#fuck any government that supported this including my own

[sophiamcdougall]

You're a reasonably informed person on the internet. You've experienced things like no longer being able to get files off an old storage device, media you've downloaded suddenly going poof, sites and forums with troves full of people's thoughts and ideas vanishing forever. You've heard of cybercrime. You've read articles about lost media. You have at least a basic understanding that digital data is vulnerable, is what I'm saying. I'm guessing that you're also aware that history is, you know... important? And that it's an ongoing study, requiring ... data about how people live? And that it's not just about stanning celebrities that happen to be dead? Congratulations, you are significantly better-informed than the British government! So they're currently like "Oh hai can we destroy all these historical documents pls? To save money? Because we'll digitise them first so it's fine! That'll be easy, cheap and reliable -- right? These wills from the 1850s will totally be fine for another 170 years as a PNG or whatever, yeah? We didn't need to do an impact assesment about this because it's clearly win-win! We'd keep the physical wills of Famous People™ though because Famous People™ actually matter, unlike you plebs. We don't think there are any equalities implications about this, either! Also the only examples of Famous People™ we can think of are all white and rich, only one is a woman and she got famous because of the guy she married. Kisses!"

Yes, this is the same Government that's like "Oh no removing a statue of slave trader is erasing history :(" You have, however, until 23 February 2024 to politely inquire of them what the fuck they are smoking. And they will have to publish a summary of the responses they receive. And it will look kind of bad if the feedback is well-argued, informative and overwhelmingly negative and they go ahead and do it anyway. I currently edit documents including responses to consultations like (but significantly less insane) than this one. Responses do actually matter. I would particularly encourage British people/people based in the UK to do this, but as far as I can see it doesn't say you have to be either. If you are, say, a historian or an archivist, or someone who specialises in digital data do say so and draw on your expertise in your answers. This isn't a question of filling out a form. You have to manually compose an email answering the 12 questions in the consultation paper at the link above. I'll put my own answers under the fold. Note -- I never know if I'm being too rude in these sorts of things. You probably shouldn't be ruder than I have been.

Please do not copy and paste any of this: that would defeat the purpose. This isn't a petition, they need to see a range of individual responses. But it may give you a jumping-off point.

Question 1: Should the current law providing for the inspection of wills be preserved?

Yes. Our ability to understand our shared past is a fundamental aspect of our heritage. It is not possible for any authority to know in advance what future insights they are supporting or impeding by their treatment of material evidence. Safeguarding the historical record for future generations should be considered an extremely important duty.

Question 2: Are there any reforms you would suggest to the current law enabling wills to be inspected?

No.

Question 3: Are there any reasons why the High Court should store original paper will documents on a permanent basis, as opposed to just retaining a digitised copy of that material?

Yes. I am amazed that the recent cyber attack on the British Library, which has effectively paralysed it completely, not been sufficient to answer this question for you.  I also refer you to the fate of the Domesday Project. Digital storage is useful and can help more people access information; however, it is also inherently fragile. Malice, accident, or eventual inevitable obsolescence not merely might occur, but absolutely should be expected. It is ludicrously naive and reflects a truly unpardonable ignorance to assume that information preserved only in digital form is somehow inviolable and safe, or that a physical document once digitised, never need be digitised again..At absolute minimum, it should be understood as certain that at least some of any digital-only archive will eventually be permanently lost. It is not remotely implausible that all of it would be. Preserving the physical documents provides a crucial failsafe. It also allows any errors in reproduction -- also inevitable-- to be, eventually, seen and corrected. Note that maintaining, upgrading and replacing digital infrastructure is not free, easy or reliable. Over the long term, risks to the data concerned can only accumulate.

"Unlike the methods for preserving analog documents that have been honed over millennia, there is no deep precedence to look to regarding the management of digital records. As such, the processing, long-term storage, and distribution potential of archival digital data are highly unresolved issues. [..] the more digital data is migrated, translated, and re-compressed into new formats, the more room there is for information to be lost, be it at the microbit-level of preservation. Any failure to contend with the instability of digital storage mediums, hardware obsolescence, and software obsolescence thus meets a terminal end—the definitive loss of information. The common belief that digital data is safe so long as it is backed up according to the 3-2-1 rule (3 copies on 2 different formats with 1 copy saved off site) belies the fact that it is fundamentally unclear how long digital information can or will remain intact. What is certain is that its unique vulnerabilities do become more pertinent with age."  -- James Boyda, On Loss in the 21st Century: Digital Decay and the Archive, Introduction.

Question 4: Do you agree that after a certain time original paper documents (from 1858 onwards) may be destroyed (other than for famous individuals)? Are there any alternatives, involving the public or private sector, you can suggest to their being destroyed?

Absolutely not. And I would have hoped we were past the "great man" theory of history. Firstly, you do not know which figures will still be considered "famous" in the future and which currently obscure individuals may deserve and eventually receive greater attention. I note that of the three figures you mention here as notable enough to have their wills preserved, all are white, the majority are male (the one woman having achieved fame through marriage) and all were wealthy at the time of their death. Any such approach will certainly cull evidence of the lives of women, people of colour and the poor from the historical record, and send a clear message about whose lives you consider worth remembering.

Secondly, the famous and successsful are only a small part of our history. Understanding the realities that shaped our past and continue to mould our present requires evidence of the lives of so-called "ordinary people"!

Did you even speak to any historians before coming up with this idea?

Entrusting the documents to the private sector would be similarly disastrous. What happens when a private company goes bust or decides that preserving this material is no longer profitable? What reasonable person, confronted with our crumbling privatised water infrastructure, would willingly consign any part of our heritage to a similar fate?

Question 5: Do you agree that there is equivalence between paper and digital copies of wills so that the ECA 2000 can be used?

No. And it raises serious questions about the skill and knowledge base within HMCTS and the government that the very basic concepts of data loss and the digital dark age appear to be unknown to you. I also refer you to the Domesday Project.

Question 6: Are there any other matters directly related to the retention of digital or paper wills that are not covered by the proposed exercise of the powers in the ECA 2000 that you consider are necessary?

Destroying the physical documents will always be an unforgivable dereliction of legal and moral duty.

Question 7: If the Government pursues preserving permanently only a digital copy of a will document, should it seek to reform the primary legislation by introducing a Bill or do so under the ECA 2000?

Destroying the physical documents will always be an unforgivable dereliction of legal and moral duty.

Question 8: If the Government moves to digital only copies of original will documents, what do you think the retention period for the original paper wills should be? Please give reasons and state what you believe the minimum retention period should be and whether you consider the Government’s suggestion of 25 years to be reasonable.

There is no good version of this plan. The physical documents should be preserved.

Question 9: Do you agree with the principle that wills of famous people should be preserved in the original paper form for historic interest?

This question betrays deep ignorance of what "historic interest" actually is. The study of history is not simply glorified celebrity gossip. If anything, the physical wills of currently famous people could be considered more expendable as it is likely that their contents are so widely diffused as to be relatively "safe", whereas the wills of so-called "ordinary people" will, especially in aggregate, provide insights that have not yet been explored.

Question 10: Do you have any initial suggestions on the criteria which should be adopted for identifying famous/historic figures whose original paper will document should be preserved permanently?

Abandon this entire lamentable plan. As previously discussed, you do not and cannot know who will be considered "famous" in the future, and fame is a profoundly flawed criterion of historical significance.

Question 11: Do you agree that the Probate Registries should only permanently retain wills and codicils from the documents submitted in support of a probate application? Please explain, if setting out the case for retention of any other documents.

No, all the documents should be preserved indefinitely.

Question 12: Do you agree that we have correctly identified the range and extent of the equalities impacts under each of these proposals set out in this consultation? Please give reasons and supply evidence of further equalities impacts as appropriate.

No. You appear to have neglected equalities impacts entirely. As discussed, in your drive to prioritise "famous people", your plan will certainly prioritise the white, wealthy and mostly the male, as your "Charles Dickens, Charles Darwin and Princess Diana" examples amply indicate. This plan will create a two-tier system where evidence of the lives of the privileged is carefully preserved while information regarding people of colour, women, the working class and other disadvantaged groups is disproportionately abandoned to digital decay and eventual loss. Current and future historians from, or specialising in the history of minority groups will be especially impoverished by this.  

#ukpol #uk politics #fuck the tories #lost media #data loss #cultural vandalism

[gingerswagfreckles]

"I don't hate Jews, just Zionists!!" Yeah the problem with this statement is that you guys have expanded the definition of "Zionist" to include every Jewish person on the entire fucking planet. The number of times I have seen the sentiment that anything short of celebrating religious extremist terrorist attacks constitutes supporting Israel in the past month and a half is completely insane. Jews are not obligated to support a militia that had the total extermination of our people as a stated goal in their foundational charter until 2017. We aren't obligated to support an organization who's leaders publicly called for the extermination of Jews as recently as 2019, and who's governing bodies still include those same members. We aren't obligated to support and participate in our own oppression in order for our pro-Palestinian activism to be valid.

"I don't hate Jews, just Zionists." This means nothing if your only definition of a "good Jew" is one who will sit up like a dog and bark on your command. One who doesn't call out antisemitism and who will cheer along side you so-called "leftists" as you throw your support behind an organization who is as explicitly antisemetic as the Nazis were in pre-WW2 Germany.

I am not a Zionist. I have donated as much money as I can afford towards relief efforts and have marched within the crowds of protesters in the streets calling for a ceasefire. I was almost arrested by the NYPD at the Jewish Voices for Peace rally at Grand Central station. And yet I have had the word "Zionist" thrown in my face so many times in the past few weeks, over and over, by a bunch of white fucking gentiles who cry about how they're being "silenced" when Jews call out their antisemitism.

"I don't hate Jews, just Zionists." A good 80% of you do hate Jews. You do hate Jews. If you classify any Jew who won't celebrate explicitly antisemitic terrorist attacks as a "Zionist," I'm sorry to tell you but you do hate Jews. Because that's all of us. Fuck you guys, honestly. None of you have ever cared about anything but chasing online leftist clout.

#gingerswagfreckles #israel #palestine #israel palestine war #israel palestine conflict #israel hamas war #i/p #i/p war #i/p conflict #jewblr #jumblr #ive been doing better at staying off tumblr but jesus seeing how ppl are #accusing the **zionists** of getting that incredibly antisemitic actress fired is too much #antisemitism #leftist antisemitism

[crimeronan]

guys. okay. rubs my temples.

i have blacklisted every word u can Possibly think of to block posts i do not want to see and somehow keep seeing them. so Please know that this is not a shit-starting post. hence why it's unrebloggable. because i legitimately just want to communicate to people in my immediate sphere.

it is... Not Acceptable Or Appropriate... to make/reblog posts referring to a collective of "jews" or "jewish people" in response to israel's genocide of palestine.

what i mean by this are posts along the lines of "what jews don't realize is-" "i wish american jews knew-" "can't wait to watch jewish bloggers come up with the worst takes imaginable-" etc etc etc.

it is similarly Not Acceptable Or Appropriate to refer to rabbis, synagogues, jewish practice, and other aspects of judaism/jewish culture as a monolithic hivemind that's loyal to israel. this includes "you're all being brainwashed by your rabbis/synagogues" "synagogues are zionist institutions" "stop speaking hebrew until your people stop committing war crimes" etc etc etc.

your kneejerk reaction (if u are a leftist goy) will likely be along the lines of: but it's simply like referring to a collective of british people or american people wrt imperialism, colonialism, and war crimes. you don't mean LITERALLY all jews, just like you don't mean literally all brits or americans.

this is unfortunately a false equivalence because of the antisemitic history and violence behind the idea of Monolithic Jews and Dual Loyalties. there is a quick overview of some of The Problems here; jewish scholarship and discussion of this is incredibly broad and varied... because jewish people are incredibly broad and varied.

like i'm fucking begging. you have Got to knock it off. i was gonna say something snide about how it's telling that i'm seeing a lot more posts About The Jews than about the fundamentalist christians who fanatically support israel's right-wing fascist govt, but like.... god i don't care i don't care i don't want to be writing this. It Just Sucks.

That's It. It Just Sucks

while i'm here, since i don't plan to talk about this anymore unless i have important resources to share: ACTUAL helpful things you can do are to keep an eye on the news and communicate with your own governments. for americans (just bc i am american) -- the biden administration has pledged to work with israel to allow humanitarian aid into gaza. it's important that the public pressure for that to happen continues & that the documentation of what's happening in palestine continues.

the more you guys turn your issue into an issue with "the jews" or "jewish people," the more time we're going to waste explaining why this is not acceptable or appropriate. which is frustrating because there is shit out there that Matters A Whole Lot Fucking More Right Now.

so keep talking about what matters. and please please PLEASE think for two seconds before you make any posts referencing jewish people.

#if u did not know about the dual loyalty history. i would recommend that u not make/reblog any posts about jewish people at all period. #given that like. u do not know enough to recognize and stop dogwhistles from proliferating in ur stuff. u know. #antisemitism #israel #palestine #current events #long post #i am a goy my jewish partner of 8 years HAS read this over and approved it prior to posting tho.

[iraprince]

Hello! long time silent fan here 💝

i came across an older post referring to you leaving the Guns Blazing project... i did back that kickstarter, and now im kinda worried about just who i gave my money to :/

are you able to share any details about why you left, or if theres anything i should know about the creators? it's too late for me to not give them money, but id like to know before i recommend the game to anyone

the main issue shared in the post you reference is pretty much it: a prominent ttrpg award was given to an active duty military strategist. a lot of people in the community, myself included, were obviously horrified by this and many spoke up about what kind of grotesque and deeply unjust message this sends about what we're allowing (more than allowing, CELEBRATING????) in the space; bafflingly, a bunch of other people in the community all crowded around to congratulate and asspat and defend and gas up this grinning servant of the imperial american death machine. it was horrifying to see that the dev of guns blazing, which the entire time it was funding had constantly and loudly advertised itself as a "decolonial" and "anti-imperialist" game, was one of the people celebrating his win.

when i confronted the dev one-on-one about this, i was told "the man's a personal friend who's helped me out in the past and helped out other marginalized people in the space." that is not a sufficient excuse for me when the issue is what this man was doing to marginalized people, FOR MONEY, FOR HIS CAREER, outside of the space. (it's murder. what a military strategist does is facilitate murder as needed by the state.) u cannot buy back lives you've destroyed globally by getting other poc jobs in roleplaying games or whatever the fuck.

i couldn't handle this. i'm not going to judge other artists who stayed in — i don't know if everyone even saw, the turmoil over the award was something that from what i saw was mostly contained to twitter and the dev kept his head down about it aside from his initial congratulations. there was a moment before i confronted the dev where honestly i thought to myself "maybe i can just pretend i didn't see it," but i knew in my heart that wasn't true and i wouldn't be able to be proud of myself if i did that. so that's why i pulled out.

my tone is heated here bc obviously this is a really appalling subject — it's the reason my commerical work contracts have a fucking ethics clause in them now, lmao — but at the same time i'm honestly not interested in like, "calling out" the dev over this. he let me leave the project immediately and without any issues, and i haven't kept up with anything he's doing since this incident. maybe he's changed his mind or like, one would hope all of the absolute horror we're constantly submerged in from witnessing the us government's eager support of the genocide in palestine has opened his eyes to No, Agents Of The Military Are Not Our Fucking Friends, Actually. i don't know. i don't care to go looking to find out. my interest is not in saying "i think this dev is a bad person and everyone should be wary of them!!!!", it's just to say "this dev did something that was so shocking to me and so misaligned from my own morals that i had to distance myself immediately." i don't know how far that reflects on anything else he believes or does, i just know it was a dealbreaker for me personally. the story ends there for me, and other people will have to make their own judgements based on what they observe now.

#i have caps of the (very brief) convo and if someone needs to see them for verification you can dm me. #but like i said i am not interested in this being like. a Callout or anything. i dont want them plastered everywhere #like i dont think anything good would come of it. it wouldnt Help anyone. im just. explaining what i saw and felt and did. #also why this is unrebloggable.

[statementlou]

my post yesterday about why I don't really care if Louis Tomlinson supports starbucks shocked me by actually circulating and getting notes and obviously I like validation and appreciation.... but I feel kind of weird about my big contribution to the topic being something that might come off as discouraging attempts to help Palestine. Feeling powerless in the face of such injustice is horrible and scary and traumatizing and while there are certain things that I do not think make much difference (like boycotting irrelevant targets), that's NOT how I feel about the situation in general! We CAN make a difference and help the Palestinian people! It can feel impossible to fight against all that power and propaganda and military might- but it has been done successfully over and over, colonialism has been destroyed in one place after another a hundred times in the last century, apartheid regimes have fallen, occupations have ended, because over and over, always, even all the military might in the literal world is less powerful than a united front of the PEOPLE. As Ursula K LeGuin said, "We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings", and as Louis Tomlinson said "The power and magic comes from the people, you guys. Don't undermine your role in all of this" and "get off the 'gram and into the streets"!

Under the cut are things you can do that I believe actually directly impact the Palestinian people and the Israeli government, including some easy ones, and the key to a successful movement is to have every type of contribution, to have NUMBERS. However- it is also necessary to have people willing to do the actual work of fighting injustice, not just changing their consumer habits or yelling at people online. I strongly encourage people to explore becoming physically involved in activist work, and not to see it as yet another tiring obligation but rather as a way to help yourself feel less overwhelmed and exhausted. Feeling powerless and defenseless is a trauma that follows us into every corner of our lives, but standing up and working for change can not only save lives, but is good for your own mental health as well, I promise.

I can't make you an exhaustive list of resources, only tell you some tactics that I believe are actually useful. I'm not an expert or whatever, but I have been actively involved in social justice advocacy, activism, and direct action for over 20 years and am drawing on that history of both things that worked and were great and things that were not from my personal experiences. Thank you to @captainrayzizuniverse for helping me (but she didn't see the post any stupid things said by mistake are entirely on me), and especially for pointing out a big (typical white person) slip up, which was to almost forget the very first item on this list: Listen to, support, and amplify Palestinian voices!!! The whole starbucks issue wouldn't even exist if people just went by this single important guideline and did the things Palestinians were asking for rather than making up other things to do instead. In life altogether, and speaking as a disabled person god does this come up a lot: if you want to help someone, start by asking them what they need and then do that even if it isn't what you think they should want. Don't fucking wing it!! Join local groups organizing for Palestine: the people united are powerful, but only if they are united and working in large groups! Join a group! This is hard because... how? who? And I can't answer that for everyone but I can tell you that in the US JVP (Jewish Voice for Peace) is doing a huge amount of very accessible recruiting, you can just join (you don't need to be Jewish) and get involved straightaway in the great actions they're putting on. PYM (Palestinian Youth Movement) is not open to everyone to join but you should definitely follow them on SM to keep up on actions and maybe find ways to support. If you're a student I bet there is some kind of group at your school?

Go to protests: protest works, period. The general politician rule of thumb is that anyone who bothers to actually go out and march represents 10-100 voters. When they look at the numbers (like- '500-1000 people protested the most recent bill you signed') they do this math and they worry. But also honestly if it's something you can manage- it's good for you. It helps. Even if you just go alone and don't talk to anyone, being in a crowd of hundreds of people feeling the same things you are, caring as much as you do, it helps. If you can, yell along to the chants as loud as you can. Get fired up and use that energy to keep going and not despair!

Call and write officials: if you live in the US or UK this is HUGE. What I said above about how they count people at protests as standing for more people who didn't bother but agree? Same with phone calls for sure, it REALLY pressures them. Many orgs make this really easy- I get emails all the time with links to send a letter in a single click or click to call and all you have to do is read the script, get on some lists I guess? But many sites also have this feature, JVP does for example

Support BDS: the Palestinian led BDS have been doing the work of isolating and chipping away at Israel for 19 years and like I said, the actions of the masses only work if we are united behind a few strategic targets rather than all over the place; they have made this possible. It's good to avoid buying from the companies they target; even better to work on the big divestment campaigns. For example, student groups pressuring the big universities to divest from BDS targets echo the successful University divestment efforts that helped end apartheid in South Africa.

Send money: money helps, immediately and concretely, and again if we are many, each person doesn't have to do a lot. Do what you can spare, it all adds up. This has been painful with Gaza for sure, with millions donating but aid being blocked. I don't have The Answer but here's a group I found that actually seems to be getting aid in, and here's a spread sheet of gofundmes- note that people who have foreign passports do not have to pay the horrible border crossing fees, so you may wish to focus on funding those who don't have that privilege. this could maybe be better and there was some other stuff I wanted to say about doing activism to tie up the "activism as self care" thing from above and also bringing it back around to talk about Louis more but I'm tired and I'm hungry right now and this is a lot already. So. Bye lol sorry. send me asks if any of that is something you care about or want to hear

#yes the first Louis quote is kind of just me being silly I know he was referring to live music... but also he SAID IT #and those words have power regardless of the context and I believe it is an ethos he believes in #and the second thing is literally something he posted from an actual protest. my guy!! 🥰 #palestine #blah blah blah #starbucks discourse

[afghanbarbie]

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

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

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

An overview of Afghanistan's recent history:

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

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

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

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

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

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

#afghanistan #taliban #anti imperialism #feminism #radfem safe #america is a terrorist state #america is a failed state #global south #western imperialism #hazara genocide

[twilightcitysky]

My daughter is four. She came home from school and told me she was playing a game called “Princess Gets Rescued From a Tower”. The kid of two feminists, living in a liberal city in a blue state, at the age of four, has internalized the idea that princesses need rescuing. 

I did four years of residency in ObGyn and three years of residency in Psychiatry. I am an MD and a practicing psychiatrist. I don’t have the bandwidth to look at the numbers right now, but I will tell you from personal experience with hundreds and hundreds of patients that women are the strong ones. Most of the babies of teen girls I delivered had no support apart from their own mothers. I wrote “father of baby not involved” in the chart more times than I can count. Most of the pregnancy terminations I performed were for girls and women on their own. Nothing made me feel like I’d made more of a difference than providing a desired termination for a teenager and placing her IUD. Now that girl gets to continue her education, develop her frontal lobe, and decide who she wants to be and what she wants to do. She doesn’t have to be a baby trying to raise a baby. She doesn’t have to be another cog in a system that perpetuates the cycle of poverty in order to keep women and people of color from working towards equality, equity, fairness and real change. 

Make no mistake. The overturning of Roe vs. Wade today is not about saving the lives of the unborn. It is about control of women’s bodies and agency, particularly poor women without the resources to travel out of state for a pregnancy termination. Women are meant to be property. Don’t believe me? How many letters have I received addressed to “Mrs. Husband’s First Name – Husband’s Last Name” instead of “Dr. My First Name – My Last Name”? How many people think my kids have their dad’s last name, because he’s the man and when you get married you’re supposed to give up your identity? Yes, it’s only a name. Yes, it’s tradition. But try speaking up against it— even that one, small thing— and see how much resistance you run into. 

Now women want more than our own names. We want to be paid the same as our male colleagues. We want our voices to be heard in legislation and government. We’d even like to be the president someday. At bare minimum, we’d like to decide the timing and circumstances of when we become parents, because women still carry the majority of responsibility for raising children today, with rare exceptions. We are on a tightrope with no safety net, because there’s so little in the way of institutional support for people who end up with a baby to support and no way to put food on the table. 

People who are thinking about how to get from one day to the next aren’t in the streets protesting. People who are terrified that they’ll be beaten or raped by their partner aren’t rallying for change. People who are trying to raise a child on a minimum wage salary with no parental leave benefits, without any sort of support, aren’t getting an education. People who are working two jobs to keep a roof over their heads aren’t voting. 

And that’s the goal. 

The princess in the tower may need a rescue now, but ask yourself who put her there. Ask yourself who robbed her of the tools to escape, because she’s strong and capable. If you’re a woman, stay safe. If you’re a woman of privilege, help your sisters. If you’re a man, speak up for us. And if there’s any part of you who feels that this is a move that will help any human beings at all, including the unborn children who are the proposed beneficiaries, I cheerfully invite you to get fucked. Nobody wins when women are forced to have kids they can’t or don’t want to support. Not them, not the kids… and not you. 

#roe v wade #roe versus wade #roe vs. wade #current events #news #abortion rights #reproductive rights #reproductive freedom #womens rights #unbelieveable #the backlash is here

[hero-israel]

Hi, if you don't mind answering, I have a question regarding Israel. I figured any Jewish person in Israel or not probably knows better than I could guess after occasionally reading Tumblr for a couple of months. What do you think is right/wrong about the Israel government, what should it be like and what should it do now? I would be thankful if you could answer.

Some context, if it makes any difference why I'm asking: I'm Ukrainian, and I was surprised first time I saw people comparing Israel with russia. It felt wrong to me from the start, cause it made more sense to compare terrorists with terrorists instead. Western leftists seem ignorant and delusional to argue with them, but I also saw this opinion from some Ukrainians on twitter, so I got interested to learn a bit more to get proper arguments against this comparison. Then I learned that quite a lot of Jewish people here are against current actions of the Israel government in Gaza, which at first looked strange to me cause it's a very different situation from what we have in Ukraine. I figured that Jewish people are the best source to learn "what's wrong with Israel government" without being flooded by conspiracy theories. I support Israel, but I don't want to support things that most of you guys actually disagree with. And another thing, personally I don't see how it's possible to get rid of hamas without harming civilians in Gaza, but I saw here Jewish people arguing that both Palestinian and Israeli civilians shouldn't be harmed. That's why I asked a few people on Tumblr what they think Israel should do to get some opinions, though perhaps my question among attacks was seen as an attack too. So this time I add this long clarification, sorry about that 😅

Thank you for the insight - I particularly appreciate hearing what this sounds like from Ukrainians as they face their own crisis.

I support actions that protect Jewish lives and Jewish rights, everywhere in the world, including in Israel. I want governments moral enough and strong enough to do that, everywhere, including in Israel. Sadly, Israel is really fucking it up for the last year.

No one should be happy with what is happening in Gaza. It is an appalling humanitarian disaster, exactly as Hamas planned it would be. Once they were able to stage their attack, Israel had no choice but to invade; to have done anything other than invade would have sent a message to all their enemies that they would just lie back and take it, and that is a message they cannot afford to send.

The current Israeli government is one of the most ultra-right-wing, revolting, criminal, and incompetent out of any democratic nation in the world. Their stupidity made the Hamas attack possible. Benjamin Netanyahu has been PM forever and kept winning elections because despite his ugly, crooked personality, he was good at the job, good from economic and diplomatic perspectives, and avoided major change with the Palestinians. As he stayed in office longer and got more crooked with age, his scandals and campaign crimes piled up until it really looked like he could face prison for it. For a cruelly, tantalizingly brief period, the more forward-thinking elements of Israeli society were able to oust the far-right parties, but eventually that fell apart for the dumbest and most aggravating reason ever and Netanyahu was able to come back. This time he boosted up fringe ultra-right-wing candidates who were too extreme to function in a "real" government but who promised to help him change laws so he wouldn't go to jail. The actual process of changing those laws - transparently to end the investigations of the MULTIPLE indicted or convicted criminals in this government - tore Israeli society apart. People were warning for MONTHS that military readiness was plummeting. The Hamas attack plan had been known since around 2015 and an even more detailed version surfaced last year. They were all just too busy working to legalize crime and settle old scores than on watching the border where the genocidal fascist militia lives.

I don't know what the proper plan at this point is. After 3 months, I'm still very much emotionally stuck on "what you are supposed to do is PREVENT THIS, YOU IDIOTS, THAT IS YOUR JOB, AND NOT A HARD ONE." I don't think I will ever get past that, it was so obvious and I had been losing sleep all year fully expecting something like this to happen. Within the first few weeks after the attack, I saw a message from former PM Naftali Bennett about how it would be relatively quick and easy to flood all the Gaza tunnels with seawater and that would solve the problem; kill off Hamas troops, destroy their weapons, collapse their bases. Clearly they haven't done that yet. Does that mean it can't be done? If it can be done, then I lean towards thinking the current campaign should go on until it is done. If it can't be done, then I'd like to hear exactly what the goal of this incursion is and how long they expect it to last. Are they going to kill 30,000 people in the course of disarming and expelling Hamas? Or are they going to kill 30,000 people and Hamas will still be a recognizable threat anyway? If it's the latter, why kill all those people, why not stop now? When do they stop? Those are fair questions.

Basically all Jews "support Israel," insofar as they want it to keep existing as a Jewish state. Basically all Jews who support Israel also truly have no ill will toward Palestinians. They see Palestinians' problems as being less severe than the problems Jews have faced, historically and recently, and not worth the risks to Jews if an Israel did not exist. They believe in peace and want there to be a two-state solution, either because they really want a better life for Palestinians or because they want to stop feeling vaguely guilty about the occupation, or a mix of both.

I hope this was in any way helpful and regret that I couldn't be more precise about what the future plan should be.

#israel #palestine #gaza #benjamin netanyahu #ukraine #itamar ben-gvir #jumblr

[callimara]

So I want to start off this by saying that I also fully, 100% support the freedom of Palestine, and I don’t want this to one off like I do. I know that saying “don’t be antisemitic while talking about Palestine” is a big Zionist dog whistle, but… that doesn’t mean we can just be antisemitism in our defense of Palestine, y’know?

Israel does not have control over mainstream media. They have some control over what information comes out of Palestine, yes, but they don’t control the mainstream narrative, and saying that they do is was to close to the old “Jews control the media” conspiracy theory for my comfort.

The reason that mainstream narratives support Israel is because America (which is deeply antisemitic and islamophobic on its own) profits off the continued existence of Israel, and any country allied with America is going to be motivated to agree with america on international issues like this. Israel has very little influence on it. Israel hold very little power outside of what western governments give it.

Anyways, from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free, but we don’t have to be antisemitism to get there.

This is so important because it's absolutely right. What Israel is doing doesn't make it ok to be antisemetic or incite hate on Jews because Israel does not reflect on all Jews.

A lot of Jews, including many Holocaust survivors, have been protesting for Palestine's freedom because this isn't a war of religion. What Israel is doing violates MANY Jewish laws and many of the politicians don't give two shits about Judaism unless it's to claim indigeneity so that they can justify their apartheid regime and colonialism. Because the fact is, Zionism is completely secular.

Part of Israel's marketing scheme to sell the idea of The Jewish Homeland to Jews and get them to immigrate and settle in Palestine is conflating religion with race and erasing the unique identities of Jewish people from different cultural backgrounds. What they love to do is claim that every Jewish person in Israel are Mizrahi (and thus have always belonged there), when many of them are actually Ashkenazi. But they don't want to acknowledge that, because it makes them seem less indigenous. (And perhaps that's why ancestry tests are so heavily regulated in Israel. Like, you are NOT allowed to take one just for fun.) Let's also not forget that if you are not Ashkenazi (like Yemeni or any other non-European Jew, for instance) you are more likely to be marginalized.

So in a way, they are erasing their own cultural identities in order to justify their colonialism, which is fucked in itself.

And regarding Israel's dominance in mainstream media, yes, this person is also correct. Western media is heavily biased towards Israel because their countries directly profit from Israel's existence as a western foothold in the middle east. I especially love the statement, "Israel hold very little power outside of what western governments give it." because it's true, and it makes it even more fucked up because the western governments COULD have said something about what Israel is doing. They COULD have stepped in and stopped all of this from happening.

But they chose not to.

Which means they should ALL be held accountable for what is happening in Palestine, not just Israel.

#free palestine #from the river to the sea palestine will be free #zionism #judaism #antisemitism

[decolonize-the-left]

Hi I've had an influx of followers again so I wanna say hi and tell y'all a little what I'm about.

So hi, I'm decol. I'm a grown Ojibwe leftist living with my trans gf and my kid ❤️

You may have noticed I posted a lot of politics. Lately it's been Free Palestine but thats because it became my new normal. Before I became so focused on Palestinians liberation tho, I posted a lot more other things. Human rights, trans rights, women's rights, Im mentally ill and AuDHD and post about mental illness stigma, landback, calling out white supremacy, decolonization, etc. My blog has been political for along time but always on the side of human rights and fighting oppression. But that's just liberal stuff. What makes me a leftist is that I don't believe states or borders are good for people.

Let's get into why that is.

I support life and believe that a state or government fundamentally opposes life.

I also support whatever means necessary the oppressed seek to gain freedom. I don't think it's my place or anyone else's to say liberation can only look one way. Especially when it's often from privilege and a myopic view of comfort that most us speak.

There wouldn't be so many people being oppressed if there weren't so many people dedicated to their own comfort instead of liberation. Nobody should have to Vote to have human rights and if in fact any oppressed people had allies we would not have had to march for them either. We shouldn't have to earn our human rights from a majority that didn't want us to vote in the first place and nobody should have to do it now.

I think voting therefore is also a fundamentally flawed system that no amount of voting blue will change because it is not the Votes that must change, but the people who are casting them. It's the people in the majority who are not demanding equality and the people in the majority who are leaving others to fight for themselves.

But I do unfortunately live in a society that continues to use and weaponize that system anyway for their bi-annual puppet theater where they watch BIPOC fight and bid on who will give us more rights .

I think few people see this for what it is and even less are willing to demand the change necessary to give all people a proper and equal voice. Such is the nature of the majority is it not? They may pretend to hate injustice but remember that myopic view of comfort they have? Injustice is included with it, free of charge.

So yeah, you will see me advocate for certain things on this blog that may contradict the views I've stated at first glance. But It's just me working within the framework that I have been given.

For example I'll push for presidential candidates despite the fact that I support Landback and believe voting is flawed and the country is fascist. Because I know we are far from an organized revolution full of intersectional solidarity and realistically I must work within the framework I have. Which is a shitty voting system and a population who doesn't even fully realize why it's so shitty.

Or you'll see me support violence when I support saving lives. And that's because I also believe the language of the oppressor is violence and likewise that anyone who's ever tried catering to their "better conscience" has found that oppression wouldn't exist if the oppressors had a conscience to appeal to. Violence is the answer sometimes and I've found that sometimes it's the only answer that a state will understand.

To that end...I don't want to hear about any state military anywhere. Every single military on earth has done some seriously fucked up shit. I know this. You know this. I don't support any military anywhere. Period.

I don't think anyone is innocent either. As I've gotten older I've realized it's been made clear that race and religion are part of everything including our headlines today and that's it's been that way for a long time. Even freedom and liberation and oppression have been racialized and as a native 'leftist extremist' I've seen that firsthand. I've learned that both sides will lie to make the other look bad without taking accountability for whatever awful thing they did themselves.

Power corrupts. And it's why I support principles and ideas behind a movement and not necessarily the specific people of it or even the movement itself and it's why I will ALWAYS disregard any attempt to undermine a movement because the people leading it were found to have flaws. Of course they did. And of course they're being politicized. Such is the reality of the Us vs Them political landscape. Anything to make the other guy look bad.

It's up to us who were going to stand behind despite their flaws. It's up to us to decide what principles matter to us. And I refuse to let perfection be the enemy of progress. Because I understand a lot of people in 2024 have been spoon fed puritan ideas that have made them believe most movements are not good enough to support. Either they don't follow their ideology perfectly or their tactics are too aggressive or their goals are "unrealistic." It's always something.

I don't subscribe to this puritan 2.0 logic. Nor do I believe that it should apply to everyone. I didn't ask to be held under a microscope for example. I'm just a Tumblr blogger. Yeah I blog about a lot of politics and such but that's because I like politics and such lol I'm not a representation of anything but myself, but you'll find I too have been politicized in ongoing race and theological wars. "Why would you say x if you support y?" says anon in another attempt to make all supporters of Y look unreliable and bad for their opinions on X. As if my singular bad opinion is somehow a representation of everyone else who supports Y and not just my opinion specifically on x.

I also want to be very clear that I'm still learning :)

I don't know everything about everything yet and as such I'm sure I'll fuck up or say the wrong things or use the wrong terminology sometimes.

Please just give me a heads up. Don't be a puritan about it and make a whole post about how ignorant and harmful I am or something, especially when it's been made clear my intentions are not to offend or exclude anyone and I would Never intentionally do anything like that.

I try to educate myself on topics before I speak about them but lots of the things I discuss on my blog require a lot of knowledge to be spoken on in confidence. I am often not confident lol. As a native tho it annoys me to no end when people use the excuse that "well I didn't know enough about the topic so I stayed silent and didn't share opinions on it at all ever" because that's also a puritan act thats detrimental to movement and helps to maintain our status as 'Irrelevant Concern.' So I try to educate myself and show support, tho sometimes it isn't as well worded or educated as it should have been.

All I ask is you have some grace when that happens as I have good intentions. Additionally if I ever fuck up Please tell me. I do not ever want to make someone feel like shit cuz or singled out cuz I said something ignorant I shouldn't have.

Some people choose comfort and don't acknowledge when they fucked up. I try to pride myself on Not doing that and correcting myself where others can see and learn from it too.

Not everyone wants to learn tho. Those are the people I don't understand. Those are my opposers; the people standing indifferently in the way of progress while oppressed fathers beg for them to move aside. And what is he to do with the child dying in his arms? Just allow this man to keep being the only obstacle to saving them? Of course not.

And so I aggressively and vehemently stand by the opinion that self defense in this way is never wrong. Let all the ignorant white supremacists die if they have to and let all their allies cry about it. I don't care. White supremacists fundamentally oppose life which I support. And so I fundamentally oppose white supremacy the same way I do a state and as such I openly call for their destruction as well.

This is getting long so I'll wrap it up.

TLDR:

Human rights are to be taken by any means necessary if they were not given to you. The people with-holding them don't get to complain about how you get them and either does anyone else especially if they aren't helping you get them now. Additionally, people should be given room to grow but choosing not to grow is a choice too so don't tolerate the intolerant who stands in your way. If you can cut him down then do it.

PS:

My asks are always open. I get a lot of mean, bad faith asks and so I answer most asks with this mindset and I'm trying to be better about it but if you send one in good faith and my attitude sucks, please don't take it personally.

P.p.s

I share a lot of politics and upsetting things and images on my blog. I don't feel the need to tag every post because So Many of them are this way..

However, the posts that are especially bad ARE tagged

My trauma/trigger tag is: decolstw

This is a catch-all tag. Gore, white supremacist violence, historical hate crimes, and the like are all tagged with this.

#decols post #decols opinion #my post #you can reblog this im mostly just mostly sharing this for new followers who are confused and lost if my asks are any representation lol

[communistkenobi]

something i’ve never liked is how, when people talk about dealing with the problems indigenous people face, there’s always this assumption that we shouldn’t “punish” non-indigenous people by involving them in the solution. just because their ancestors did something wrong that doesn’t mean they have blood on their hands and that their ancestors’ intentions aren’t their intentions.

i’m not somebody who thinks we should take responsibility for running society instead of the government, but, the situation just just rubs me the wrong way. like if your ancestors wronged people and the people they wronged have to deal with the consequences of of said wrongs everyday, do you not owe it to society to be part of the solution?

i don’t know what to do about this situation, but i just feel like society teaches non-indigenous people they are not responsible for pursuing justice here and i was wondering what your thoughts on the matter. tysm in advance if you reply 🤍

Even if you accept that current settlers are not in any way responsible for or benefit from past colonial violence (which I don’t, but we will sit with this hypothetical for a moment), then the same reasoning must be extended to indigenous peoples. If my wealth and privilege in a settler colonial state is not morally linked to the history of said state, then the oppression of indigenous peoples are doubly not their own faults - which is all the more reason to resolve current inequalities! But this line of reasoning is not logically extended to indigenous people because in the Canadian imaginary (and other settler colonial contexts, but I’m most familiar with Canada so I will speak on this context) indigenous people are considered to be subjects stuck in history, always “behind” us in time. Of course, indigenous people are treated as indigenous in every conceivable way, but they are treated as if they are in the wrong time period. The only acceptable version of this for settlers is for there to be no more indigenous people - only then will there be no debts to repay.

But obviously this is not the case, and can never be the case. I think concepts of individual punishment or retribution are a flawed way of understanding decolonial efforts. A more productive understanding is what Fanon says - for decolonisation to happen, the last must come first. This can be in the form of wealth and land redistribution, legal autonomy, official apologies, the abolition of various colonial institutions, and so forth. This can include stripping institutions of their wealth which consequently means powerful people will lose status and power (the church, for example, which was one of the primary architects of residential schools), but this is not based on individual punishment. Obviously this isn’t immediately realisable in the current state of affairs, and so supporting current indigenous struggles (such as blocking oil pipelines, the MMIWG project, etc) is of prime importance.

And also like just on a general note, settlers do still directly benefit from settler colonialism. Like whenever you hear about a new pipeline being built on indigenous land, the argument is always about how many jobs it will create (for settlers). Churches profit fucking massively from indigenous genocide and every settler Christian directly benefits from this. The RCMP is an arm of the Canadian state that is constantly used to conduct massive amounts of violence and suppression of indigenous people. etc.

And this is also a deeper disease of white supremacy: this open denial of history allows white people today to believe their accomplishments, their privileges, their wealth, are entirely of their own doing, ignoring the mountain of colonial architecture that affords them these privileges in the first place. This also has the dual effect of individually blaming indigenous people for their own oppression. At the heart of this sentiment is an existential white insecurity - white supremacy promises what it says on the tin, and while many white people buy into it wholeheartedly, deep down there is an anxiety about the true nature of white supremacy, because white supremacy only works if it is constantly, violently reinforced at every turn. White supremacy, contra to the claim of white supremacists, is not naturally occurring, it has to be fought for at every moment, it has to constantly add bodies to the pile to justify itself. So when (especially white) settlers claim they are not responsible for the sins of the past, this is motivated reasoning, because if the past does not exist then their privilege as a white person is a result of some biological process outside of history, emerging naturally and organically. 

So like you, I don’t buy this argument, I think it’s deeply racist, and I don’t think it’s arguing the thing people think it is - of course Joe Average on the street is not individually responsible for his government’s genocide, because settler colonialism is an institutional project, but calls for decolonisation are not calls for white genocide or whatever other nonsense. It is like all serious left wing projects an aim towards the abolition of class, the abolition of the settler as a historical subject that exerts power over the indigenous subject. and while decolonisation is a violent process (and I use violence in an expansive, inclusive sense, not just interpersonal physical violence - many indigenous struggles you see today are violent in some sense or another because they are confronting the state), it is only that way because settler colonialism itself is an eternally violent machine and must be sloughed off violently 

#asks #genocide tw

[punkboyjack]

The shit lie of SRS in Iran

So it's a something stuck in my brain ( and my life ) that I think people need to know about it is the thing about LGBTQ+ people in Iran especially T because I'm trans and it's little too much complicated in iran

Bing trans in Iran has some benefits in look but it's a lie

We are known as mentally ill people

We have the same problems as any other LGBTQ+ person in the world but with a higher rate

Most of the time, they give strong psychedelic drugs and hormones to trans children ( or just LGBT childrens )

And I was so paranoid about it that I wouldn't take any of the psychiatrists' pills when I was depressed (my parents don't know that I just got better somehow and no one doubt about it)

The Iranian government also monitors online transgender communities, often subjecting them to censorship, and police routinely arrest trans people

Unfortunately most Iranian parents like boys so trans woman's are badly treated almost 92% of trans women in Iran faced verbal or emotional violence and over 70% had faced physical violence

And the rate of murder and attempted suicide among trans people in Iran is high (mostly trans women).

and that really sad bcz one of the trans woman's that a used to know have Ben send to who knows where for the military training by her dad because ( HE was not man enough)

1_pre surgery is hell : we go on a all girl / all boy schools and I think it's like Catholic schools over there

And people don't respect us we mostly have problem finding friends we don't have the From the social point of view, it is almost impossible to identify ourselves as transgender because the government has strictly separated men and women. I didn't really know what my problem was until I was 13 years old

Worst and most important part is telling our parents that we are trans and they should support us because all the work of the license is done with the consent of the family ( I'm so lucky about my parents by the way so good for me but holy fuck who made that rule in the first place)

2_ the surgery is chipper here (it's a lie ) -> we spent Soo much money and time ( and mental health) on permission to do surgery and people who do this surgeries are not even have expertise in this work And they have long-term side effects that are not good at all

first submitted to a long and invasive process

including virginity tests ( idk whyyy)

formal parental approval ( I told you)

, psychological ( it's just the worst part you can't imagine how terrible this psychologists are ),

inspection by the Family Court ( like a god damn criminal )

If we don do the SRS we are basically nothing to them and Thay don't give a fuck about us unless we did something wrong or something and then we are basically dead as hell

Like let's say you are a heterosexual trans men who don't want to do a surgery and you have girlfriend who loves you and respect's you

Will no you don't you are just a lesbian to them and will if they found out what's between your legs you and your gf are going to be executed I'm not joking

3_After surgery, is hard as hell : discrimination, from the law, the state, and from the people around us

Given the lowest quality of hormone therapy, we usually do not have reliable sources for it . Surgery under the hands of non-specialists causes dangerous side effects, and if we are imprisoned, we will no longer get hormones

And not so fun fact : Most of the gay people in Iran are recognized as transgender and they have to tell us about the process because otherwise they will be executed. For the government, changing their gender of poor gay people shows a better face than killing them

And yeah rest of your gay life you are just unfortunate person stuck in a person of your own body

Bruh I read it all over and I'm not even close to the realty it's too much

#free iran #iran #trans #trans boy #transgender #trans girl #transmasc #trans man #LGBT #LGBTQ #queer #trans woman #trans pride #gay

[strawberrysoup]

Please don't get your hopes up, this is not about me returning from a four year hiatus or coming back to any fics I've started. This is an apology and acknowledgement of problematic content I've written - not the dark!fics or horror content, for better or for worse - regarding subjects I didn't and still don't fully understand.

I started writing Let's Review in 2019. At the time, I didn't know much about Israel. I knew that the United States overall supported Israel, but I didn't know why they needed to be 'supported'. I knew Israel came about after the Holocaust, but I didn't know how. I equated Israel with Jewish people, to my understanding Judiasm and Jerulselem were equitable to Mecca and Muslims. They were places I associated with religions; the historical home of the Jewish people was Israel and that was about it. I didn't know about Zionism or the history of the area or the displacement and genocide of the people of Palestine and the horrors they've endured under the Israeli State.

At one point, someone sent me a message asking about my opinions on Palestine and Israel and I replied something along the lines of, I don't want to discuss politics or political opinions on my Dark/Dead Dove Do Not Eat Fanfiction Tumblr. I don't know if Let's Review implies Penny supports Israel or if it implies I support Israel, I don't know the dog whistles to listen for or that I might have repeated without understanding their meanings - yet. I am actively attempting to learn more. I will not edit out any of what I wrote, I take responsibility for my ignorance and I won't try to erase or hide it. If I ever decide to return to writing, I will add disclaimers to every chapter of the original version of Let's Review with a more condensed version of this post. For now, I will pin this post to serve as a constant apology and acknowledgement for anyone new who stumbles across my fics. If I rewrite Let's Review, Penny and Peter will remain Jewish, but I will omit Penny's Israeli heritage - regardless of my determination to acknowledge my mistakes, I also acknowledge that building a character with that backstory is beyond my ability to accurately and respectfully portray.

I apologize to anyone that I marginalized with my writing. I apologize for writing off the message I received asking my opinion, that should have prompted me to do more research to understand why the question was even posed. I still do not fully understand the intricacies of this situation, history is written by the victors and religion is complicated.

What I do know is the actions of the Israeli/Zionist state do not represent the Jewish people or religion. I understand that the actions of the Zionists are antithetical to the Jewish religion. I understand that supporting the Zionist state is supporting the genocide and ethnic cleansing of the Muslim and Arab people of Palestine that has been happening over more than half a century. I understand that the 4th largest military force in the world is working to eradicate 2.2 million people who have no military or government to protect them in the Gaza Strip.

I've written a letter to my state congressmen and senators. If you've read this post and agree with my perspective, please consider reaching to whichever official is meant to represent your interests in your government. I've included mine below because I know the process of writing that sort of letter can be daunting. It's not perfect - it's probably not even good, it could be fucking stupid, but I think it gets the point across. Copy and paste it if you're comfortable with that, take it and edit it to make it your own, I don't care - what I care about is you contacting your representatives to make sure they understand you condemn the actions of the Israeli state's war crimes and human rights violations. I tried to include as much as I could while keeping it just under 2,000 characters.

You might think this is stupid of me, to return after so long just to make this statement. But I think it matters. Even if I hadn't written a character with a backstory that was beyond my ability to write respectfully that I needed to take responsibility for, requesting and attempting to facilitate anyone who still follows me to do what they can is something I will do to the best of my ability. Share your opinion. Be loud. Make them listen.

[Representative],

I'm writing to you today regarding the war crimes and human rights violations occurring in Israel, occupied Palestine, and the Gaza Strip. Foremost, I hope you understand that supporting the Jewish people isn't the same as supporting Israel. Supporting Israel is supporting Zionism. Supporting the Zionists is supporting the crimes being committed against a population marginalized due to their religion and ethnicity.

Israel doesn't exist as a country, but it does exist as a hostile military force actively committing acts of genocide and ethnic cleansing. We know what apartheid policy looks like and how quickly it devolves into fascism. The Muslim and Arab people of Palestine have been relegated to second class citizens and it keeps getting worse.

Those living in the Gaza strip, the largest open air prison in the world, have no voting power under the Zionist State. They have no military, no government, no airport. They have no control over their electricity, imports or exports, internet access, or movements in or out of the strip. These 2 million people have been forced to live in a territory that is 25 miles long and 6 miles wide, and the Zionist army is eradicating them.

You can't blame the population of Gaza for the crimes of Hamas. As I mentioned before, the territory is occupied by more than 2 million people. You can't equate the entire population with their most radical terrorist faction.

We've seen this happen before. How many people will die in bombings and massacres before we stop turning a blind eye?

This cannot be ignored or supported. Every government should loudly and clearly condemn these inhumane crimes. Please bring this to your colleagues' attention. Please support Palestinians, support the Arab and Muslim populations living in what they call Israel, condemn the actions of a hostile occupying force commiting real time genocide while we watch.

[Your Name]

[phoenixyfriend]

The older I get, the more I understand how much of my take on certain topics (now including Star Wars, particularly the genocide of the Jedi and the many civil wars of the Mandalorians) stems directly from Balkan Cultural Trauma.

Like. There is not a way to really explain my feelings on Mandalorian imperial history and the genocide of the Jedi without getting into things like (and this has links because I do not have the energy in me to explain everything in detail because it's just so much shit, people do entire doctorates on just tiny parts of any given one of these):

five hundred years of Ottoman oppression of the region (especially the blood tithe of devshirme and its role in the Janissary slave army; the English Wikipedia article is significantly kinder about the practice than the Balkans remember it being), and the rise of nationalism in the wake of its dissolution

the attempted genocide of the Serbs in Croatia in WWII (the Nazi regime of Croatia operated the third-largest concentration camp in Europe, and targeted ethnic Serbs more than all other groups combined, resulting in several hundred thousand dead Serbs at the hands of far-right Croats and Bosniaks, with records kept so poorly that estimates range from 200k to 500k, all committed without the use of mass extermination tools due to lack of adequate equipment), which most of the Western world has no idea about but features heavily in my own family's history

the attempted genocide of Croats and Muslims in greater Yugoslavia by the Chetniks in WWII (far-right Serb nationalists and Yugoslav royalists, resulting in the deaths of about 55k-73k Croats and Muslims)

the same shit happening in the 90s, once again on the same religious/ethnic divides (basically the same thing in the Balkans, a large number of conservative parties are of the opinion that a Serb who converts to Catholicism is now ethnically a Croat, and if they convert to Islam they are now ethnically a Bosnian/a Bosniak), resulting in tens of thousands of Bosniaks dead at the hands of Serb nationalists, and upwards of a million displaced. (Bosnian and Croatian forces also engaged in war crimes against each other and Serbs, but to a much smaller degree.)

The entire mess that is Kosovo, where even I can't really start to explain what's going on because it's been going on for so many years in so many directions and it's probably another 'the Ottomans fucked everyone over and then we turned around and went for each others' throats after they were finally gone'

Within that context, you have all this bullshit about propaganda fed to the people by the government, propaganda fed to the outside world to shift over international perception of the events, propaganda used to help the outside world forget about a horrific historic war crime, arguments about which nationalist attitudes were a direct result of Ottoman oppression instead of a later development, which current conflicts can be traced back to Ottoman oppression and who resisted versus who cooperated, who lied about what, who initiated what, which crimes can be attributed to a rogue military and which to the government, which crimes were supported by the population and which were supported only by the wealthy or high ranking, about what even actually happened, about who even actually died, about how many things were initiated by outside forces since there are theories that the CIA helped kick off or at least inflame the many conflicts of the 90s and 00s--

And I was raised in America, and have tried to do independent research every time my parents told me a story about history because I don't want to trust the words of two people on the history of millions, and it's always so much more complicated than you think.

Except for two rules, really, which is that almost everything traces back to the Ottomans fucking us over, and the Rroma always suffered for everyone else's bullshit even though they weren't involved in the conflicts in the first place.

#star wars #balkans #balkan history #serbia #and various others #history #death tw #ethnic cleansing tw #genocide tw #phoenix posts #vent post

[chososhoeso2]

One piece theory + spoilers:

Okay so I saw this TikTok earlier. Shout out to @jinbejay for making this:

Whether the op meant it as a joke or a genuine theory, it really got me thinking. This theory doesn't sound too bad, so I wanted to research it a bit. Now I did type up a whole long thing with a lot of little bits of research I did.. and then I found a CBR article that basically said all the same things. If you'd rather just read the article, here's the link: https://www.cbr.com/one-piece-who-is-dragons-father-theory/

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Everything below this point is stuff that I found on my own before I came across the article:

So there are three possible ways I think this theory could go:

There are a few things that we know with certainty:

1. Garp fucking loves taking in strays

2. The identity of Luffy's mom (*cough* Crocodile *cough*) hasn't been revealed yet

3. Garp and Rocks fought each other in the God Valley incident

4. Garp has good relationships with criminals (i.e., Dadan, Roger)

Right now, Dragon is 55 years old. The God Valley incident happened 38 years ago. So at the time of the incident, Dragon would have been 17. Rocks supposedly died during that incident which, supposing Rocks is Dragon's father, could have left Dragon as an orphan. Now 17 isn't young in the one piece world, by any means. Both Ace and Luffy set out to become pirates at the age of 17 and Luffy was only 17 when the strawhats took down Enies Lobby and two Warlords (plus impel down and marineford), so 17 really is not all that young here. We also don't know if Dragon was even at God Valley, but let's say he was (it's a theory and what's a theory without some good speculation). My main three possible routes for this theory are:

1. Garp took in Dragon at God Valley after Rocks was defeated. Dragon meets Garp's daughter and they get busy (and potentially married)

2. Garp arrested Dragon at God Valley. While imprisoned, Dragon met Garp's daughter and maybe she helped him escape? Or maybe since he wasn't a revolutionary yet, he wasn't imprisoned for long, but he still got to know Garp's daughter during that time.

3. Dragon escaped - or was never actually at - God Valley and just somehow managed to meet Garp's daughter someday.

There could obviously be other things like maybe Garp's daughter was also a criminal and her and Dragon were imprisoned together. Idk. But here's some support for option 1:

I want to note that Dadan is also 55 years old, like Dragon. Which is weird to me, bc I expected her to be closer in age to Garp. But Garp trusted her with his grandkids and blackmailed her into compliance. She was a wanted criminal, a mountain bandit. You know who else would be wanted? The son of the most notorious pirate of the age. Garp has had multiple different relationships with various different criminals, including Dadan and Roger. So it wouldn't be totally wild for him to have another criminal relation.

We know that Shanks was found as a baby by Roger and Rayleigh at God Valley, so why couldn't another random kid end up getting adopted during that incident? Also, we have seen on a couple occasions where kids are taken in by the marines. Namely Corazon and X Drake. Granted those two worked in pirate crews as undercover Marines, but still. Let's say that that was going to happen with Dragon, as well. Garp decided to take him under his wing with the grand hopes that he would become a military genius - like his wishes for Ace and Luffy. And maybe, regardless of his daughter, he even had Dragon's last name changed from Rocks to Monkey, so that he wouldn't suffer from government or pirate persecution - like how Ace ended up with the last name of Portgas instead of Gol.

However, just like with Luffy and Ace, Dragon didn't want to become a Marine. He already knew about what the government was really like. We know that Rocks was very much so against the government - whether for strictly selfish reasons (ya know, wanting to rule the world) or for the purpose of freedom, I can't say for sure. Even the main purpose for the God Valley incident was to mess up some celestial dragons and nobles. He also was interested in finding out the government's secrets. Here are some excerpts from the wiki:

Now, if Rocks were to have a 17 year old son at that time, I'm sure he would have taught the son all about the truths of the world/world government that he had been uncovering. All of that knowledge could easily lead someone to want to become a revolutionary. I mean the world government and the celestial dragons and the slavery and the hush hush of it all... It's real fucked up. However, you could probably learn even more about it if you were to get taken in by a military hero. After all, the best weapon is knowledge.

Now, there are 16 years between the God Valley incident and the Buster Call on Ohara. That's a long time where we don't know what Dragon was up to. We know that at least a few years before he met up with Vegapunk on Ohara, he was working with the freedom fighters - of which Dragon had invited Vegapunk to join but was rejected due to lack of funding. The only other thing we know for sure from that time is that Dragon saw the execution of Roger just 2 years before the buster call (at age 31 btw). That's a decent amount of missing time.

As for options 2 and 3, we don't really have information for or against either of them. That I can think of, at least.

---------------------------------------------------

Also, if you don't see how Dragon and Rocks could be related, they just look so much alike. Luffy definitely looks like Garp but Dragon doesn't, which would support the Dragon marrying Garp's daughter theory. You can't tell me that Dragon and Rocks don't look similar. They have similar long black hair, the same exact hairline, similar forehead lines, and a strong nose.

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If you've already heard of this theory, then that's pretty cool. I only just found out about it but I'm all in. I'm curious if anybody agrees or disagrees with the 3 potential routes that I mentioned. Also I apologize if there are a lot of typos or if things seem jumbled or out of place, I'm really tired and wanted to post this before I fell asleep lol

#one piece #one piece theory #monkey d. dragon #monkey d dragon #garp one piece #rocks d. xebec

[hulahoopsoupgroup]

ive ranted about this to my friend like 3 times this week but ill rant again because im just so fed up and angry.

21st century american capitalism is so dismal. we put everything behind a paywall. you cant exist without paying money and you cant go anywhere or do anything without paying.

you have to pay to be born and you have to pay to survive. if you cant pay to survive, you have to pay to die. theres no escaping it.

most jobs in the usa require a college degree, but a lot of people cant afford to go to college. its honestly infuriating that people cant get the jobs they want because the education is so expensive. why do i have to pay tens of thousands of dollars to the government so i can get a job that will probably only barely keep me afloat in todays economy?

why do we pay writers and artists so little when they are one of the most vital parts of society. where would we be without the painters and authors who create beautiful scenes and impactful stories?

weve overcomplicated society so much that you have to jump through so many financial hoops to just, exist. you have to have insurance for everything. everything costs so much. why do i have to pay over 2 dollars for a bottle of water at work? why are the bags of candy 5 dollars?

all of this just makes everyone miserable, no doubt. i had a conversation with 5 other people and all of us have had severe depression/anxiety, had to be medicated, or needed a lot of therapy/not been able to afford it. and im not stigmatizing therapy in any way. if i could afford it, i would absolutely go, but my job doesnt pay much, so even one session would set me back so far regarding money.

the fact that its so normal for 11-13 year olds to start experiencing severe depression is so concerning. its almost like a rite of passage. ask anyone in gen z if they were depressed in middle school and theyll probably say "yeah." thats concerning.

young people's suicide rates have risen over 50% in the past 10 years. 42% of gen z considered suicide in 2021-22. the fact that i know 3 or 4 people (myself included) who have attempted suicide before age 16 or 17 is insane.

we're so depressed about the future and reasonably so. its so bleak. the world is burning, people are killing each other over such trivial things, nobody listens to each other, and the government is just going insane. how badly do you have to screw up to make a 13 year old want to kill themself because they feel like the future is so bleak?

how badly do you have to screw up to prevent so many people from going to college and getting jobs to support themselves?

how badly do you have to screw up to bar people from something as simple as going to the doctor and earning a basic living wage?

and to think that there are still people who think this is fine. there are some people who sit back and say this all makes sense, that it makes sense that you have to pay thousands of dollars for a few stitches in your hand if you have a cooking accident, that you have to insure every last bit of your life, that people killing each other over ideological differences is natural and cant be helped.

america needs to wake the fuck up and get shit done. its destroying its own future. its making the future generation kill itself because of how miserable it is. fucking do better and maybe you wouldnt burn to the ground in a dumpster fire

#rant post #rant #tw sui ideation #tw sui attempt mention #tw mental health #tw mental illness #anti capitalism #everyone is insane :) #american bullshit #gen z culture #gen z shit