Tumgik
#Calls | Independent | Investigation
xtruss · 6 months
Text
World Central Kitchen Calls For Independent Investigation into Killing of Aid Workers in Gaza
An independent investigation is the "only way to determine the truth," WCK said.
— By Kevin Shalvey | April 4, 2024
Tumblr media
LONDON -- The foreign-aid organization World Central Kitchen called on Thursday for an independent and international investigation into the killing of seven of its workers in an Israel airstrike in Gaza.
"An independent investigation is the only way to determine the truth of what happened, ensure transparency and accountability for those responsible, and prevent future attacks on humanitarian aid workers," the organization said in a statement.
The seven aid workers were killed Monday night when their three-vehicle convoy, including two armored cars, was struck after leaving the Deir al-Balah warehouse in central Gaza, where the aid workers had helped unload more than 100 tons of humanitarian aid brought to Gaza on the maritime route, according to the statement from WCK, a humanitarian organization dedicated to delivering food aid.
Tumblr media
Palestinians inspect a vehicle with the logo of the World Central Kitchen wrecked by an Israeli airstrike in Deir al Balah, Gaza Strip, Tuesday, April 2, 2024. Ismael Abu Dayyah/AP
The organization, which was founded by chef Jose Andres, described the airstrike that killed the workers as a "military attack that involved multiple strikes and targeted three WCK vehicles."
"All three vehicles were carrying civilians; they were marked as WCK vehicles; and their movements were in full compliance with Israeli authorities, who were aware of their itinerary, route, and humanitarian mission," the non-governmental organization said Thursday.
Tumblr media
The World Central Kitchen identified seven aid workers who were killed in Gaza. World Central Kitchen
WCK said it had asked the U.S., Australian, Canadian and Polish governments to "join us in demanding an independent, third-party investigation into these attacks, including whether they were carried out intentionally or otherwise violated international law."
A senior adviser for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said claims that the Israeli strike was intentional were "absurd."
"The last thing we would want in the world is to endanger civilian lives," Ophir Falk, the adviser, told ABC News on Wednesday.
WCK said Thursday that it had asked Israel to preserve all material -- including documents and communications -- that may be relevant to the strike.
— ABC News' Bill Hutchinson, Meredith Deliso, Britt Clennett, Dragana Jovanovic, Jordana Miller and Kuba Kaminski contributed to this story.
0 notes
anim-ttrpgs · 9 months
Text
A.N.I.M. Adventure Art: Benadetta (not to be confused with Burnadette)
Tumblr media Tumblr media
Art by @theblackwarden
Meet Benadetta. Benadetta is a 30-something-year-old OSHA inspector who used to chain smoke but now vapes(this is mechanically important, it’s why she has very poor Athletics and other Physical skills and also is tied to her “Comfort Item” Trait.).
This art has been posted here with permission as part of A.N.I.M.’s Adventure Art initiative in our TTRPG book club.
Benadetta is a PC from Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy by A.N.I.M.
If you’d like to join the A.N.I.M. TTRPG Book Club, you can find the discord invite on our website.
If your art fits he parameters outlined on this post, and you’d like it featured here, tag us or post it in the book club’s Adventure Art channel on discord.
If you’d like to support us and get a prerelease copy of Eureka: Investigative Urban Fantasy, check out our Patreon! Our Kickstarter is planned for launch in April 2024!
Mild spoilers under the cut, details kept vague so as not to spoil the adventure module this we are using for this adventure, it's a Call of Cthuhlu adventure module (Eureka is compatible with those without much tweaking!) not one of our own.
Benadetta was the one who OSHA inspected the warehouse that then blew up like a week later, inciting the mystery. She feels like she could’ve been responsible for the explosion by not being thorough enough and that’s why she went out of her way to try and find out the cause—along with this weird woman, Yvette, whom she thinks is a V:TM LARPer(she went on like one date with a guy like that in college who also never broke character) from the Internet she met on r/warehouseexplosions.
Investigation ensued.
They found out that Benadetta was not responsible, it was actually a bomb, and this is part of an organized crime thing that much later they have discovered is a radical cult.
Also this weird woman from the Internet has been buying Benadetta things at the drop of a hat, like meals and a whole form-fitting biker suit that costs like $600(was part of a disguise) and Benadetta has been...not discouraging her at all.
Benadetta has been losing Composure rapidly throughout the adventure and is now constantly hovering between 0 and 2. Yvette is...really bad for the Composure of people around her.
The problem is that regular people restore 2 Composure at the end of every day, plus composure from the comfort of fellow investigators. However, Yvette just plain cannot do this. She has a -4 in that skill.
She found out a little more recently that 1. Yvette is a real vampire. and 2. Yvette murdered three armed organized crime enforcers with hardly a second thought when left to her own devices. This brought her Composure down again.
In the morning of the most recent session they went to an architect’s house to get some blueprints, only for Yvette to be lured away from the living room and blasted apart with a shotgun by one of the guy’s assistants with a shotgun upstairs(that’s a whole story), while the other assistant attacked Benadetta with a knife and cut her arm open.
Yvette showed back up in the nick of time, now holding that shotgun, and punched the teeth out of the knife-wielding assistant.
It turned out that the architect had no idea about any of this, the assistants were members of the cult whose job it was to spy on him, and murder anyone who showed up asking about those blueprints.
After visiting an Urgent Care for the knife wound and Yvette treated Benadetta to an expensive meal after Benadetta basically snapped at her and insisted she owed her for dragging her around into involvement with a deadly cult, so they went to a nice restaurant.
They later went to Chili’s after Yvette left Benadetta alone for a few hours to lay on her bed and cry at 0 Composure.) Oh and also Benadetta owns 4 pet rats that she cried with. She has not allowed Yvette to see them.
They had to go to Chili’s because through some cyberstalking they found out a member of the cult frequents it and Yvette thinks this specific guy has information and might even be receiving a bomb to deliver to a certain location soon. (Yvette wants that bomb so she can drop it in the mailbox of the cult HQ, which is something I think Benadetta doesn’t fully realize.)
Benadetta, however, only came along meaning to be moral support while making Yvette do all the work. Benadetta is just getting drunk on watered down bottomless appletinis. But, even drunk, she is quickly realizing what a mistake it was to send Yvette to talk to this guy alone.
Because Yvette’s Interpersonal skills are -3 or worse almost across the board.
Benadetta ended up having to pull Yvette away when Yvette wasn’t checking her text messages (texts like “HE IS TRYING TO FUCK YOU”) and try to talk a mortified Yvette into proposing a ‘ménage à trois’, so that they could get this guy to bring them home and get him even more drunk so they could just search his house. Yvette *could not* do it so Benadetta has to call him over and say it herself while seductively unbuttoning her dress shirt—despite looking almost literally as disheveled as one can look in Eureka(0 Composure) and being drunk and even failing the Seduce roll resulting in her belching loudly and then dying inside, they were just two-drunk-beautiful-women-proposing-a-threesome-to-meathead-dude-out-of-nowhere enough to pull it off and get him to take them home.
I think Benadetta could’ve done anything short of shit her pants and this guy would’ve still taken them home.
Tumblr media
43 notes · View notes
trashedbins · 2 years
Text
Tumblr media
what a day in the monastery of cyriacus does to a mf 😔
(from a call of cthulhu campaign by @the-mad-owl <3)
5 notes · View notes
prokopetz · 1 month
Text
I think the hardest miss I've ever bumped into in children's educational television came from a show called Ghost Writer that debuted in 1992.
The opening story arc concerned a series of thefts at the protagonists' school; when the kids tried to figure out who was behind it, their investigation eventually discovered that a bunch of other middle schoolers had independently formed some sort of bizarre pseudo-Dionysian cult where they'd perform ominous chants and greet each other with secret mottos and wear masks with faces on both the front and back, except literally all this cult was doing was stealing the lunch money out of other kids' backpacks and using it to buy tokens at the local video arcade, which was also the cult's headquarters.
It was like they couldn't decide whether they wanted to do a Satanic Panic thing or a video-games-are-making-children-violent thing, so they split the difference in what I assume was intended as a grim cautionary tale, but all that nine-year-old me took away from the viewing experience was "wow, being in a cult looks cool as hell".
4K notes · View notes
foolishxprincipalitee · 5 months
Text
SCOTLAND FOREVERRR 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🪺
This is a Good Omens 2 Easter egg I've yet to see anyone else point out.
Tumblr media
When Aziraphale is in Edinburgh investigating the record mystery, he borrows a cell phone from a Scottish man to call Crowley.
Tumblr media
The busted old phone has a Union Jack wallpaper.
Tumblr media
Once Crowley hangs up, Aziraphale miraculously repairs the phone to say thank you, as well as putting blessings upon Twitter and Grindr.
Tumblr media
The blessed phone also now has a Scottish flag wallpaper! 😇
I interpret this as a pretty clear statement from Neil Gaiman supporting Scottish independence.
Made a video about this for TikTok too.
4K notes · View notes
sakuravalelp · 2 months
Text
The Dance Academy isn't a gang- DC X DP Prompt
Inspired by this prompt
Clockwork suggests to Danny, who's been the king of the infinite realms for 6 years now, that he should take sometime off in a mortal realm. He doesn't feel like going back to his own dimension (you choose the reason), so Clockwork suggest another dimension where he thinks Danny might have fun.
Danny investigates the dimension, and finds it is a dimension where some humans, who are called meta-humans, develop powers, mostly during their childhood. Danny knows how tiring and alienating it is to grow with powers that one have to hide. He wishes to give this kids a safe space to experiment with their powers, but not as a weapon, just as part of themself.
He chooses to create a dance academy, because dancing is something in which you use your body and express yourself. It would be an excellent way to encourage this kids to use their powers while enjoying themself. He decides to open the dance academy in Gotham, were it seems metas may feel more pressure to keep themself hidden. With his ability to see and feel the differences in soul it's easy to identify metas, so he starts scouting kids for the academy.
Of course convincing the kids that it's just a a dance academy that wants to create a save space for metas, instead is of a trafficking ring, is difficult. But once he gets the first couple kids in, slowly more come too.
-.-.-.-.-.-.-
Bruce is worried about the new possible meta gang that it's forming on Gotham, and sends Duke undercover.
It's hasn't been long since Duke joined the bats, and this is his first official undercover mission. He's excited at the start, feeling proud that he's been trusted with an independent job, but then he finds out that the "gang" it's just a dance academy. He's a little disappointed, thinking that this job is more of a probation thing than anything, since there isn't anything suspicious.
The bats tell him to stay in the dance academy, because maybe the dance thing is just a cover up and they'll reveal their real motives when he's actually accepted in the group. And Duke takes it as them wanting him to have a meta support system. See? He's learning to understand how the bats show love to each other!
Duke finds himself enjoying being in a dance group. It's a lot of fun. Danny it's fantastic, he has a lot of powers and isn't scare to show them. Which makes everyone in the group feel so much safer to use their own.
Danny encourages them to integrate their powers in their dance. It's freeing. Their powers are treated as a normal part of them, and not as this exotic ability that has to be controlled. It's such a safe space that all of them have gotten used to using their powers for day to day stuff when in the dance studio. It all feels so casual because no one bats an eye to it. There's no talk about how they should try to do things "normally," or limit their use of their power.
Danny: "Why would you? That's your normal, and this place is safe for you to just be you."
Duke realizes a bit late that the bats were actually suspicious of the group, and that his placement there wasn't really a probation. He's glad to know he was actually trusted with a job, but, he had really thought that every time they had asked about his day with the group was because they were interested in how he was doing. That they were showing love and interest in him in that evasive ways the bats did, and it kinda suck to know it wasn't the case. It also meant that he had to confront their family in their clear meta-discrimination.
"Would you have been so suspicious if it wasn't a meta group? No. Other than them all being metas there wasn't anything off. No proof of fights, no proof of robberies, no proof of trafficking, nothing.
There's no proof of anything other than a group of teens dancing, and you know that because you checked it out before sending me.
Like, I don't blame you for checking it, I'm not naive, but you were so sure it was a gang, just because they were metas. That's fucked up guys."
2K notes · View notes
Text
Tumblr media
The latest questions are centered around Anat Schwartz, an Israeli who co-authored several of the paper’s most widely circulated reports, including the now well-known and scrutinized December 28 article headlined: “‘Screams Without Words’’ How Hamas Weaponized Sexual Violence on Oct. 7.” Independent researchers scrutinized the online record, and raised serious questions about Schwartz. First, she has apparently never been a reporter but is actually a filmmaker, who the Times suddenly hired in October. You would expect the paper to look for someone with actual journalistic experience, especially for a story as sensitive as this one, written during the fog of war. Surely the paper had enough of its own correspondents on staff who could have been assigned to it. Next, the researchers found that Schwartz had not hidden her strong feelings online. There are screenshots of her “liking” certain posts that repeated the “40 beheaded baby” hoax, and that endorsed another hysterical post that urged the Israeli army to “turn Gaza into a slaughterhouse,” and called Palestinians “human animals.” (Just this morning, more evidence emerged online; Schwartz apparently also served in Israeli Military Intelligence.) Finally, one of her co-authors on two of the reports was Adam Sella, who is her nephew.  Let’s pause here. What would happen if the Times suddenly hired a Palestinian filmmaker with no journalistic background, who had recently publicly “liked” posts that called for “pushing Israeli Jews into the sea,” to co-write several of its most sensitive and contested reports? 
[...]
There’s another related example of how the Times has botched the sexual violence story. One of the first Israeli organizations that arrived on the scene of the Hamas attack was Zaka, a volunteer group that recovers dead bodies. On January 15, Times reporter Sheena Frankel wrote a positive profile of the group; she included 3 or 4 sentences of criticism, only to quickly dismiss them. This site had already raised serious doubts about Zaka weeks earlier, pointing out that “the organization’s volunteers have systematically given false testimonies, and continue repeating them to journalists on behalf of the Israel government.” Then, on January 31, the Israeli daily Haaretz published a long investigation, that highlighted “cases of negligence, misinformation and a fundraising campaign that used the dead as props.” Haaretz cited one Zaka report that said a volunteer had seen a murdered pregnant woman, with the baby still attached by the umbilical cord — before concluding that the incident “simply didn’t happen.” At this stage, there are serious doubts about many aspects of Israel’s overall account about October 7. Only a genuinely independent and impartial investigation might some day get closer to the truth. But meanwhile, at the very least the New York Times must publicly recognize its errors, and assign new, unbiased reporters to try to clean up its mess. 
Continue reading
2K notes · View notes
communist-ojou-sama · 4 months
Text
Like, this may come as a shock to people like Tumblr liberals who are totally stuck in the Western anglophone neoliberal ideology echo-chamber but like, outside of the west, out there where the majority of the worlds people live, Kwame Nkrumah's thought is taken more seriously than Milton Friedman's. So why will left liberals engage with Friedman's thought, even if only to debunk it, but not engage at all with Nkrumah's writings on neocolonialism, and just write it off?
There's a common charge leveled by supposedly "open-minded" liberals toward anti-imperialists, that we just 'blindly' support any force that's contravailing US the US on a regional or global scale, but how am I supposed to take this seriously as anything but projection?
We anti-imperialists often make specific, verifiable claims about happenings in global geopol, such as that the so-called "Free Syrian Army" consisted mostly of salafi jihadists allowed into Syria through their northern border with Turkey, and that it doesn't make sense that a civil war could simply Materialize in a country like Syria which right before the war started had one of the lowest ratios of guns to people in the world, or that the Maidan coup regime that swept into power in Kiev in 2014 was heavily infiltrated with fascists, and would not have been able to consolidate power without the instrumentalisation of fascist gangs and paramilitary organizations.
The liberal response to these specific claims, then, is to point to reports from corporate media with every incentive to lie, themselves doing no independent investigation but instead parroting verbatim the word of the State Department as fact, and dismissing all independent media investigations out of hand with no further thought.
In a situation such as this, can that response really be considered "open-minded"? It seems that time and time again intellectual rigor is reserved for discussions of technocratic tinkering within the west's iron curtain, and not the lives of people outside of it.
There's plenty of brain-juice to be expended on justifying why the US economy is actually in good shape and the people saying they're struggling more than before are just stupid, but when it comes to considering why African heads of state choose the China Development Bank over the IMF as an economic partner or Russia over the NATO states as security partners, these leaders of millions are dismissively written off as histrionically anti-Western, paranoid, and too mentally weak to see through Russian and Chinese propaganda. Is it this really a 'rational' way to look at the world?
Personally, I think not.
1K notes · View notes
Text
SoCal Gas spent millions on astroturf ops to fight climate rules
Tumblr media
Today (19 Aug), I'm appearing at the San Diego Union-Tribune Festival of Books. I'm on a 2:30PM panel called "Return From Retirement," followed by a signing:
https://www.sandiegouniontribune.com/festivalofbooks
Tumblr media
It's a breathtaking fraud: SoCal Gas, the largest gas company in America, spent millions secretly paying people to oppose California environmental regulations, then illegally stuck its customers with the bill. We Californians were forced to pay to lobby against our own survival:
https://www.sacbee.com/news/politics-government/capitol-alert/article277266828.html
The criminal scheme is spelled out in eye-watering detail in a superb investigative report by Joe Rubin and Ari Plachta for the Sacramento Bee, which names the law firms and individual lawyers involved in the scam.
Here's the situation: SoCal Gas is California's private, regulated gas monopoly. They are allowed to lobby, but are legally required to charge their lobbying activities to their shareholders, and are prohibited from raising customer rates to pay for lobbying.
The company spent years secretly violating this rule, in the sleaziest way possible: working with corporate cartels like the California Restaurant Association and BizFed, the monopoly paid BigLaw white-shoe firms to procure people who posed as concerned citizens in order to oppose climate regulations that are essential to the state's very survival.
The bill topped $36 million – and it was illegally charged to its customers, the Californians whose immediate health and long-term survival these efforts opposed. SoCal Gas refuses to disclose the full extent of the spending, as do its lawyer-procurers, who cite legal confidentiality and a First Amendment right to secretly seek to influence policy in their refusal to disclose their profits from this illegal conduct.
The law firms involved are a who's-who of California's most prominent corporate fixers, including Reichman Jorgensen and Holland & Knight. The partners involved have a long rap sheet for anti-climate dirty tricking, most notably Jennifer Hernandez, notorious in climate justice history for an incident where activists claim she posed as one of them, infiltrating a campaign to force corporate despoilers to clean up their pollution in order to sabotage it, while secretly on a wealthy, prominent landowner's payroll.
Hernandez claims to care about the environment and says that her longstanding, corporate-funded, extensive campaigns and lawsuits against state environmental regulations are motivated by concern over their impact on working people. Her firm, Holland & Knight, denies serving SoCal Gas in opposing gas regulations, but it received $594k in ratepayer dollars, and submitted comments opposing the rules on its own behalf. Those comments were nearly identical to the comments submitted by SoCal Gas.
Hernandez also represents an obscure organization called The Two Hundred for Home Ownership in "a flurry of lawsuits" over California Air Resources Board rules on pollution, seeking to overturn the state's landmark climate change regulations.
Two Hundred for Home Ownership was founded by Robert Apodaca, who told the Bee that Hernandez's work for him is pro bono and not funded by SoCal Gas, but his entry into the fray occurred just as SoCalGas was founding an astroturf group called Californians for Fair and Balanced Energy (C4BES), which pretended to be an independent organization, disguising its relationship with SoCal Gas.
Apodaca is also founder of United Latinos Vote, an organization that had been largely dormant for seven years, not receiving any donations, until 2018, when the California Building Industry Association gave it $99k. The CBIA is a large-dollar recipient of donations from SoCal Gas, and its CEO insists that it was not acting on SoCal Gas's behalf when it made its unpredented donation to Apodaca.
The CBIA donation to United Latinos Vote was forerunner to a flood of corporate donations from the likes of Chevron, Marathon and Phillips 66. Shortly after receiving this cash, United Latinos Vote ran a full page ad in the LA Times, accusing the Sierra Club of pushing for anti-gas appliance rules that would harm working class Latino families.
This ad, in turn, featured prominently in advocacy by the SoCal Gas front group C4BES, funded with $29.1m in ratepayer money, which it then spent seeking to link clean appliance rules with anti-Latino racism. A quarter of California's carbon emissions come from home gas use.
SoCal Gas is regulated by the California Public Utility Commission (CPUC), which tolerated this mounting illegal conduct for many years, even as the company circulated internal memos as early as 2015 discussing its plans to oppose electrification in the state on the basis that it constituted "a significant risk to our business."
But last year, CPUC fined SoCal Gas $10m. Now, CPUC's Public Advocate office has filed a damning, extensive report on SoCal Gas's unlawful conduct, seeking $80m in rate cuts to compensate Californians for the funds misappropriated to protect the company's shareholder interests:
https://docs.cpuc.ca.gov/PublishedDocs/Efile/G000/M517/K407/517407314.PDF
Additionally, the Public Advocate is demanding $233m in fines for the company's refusal to allow investigators to audit its books and discover the full extent of the fraud.
SoCal Gas is the nation's largest utility, but (incredibly), it's not the dirtiest. That prize goes to Ohio's FirstEnergy, which handed $60m in ratepayer dollars to state politicians in illegal bribes in exchange for coal and nuclear subsidies and cancellation of state climate rules. That scandal led to GOP speaker of the Ohio House Larry Householder being sentenced to 20 years in prison:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ohio_nuclear_bribery_scandal
There is something extraordinarily sleazy about using ratepayers' own money to lobby against their interests. SoCal Gas and its Big Law enablers have funneled millions in Californian's money into campaigns to poison us and boil us alive, and they did it while using workers and racialized people as human shields.
Tumblr media Tumblr media
I'm kickstarting the audiobook for "The Internet Con: How To Seize the Means of Computation," a Big Tech disassembly manual to disenshittify the web and make a new, good internet to succeed the old, good internet. It's a DRM-free book, which means Audible won't carry it, so this crowdfunder is essential. Back now to get the audio, Verso hardcover and ebook:
http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org
Tumblr media
If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2023/08/19/cooking-the-books-with-gas/#reichman-jorgensen
Tumblr media
Image: Maryland GovPics (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/mdgovpics/6635539089/
Jackie (modified) https://www.flickr.com/photos/79874304@N00/197532792
CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/
4K notes · View notes
reasonsforhope · 9 months
Text
"Research on a police diversion program implemented in 2014 shows a striking 91% reduction in in-school arrests over less than 10 years.
Across the United States, arrest rates for young people under age 18 have been declining for decades. However, the proportion of youth arrests associated with school incidents has increased.
According to the U.S. Department of Education, K–12 schools referred nearly 230,000 students to law enforcement during the school year that began in 2017. These referrals and the 54,321 reported school-based arrests that same year were mostly for minor misbehavior like marijuana possession, as opposed to more serious offenses like bringing a gun to school.
School-based arrests are one part of the school-to-prison pipeline, through which students—especially Black and Latine students and those with disabilities—are pushed out of their schools and into the legal system.
Getting caught up in the legal system has been linked to negative health, social, and academic outcomes, as well as increased risk for future arrest.
Given these negative consequences, public agencies in states like Connecticut, New York, and Pennsylvania have looked for ways to arrest fewer young people in schools. Philadelphia, in particular, has pioneered a successful effort to divert youth from the legal system.
Philadelphia Police School Diversion Program
In Philadelphia, police department leaders recognized that the city’s school district was its largest source of referrals for youth arrests. To address this issue, then–Deputy Police Commissioner Kevin Bethel developed and implemented a school-based, pre-arrest diversion initiative in partnership with the school district and the city’s department of human services. The program is called the Philadelphia Police School Diversion Program, and it officially launched in May 2014.
Mayor-elect Cherelle Parker named Bethel as her new police commissioner on Nov. 22, 2023.
Since the diversion program began, when police are called to schools in the city for offenses like marijuana possession or disorderly conduct, they cannot arrest the student involved if that student has no pending court case or history of adjudication. In juvenile court, an adjudication is similar to a conviction in criminal court.
Instead of being arrested, the diverted student remains in school, and school personnel decide how to respond to their behavior. For example, they might speak with the student, schedule a meeting with a parent, or suspend the student.
A social worker from the city also contacts the student’s family to arrange a home visit, where they assess youth and family needs. Then, the social worker makes referrals to no-cost community-based services. The student and their family choose whether to attend.
Our team—the Juvenile Justice Research and Reform Lab at Drexel University—evaluated the effectiveness of the diversion program as independent researchers not affiliated with the police department or school district. We published four research articles describing various ways the diversion program affected students, schools, and costs to the city.
Tumblr media
Arrests Dropped
In our evaluation of the diversion program’s first five years, we reported that the annual number of school-based arrests in Philadelphia decreased by 84%: from nearly 1,600 in the school year beginning in 2013 to just 251 arrests in the school year beginning in 2018.
Since then, school district data indicates the annual number of school-based arrests in Philadelphia has continued to decline—dropping to just 147 arrests in the school year that began in 2022. That’s a 91% reduction from the year before the program started.
We also investigated the number of serious behavioral incidents recorded in the school district in the program’s first five years. Those fell as well, suggesting that the diversion program effectively reduced school-based arrests without compromising school safety.
Additionally, data showed that city social workers successfully contacted the families of 74% of students diverted through the program during its first five years. Nearly 90% of these families accepted at least one referral to community-based programming, which includes services like academic support, job skill development, and behavioral health counseling...
Long-Term Outcomes
To evaluate a longer follow-up period, we compared the 427 students diverted in the program’s first year to the group of 531 students arrested before the program began. Results showed arrested students were significantly more likely to be arrested again in the following five years...
Finally, a cost-benefit analysis revealed that the program saves taxpayers millions of dollars.
Based on its success in Philadelphia, several other cities and counties across Pennsylvania have begun replicating the Police School Diversion Program. These efforts could further contribute to a nationwide movement to safely keep kids in their communities and out of the legal system."
-via Yes! Magazine, December 5, 2023
1K notes · View notes
pseudowho · 10 months
Text
Glory Glory: Kamo Choso
Tumblr media
An absolutely unhinged delicious "Help, I'm stuck!" series, where the reader is taken care of by the JJK guys.
18+ as always. Pure smut.
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
Choso held an inherent dislike of being sent on missions with you; not because he disliked working with you-- in fact, quite the opposite-- but rather that he felt you shouldn't be sent on any missions, much preferring the image of you curled up safely at home, than dealing with ruthless, filthy monsters.
He seemed blushingly aloof to you, distant but oddly protective as you investigated a local elementary school; each time you moved to open the door to a new room, he darted ahead, gently urging you back, his palm facing outwards against the small of his back; each time you wandered too far away, you would hear light footsteps and feel the warm whoosh of air as he arrived beside you, dark eyes scanning the perimeter around you.
Choso barely wanted to part from you; first affectionate towards you because Yuuji saw you as family, but his affection then grew roots and sprouted independently. Choso did not recognise the species of flower his affection had bloomed into, but it was red, soft, and had him waking up in cold sweats at night, his cock confusingly hard and wet as pleasure roared through him just at the thought of you in his dreams.
Being out with you now, hunting something with killing intent, set his teeth on edge in a way he couldn't verbalise to you. You were patient, smitten with this strange man, full of fluttering thrills for his protectiveness of you.
As he tried to dart in front of you to open another door, you uttered a soft noise of reproach and grasped Choso's hand, his fingers dry and hot in yours. He felt prickles of joy rush up his neck at the feeling of your skin on his.
"Let me," you urged, and despite himself, Choso found himself unable to deny you anything, but did not relinquish your hand in his as you opened the door. Letting him go with twinkling eyes that made his heart fizz, you stepped into the room. He faced the blackboard, heart thumping against his ribs and trying to compose himself, as you headed towards the back of the classroom to investigate a small store cupboard.
Moments later, he heard a wooden crash and the dry rustle of a hundred tumbling books. Turning on a pivot, Choso shot to the cupboard, calling your name in heated panic.
"I"m okay, I'm okay!" you reassured him, your lower half bent forwards over a desk blocking the store cupboard, your upper body now trapped under a tangle of stacked chairs and old textbooks. You laughed, a sweet chime that rang through Choso's chest.
Your legs flicked behind you, unable to gain purchase as your toes grazed weakly against the floor. As you tried to shift your upper half, there was a metallic clatter as another chair tumbled down on top of you. Choso jumped, alarmed.
"Stop moving! You'll just...you--" Choso's words fizzled away, taking in the view of you, bent forwards, the curve of your hips and arse now exaggerated by the angle, your lower back arching beautifully. Your skirt skimmed the tops of your thighs, and Choso gulped, already half-hard as your legs kicked out, flicking your skirt up so it barely covered you.
"I...might need you to get me out, Choso." Silence on the receiving end, "...Choso?" You heard Choso clear his throat, awkward and mumbling quietly.
"Alright, I'll, uhm...I'll..." You felt him consider before his forearms gripped you round the hips, gently pulling you back to try to release you. As you felt your bottom hit his hips, you blushed rapidly, feeling his hardening cock against you, heat seeping into your belly and pussy at your own vulnerability, and the gentle obsession of Choso. Gulping, you spoke.
"I can...I can probably get myself ou--" A moan tumbled without permission from your mouth as Choso tugged you again, trying to release you in earnest, inadvertently ramming your arse against his clothed cock, now rock solid in his trousers. Choso shuddered, but called for you in alarm at your moan.
"Are you hurt?" he pressed.
"No, no-- not hurt, I-- I can feel your-- you--"
Choso blushed in alarm, your close contact finally clicking for him, and he released you, stepping back, babbling apologies as you hurried out a flurry of reassurances.
"I just-- you feel so..." Choso trailed off, embarrassed but bewitched, lost in thought as he tested a hand lightly on your lower back.
"Choso, are you...have you ever...are you a virgin?"
Choso prickled, embarrassed, "And if I am?"
"Well," you hummed, your bottom wiggling invitingly, "...do you want to be?"
Choso almost imploded like a dying star, a spurt of precum dripping down his thigh. He was silent, entranced, hanging onto your every word.
"You can...touch me. If you like." Choso flushed from his ears to his toes, his hand lightly tracing down from your lower back to your bottom, gently cupping its round fullness in the palm of his hand. Braver, he brought both hands to you, gripping you again, rolling the sides of your hips, revelling in the exotic curves of you. He was captivated as you hummed, warmly pressing yourself back to him.
"Can I...?" You felt him finger at the lace edges of your underwear, and you swallowed, giving him a quiet noise of approval. Choso's hands shook as he slipped your skirt up over your back, slowly lowering your underwear, tenderly untangling them from your ankles.
He was filled with a strange urge to bury his nose in them and drink in the smell of you but resisted, ridiculing himself internally, putting your underwear on the desk behind him as he gazed at the uncovered soft folds of your pussy, glistening and inviting.
Choso's fingers ghosted over the curve of your arse again and you trembled in anticipation as they grazed against your pussy, stopping to rub your arousal curiously between two fingers. Eager to know more, he dipped two fingers between your folds, revelling in the barely-there soft glide of his fingers in your wetness.
Choso was delighted as you squeaked and whimpered, his fingers rolling against a spot on your folds towards the front.
"...there?" He asked, applying a little more pressure now. You whimpered and shook in confirmation, mewling your pleasure as Choso began to stroke two eager fingers against your clit, a quick learner. His inexperience was oddly endearing as he explored your body, reading the cues of your pleasure, as you felt heat build in your belly.
Choso was eager but gentle in his work, and you felt your orgasm rock tenderly through you, Choso drinking down your cries in fascination as he watched you become wetter. His cock throbbed, desperate and twitching.
You pleaded with Choso now; "Inside, please--" you urged, insistent and squirming, feeling all at once vulnerable but safe, and Choso traced your folds before dipping a finger inside you, letting out a shuddering moan, as he found his way. With boundless enthusiasm, Choso freed his aching cock, squeezing it for relief as he rubbed it between your folds, lubricating himself with your wetness. Your thighs clenched, and he held your hips in place with one hand.
Silent, and urging his hips forwards, Choso felt electricity crackle through him as he sunk his cock deeply into the hot, tight plush of your pussy, slowing to feel every little curve and ridge of you as his cock nudged against your cervix, curving to your shape. Choso let out an unashamed whimper, and you pressed your arse back to him, seeing stars with the sudden fullness.
Choso bucked his hips against you, sloppy, inexperienced, his pleasure building uncontrollably. Your sighs and moans were music to his ears, and he gripped your hips, barely pulling out as he rutted into you hard, your pleasure burning hot as he pressed against your spongy sensitive core.
Choso couldn't control himself as he wracked with cries and whimpers, his toes curling as he came, having never felt pleasure like it, head back and whispering your name like a mantra. He sloped through a haze of pleasure before coming up for air, gasping as his vision returned.
"I'm so sorry I-- I didn't last--" You giggled, and he felt a rush of love and appreciation for you, mesmerised as he watched his seed trickle slowly down your folds.
"That was perfect," you reassured him, to his blushes, "just get me out of here. We'll finish up and go home, and see what else you can learn this quickly."
+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+-+
1K notes · View notes
woso-dreamzzz · 4 months
Text
Mimic III
McFoord x Toddler!Reader
Summary: You're being suspicious
Tumblr media
There is a hole underneath your fence, at the very end of the garden.
Also at the end of the garden, is a shed. It doesn't get used much so it's a little run down.
There's no connection between the hole and the fence, not an obvious one anyway. Not one that would make Caitlin investigate them both so obviously.
She's much more concerned finding out the reason for your strange behaviour.
You've been shifty recently, which is especially strange for such a little girl. Your second birthday is coming up very quickly but you've seemed to develop fairly quickly now that you've been hanging around with Sam and Kristie's Chook when Caitlin and Katie are busy.
You've also gotten shockingly independent.
There's no need for your leash when you're in the house and Caitlin's happy to let you run around the garden by yourself as she does the dishes, checking on you through the windows periodically.
You're being a little weird and what's even weirder is Coopurr's food going missing.
Caitlin's sure that she's not overfeeding him because he hasn't put on any weight but his biscuits and his wet food are going down so quickly that someone must be taking them.
That someone, it turns out, is you.
Caitlin catches you doing it one afternoon when you grab the whole box of biscuits and a sachet of wet food before toddling out to the garden.
She sighs, letting you scamper up the far side and duck behind the shed before getting up to follow you.
Caitlin really hopes you haven't been eating them like you were when you were younger.
"Gremlin!" She calls," Don't take-"
A puffed up ball of fur hisses at her from where it's dangling from the scruff of it's neck in your hand.
"What is that?!"
"My Spicy!" You say proudly," Spicy, Spicy, Spicy!"
"Katie!" Caitlin yells," You better come out here!"
You're still holding the kitten by the back of the neck, humming to yourself as Caitlin notices the pile of cat food you're been hoarding.
She crouches in front of you, gently reaching for the kitten before flinching back when it tries to scratch her. "Where...Where did you find it?"
"Stuck under fence," You tell Caitlin," I save Spicy."
Caitlin forces a smile on her face. "That's nice. How long have you been looking after him?"
"One week," You reply," My Spicy is special!"
Caitlin warily shuffles closer, kept at bay by the flashing claws off this feral kitten.
"You're being very good with Spicy but can I have him?"
You frown. "Spicy's hungry."
"I'll feed him."
"Caitlin? What's-"
Katie skids to a stop in front of you both, mouth hanging open and discarded dish towel on her shoulder from where she was using it to dry the dishes.
"Spicy, my kitty!" You exclaim," See?"
Spicy snarls and Katie very gently throws the dish towel at him before taking him from your grip.
"Spicy!" You cry, moving to kick Katie but Caitlin's already got you by the back of your overalls, dangling you above the ground as you whine," My Spicy!"
"Katie's just...taking Spicy for a bath."
"I am?"
"Yes, Katie, you are and then we'll take Spicy to the vet."
Secretly, Caitlin hopes the vet will tell her that she needs to take the kitten to the shelter. She doesn't particularly want it in her house but you seem to have gotten attached, if the way you keep fighting against her hold is any indication.
"Want Spicy! Spicy's mine!"
There's that as well and, when Katie comes downstairs with the kitten suitably pissed off and still hissing, you go straight up to it for cuddles and it relaxes in your arms.
"No vet for Spicy!" You insist," Spicy's good!"
"I'm sure Spicy is..." Katie's arms are full of scratches. "...Tolerable but we still need to check he's not sick."
"Then bring home!"
"I don't know, Gremlin, he might want to be with other cats." Katie's very proud of herself for coming up with that excuse, mentally patting herself on the back even as Caitlin shakes her head in disbelief.
You unwrap her excuse so easily, pointing to where Coopurr is sitting, licking his own bum.
"Have Coopurr," You point out," Coopurr is cat. Spicy is cat."
"Er..."
"We keep Spicy," You declare, nodding and rocking your new kitten," Spicy, new home!"
649 notes · View notes
trans-axolotl · 28 days
Text
"Much ink has already been spilled on Harris’s prosecutorial background. What is significant about the topic of sex work is how recently the vice president–elect’s actions contradicted her alleged views. During her tenure as AG, she led a campaign to shut down Backpage, a classified advertising website frequently used by sex workers, calling it “the world’s top online brothel” in 2016 and claiming that the site made “millions of dollars from trafficking.” While Backpage did make millions off of sex work ads, its “adult services” listings offered a safer and more transparent platform for sex workers and their clients to conduct consensual transactions than had historically been available. Harris’s grandiose mischaracterization led to a Senate investigation, and the shuttering of the site by the FBI in 2018.
“Backpage being gone has devastated our community,” said Andrews. The platform allowed sex workers to work more safely: They were able to vet clients and promote their services online. “It’s very heartbreaking to see the fallout,” said dominatrix Yevgeniya Ivanyutenko. “A lot of people lost their ability to safely make a living. A lot of people were forced to go on the street or do other things that they wouldn’t have otherwise considered.” M.F. Akynos, the founder and executive director of the Black Sex Worker Collective, thinks Harris should “apologize to the community. She needs to admit that she really fucked up with Backpage, and really ruined a lot of people’s lives.”
After Harris became a senator, she cosponsored the now-infamous Stop Enabling Sex Traffickers Act (SESTA), which—along with the House’s Allow States and Victims to Fight Online Sex Trafficking Act (FOSTA)—was signed into law by President Trump in 2018. FOSTA-SESTA created a loophole in Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, the so-called “safe harbor” provision that allows websites to be free from liability for user-generated content (e.g., Amazon reviews, Craigslist ads). The Electronic Frontier Foundation argues that Section 230 is the backbone of the Internet, calling it “the most important law protecting internet free speech.” Now, website publishers are liable if third parties post sex-work ads on their platforms.
That spelled the end of any number of platforms—mostly famously Craigslist’s “personal encounters” section—that sex workers used to vet prospective clients, leaving an already vulnerable workforce even more exposed. (The Woodhull Freedom Foundation has filed a lawsuit challenging FOSTA on First Amendment grounds; in January 2020, it won an appeal in D.C.’s district court).
“I sent a bunch of stats [to Harris and Senator Diane Feinstein] about decriminalization and how much SESTA-FOSTA would hurt American sex workers and open them up to violence,” said Cara (a pseudonym), who was working as a sex worker in the San Francisco and a member of SWOP when the bill passed. Both senators ignored her.
The bill both demonstrably harmed sex workers and failed to drop sex trafficking. “Within one month of FOSTA’s enactment, 13 sex workers were reported missing, and two were dead from suicide,” wrote Lura Chamberlain in her Fordham Law Review article “FOSTA: A Hostile Law with a Human Cost.” “Sex workers operating independently faced a tremendous and immediate uptick in unwanted solicitation from individuals offering or demanding to traffic them. Numerous others were raped, assaulted, and rendered homeless or unable to feed their children.” A 2020 survey of the effects of FOSTA-SESTA found that “99% of online respondents reported that this law does not make them feel safer” and 80.61 percent “say they are now facing difficulties advertising their services.” "
-What Sex Workers Want Kamala Harris to Know by Hallie Liberman
395 notes · View notes
storiesfromgaza · 11 months
Text
Tumblr media
It is very important to read this and share it
Today the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor Observatory stated that Israel dropped over 25,000 tons of explosives on the Gaza Strip as part of its ongoing extensive war since October 7th, equivalent to two nuclear bombs.
The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Observatory, based in Geneva, highlighted the Israeli army's acknowledgment of targeting more than 12,000 objectives in the Gaza Strip, setting a record in the number of bombs dropped, surpassing 10 kilograms of explosives per person.
With the advancements in bomb quantity and effectiveness, while maintaining a consistent amount of explosives, the quantity dropped on Gaza could be equivalent to twice the power of a nuclear bomb.
Additionally, Israel deliberately employs a mixture known as "RDX" (Research Department Explosive) commonly referred to as "the science of complete explosives," with a power equal to 1.34 times that of TNT.
Tumblr media
This means that the destructive power of the explosives dropped on Gaza exceeds what was dropped on Hiroshima, taking into account that the city of Hiroshima covers an area of 900 square kilometers, while Gaza's area is no more than 360 square kilometers.
Furthermore, Israel has been documented using internationally banned weapons in its attacks on the Gaza Strip, particularly cluster and white phosphorus bombs. White phosphorus is a highly toxic incendiary substance that rapidly reacts with oxygen, causing severe second and third-degree burns. The Euro-Mediterranean team has documented cases of injuries among the victims of Israeli attacks that resemble the effects of dangerous cluster bombs, as they contain small high-explosive submunitions designed to penetrate the body and cause internal explosions, resulting in severe burns that melt the victims' skin and sometimes lead to death. These submunitions also cause peculiar swelling and toxin exposure in the body, including transparent shrapnel that does not appear in X-ray images.
The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Observatory has emphasized that Israel's destructive, indiscriminate, and disproportionate attacks constitute a clear violation of the laws of war and the rules of international humanitarian law, which stipulate the obligation to protect civilians in all circumstances and under any conditions. Killing civilians is considered a war crime in both international and non-international armed conflicts and can rise to the level of a crime against humanity.
The 1899 and 1907 Hague Conventions, along with the 1949 Geneva Convention in its latest formulation, established fundamental human rights during wartime to limit the deadly health consequences of internationally banned weapons, some of which could lead to the "genocide" of civilians.
Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media Tumblr media
Article 25 of the Hague Regulations concerning the Laws and Customs of War on Land prohibits "attacking or bombarding towns, villages, dwellings, or buildings which are not defended."
Article 53 of the Fourth Geneva Convention states that "any destruction by the occupying power of real or personal property belonging individually or collectively to private persons, or to the State, or to other public authorities, or to social or cooperative organizations, is prohibited, except where such destruction is rendered absolutely necessary by military operations."
According to Article 147 of the Fourth Geneva Convention, the destruction of property that is not justified by military necessity and on a large scale is considered a serious violation that requires prosecution. Such practices are also classified as war crimes under the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court.
The Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Observatory has called for the formation of an independent international investigative committee to assess the magnitude of explosives and internationally banned weapons used and continue to be used by Israel against civilians in the Gaza Strip.
This committee would hold accountable those responsible, including those who issued orders, made plans, executed actions, and took measures aimed at achieving justice for Palestinian victims.
1K notes · View notes
jweekgoji · 1 month
Text
Yandere!Five/Reader (platonic/headcanons)
Tumblr media
the story contains: spoilers for season 4 (+ some changes in plot), yandere!five(-s), strictly platonic, five here is in his 20s (physically) and in his late 60s (mentally), overprotective old man five, soft yan!Five, OOC cuz it's yanderes 🤷
I really like to imagine Five being overprotective over someone young and still full of joy. You can be either a kid of one of his siblings, or just a random child he found during his time in The Commission. It wouldn't be that far away from reality, The Handler took little Lila and trained her to do the dirty job, no one would be surprised if that creepy woman ends up kidnapping another child born on October 1st for herself.
Either way, Five is a good familial figure. We all saw how he acts towards little Grace, making small cheering comments from time to time to his niece when she is enjoying her birthday party. I expect him to be much softer if it's someone who is always close to him and constantly tags along with Five. Let's say, he knows you enough to let you go with him at the end of Season 3, since all of his siblings left, he basically has no other choice but to be the only one who has to protect you.
At first, he might get a little irritated because of it. It's not because he finds you annoying or hates being around kids. The problem is, he is not a social person himself. He never had a proper childhood because he spent 45 years stuck in the apocalypse. Then his time in The Commission, stuck with people either invading his personal space, or always staring at him due to him being him. The man got no time for a good rest. He also got no experience in how he should take care of a kid.
Despite a good bag of problems on his back, like the fact that he is still considered a child himself because of his appearance, no job, no money, no place to stay, he somehow gets everything you need. It would probably cost him a lot of pride to sacrifice, people constantly saying «Aww, are you looking after your little sibling at such age? Where are your parents?» makes him want to say something snarky, but he would bite his tongue, since he doesn't want people to ask more questions. He is used to doing everything on his own, dealing with every trouble by no one but himself because it's how he got things done for ages. Not so surprising, Five is pretty good at it.
When he gets his job as a CIA agent, he does not get so much time to be with you, he's more busy even though he is «the one of the professional young agents», trying to investigate more and more. But I believe that he would absolutely think about you during his work, he would go nonchalantly in his mind «Should I buy them the cereal with that dumb colourful toy inside? No, that stuff has too much sugar for someone their age—», which is pretty ironic since Five has a little sweet tooth himself, knowing his famous toasts with peanut butter and marshmallows. He doesn't give you a chance to eat that stuff too much anyways, because he believes « You'll get to eat those when you grow older», while you probably pout and tug on his clothes, trying to make him share with you this tasty sweet thing with tons of deadly sugar! He will give up after a good 15 minutes of you jumping around, being noisy and whiney, so he would roll his eyes and give you like less than 1/3 of the toast, saying 'here is your half, happy now?🙄'. At least he managed to keep you quiet for some time, while he can focus on some little time of his rest.
Five wants you to be independent just like him. Mainly because he doesn't want to think about potential scenarios where you are without him, all defenseless and have no idea what to do. He will teach you everything, how to protect yourself, how to use the oven, who you should call immediately if something happens (he will probably write a phone number with a marker on your wrist, since kids tend to be forgetful and easily distracted and he does NOT take such a risk).
But Five would never push or press on you, he doesn't want to make another child assassin with childhood trauma, think of it as a grandfather taking you to the lake to teach you how to fish. He is constantly near your side, guiding gently but firmly, to you it's mostly about having fun but also learning new things. Five will praise you, give you some advice and will pet your head if you do something right. I do believe he is overprotective, that he doesn't want to even let you near anything dangerous, but he's also paranoid that if another apocalypse comes back, you should be able to survive.
When Five gets his powers back and reunites with his siblings, you will always be with him. Of course I can imagine him having a nanny to call so you would be away from all his family stuff and there is someone whom he can trust enough, but...he might trust himself more than anyone else (but also it's more interesting for the story than you being somewhere away from all the fun lol). When weird things start to happen, Five is looking for anyone even slightly suspicious. Why is this Elf Guy looking at him? Is that guy looking at YOU ? Stop looking at his kid!
Thankfully for him, you weren't around when Lila and Five stuck in that subway. But instead of spending years here, giving up on the idea of coming back home, that would never happen. Because come on, it's Five. He would never give up on coming back to his family and you, someone he also considers as a part of his family. Maybe they're not ideal, they might hate each other, sometimes even annoy him, but he would never allow himself at least a single minute of proper rest since he believes that his only priority is to come back to people he cares about.
The moment he finds the notes on how to come back, he will do it in an instant. When he sees his family safe - he is happy, even though he would hide his inner feelings. You're a little confused when he just hugs you tightly to his chest all of the sudden, sighing in relief the moment he realizes you're with him. Still the same little you, not a single change in your appearance. « Something happened?» you ask softly, carefully placing your arms around him. for some reason, it feels weird. he was never a person who could hug you just because he feels like it. the only time he might give you that it's only if you initiate it, needing comfort because you were afraid of storm or just woke up from the nightmare. « No, no, just stay like that for a little bit,» Five whispers, trying to calm his racing heart. he's thankful that this body at least can take all the stress he constantly experiences in his life. you are probably surprised and confused but he doesn't care about it now. he just came back to you after years of being apart. at least for him it was, for you — a few hours. Despite how unusual it makes you feel, you don't question it, you will give him all the comfort he deserves after whatever he went through.
A good happy ending we deserve would probably be Five (accidentally) taking you to this buffet full of his other versions. You're probably so shy and awkward to see all of them, so you stick closer to him, holding his hand. Five is a little more protective too, he doesn't trust his other selves as we know. I can imagine a little you being so scared to even make a single move, because the moment you look away, you might get lost! Is that your Five? Or is it the one who's near the other table? Why is that Five drunk? When did he find the apron?? But all of them are very nice to you. Five who works as a waiter would gladly help you to find your guardian and maybe he'll spoil you with food they serve here— Your Five is definitely not happy with how much attention you gain from.. other versions of him, but he knows that they all care the same of you.
332 notes · View notes
sissa-arrows · 4 months
Text
A settler organized in a militia killed a Kanak protesting for liberation from French colonialism in Kanaky.
They are trying to minimize it by saying (without proper investigation) that the settler was defending himself and calling him a “civilian” as well as by calling the Kanak man a “rioter”. The high commissioner also announced that if “calm” doesn’t come back he will organize a military intervention to bring back “peace” and “calm”. For the record there’s already a lot of military checkpoints (edit: I used the expression military checkpoint but it’s not the right one I’m talking about the control by the gendarmerie who are like cops except they are in the military) that Kanak people have to go through daily in certain area and a heavy military presence so when he is talking about military intervention he is talking about killing people.
Article (in French)
This is all happening because France wants to accelerate the colonization of Kanaky by allowing every single white French adult the right to vote locally. The Kanak resistance managed to negotiate so only settlers who had been in Kanaky for a decade or more in 1998 could vote locally. New settlers cannot do it. And France and its settlers want to go back on that accord saying that the 2021 referendum shows that people don’t want liberation so it’s racist (against settlers) to not let them vote (and take over Kanaky completely)
If any piece of shit brings up the 2021 referendum as a justification of French colonialism in Kanaky, know that it has zero value. The Kanak people and the resistance called for a report of the vote because of COVID. Mentioning that not only there was a health risk but that Kanak people have a long grieving period which meant that they wouldn’t be able to vote. That vote ended up being only a settler vote. If you compare it to the two previous votes with higher participation rate it’s almost certain that the Yes to independence would have won.
For those who don’t know it international law recognize Kanaky as a colony. The UN has Kanaky on the list of territories where indigenous people have no right to self determination and they recognize France as the occupying power (thanks to Palestine we’ve seen that international law doesn’t apply to Western backed colonialism but that’s an other topic)
654 notes · View notes