” Kent let out a deep sigh. “…You ain't so bad either. If I can't pick a woman.” Nathan couldn't help the blush that spread across his face. “…That's probably the nicest thing you've ever said to me. Even though it was still pretty insulting.” “Shut up, it's not like any of that can happen anyway,” Kent grumbled. “I reckon you'd never move out here.” “Not a chance.” “And you’ve got that veggie boy now, so…” “His name is Dax. You can use his name; I know you have it in you.” “So, that's that then. There's nothing I can do,” Kent said starting to get up. Nathan grabbed his arm though and and used it to pull himself to his feet, too. As soon as they'd both straightened up, he leaned in towards Kent and kissed him. The bear man was shocked, but he didn't pull away. Instead, after a few seconds, Nathan felt his hand creep up to his waist. The sudden touch broke the wolf man out of the moment, and he pulled away, taking the hand off of him. “You know, I should go check on ‘veggie boy’.” Kent was stunned, staring at Nathan with wide eyes and a furious blush across his face. Nathan started to walk back to the cottage, but Kent managed to shake his surprise and grabbed Nathan’s arm. “Now, you wait just a minute! You can’t just do that and walk away like it was nothin’!” Nathan turned around. “It was nothing. It was just a little gift to maybe help you figure out some stuff. As  you said, I have Dax.” Kent just grimaced and let go of his arm. “I won’t help you no more until I see my kids.” “Fine.” Nathan went back inside.

When Nathan got in, he found Dax passed out on the couch with the ceiling fan on. It really wasn’t that hot out so Nathan went over and put his hand on his partner’s forehead. “You’re burning up…” Nathan said a little worried. He started to shake his partner’s shoulder. “Dax. Wake up…” Dax groggily opened his eyes. “Hm… Yeah? …Nathan?” “Are you okay?” Nathan asked. “It feels like you’re running a fever.” “I feel okay…” Dax exhaled. “Just hot.” “I think you should see a doctor,” Nathan said. “No, it’s not that bad… Just need to cool down.” Nathan sighed and went to get him a glass of cold water and a cool wet towel for his head. “Come on, drink this.” Dax sat up a bit so he could sip down the water. Once he was done, he put the glass down on the coffee table. “That's actually been really good water… He said spring fed, right?” “Yeah.” Nathan put the towel on Dax's head. “I was hoping you and I could go back into town today but if you're not feeling well, I don't want to push you. That, or we go into town to a doctor.” “I think I'm fine,” Dax said taking Nathan's hand. “I don't feel nauseous or anything like that. No sore throat.” Nathan nodded. “Alright, you rest for an hour and if you don't cool down, I'm calling Hanover to come and take us to a clinic.” “Alright.” Dax smiled and squeezed Nathan's hand. “Did you have a good practice though? I stopped hearing howling and stuff when I got back.” “Yeah, I just had a chance to talk to Kent about some stuff…” Nathan said. “Stuff like what?” Dax asked. Nathan frowned. “I'm still trying to process it, and I do want to talk to you about it later. But you need to rest first. I don't know what you did on that run to get you like this, but I'm worried.” “It really could just be a symptom of pushing myself too much on the run,” Dax suggested. “I really haven't worked out properly since last year, and I definitely haven't had an hour long run in nature for a while.” “You used to?” Nathan asked. “Oh, yes. Back home, I ran trails all the time,” Dax said. “It helped me think.” “Well, maybe you're right, but still…” Nathan took out his phone. “I'm going to call to be picked up anyway because either way, we’re going into town.” “So, no more training?” Dax asked. “No, Kent refuses until I bring the kids…” Nathan said. “Shame.” “If you are feeling well, we can maybe do a little celebrating together,” Nathan said. “Celebration?” “Yeah, it’s Canada Day after all.” “Oh…” Dax snickered. “Alright, time to celebrate the genocide of my people.” Nathan paused. “Oh. Uh, shit… Dax, I—” “Relax, I was only teasing you,” Dax chuckled. “You scared me…” “I mean, it did happen,” Dax said. “But we can celebrate a future of transparency, reflection, reparation and growth together and across the country. After all, we’re building bridges this weekend.” Nathan smiled and nodded. “Yeah, I like that... Anyway, do you understand when I say rest, I mean that I want you to sleep?” Nathan asked. “You're the one who woke me up…” Nathan kissed his nose. “Finish your nap, Dax.” “Well, alright… If you insist.”

[staysaneathome]

I Shouldn’t Cry, But I Do

Back in London, there are two avatars huddled together beneath the earth. Sobbing and being sobbed upon. Holding and being held.

Only one of the two is an Avatar of the Buried.

Her partner is (in remission? Recovering?) from xir alleigance to another power, so all she can think to do is Bury them with her, below the protective layers of concrete and earth, to allow them this one sanctuary to express the emotions choking xem past the point of legibility.

The Lonely cannot prey on xem here, after all.

Petra Ito hugs her partner tight, relishing in the closeness of xir embrace. She does not understand totally why xey weep, but she can at least provide this. She had no lost love for her blood relatives, but she knows intellectually that she is the exception, not the norm.

Even so, she can sympathize with certain aspects of her love’s loss.

She presses another kiss to Frey’s forehead. “I know, love, I know. I’ll sink it into the ground if you want.”

Xey choke off into a sob again, pushing closer to Petra. She clutches him tight, his usually pristine clothing and hair entangled with countless granules of dirt. “You can’t. It’s, it’s the Magnus Institute. There’s so much money poured into that place—!”

Xey choke off into a sob again, pushing closer to Petra. She clutches them tighter, scowls as she fends off the hungry tendrils of her patron. No. Not for You. Not This One.

“I could. If you really wanted me to.” She murmurs, drawing her nails up and down xir spine.

Frey gasps for breath, brows furrowing down. “Un-uncle Peter poured so much of himself into that place, an-and for what?! S-some recalcitrant, uptight arsewipe, who, who’d never even loved him the same way he loved them, some random PA he’d thought would be an, an asset to the Forsaken, the Archivist—!”

Xey can’t help the sob bubbling up again. Petra presses another dirt-smeared kiss to xir brow, painting their partner liberally with evidence of her affection. Xey aren’t alone now, no matter how much xir grief tries to isolate them. “I know, love. He was a brave man, trying to handle those forces like that. Make things safer for the rest of us.”

Frey buries xir face in Petra’s front, even now still being gentle due to the sensitivity there in the midst of all xir suffering. The sweetness of the gesture makes her heart swell in ways that she hadn’t thought possible outside of fiction. If she hadn’t met xem that night…

Thoughts of the circumstances surrounding their first meeting drew her up short. “We need to warn them.” She murmurs quietly, almost to herself.

In the dark of the grotto, it is hard to see the shine of her partner’s wide, dark eyes as xey blink up at her. “Huh?”

“I need to warn them.” She repeats. “You know, Des, and…what is it, we’re calling it now?”

Frey tilted xir head to the side in contemplation. “…Outis?” Xey ventured.

Petra huffs a laugh and bestows another kiss. “No, that’s just what you liked the most, because you’re a language nerd. It was Nanashi, wasn’t it?”

Frey snorts in return and leans up to meet her lips for the first time since she’d sequestered them both down here after hearing the news. “Now who’s the language nerd? It’s not Benjamin, I know that much.”

“Well, of course it’s not Benjamin.” Petra jokes. “Well, you get who I mean, right? The Stranger kid.”

“Like I know anyone else who Des renames so often, and who won’t pick one and stick to it.”

Petra sighs, gently toying with a few curls at the edges of her partner’s ponytail. “I’ll need to tell them to stay out of London for a while, ‘til everything dies down and this Archivist hopefully goes the way of Gertrude Robinson.”

Those last two words are spat like a particularly foul curse.

Frey tightens xir grip and nuzzles into Petra’s neck. She accepts the comfort gladly. “Yeah. The farther those two are away from that murderer, the better. I don’t know what I’d do if he got near either of them. Probably die, given my luck”

Petra makes a small noise of protest. “I’d protect you. But yeah, best to stay away for now. Particularly Stranger-kid, or whatever the hell it‘s called now. You know he was the one who blew the Circus to smithereens? If that man got wind that even one had escaped his genocide…”

Frey shivers. “Ugh. Please don’t.”

“Sorry love.” Petra busses an apology kiss between xir eyebrows. “But. Yeah. Des’ mum and family are smart, so he should be okay, and I haven’t seen it around since the whole Web Leitner issue, but. I should warn them. Tell them to run away from anyone calling themselves the Archivist at least. I don’t want them following him home by accident.”

Frey huffs a short, almost bitter laugh. “It’s kind of like they’re our kids, isn’t it? Just one weird, messed up avatar family.”

Petra has to bite her lip to control the swarm of (thankfully metaphorical) butterflies in her stomach at that image, swarming like Des’ family always do. “Can’t think of anyone I’d wanna parent with more than you.”

There’s silence in the small grotto of earth under the parking lot for some time, broken only by the sounds of shifting clothing as the two try to hug even closer.

“…Great Uncle Nathanial wants me to go meet with Director Bouchard. To make The Family’s grievances known.” Frey muttered at last. “Would—would you come with me? J-just so…”

Petra swallows down her instinctive and visceral refusal. She’s never wanted to become another sob story trapped in the walls of the Eye’s temple, stripped of everything that made her her and left to rot, but if the alternative is consigning poor, sweet Frey to that hell…

“Of course I will.” She murmurs back. “You never even had to ask.”

[arionaleilani]

it’s the way that it would take literally five minutes of googling to figure out how wrong you are… but since you won’t do it, i will! this is for u @thebrightestwitchofherage (:

maybe this is out of order but let’s be clear: this is not israel defending itself. israel has full control over what comes in and out of gaza. israel has had an illegal occupation over palestine since 1948. the fact that israel has a place at the UN and can participate in votes while palestine doesn’t should tell you enough. plus what the hell are they defending themselves from? hamas? do you seriously think hamas is anywhere near as big and powerful as the western world funded ios?

here’s a few other things too:

israel used behind the scenes movie footage to try and claim that palestine is faking their videos of dead and injured children.

here’s a family member of a holocaust survivor exposing zionist hypocrisy

here’s another being arrested for peacefully protesting the palestinian genocide and demanding a ceasefire

speaking of holocaust survivors, israel treats them like shit and has for a very long time

here’s a family member of holocaust survivors getting arrested while calling israel “nazi israel” because israel is literally a neo-nazi state

oh look! another israeli jewish man and child of holocaust survivors stating that the british government is supporting genocide by supporting israel

here’s an 87 year old holocaust survivor who has been at the white house daily protesting for peace in gaza

here’s a lie from the iof being debunked

here’s another

for your own sake i’ll stop there, but feel free to try and offer me some more talking points, i’ll be more than happy to provide more actual sources and links, especially since the posts you made have none (:

also, one last thing:

hamas is a byproduct of israel’s cruelty. when a product of your cruelty decides to stand up and fight back after 75 years of illegal occupation and oppression, even after trying to peacefully protest for over a year and 223 palestinians were killed in response, maybe reassess your own cruelty rather than blame the ones given no choice but to fight back.

‘dont tag byler if its not byler’ ‘dont tag noah if its anti noah’ ‘if its not stranger things dont tag stranger things’ oh my god?? literally shut the fuck up.

i know that’s usually like a rule in fandom spaces, i’ve been in fandom spaces since i was 12, trust me i’m aware, but that shit applies to like. stupid ship discourse. “i don’t like this ship because it doesn’t fit with MY favorite ship so i’m going to complain about it in the tag for the ship i don’t like” <- that’s shitty

but this isn’t fucking fandom discourse. this is literally supporting the slaughter of an entire people. this is noah schnapp in a video with stickers saying zionism is sexy. this is shawn levy supporting israel and illegal occupation. this is SHOULD BE IN THE TAGS.

why? because these people should not be getting support! this show should not be getting support!

noah schnapp wants palestinians to die. let’s be very clear about that. let me say it again:

noah schnapp wants palestinians to die.

i hope st5 fails. i hope noah schnapp loses his job. i hope shawn levy never knows peace. i hope every single person on that show who supports israel never goes a day without being haunted by the thousands of dead kids they supported the slaughter of.

i hope the sets for stranger things burn down. i hope noah schnapp can never go a day without being called a piece of shit. a supporter of genocide. a racist.

because that is exactly what he is.

i hope these people’s names are forever tied to these beliefs. i hope stranger things goes down in history as that one show that those zionists were on. i hope noah schnapp can never google his name without being confronted with how much of a monster he is.

“but he’s young! he’s jewish! he’s scared!”

he’s NINETEEN with FULL ACCESS TO THE INTERNET and ACTIVELY ATTENDING COLLEGE.

he isn’t posting about JUDAISM he is LITERALLY PASSING OUT STICKERS SAYING ZIONISM IS SEXY

and he sure as FUCK does NOT seem scared in ANY of the posts he has made since sharing that shitty multi page statement on his instagram that HE DIDN’T EVEN WRITE!! HIS FUCKING FELLOW ZIONIST PIECE OF SHIT FRIEND WROTE IT AND HE POSTED IT!! if HE was scared maybe he’d use his own words to say so, but nope!! he’s just a massive fucking cunt scumbag just like every other zionist and every other person who is doing anything other than condemning the actions of israel and the people who support it

rot in hell, stranger things. and take noah with you.

[9thbutterfly]

I wanna know about all your projects! they sound so interesting! but if I have to chose tell me more about goblins please? or nettle patch?

Goblins:

One of my many Kivailo world stories - how do I quickly explain the Kivailo world? Teenage/early twenties me grappling with the question of “could something like the nazis happen today?” and creating the most fucked-up country I could come up with. (And later mostly losing my interest in it because I realised the real world is at least that fucked up, if not more.)

I think plot-wise Goblins is the most interesting of the Kivailo world stories - it has “overcoming a lot of internalised homophobia and falling in love with another woman” and “rapist going from being an utter asshole to somewhat decent and saving some people’s lives (but still being a rapist because you can’t make that un-happen)” and “cute little girl and kindly old grandpa hide a person from genocidal government”.

Unfortunately it is an unedited and unfinished NaNoWriMo story... let me see if I can find a good bit that isn’t a complete mess of typos and notes to myself...

The little girl, standing in the hallway with her arms wrapped around the old man’s middle, was crying now. “But the goblin!” she sobbed into the man’s stomach. “They’ll see the goblin.”

Jonathan had already opened the door, and Julius followed him through before he had fully processed what the girl had said. But as soon as he had stepped onto the stairs leading to the attic, he understood.

He didn’t need to see – he knew as soon as he smelt it. The faint stench of urine and sweat, the smell of a human confined in a small room. Without thinking, he pulled the door shut and grabbed Jonathan’s jacket to spin him around and pin him against the wall. “You’ll keep quiet.” He whispered. “You won’t breathe a word, to anyone, or I’ll – I’ll tell everyone you’re gay.”

He was grasping at straws, voicing the one threat that popped into his mind, the one that might scare someone even if it had no basis in fact. Jonathan had full five months of military service left, and to spend these five months with everyone believing him to be gay would be a nightmare, perhaps even worse than what Julius had lived through when Daniel’s existence had become known.

But it seemed his random threat had hit home. In the dim light of the bare light bulb, Jonathan gasped, “No, please -! How did you -?” He snapped his mouth shut and bit his lip as if he had just realized that he’d all but confirmed Julius had been right. Julius himself nearly let go of Jonathan’s collar and stepped back, so shocked by the discovery that he almost forgot what was at stake. But the wave of sudden disgust, the disturbing idea that Jonathan might think he’d grabbed him to kiss him, still didn’t wash away the knowledge of what they would find at the top of the stairs – what the little girl had been crying about.

“Never you mind,” he grated. “You just keep your bloody mouth shut. And your hands and eyes off me, just so that’s clear.” He loosened his grip for a moment, then tightened it again. “Is that clear?”

Jonathan nodded, his eyes wide, his mouth working silently.

“You’ll stay quiet?” Jonathan nodded again, and Julius let go  of him and continued up the stairs.

The attic was filled with a jumble of old furniture and cardboard boxes. A dusty wardrobe and a stack of boxes formed a wall next to the stairwell, with just a tiny bit of space to crawl to the other side. Julius got down on hands and knees to slip through. There was a mattress there, with a tangled nest of blankets and quilts, a covered bucket in the corner, an all too familiar sight for him, and balls and bits of string littering the floor. In a swift movement, he pulled the wardrobe door open.

The Kivailo cowered inside, shrinking back into the corner at the sight of Julius. At first glance, he seemed to be a middle-aged man, but as Julius put a finger to his lips, signalling for quiet, he thought he was probably not all that old, thirty at most. The Kivailo stared at him uncomprehendingly until Julius shut the door.

“Well?” he called to Jonathan. “Are you going to come, or what?” The other soldier quickly hurried up the stairs.

“The girl’s play room, I’d say,” he commented as Jonathan stuck his head through the gap in the boxes. He made a show of opening the wardrobe again and peering inside, catching another glimpse of the Kivailo’s terrified face, then shrugged, closed the wardrobe and poking a couple of boxes.

“It smells…” Jonathan started, but Julius wasn’t going to let him finish. “She probably left some snacks up here until they rotted. You know how children are. Come on, let’s check the other side.”

“Julius,” Jonathan said quietly as they poked around between the odd pieces of furniture on the other side of the stairwell, a crib, a rocking chair, some dilapidated cabinets, with a sewing machine and a typewriter standing on top. “There’s got to be…”

“I said, not a word,” Julius cut across him. “And I mean it.”

Jonathan’s eyes went wide, as if he just now understood what Julius had meant. “You’re…”

“Not a word,” was all Julius said, and he turned and clattered down the stairs, waiting for Jonathan to follow before he opened the door.

They had only just closed the door again when Officer Needs-A-Name came up from the cellar.

“Nothing to report, sir,” Julius said. “Just junk and a play space for the girl.” He jerked his head at the child and her stony-faced grandfather.

“I got nothing, either. On we go, then.”

He was as bored with these endless raids as the soldiers were, Julius suddenly understood. And he didn’t really expect to find anyone. He shot Jonathan another warning look as he followed the officer, then, when the older man was out the door, dropped to his knees next to the girl, just for a moment, just to whisper, “Don’t worry about the goblin. I used to have one in my house as well.” Before she or the old man had time to reply anything, he rose and followed the others out of the house.

Nettle Patch’s full title was “Out of the Nettle Patch into the Brambles” (no connection to The Bramble Prince, though), and it was supposed to be a fantasy story in which a bunch of farmers and craftspeople (just normal people, who do not turn out to be secretly royalty) save the world from some sort of supernatural threat... except I never really figured out what the threat was supposed to be, so it didn’t really go anywhere. So the whole thing is kind of a mess consisting of lots of backtracking and notes to myself and typos (again, unedited NaNoWriMo) but I liked the bit where a very shy teenager who is totally not a self-insert gets volunteered for the Quest.

His mother sat down beside him, and poked him with a sharp elbow. “Sit properly,” she reminded him sharply but quietly, and he slowly unfolded himself from his preferred posture, with knees pulled up to his chest and arms wrapped around them, and crossed his legs like everyone else was doing.

“Well, Denneb,” his mother said. “These fine folks here are heading off across the mountains to find some lady that stole something from the temple, and they are going to need some help – they don’t speak the language, of course, and they also don’t know much about finding food in the forest, or about sleeping out of doors, like you do, so I thought it would be lovely if you went with them to help them. And it would be good for you to see a bit of the world, too – you can’t spend all of your life up here with your grandfather. I mean, I would prefer it if you just came down to visit us all a bit more often, and went to the village like everyone else, instead of sending you away, but if that’s what it takes to get you to come out of your hood a bit, then so be it. And how will you ever find someone to marry, if you always hide up here? You can’t marry a bear or a tree or something. And you’re really of an age to start looking for a nice girl, or a nice boy I suppose, Mother knows this family produces enough children that there’d be a few for you and a husband to raise, if you’d rather have one of those than a wife. But a wife would be lovely, of course, so you could have babies of your own.”

“Wait, what is this? Why does Denneb get to go over the mountains and look for a wife?” Nonnol suddenly appeared around the corner of the house again, skewers with marmot meat in her hands. “I want to go over the mountains to look for a wife.”

[thedeadflag]

After watching S5E04 of the Expanse, I 100% get that Marco Inaros is the big villain of the season. I absolutely get that.

Still, like, credit where credit’s due, the catastrophes on Earth and Mars must be hung on the historical leaderships of both Earth and Mars. They eliminated all other options Belters had of escaping their indentured servitude, slavery, and oppression. Like, once Fred/Dawes/Drummer/Ashford’s attempts to make their “seat at the table” bring about improvements, only for that to backfire and lead to further worsened conditions for Belters, all that was left was violent uprising. And Earth certainly didn’t think the belt capable of that, and seemed 100% fine with that, so this hangs on them, Marco was just the messenger of that wakeup call.  That was the bed that Earth and Mars’ leadership made, and unfortunately their people have to lay in it.

Like, what else was left? Certainly no peaceful options, since those only led to worse conditions and attempts by the UN/Mars to sabotage any possible forward progress, same as they’ve always done. For a more realistic ideal scenario, I think precision attacks to eliminate the Bush naval shipyards and other means of making an offensive (and/or taking out defensive countermeasures like the watchtowers/spotters) would have been a better play than indiscriminate asteroid attacks on Dakar, Scranton, and somewhere else in southeast Asia, because civilians have never really played a part in this, and they don’t deserve that death and suffering, they have hard enough lives as is with a tyrannical oppressive government of their own. 

But maybe that ideal scenario just was never a possibility. When your people are enslaved and having genocide committed against them, it’s hard to universally rebuke someone for doing the wrong thing for the right reasons, especially when all the “right things” have been tried and failed, even if the guy is self-serving and largely doing it to feed his ego. 

So yeah, hate Marco, he just killed millions of people, that’s justified. He’s a horrible person, and he deserved that hate. But sadly, he was also made necessary by Earth and Mars, and so this is entirely on Earth and Mars’ leadership, this is something they should have to answer for, but they almost certainly won’t, and it’ll be interesting to see how things progress from here on out.

Like, even Marco’s speech at the end, even if we know it’s bullshit (and it almost certainly is given his massive ego, but the show has deviated from the books in some ways, so who knows), taken at face value it’s largely a very very fair plan of action. Nothing he’s said that wasn’t the policy of the UN and Mars before, with the benefit that Earth/Mars keep sovereignty within their planets. Maybe not a feasible plan long-term, really, but the majority of what was described is fair as heck given everything.

All this blood and suffering just because the UN and Mars wouldn’t get their boots off of the throat of Belters. No doubt they’ll rally and redouble their shit towards the belt, instead of taking the L and re-evaluating their relationship with belters. It’ll only get worse before it gets better, and too many more people will need to die, but what Marco and co did changed things. The UN and Mars won’t be able to go back to casually putting their foot on the throat of Belters without remembering what it cost them the last time around. Maybe that painful memory along with some time and healing ends up letting things come back around to winning them the incremental gains Dawes/Johnson/Drummer/Ashford were aiming for in the end, who knows?

Either way, I’m happy with this season so far, minus a few minor quibbles with the Avasarala family dynamic and some pacing issues.

[angrybell]

Simply because people die in war does not make the people/state that killed them guilty of war crimes.

Hamas started a war. They started it by deliberately targeting civilians. Israel responded by going after Hamas and trying to save the hostages taken by Hamas from Israel into Gaza.

Hamas, because they are cowards, chose to established their fight facilities in the midst of non-combatants. Why? Because they knew it would make Israel hesitate to go after them.

So Israel has done what it can to minimize casualties to non-combatants. It has dropped leaflets. It has called and texted every phone in a potential target area, talking with the people asking them to leave.

Hamas has done everything it can to maximize casualties. They have ordered people not to leave. They have blocked people from leaving. They have shot people trying to escape through humanitarian corridors.

Why?

Because they know people like you will blame Israel for all the deaths. They know that weak minded Western liberals are looming for an excuse to castigate the Jewish nation because it won’t kowtow to intersectional dogma and commit suicide by allowing Hamas to escape to launch another attack at some time in the future.

Something that they have promised to do until they have completed their goal of genocide against the Jewish people both in Israel, in particular, and in the world at large.

Hamas knows that no matter what atrocity they commit, you simpering cowards in the West will forgive them. Why? Because dead Jews have been determined by people like you to not count. Dead Jews are viewed as price of resistance because those Jews had the audacity to not be stateless victims liek their ancestors had been.

Hamas knows that as long as the dominant progressive orthodoxy reigns, they can commit any crime and it will be supported by Western progressives. Not only will it be supported, but it will be emulated and celebrated.

And they will continue to sacrifice their people like Ba’al cultists. Because they know that I’m doing so, you will continue to support them.

In effect, @biokitty, it is because of your support for “Palestine” that more “Palestinians” will die. Because Hamas and Fatah and PIJ will continue to arrange situations where their people will die.

A fundamental responsibility of any government is the protection of its citizens. A government that cannot protect its citizens loses its legitimacy. There is no higher obligation.

Israel strives to meet this obligation. It has spent millions of dollars building shelters for its people. It has spent billions of dollars developing defense systems that will protect their people from rocket, mortar, nuclear missile attacks.

Before you say “but why didn’t it spend billions for peace”, let me remind you that the Arabs illegally occupying Gaza, Judea, and Samaria,have no interest in peace. Hamas, until cynically altered its governing document after 10/7/23, for example specifically stated it would never enter into negotiated settlement but would continue their fight until a Muslim Arab dominated state replaced Israel. Fatah took more than a decade to even amend their charter and their membership actually contends that they didn’t do it in what passes legally for that terrorist organization.

Then I’ll remind you that Israel offered peace

2008 Olmert Peace plan - rejected

1999 Batak Peace Plan - rejected

1974 to 1987 Israel wanted to negotiate peace - rejected

1968 - 1973 Israel offered to land for peace - Egypt and Syria attacked

1968 Allon plan - rejected

1949 Israel sought a peace treaty with its Arab neighbors to end the War of Independence, they refused.

And before Israel became a state, the Arabs were offered peace plans including

1947 UN Partition Plan - rejected by Arabs, accepted by Jewish Yishuv

1938 Woodhead Plan - rejected by Arabs, accepted with conditions by Jewish Yishuv

1937 Peel Commission partition - rejected by Arabs, accepted by Jewish Yishuv.

1919 Faisal-Weizmann agreement - nominally accepted but later abandoned per Faisal’s addendum.

Arab peace plans put forward? Hamas has never put forward one. Syria has never put forward one. Nor has Lebanon. Fatah has never put forward a plan. The only plan I am aware of that was ever actually offered to Israel, was by a third party, The Arab League, in 2002.

Now, Fatah accepted it, Hamas rejected it, and Israel said they would use it as a basis for negotiations, but that a precondition for a final agreement was that there had to be a cease fire in the Second Intifada. The response of the Arabs was the Passover Massacre in Netanya.

When the intifada did end, Israel tried to enter into negotiations based on the plan. The Arabs refused to negotiate at all. Saeb Erkat, chief negotiator for Fatah, took the position that the proposal represented a minimum and they would not consider any counter proposals that did not accept every point in the Arab League proposal.

Israel, the Jews, have been willing to compromise for more than a century at this point. And the West keeps rewarding them with money, with excuses, with a growing acceptance of antisemitism.

And suggesting Mein Kampf was planted by the Israelis shows a profound ignorance for the popularity of the book in the Arab Muslim world. The books has been translated and sold in the Arab world since 1934, originally being serialized in Arab newspapers.

It has been published in Arabic in book form with translations in 1937, 1963, and 1995. It is a perennially best seller in Arab countries as well as Turkey. As recently as the Cairo Book Fair in 2023, multiple publishing houses (at least 10 I. Egypt and Syria) were marketing Arab translations of Mein Kampf, along side The Protocols of the Elders of Zion (a creation of Imperial Russia’s Okhrana), and The International Jew by Henry Ford (a noted antisemite).

Israel is the only country so special that it’s right to retaliate and defend itself is denied before it’s fired it’s first shot. As Israel was collecting the bodies of its dead, finding parents and children burned alive in their homes, finding bodies of women and children with evidence of rape, people like you were already in the streets demanding Israel agree to a cease fire.

A cease fire?

Really?

We’re the Ukrainians told to hold back when the Russians invaded? Why must the Jews be denied a basic right denied to everyone else.

Oh that’s right, because according to progressive orthodoxy, all of the crimes committed on behalf of the Arabs (whom you call “Palestinians”) are forgiven and forgotten because Israel successfully defended herself in 1949-49, 1968, 1973, and all the little incidents that don’t merit being called a war. The Arabs are forgiven from their attempts at genocide that started in 1920, or any of the other earlier massacres and attacks on Jewish communities in Eretz Yisrael.

All is always forgiven of the Arabs. They are excused because either through a Western paternalism that views then as immature or a western antisemitism that despises Jews for not dying. Nothing, real or imagined, is ever forgotten or forgiven when it comes Israel and the Jews. People still believe the lies, like the massacre that never happened in Jenin, or more recently, the attack on the hospital that never happened.

Enjoy your perceived moral superiority as you consign more “Palestinian” children to their death. It’s made possible because of your willingness to be Hamas’ accomplices.

This was yesterday.

They literally stole the dude’s idea though.

[blog-sliverofjade]

Hearth Fires 2: Sneaky Like a Cat

Pairing: Remi Denier x OFC

Summary:  Lorel Maddox just wants to live as a human, run her bakery in peace, and forget. Unfortunately, the alpha of the local leopard pack has very different ideas. Remi Denier doesn’t know what to make of the female Changeling who wants nothing to do with him or the RainFire pack. He does know that he has a driving need to protect her. Even if it’s from herself. While they’re embroiled in a battle of wills, there’s a war brewing on the horizon. The outside threat could not only destroy everything they hold dear, but tear apart the fragile new bonds of the Trinity Accord, plunging the world into bloodshed to rival the Territorial Wars of centuries past.  

Word count: 2466

Hearth Fires Masterlist

Beta read by the invaluable pandabearer

Remi entered a familiar code into the comm screen and sprawled out on the large cushions scattered around the main floor of his aerie.  Waiting for the call to connect, he cracked a longneck and took a swig.  Stomach rumbling, he wished he’d at least gotten a cupcake before scaring the piss out of the little baker.

He knew she didn’t intend any harm to the pack.  But sometimes what happened wasn’t what one intended, as he knew very well.  Just like he hadn’t intended to throw out that ultimatum. He’d wanted to get a sense of her and make the offer.  Then she’d turned him down and it was like his brain had switched off and his alpha hindbrain had taken over.

It wasn’t the first time he’d been turned down since he started building RainFire; it was, however, the first time a lone submissive female had said no.  Generally, ones like her didn’t go roaming for as long as she had. The feeling that something was amiss with her hadn’t left him, like an itch that he just couldn’t scratch.

“I’m flattered I’m your drunk dial,” Lucas Hunter said dryly, “but I have a mate.”

“I’d’ve to be drinkin’ bad hooch to be drunk dialin’ your laide tchew,” he snorted.  “And I’d hope it’d make me blind.”

Hunter snorted, then reached down out of view of the screen and picked up a little, black cub by the scruff of her neck.  Naya purred loudly enough that Remi could hear it and butted her forehead against Lucas’ face, even though her body continued to dangle limply in his grasp.

“You know better than that,” her father frowned at her, unfazed by the cute affection, and tapped her nose.  The responding mewl was adorable enough to pierce even the most jaded heart. “No, you can’t have a cookie, but you can say hi to Remi.”  He pointed to the screen and set her on his lap. A fluffy black tail rose high and curled at the end in greeting.

“Quoi se fais du mal, possede?”  His cat stopped its irritated pacing and chuffed in amusement at the pair of bright green eyes that now took up most of the screen as she leaned in to greet him.

“She’s been using my chair as a scratching post.”  Remi coughed to cover a laugh at the other man’s deadpan expression that barely hid his amusement.  At the recount of her misdeed, she flopped onto her back and put one paw over an eye as if to say “oops.”  Hunter had answered in his office at DarkRiver HQ. If he’d been at home, which had cushions instead of traditional furniture much like Remi’s own, his daughter would have sharpened her claws on a tree instead.  “Can you make it quick? I have a meeting in ten.”

Remi laid out the situation to Lucas, who listened without interruption.

“She says she didn’t know ‘bout the expansion.”  He spread his hands wide.

“You posted to Packnet?”  Hunter referred to the network utilized by Changelings all across the world.  Even loners used it, primarily to keep track of claimed territory to avoid accidentally trespassing.  A mistake meant death for a predatory Changeling.

“’Course I did,” Remi snapped in frustration.  Lucas let that one slide. “Damnedest thing is she says she’s never heard of it!”  He ran a hand through his shoulder-length hair. “I don’t know what to do.”

“Bullshit,” he snorted, then darted a glance at Naya, who’d climbed up to drape herself across his shoulders.  “You just don’t like your options.”

“Could you run a submissive off your lands?” he snarled.  Lucas gave a low warning growl to remind him that they were both alphas; his cub stopped kneading his shoulders and her ears swivelled forward, looking for the threat.  Remi had to rein his cat in before they got into a pissing match; it had been on edge since he stepped into the bakery. The animal, too, was disturbed with the mystery that was Lorelei Cain Maddox.

“Buy her land, her mortgage, and any other debt out from under her if she doesn’t play ball.  It doesn’t have to come to combat.” A ruthless solution from an alpha who was as accustomed to fighting in the boardroom as he was with teeth and claws.  The merciless alpha stroked his daughter’s back, lulling her back to her sleepy state. He looked like a damn villain when he did that in that chair.

“Mais.”  Blowing out a breath, he took another drink to give himself time to consider the suggestion.  He shouldn’t have made the offer at all if she made his hackles rise, not until he figured out why.  Now he had to deal with the fallout and any leverage would serve to protect the pack, even if he didn’t use it to force her hand.  “Might have to. She looked like she’d rather chew an arm off than listen to me.”

“I can’t blame her if you were your usual charming self.”  Remi flipped him the bird, but there was no heat in his accompanying glare.  Lucas huffed in laughter. “You can’t help those who don’t want to be helped, you need to focus on your own.  If she won’t play ball with you, she might with your enemies.”

“Ca me rapelle, there’s something else I wanted to talk to you about.  I’m forwarding you something.” He set his bottle down and fired off the email as he spoke.  “Several folks in town reported receiving this.”

“’Trinity’s Goal is Human Genocide’,” Lucas read the subject line with a snort.  “’We won’t be replaced, trying to take power, subjugate the human race…’ Yeah, we had something like this awhile back, so did StoneWater.  Do you know where it came from?”

“We got someone working to trace it.  I was wonderin’ if your people have time to look at it, might be tied to the one you mentioned.”  The older pack had resources that RainFire simply didn’t have yet and he wasn’t above asking for help to keep his pack safe.

“It might be the same group, but extremists tend to use the same catchphrases; it’s like they just swap out the nouns.  I recommend keeping your sentinels on alert.” Remi nodded. He’d already briefed those that hadn’t brought the situation to his attention, but if this was a larger threat then they needed to know that, too.

“We’ve got some friends in the city, I’ll ask them to keep their ears to the ground.”

“This might be an individual, but if it’s a cell working to sway public opinion your friends will probably hear of it first.  I’ll have my team see what they can find.” Lucas’ eyes narrowed, but that didn’t hide the teasing glint in his green eyes that looked so much like his cat’s.  “You know, the mentorship was only meant to last the first year.” While that year had passed nearly nine months ago, the two of them had kept in regular contact.

“You don’t have to answer my calls,” he shrugged and tucked a hand behind his head.  “I could always ring up Hawke. Say, you got his number?”  Hunter scowled at the mention of the SnowDancer alpha.

“Are you so hard up you’d ask a wolf for help?”

“I’m asking my Trinity representative for help with somethin’ that might be a bigger problem, but if you’re too busy…”

“Naya, say ‘adieu’ to Oncle Couillon .”  She waved her tail back and forth.

“Bye-bye, cher.”  Remi blew the cub a kiss.  “Donne la belle Sascha un bec pour moi.”  Before hanging up, Lucas gave him one last scowl for telling him to kiss his mate for the other alpha.

He pulled out his organizer and began to plot.  She might be stubborn, but he had an entire pack behind him and he wasn't afraid to use it.

At the sound of the front door opening, Lorel set down the cranberry coloured frosting she was piping onto rows of cupcakes.  She wiped her hands off on a damp white washcloth that was already smeared pink and red with previous uses.

Stopping in the archway that led to the front, she stifled a groan.  The customer who’d entered with her daughter was a changeling: a leopard, to be specific, and one of many who'd managed to wander into her shop over the past week.  Even if she didn’t have a note in her scent that matched an element of Denier’s, she obviously had to be a member of RainFire.  It seemed like she'd already met half the freaking pack, and, in the southern custom that she was rapidly coming to learn, a quick chat was at least half an hour long.

She could hardly refuse to serve the woman; not only was it illegal, but it would be hypocritical.  Besides, changelings were extremely loyal and prolific customers at their favourite restaurants due to their higher caloric requirements.  And not to mention it was probably unhealthy for her if she pissed off RainFire.

Somehow, she was sure the asshole was behind the parade of leopards in her bakery, even if she had no way of proving the suspicion.  She had seen some underhanded tactics in her time, but this latest was the lowest of the low.  Standing up straight, she braced herself.

A little girl in a lavender tutu dress toddled up to the display case like she’d found Nirvana.  Her dark hair was tied up in loose buns that bobbled with every step of her purple, glitter rainboots.  It was impossible not to smile at the sheer joy that lit up her face, which was marked with what looked like slashes from a set of claws, yet they lacked the pigmentation and texture of scars.  They appeared to be birthmarks, albeit pale instead of dark.

“Cookie, pease?”

Seriously, those big, guileless eyes should be registered as lethal weapons.

“What kind would you like?” Lorel asked after glancing at the adult with her to make sure it was ok.

“Dat one!”  A tiny finger pressed to the plas-glas pointed to a set of sugar cookies shaped and frosted to look like various types of leaves: green fading to brown, yellow to red, and whatever other combination had occurred to her at the time.  Lorel picked one of her favourites: a maple leaf with yellow at its centre, surrounded by orange, and turning to red at the edges. For the veins, she’d drawn a knife through the frosting to create lines of colour that bled outward through the gradations.

“Make it a dozen, please, and a dozen each of the caramel apples, the maple pecan cupcakes, and, ooh, pumpkin cheesecake snickerdoodles,” the woman said, her eyes lighting up with the last order.

She nearly did a double-take.  That was her entire stock of each of those items and over half of her seasonal items.  Not that she was about to complain. She wrapped the maple leaf in a napkin and handed it to the girl, experience telling her that it wouldn’t last enough to warrant packaging.

“Thank you!” she chirped and rose on her tiptoes to take the leaf.  The cookie was bigger than both of her hands. Settling back on her heels, she took a bite and exclaimed in delight, eyes going impossibly wide.  Lorel struggled to breathe past the ache in her chest.

Avoiding eye contact with both of them, she quickly boxed up the goodies.  The sooner she got them out of there, the sooner she could breathe easy again.  It didn’t help that her cat was currently clawing at her with a fierce need to play with the cub.   Kid , she mentally reprimanded herself.

“Is something wrong?”  Lorel stared at the other woman for a heartbeat before she realized she’d been shaking her head while silently rebuking herself.

“Oh no.”  She donned a smile like well-worn armour.  “Just talking to myself. Thinking about how many to bake tomorrow, you know?”

The customer nodded and hummed in agreement, but something in her eyes said she wasn’t buying it.  

“It must be hard to move to a town where you don’t know much of anyone and take over your aunt’s business.”

Lorel’s eyes narrowed. She didn’t trust sympathy from a cat, not even one with a child that appeared to be loved and treasured.

“Small towns, everybody knows everybody.”  The other woman shrugged off the suspicion cast her way.  “By the way, I’m Tien and this is JoJo.” JoJo was currently spinning in the sun streaming through the window and watching her skirt flare out.  The glitter in her boots flashed brilliantly in the light. With each bite of her cookie, she hummed a happy little tune.

The pang in her chest was back.

“Lorel,” she flashed her customer service smile, the small one when she wasn’t really feeling like smiling.  Luckily, she was ringing up the sale and therefore had an excuse to avoid anything more than briefly flicking her eyes at Tien.  Then she gave the total and they went through the ritual of the transaction.

“Here’s my number.”  Tien jotted down the code on a slip of paper she’d found in her purse.  “Let me know if you ever want to talk or if you ever want to… I’d say go for coffee, but,” she broke off with a laugh and gestured at the espresso machine.  “Do lunch or something.”

She couldn’t decline without being rude, and being rude in a small southern town would spell disaster for her business.  And the other woman’s smile was so broad and genuine that she smiled back despite herself.

“Thank you.”  Lorel took the scrap and slipped it into her apron; today it was yellow and edged at the bottom with lace.  The lavender flowers on it matched the full-skirted dress she wore.

“Come on, kidlet.”  Tien herded the girl towards the exit.

“Bye!”  JoJo waved and skipped out the door, offering a bite of her cookie to her mom, who accepted with an “mmm!”

Lorel sank back against the counter and thrust her hands into her pockets, idly fingering the contact number.  How could they be so happy and obviously well-adjusted in a pack with an autocratic asshole like Denier? Although, was there really any other kind of alpha?  In her admittedly limited experience, the answer was no.

And yet neither of them had, had the hollow, guarded eyes that were the result of abuse from those in power.  While the rest of the pack seemed friendly enough, no doubt the carrot to Denier’s stick, it wasn’t something she was used to.

She crumpled up the paper and tossed it in the recycler.

No matter how honest she appeared to be, Tien was still Denier’s pawn.

Notes:   Remi isn’t canonically Cajun, it’s left ambiguous (“with a name like that sounds like he should be hunting gators in a swamp somewhere”).  But I like the idea that he can play the dumb swamprat, or the suave southern gentleman, or a shark in the boardroom because he learned how to dominate whatever room he was in and that he had to learn to blend in (*foreshadowing of my personal HC’s).

I'm a bit of a language nerd. The evolution of Louisiana French is interesting because it basically takes Acadian French and drifts it, then splices in some Choctaw.  And it appears to share some quirks and sentence structure with French Creoles. I'm not sure if that's due to sharing a "parent" language (I don't know enough to say) or due to cultural exchange in the region.

The Cajun French in this chapter comes from published dictionaries and articles written by native speakers, then cross-referenced (or simply plugged into google to see if similar results pop up). Then if I need to conjugate something or figure out grammar, I'll run it by my spouse who speaks Quebecois (which evolved from Acadian, too), but isn’t French Canadian.  So if it’s atrocious, my apologies and please let me know.

Laide tchew - ugly ass

Quoi se fais du mal - what trouble have you been getting into?

Possede - literally possessed one, a term for a mischievous child

Mais - Literally French for “but.” According to kenwheatonwrites.com it “means “well then,” and is used to delight, shock, exasperation — any number of things. It’s almost like “dude” or “fuck” in its ability to morph into anything depending on situation, tone, delivery and other factors.”

Ca me rapelle - That reminds me

Oncle - uncle

Couillon - idiot, imbecile, funny person. In standard French, it means dickhead or bastard. I like to think that Lucas knows standard French, which helps him to understand Remi when he's slipping into his native patois. ;)

Donne la belle Sascha un bec pour moi - give the lovely Sascha a kiss for me

Fun fact: "bec" can mean "kiss" and "beak." So I'll tell my pet birds "bec la bec!" I'm easily entertained, what can I say?

[orcinus-ocean]

Can we have environmentalism and conservation without human-hating, please?

We’ve all heard it, most of us have said it. I have said it, but I regret that, and will tell you why.

You can hardly have any talk of conservation of wildlife and nature without having it hand-in-hand with anti-human rhetoric, often downright hateful of our entire species.

We have to stop doing this.

It’s not just my pet peeve, this could really be dangerous. We’ve seen what governments have done to people before when they have been allowed by the populace (over 100 million murdered by governments in the last century alone, and that’s not counting the wars), and now it’s not just one specific group, but all of humanity that is viewed as a “disease”, and it’s frequently parroted in the media.

“Have no more than two children - stop eating meat - stop going on vacation - stop driving” - this and more, has nothing to do with saving the environment, and all to do with control (and for the former, population reduction - which is absolutely fine if it’s voluntary, but it might not stay that way forever).

We say that “we are all responsible for this”, or it’s “all of humanity” when we see environmental destruction, or some species going extinct. But that’s simply not true.

The vaquita for example, probably lost even if there are a few individuals left, was destroyed by the industry for totoaba swim bladders for a Chinese market, and shrimp for a US market. There is consumer responsibility - but I won’t say that every person who bought that shrimp from the Gulf of California has vaquita blood on their hands, as I would have been inclined to say a few years ago.

Do you know exactly what’s going on on that plantation where you got your pineapple from? Just an example. I sure don’t know. And unless some local conservation group tells us, I won’t know. Maybe there’s some rare bird nesting in trees that they are cutting down to grow pineapple. I wasn’t told this when I bought the pineapple. I wasn’t even given the choice between this pineapple, that leads to that hypothetical bird’s displacement, and another pineapple, which doesn’t. (I don’t even eat pineapple, it’s just an example.)

In the same way, the consumers of that shrimp or swim bladder - if they haven’t been informed - can’t be held responsible. Now if they HAVE been informed, say “I don’t care”, and keep consuming, then they have responsibility, naturally. But that is rarely the case. Most of us are kept in the dark about most of the products we buy, and that doesn’t just include food.

Or the Southern residents in Washington - if the people eating the salmon are not informed, they can’t be blamed for the demise of the whales. Again, which is why they should be informed so they can make a responsible decision to stop consuming it.

It is the fault of the INDUSTRIES and GOVERNMENTS. Megacorporations in bed with the governments.

“We live in a democracy”, you say, “so we chose our government, everything they do, we have approved as a people!” Well, not really. There are no pure democracies, and you can’t tell me government officials and politicians are oh-so-honest about what they do and plan to do... lying is their national sport, if they had one.

But people don’t think about this, and instead put collective guilt on the entire human species. “Humans are cancer”, “humans are a virus” - what if I told you that one of the points in the UN criteria for genocide, is “likening a group to animals or disease”?

Except now, again, it’s not a specific group (there is actually a specific group being demonized more than others, but I can’t say that here, or I’ll be called a racist... *cough*it’swhitepeople*cough*), as much as it’s “the ruling class” (megacorporations<3governments again) that has declared war on humanity. And they are normalizing us to it, making us go along with it.

So we have collective guilt as a species. If an industry pours poison in the sea, if another kills dozens of species as bycatch, and another clearcuts Borneo - it’s all our fault.

In the same way, because there are child sex trafficking rings, we are all child rapists? No, of course not. That’s not how it works.

Is she “cancer”?

Is he a “virus”? (Those are near-extinct Spix’s macaws, BTW)

Should these people “ask permission to breed”?

I have no idea who these people are, I just see them being obviously part of the solution, yet they are painted with the same brush of being “human”, as if it’s a curse word.

And you know, if my worst doomsday-fears of the government’s war on humanity ever come to pass (it sure looks very close right now), these people ^ will be right alongside the horrible people, punished for being human.

In a way, this is a continuation of this post I wrote after reading some really disgusting anti-human comments on a Loro Parque post about the Sumatran rhino.

So to close off (while I could keep going all day), maybe, just maybe, stop going...

“Humans are a cancer/virus/parasite” “It’s everyone’s fault” “Humans need to go extinct” (Unless you’re volunteering yourself, if so, at least kudos for living according to your beliefs... or maybe not “living”, but you get it)

The hateful and dehumanizing language and rhetoric used around humans as a species for decades now, is probably meant to set us up and soften us for this: