#they all have their own cultures and areas they are from

[not-poignant]

Agreeing that there's a range, but also if you've ever gone somewhere important, or culturally significant, or to a national park in your area, you are also practicing tourism! You are not immune from being a tourist in your own locality! You are not immune from other locals wanting to hunt you for sport!

This is something I've noticed in Australia. In that moment when me, a bunch of Australians who have never been to Western Australia, and a bunch of tourists who have never been to Australia, all converge on the same cultural interest because it's being advertised (as a tourism event), in that moment, we are all tourists, and I am having elements of a similar experience to everyone there. I do not have any more or less of a right to be there. (Especially because I'm a white Australian, which is a whole thing).

I wish one of the answers was: 'I recognise that I can be a tourist even in my own country too.'

Tourism is literally just travel for pleasure. If you go to a botanical festival in your own town to have a good day, along with all the other folks out of state, from other countries etc., you're still just practicing tourism, and you're contributing to local tourism. Maybe you have feelings about how people should do it "properly" or "correctly" or recognise when foreigners don't (and possibly have no way to) understand local etiquette, but, yeah, you're just one of them.

[whencyclopedia]

Ancient Jordan

Jordan is a country in the Near East bordered by Israel, Syria, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia. The country's name comes from the Arabic Al Urdun, referencing a fortified site but also meaning "prominence", though various sources also claim the name comes from the Hebrew word Yarad ("descender"), referencing the downward flow of the River Jordan.

The region has a long history as an important trade center for every major empire from the ancient world to the present age (from the Akkadian Empire to the Ottoman Empire), and numerous sites in the country are mentioned throughout the Bible; 180 times in the Old Testament and 15 times in the New Testament.

Alexander the Great (r. 336-323 BCE) founded cities in the region (such as Gerasa) and the Nabateans carved their capital city of Petra there from sandstone cliffs. Early in its history, the area attracted and inspired traders, artists, philosophers, craftspeople, and, inevitably, conquerors, all of whom have left their mark on the history of the modern-day country.

Jordan, formally known as The Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, has been an independent nation since 1946 after thousands of years as a vassal state of foreign empires and European powers and has developed into one of the most stable and resourceful nations in the Near East. Its capital city, Amman, is considered one of the most prosperous in the world and a popular destination for tourists. The history of the region is vast, going back more than 8,000 years, and encompassing the tale of the rise and fall of empires and the evolution of the modern state.

Early History

Archaeological excavations date human habitation in the region of Jordan back to the Paleolithic Age (around two million years ago). Tools such as stone hand-axes, scrapers, drills, knives, and stone spear points dated to this time period have been found in various locations throughout the country. The people were hunter-gatherers, who led a nomadic life moving from place to place in search of game. In time, they began building permanent settlements and establishing agricultural communities.

The Neolithic Age (c. 10,000 BCE) saw the rise of stable, sedentary communities and the growth of agriculture. These small villages eventually became urban centers with their own industry and initiated trade with others. Large urban centers developed such as the city of Jericho, claimed to be the oldest continuously inhabited city in the world, with an approximate founding date of 9,000 BCE.

According to scholar G. Lankester Harding:

far higher culture than we had hitherto suspected, for here was not merely a village of well-built houses with fine plaster floors, but there was a great stone wall all around the settlement with a ditch or dry moat in front of it. This implies a high degree of communal organization, of subordinating the personal interests to those of the many.

(29)

Communal interests are also evident in the ancient monuments raised at this time. Throughout the Neolithic Age, the people constructed megalithic dolmens across the land (very similar in size, shape, and methods used to those of Ireland). These dolmens are thought to be monuments to the dead or possibly passageways between worlds. These dolmens are often found in fields of circled stones whose meaning remains unclear, but it is obvious that the builders would have had to work in groups for a common cause to create these sites.

Lime Plaster Statue from Ain Al-Ghazal

Osama Shukir Muhammed Amin (Copyright)

The dolmen sites were most likely religious in nature and visited for worship, divination, and festivals by the people of the nearby cities. The largest settlement of the Neolithic Age in Jordan was Ain Ghazal, located in the northwest (near the present-day capital of Amman). Inhabited c. 7000 BCE, Ain Ghazal was an agricultural community whose artisans created some of the most striking anthropomorphic statuary in early history. The statues found at Ain Ghazal are among the oldest in the world today.

The community had over 3,000 citizens and engaged in trade and the manufacture of pottery, which increased the wealth of the people individually and the city collectively. Ain Ghazal continued as a prosperous settlement for 2000 years between c. 7000 BCE and 5000 BCE when it was abandoned, most likely due to overuse of the land.

Continue reading...

[storywestistrash]

i am actually so tired of the way westerners treat eastern europeans

[dykedvonte]

The Khans - My Introspective

I don't like the Military and I don't support a lot of the actions the NCR does to the Mojave in New Vegas but in terms of the Khans I feel like the fandom infantilizes or diminishes the fact that they are or at least one of the most violent raider groups in the Mojave.

What happened at Bitter Springs was a tragedy, innocent lives were lost and the fact that the NCR swept it under the rug and continued to hunt down Khans that are truly trying to back down and resettle is horrendous, but there is a history to the NCR's aggression towards them.

The Khans first appear in Fallout 1, the main faction of raiders in the game besides the mentioned Vipers (who don't actually appear if I remember correctly). They came from Vault 15 along with the members that would form rival groups; The Vipers, The Jackals, and Shady Sands. They are a very large and foreboding raiding party, known for burning towns and encampments they attack and taking survivors as their slaves or slaves to sell. They are a big reason why the Jackals and Vipers are actually so small in New Vegas, they wiped them out.

Their main targets where Shady Sands and Junker town, the former of the two would be what became The New California Republic. This explains a big part of their animosity towards the Khans, only furthered by the fact the Khans kidnapped Tandi as a young girl, the girl that would go to offically found the NCR out of Shady Sands. When the dweller saved her and killed much of the Khans, this allowed the NCR to develop into what it currently is as they no longer needed to focus on fighting off constant raids.

When the Khans became the New Khans in Fallout 2, they barely resembled the Khans as they were led by Darion, Garl Death-Hand's son (former leader of the Khans). They were smaller and refortified vault 15, still planning to take down the NCR (at this time nowhere near as imperialist as they are in FNV) as mostly a revenge/power ploy. They manipulate The Squat, a group of y'know squatters, that lived in the upper levels, promising and lying about repairing the vault and offering them ransacked caravan resources if they kept the NCR away. Being their only life line The Squat had no choice. Still the chosen one got rid of them and they left New California for the untapped Mojave.

The Great Khans, the most current iteration, continued in the path as the original Khans, regrouping and gaining information from the Followers who hoped they'd use their new medical knowledge to heal themselves. They gained more members and a substantial part of Vegas territory before they were run out by the three families. They were pushed to Bitter Springs where they first and foremost continued to pick off and attack NCR settlements, most of which consisted of caravans, towns, and camps as they saw them as easy like in their old days. It was the killing of four influential Republic members (non-military) that brought on Bitter Springs.

Bitter Springs was the result of years of hatred and animosity and likely the goal to send a final message to the Khans. It does not excuse the fact that innocent men, women, and children were slaughtered with few survivors. It does not excuse the fact that the NCR has yet to make amends for this and continues to try and persecute the Khans even in moments of surrender.

This post is not to defend what happened but to give a quick rundown of the Khan's history and their history with the NCR. It's to remind people that the NCR is not just their military power but an actual group/settlement of people that were also attacked indiscriminately by the Khans. It's to point out that the Khans were not a band of indigenous people (no matter the comparisons) driven from their homes but raiders who fed into the brutal cultures of the west coast wasteland and were in turn treated to the same things.

My frustration comes from the fact that FNV has so many comparisons to indigenous struggles but the groups it chooses are not comparable at all. Their oppression hinges on not being familiar with their past, which explains why they have the reputation they do in canon. The "tribes" are often not even groups of minorities or have goals/desires out of acquisitions of power and I feel like it is important to both acknowledge that this is bad indigenous rep because it is not supposed to be. It is supposed to be a comparison of the in-game groups and how they all do the same things and justify it in their own fucked up ways, some better at it than others.

FNV of all the Fallout games (in light of it being heavily Western based) distastefully uses indigenous imagery and theming for groups that are sad mimicries of American indigenous cultures at best and outright offensive at worst.

[siena-sevenwits]

(Written yesterday) Well, it’s Epiphany, and the end of Christmas proper. I know many continue to celebrate Christmastide all the way until Candlemas, but our tree came down today and I don’t really do much to observe the extended season. So it seems to me that if I’m going to finally revisit Elystan’s point of view in the Christmas chapters, now that I know a little more of his history, I’d best do it before Epiphany is out. Here we go!

[Turns on “Denn es is tuns ein Kind geboren” from “Der Messias.” Since this is Elystan’s pov I really ought to listen in English (tangent: aren’t we Anglophones blessed Handel was in Ireland when he wrote it?) but I thought I’d listen in German as a nod to the Liennese in the room.]

I love the fact that although Elystan’s good with classics when it comes to languages, German is not his forte. This isn’t something you see so often in fiction – that an aptitude for a language, or even languages, doesn’t necessarily apply across the board. (And of course it has the story layer that he and Josiah don’t understand each other, even though they technically speak each others’ languages. Boys, there is so much you’re hiding from others – and so much you don’t see in yourselves.)

Ha. Even here in Corege, Tamett’s Noriberreanness (sp?) is still a point against him in the eyes of the masters.

“[H]e needs to invest in a copy of Bellwell’s Guide for the Traveller in Corege. All good bookstores have it. Changed my life.” Heaven help me, Elystan thinks his jokes are so funny – and I’m smirking despite myself.

“And that distracted Josiah’s attention from the depths of the literary gem he was composing…” Oh that you knew the systematic and painful stuffing down of grief you’re witnessing from outside, Elystan. [I should really be listening to Satie’s Gnossiennes or something equally sombre for Josiah’s composition, but we are not in his head.]

“I’ll leave a box of chocolates in the empty chair in the King’s box, in your memory.” OOF –  the joke’s aimed at disgusting Josiah, but yeah, let’s make a joke about an empty chair in the King’s Box right now, Elystan. That’s certainly a good joke for you to make. (I doubt he’s actually thinking along the lines I am, but still.)

Oh, Elystan, your mother would love to take you to the movies if you would let her… And she writes to him faithfully even though she never gets any back. I understand why there’s such an enormous rift between them, and she’s certainly not blameless – but this must be a hard time for her, having realized at least some of the damage she’s caused, how broad the gulf is, spent the summer trying to mend their relationship among many other things, then had to send him away for his own sake. And she never hears from him. That would be hard. These stories have such huge themes of attachment and how hurt to that attachment ripples into so many seemingly unrelated areas of life. My heart goes out to both Elystan and Bethira.

Oh gosh, he almost asked Josiah was he was going to do with his Mother for Christmas. The anniversary of his mother’s December death is almost here, and right this moment he’s writing a paper about how above grief a real man needs to be. Josiah heard that pause loud and clear.

The way schoolboy culture won’t let them just say “family.” (It’s the heart of all this, it’s all about family, and they can’t say it, they can’t say it. They’re not even consciously thinking about it – they’re all just copying each other – but they haven’t got families anymore. They’ve got [airy wave of the hand] people.”

Josiah wrinkled his nose. “How about the rest of the year?” If he had not been such an overgrown lump, Elystan would have knocked him out of his seat. – Oh boy. Knowing what Elystan’s rest of the year has been like this past year, that one smarts even more.

I am eternally amused by Elystan’s ongoing crocodilianess.

He misspelled “grievous.” No undertones there.

Love these boys so much. Since this is a revisit in light of what I know of their previous lives, these comments are likely to all tend to the “oh no” direction, but also I am smiling so lovingly at all of them.

A Christmas Chapter: Elystan’s POV

Last year I wrote two versions of this story, from Tamett’s and Josiah’s POVs. I had intended to leave it there, but a friend wanted Elystan’s POV, so after a long struggle of trying to find a story I’d never really planned between the lines of the existing pieces, here is the third and final version.

This one runs very long, nearly 17000 words. It’s not perfect, probably has wording issues right and left, and it feels a bit more like a series of random events than a cohesive whole, but I’m sick of fussing with it for now, and you’re very welcome to tell me (politely) what could be improved.

In case you’re unfamiliar with these characters, Elystan is the thirteen-year-old son of a disgraced former king of Corege (one of several nations in this  Edwardianesque world). After circumstances that have resulted in his having a massive grudge against his mother and his half-brother Delclis (the current King), he has been sent to Hollingham, an elite boarding school, where he rooms with Josiah, Crown Prince of Lienne, and has befriended Josiah’s paid companion Tamett. They’re about to reach the end of their first term, and Elystan is faced with the daunting prospect of having to spend the Christmas holidays with his dearly beloathed family.

Keep reading

[britneyshakespeare]

This is just a map of New England (minus Connecticut the fake New England state)

[dunadaan]

I’ve been feeling Créa creep up on me as of late and today I went back and reread my little document where I type up random ideas for scenes/fics and I was like. Wow who wrote this. This is really good. Why isn’t there more of this damn. But also wow I really put miss créa through the blender and she is a fine red mist a lot. But that is the life of a ranger…and even when she’s not a ranger anymore I press blend on high and she is sadly used to that

[becca4leafclover]

waiiiitt I just realized the reason why I love QSMP so much as a concept is because it's kind of like my childhood growing up overseas oh my goooodddddd what if i cried

[gingerswagfreckles]

The whole argument against displaying mummies and other human remains in museums is so weird bc people are totally obvious to the fact that they're projecting their own religious/cultural beliefs into these inanimate objects rather then respecting the religious beliefs of people who have been dead for thousands of years.

[yakityyaku]

very funny (irritating) to me that everyone whined and yelled about stupid rainbow capitalism and how performative wokeness/allyship is a net bad we should all refuse to support and now like.

tumblr is doing nothing for pride and target isn't selling much (if any) of their pride collection offline except at certain stores (in democratic areas, basically) and build a bear has a much tinier collection than normal and all the actual pride stuff is on their "adult" website (not sure if it's in stores, but pride = adult is a hell of a message)

there are genuinely good criticisms for performative allyship in all its applications. it shouldn't be the only thing we expect from people and companies. but if all the shit I see being called performative stopped tomorrow then in terms of the LGBTQ+ community especially we just. wouldn't talk about queerness or queer issues or celebrate pride or do anything.

open your fucking eyes. we are very close politically to having gay marriage rolled back. now companies are basically being let off the hook to even make a miniscule effort (which matters to the people who don't have access to any other kind of support in their communities! which normalizes the community in public spaces!) because the only reaction they have gotten over the last few years are negative ones from BOTH sides.

we are so entrenched in discourse at all times for the sake of our OWN performance of who is the wokest and who is REALLY an ally or a good community member that we have basically handed over all the work of activists of the last several decades to the other side because we'd rather scream at each other over fucking chicken restaurants and shit than the real life backsliding that's happening.

and this goes for other shit too. feminism, poc rights, all of it.

also. trans rights aren't discourse and aren't just culture war arguments. in case any terfs think they can spin this to be antitrans.

[sapphia]

USA please listen to me: the price of “teaching them a lesson” is too high. take it from New Zealand, who voted our Labour government out in the last election because they weren’t doing exactly what we wanted and got facism instead.

Trans rights are being attacked, public transport has been defunded, tax cuts issued for the wealthy, they've mass-defunded public services, cut and attacked the disability funding model, cut benefits, diverted transport funding to roads, cut all recent public transport subsidies, cancelled massive important infrastructure projects like damns and ferries (we are three ISLANDS), fast tracked mining, oil, and other massive environmentally detrimental projects and gave the power the to approve these projects singularly to three ministers who have been wined and dined by lobbyists of the companies that have put the bids in to approve them while one of the main minister infers he will not prioritise the protection of endangered species like the archeys frog over mining projects that do massive environmental harm. They have attacked indigenous rights in an attempt to negate the Treaty of Waitangi by “redefining it”; as a backup, they are also trying to remove all mentions of the treaty from legislation starting with our Child Protection laws no longer requiring social workers to consider the importance of Maori children’s culture when placing those children; when the Waitangi Tribunal who oversees indigenous matters sought to enquire about this, the Minister for Children blocked their enquiry in a breach of comity that was condemned in a ruling — too late to do anything — by our Supreme Court. They have repealed labour protections around pay and 90 day trials, reversed our smoking ban, cancelled our EV subsidy, cancelled our water infrastructure scheme that would have given Maori iwi a say in water asset management, cancelled our biggest city’s fuel tax, made our treasury and inland revenue departments less accountable, dispensed of our Productivity Commission, begun work on charter schools and military boot camps in an obvious push towards privatisation, cancelled grants for first home buyers, reduced access to emergency housing, allowed no cause evictions, cancelled our Maori health system that would have given Maori control over their own public medical care and funding, cut funding of services like budgeting advice and food banks, cancelled the consumer advocacy council, cancelled our medicine regulations, repealed free prescriptions, deferred multiple hospital builds, failed to deliver on pre-election medical promises, reversed a gun ban created in response to the mosque shootings, brought back three strikes = life sentence policy, increased minimum wage by half the recommended amount, cancelled fair pay for disabled workers, reduced wheelchair services, reversed our oil and gas exploration ban, cancelled our climate emergency fund, cut science research funding including climate research, removed limits on killing sea lions, cut funding for the climate change commission, weakened our methane targets, cancelled Significant National Areas protections, have begun reversing our ban on live exports. Much of this was passed under urgency.

It’s been six months.

[professorsta]

Okay the thing is though about George R Martin is how can he deny his affintiy for gentalia if he even brings it up during death scenes?! Why does Twyn mention his pubic hair covered with blood after getting killed. Im not a prude but it just kills me when he denies it like Sir? The whole point of a book is to descibe what the reader is visualizing, you want us to consistently visualize a penis, pubic hair, and nudity in the books. Fuck its so funny i dont know how to describe the dissonance of denying the love of the loin area and yet use it as a tool is descitbe whats happening so often. The blood seeped through his shirt to his pubic hair and his thighs. Wonderful, you are making so many people imagine an old man with bloody public hair, you menace, obsessed, what the hell. And this is a serious series, like complete dean-pan this moment is very important and also bloody bloody balls are happening as well

[no-passaran]

Genocide experts warn that India is about to genocide the Shompen people

Who are the Shompen?

The Shompen are an indigenous culture that lives in the Great Nicobar Island, which is nowadays owned by India. The Shompen and their ancestors are believed to have been living in this island for around 10,000 years. Like other tribes in the nearby islands, the Shompen are isolated from the rest of the world, as they chose to be left alone, with the exception of a few members who occasionally take part in exchanges with foreigners and go on quarantine before returning to their tribe. There are between 100 and 400 Shompen people, who are hunter-gatherers and nomadic agricultors and rely on their island's rainforest for survival.

Why is there risk of genocide?

India has announced a huge construction mega-project that will completely change the Great Nicobar Island to turn it into "the Hong Kong of India".

Nowadays, the island has 8,500 inhabitants, and over 95% of its surface is made up of national parks, protected forests and tribal reserve areas. Much of the island is covered by the Great Nicobar Biosphere Reserve, described by UNESCO as covering “unique and threatened tropical evergreen forest ecosystems. It is home to very rich ecosystems, including 650 species of angiosperms, ferns, gymnosperms, and bryophytes, among others. In terms of fauna, there are over 1800 species, some of which are endemic to this area. It has one of the best-preserved tropical rain forests in the world.”

The Indian project aims to destroy this natural environment to create an international shipping terminal with the capacity to handle 14.2 million TEUs (unit of cargo capacity), an international airport that will handle a peak hour traffic of 4,000 passengers and that will be used as a joint civilian-military airport under the control of the Indian Navy, a gas and solar power plant, a military base, an industrial park, and townships aimed at bringing in tourism, including commercial, industrial and residential zones as well as other tourism-related activities.

This project means the destruction of the island's pristine rainforests, as it involves cutting down over 852,000 trees and endangers the local fauna such as leatherback turtles, saltwater crocodiles, Nicobar crab-eating macaque and migratory birds. The erosion resulting from deforestation will be huge in this highly-seismic area. Experts also warn about the effects that this project will have on local flora and fauna as a result of pollution from the terminal project, coastal surface runoff, ballasts from ships, physical collisions with ships, coastal construction, oil spills, etc.

The indigenous people are not only affected because their environment and food source will be destroyed. On top of this, the demographic change will be a catastrophe for them. After the creation of this project, the Great Nicobar Island -which now has 8,500 inhabitants- will receive a population of 650,000 settlers. Remember that the Shompen and Nicobarese people who live on this island are isolated, which means they do not have an immune system that can resist outsider illnesses. Academics believe they could die of disease if they come in contact with outsiders (think of the arrival of Europeans to the Americas after Christopher Columbus and the way that common European illnesses were lethal for indigenous Americans with no immunization against them).

And on top of all of this, the project might destroy the environment and the indigenous people just to turn out to be useless and sooner or later be abandoned. The naturalist Uday Mondal explains that “after all the destruction, the financial viability of the project remains questionable as all the construction material will have to be shipped to this remote island and it will have to compete with already well-established ports.” However, this project is important to India because they want to use the island as a military and commercial post to stop China's expansion in the region, since the Nicobar islands are located on one of the world's busiest sea routes.

Last year, 70 former government officials and ambassadors wrote to the Indian president saying the project would “virtually destroy the unique ecology of this island and the habitat of vulnerable tribal groups”. India's response has been to say that the indigenous tribes will be relocated "if needed", but that doesn't solve the problem. As a spokesperson for human rights group Survival International said: “The Shompen are nomadic and have clearly defined territories. Four of their semi-permanent settlements are set to be directly devastated by the project, along with their southern hunting and foraging territories. The Shompen will undoubtedly try to move away from the area destroyed, but there will be little space for them to go. To avoid a genocide, this deadly mega-project must be scrapped.”

On 7 February 2024, 39 scholars from 13 countries published an open letter to the Indian president warning that “If the project goes ahead, even in a limited form, we believe it will be a death sentence for the Shompen, tantamount to the international crime of genocide.”

How to help

The NGO Survival International has launched this campaign:

From this site, you just need to add your name and email and you will send an email to India's Tribal Affairs Minister and to the companies currently vying to build the first stage of the project.

Share it with your friends and acquittances and on social media.

Sources:

India’s plan for untouched Nicobar isles will be ‘death sentence’ for isolated tribe, 7 Feb 2024. The Guardian.

‘It will destroy them’: Indian mega-development could cause ‘genocide’ and ‘ecocide’, says charity, 8 Feb 2024. Geographical.

Genocide experts call on India's government to scrap the Great Nicobar mega-project, Feb 2024. Survival International.

The container terminal that could sink the Great Nicobar Island, 20 July 2022. Mongabay.

[Maps] Environmental path cleared for Great Nicobar mega project, 10 Oct 2022. Mongabay.

[homunculus-argument]

Making every other fantasy race except for humans a monoculture isn't just lazy, but actively robbing yourself of a wealth of story depth. Give them cultures with distinct nuances about things a human would have no idea about. Elves whose invisible and extremely nuanced cultural cues are not only incredibly subtle, but vary from one elven line to another, so something that would be considered a remarkably tactful and delicate choice in one elven house would be an atrocious insult in another.

Goblin clan feuds about The Sacred Bug - they all agree that this specific species of beetle is sacred to the Goblin Gods, but the question is whether it is taboo to eat it, or whether it would be blasphemy to not eat this bug that was specifically gifted to goblinkind by the gods. Can You Eat The Bug -wars are torrid affairs that can last generations. There's a theory that there are two different goblin gods who appear as the same one, and have deliberately given their own respective clans contradictory instructions about the bug just to fuck with them. Everyone who has ever asked a goblin about this theory has been bit.

Dwarves who have different regional measures for different ground depths. There's a confusion within a construction crew digging a new tunnel with some of the foreign builders using words like "first cracks deep" for something that's not a measure that's in use in the dwarvish universal metric system. And then it turns out that different dwarves from different areas are used to different kinds of bedrock that cracks at different levels, and they also disagree with each other about how deep is "first cracks deep".

And the Mason Master of the projct throws his pickaxe in the tunnel wall in frustration and goes "alright the next one of you to say some utter fucking hillbilly bullshit gets their ass beat so bad that your mother's beard falls off."

[icannotgetoverbirds]

Rural queers, suburban queers, queers surrounded by hate, I may never be strong enough to live your life, but I stand in solidarity with you. you are welcome in spaces with me. lightspeed and stars' blessings to you. I send the same regards to rural/suburban poc and poc surrounded by hate, and it all goes doubly for those of both demographics.

white trans ppl from liberal suburbia in blue states will go on and on about how scary it is to be a trans person right now but the second they encounter a trans person from a red state they’ll be like “ummmmm why would you live in such an uncivilized place lmao maybe you shouldn’t have voted for republicans like if you don’t like how conservative it is then just leave” as if these states aren’t populated by black and brown people who face intense voter suppression and poor people who can’t just up and leave. not to mention the fact that all those articles y’all are sharing about the state of trans safety? those are in our states and we will be the ones who go down first. so instead of laughing at us dumb hicks from your liberal safe haven, consider instead shutting the fuck up and actually doing something to help us. because they’re coming for you next.

[incoherent-orca]

In ASL and SSL, this is the gesture for "Inshallah," which means means "God willing"; it's used to express hope that a specific future event will come to pass.

🇵🇸 Things you can do below 🇵🇸

🍉 SHARE posts from Palestinians, especially journalists on the ground (copy link on IG works just as well as sharing?). They're literally dying for that footage 🙃 let's make sure it counts

🍉 DONATE an E-sim @connectinghumanity_ on IG

🍉 DONATE to @CareForGaza (Twitter; donation links should be on their profile too). A lot of donation drives are just... making a grab at clout but this one is legit; a number of Gazans confirm that the food/produce is getting to them. The organizer seems to be Palestinian and living there as well

🍉 BOYCOTT brands listed by @bdsnationalcommittee on IG

Official boycott targets: AXA, Puma, Carrefour, Siemens, Ahava, HP, Sodastream, any products from Israel

Organic boycott targets: Domino's, McDonald's, Burger King, Pizza Hut, Wix

🍉 PRESSURE your governments & officials to call for a ceasefire and #InvokeGenocideConvention at the ICJ (rootsaction.org)

🍉 PROTEST. If there are mobilizations in your area, show up to be part of the count. No heroics—do what you feel safe doing and listen to the organizers.

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it was also important to me to include an Al-Qassam fighter in this, because they're often scapegoated by Western media, and also by well-meaning allies who say "but civilians are not Hamas"; there's this attempt to separate militant resistance from the process of liberation as a whole

Yeah, most civilians are not Hamas, but they don't denounce them either. Palestinians call them freedom fighters, protectors.

because the resistance is not a bunch of evil, violent outliers; they are as much victims of the occupation as the women, children, and non-combatants are. Most if not all of them were born under the occupation; a good percentage of them are also orphans.

I will never condemn boys who live along the coast but have never seen the sea.

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And end to the violence can't mean a return to business as usual, where the occupation and apartheid continue and Palestinians are still getting displaced on their own land. it will still take decades to rebuild homes. priceless historical and cultural items & structures have been callously destroyed and can never be recovered. nearly all the children in gaza have been made disabled and traumatized and murdered—what kind of future will they inherit?

israel must be abolished. They, the US, Canada, and the EU, must pay

Inshallah, we will not stop at a ceasefire

Inshallah, we will see complete liberation for Palestine