#and now its like that building should be condemned and this person should go to a psychiatric hospital

[lovecorediscounted]

My favorite horror channel is aurikatariina🥰

[gootarts]

as of 8/3, the most recently updated version of this post is here (it's a reblog of this exact post with more info added)

as a lot of you know, limbus company recently fired its CG illustrator for being a feminist, at 11 pm, via phone call, after a bunch of misogynists walked into the office earlier that day and demanded she be fired. on top of this, as per korean fans, her firing went against labor laws---in korea, you must have your dismissal in writing.

the korean fandom on twitter is, understandably, going scorched earth on project moon due to this. there's a lot currently going on to protest the decision, so i'm posting a list here of what's going on for those who want to limit their time on elon musk's $44 billion midlife crisis impulse purchase website (if you are on twitter, domuk is a good person to follow, as they translate important updates to english). a lot of the links are in korean, but generally they play nicely with machine translators. this should be current as of 8/2.

Statements condemning the decision have been issued by The Gyeonggi Youth Union and IT Union.

A press conference at the Gyeonggido Assembly will occur on 8/3, with lawmakers of the Gyeonggi province (where Project Moon is based) in attendance. This appears driven by the leader of the Gyeonggi Youth Union.

The vice chairman of the IT union--who has a good amount of experience with labor negotiations like these--has expressed strong support for the artist and is working to get media coverage due to the ongoing feminist witch hunts in the gaming industry. Project Moon isn't union to my knowledge, but he's noted that he's taken on nonunion companies such as Netmarble (largest mobile game dev in South Korea) by getting the issue in front of the National Assembly (Korea's congress).

Articles on the incident published in The Daily Labor News, Korean Daily, multiple articles on Hankyoreh (one of which made it to the print edition), and other news outlets.

Segments about the termination on the MBN 7 o' clock news and MBC's morning news

Comments by Youth Union leaders about looking into a loan made to Project Moon via Devsisters Ventures, a venture capital firm. Tax money from Gyeonggi province was invested in Devsisters in 2017, and in 2021, Devsisters gave money to Project Moon. The Gyeonggi Youth Union is asking why hard-earned tax money was indirectly given to a company who violates ESG (environmental, social and governance) principles.

Almost nonstop signage truck protests outside Project Moon's physical office during business hours until 8/22 or the company makes a statement. This occurs alongside a coordinated hashtag campaign to get the issue trending on Twitter in Korea. The signage campaign was crowd-funded in about 3 hours.

A full boycott of the Limbus Company app, on both mobile and PC (steam) platforms. Overseas fans are highly encouraged to participate, regardless if whether they're F2P or not. Not opening the app at all is arguably the biggest thing any one person can do to protest the decision, as the app logs the number of accounts that log on daily. For a new gacha such as Limbus, a high number of F2P daily active users, but a small number of paying users is often preferable to having a smaller userbase but more paying users. If the company sees the number of daily users remain stable, they will likely decide to wait out any backlash rather than apologize.

Digging up verified reviews from previous employees regarding the company's poor management practices

Due to the firing, the Leviathan artist has posted about poor working conditions when making the story. As per a bilingual speaker, they were working on a storyboard revision, and thought 'if I ran into the street right now and got hit by a car and died, I wouldn't have to keep working.' They contacted Project Moon because they didn't want their work to be like that, and proposed changes to serialization/reduction in amount of work per picture/to build up a buffer of finished images (they did not have any buffer while working on Leviathan to my knowledge). They were shut out, and had to suck it up and accept the situation.

Hamhampangpang has a 'shrine' section of the restaurant for fans to leave fan-created merch and other items. They also allow the fans to take this merch back if they can prove it's theirs. Fans are now doing just that.

To boost all of the above, a large number of Korean fanartists with thousands of followers have deleted their works and/or converted their accounts from fanart accounts to accounts supporting the protests. Many of them are bilingual, and they're where I got the majority of this information.

[note 1: there's a targeted english-language disinformation campaign by the website that started the hate mob. i have read the artist's tweets with machine translation, and they're talked about in the second hankyoreh article linked above: nowhere does she express any transphobic or similarly awful beliefs. likewise, be wary of any claims that she supported anything whose description makes you raise eyebrows--those claims are likely in reference to megalia, a korean feminist movement. for information on that, i'd recommend the NPR/BBC articles below and this google drive link of english-language scholarly papers on them. for the love of god don't get your information about a feminist movement from guys going on witch hunts for feminists.]

[note 2: i've seen a couple people argue that the firing was for the physical safety of the employees, citing the kyoani incident in japan. as per this korean fan, most fans there strongly do not believe this was the case. we have english-translated transcripts of the meeting between the mob and project moon; the threats the mob was making were to......brand project moon as a feminist company online. yes, really. male korean gamers aren't normal about feminism, and there's been an ongoing witch hunt for feminists in the industry since about 2016, something you see noted in both the labor union statements. both NPR and the BBC this phenomenon to gamergate, and i'd say it's a pretty apt comparison.]

let me know if anything needs correction or if anything should be added.

[centrally-unplanned]

There is this tweet going around which is getting pretty dunked on:

Start regularly recording your parents, elders and loved ones. With enough transcript data, new voice synthesis and video models, there is a 100% chance that they will live with you forever after leaving physical body. This should be even possible by end of the year.

And while I sympathize with the dunks, I also like to provide charity - there is no spiritual essence in this world, humans are diverse, if this concept is helpful to someone dealing with loss there is nothing inherently wrong with that. I have personal doubts it is healthy but context is a vast thing.

What is way more concerning to me is the way this idea intersects with the Web 2.0 paradigm of service delivery. If you build a digital simulacra of your dead parents...who do you think is going to own it? Unless you are hosting a domestic LLM model on your PC, which virtually no one does, this will be a service offered by Microsoft. You want...to create a simulacra of your mother, based on data from her life, and...sell that data and simulacra to a company who will reserve the right to utilize that data in any way they see fit?

My point isn't even to condemn that (I mean...), more to comment that...its going to happen. Someone's job at Microsoft 20 years from now is to be the data scientist in charge of monetizing their reams of data from the fake humans their users make. Fun...times...?

At least with waifus the ethical conundrums were sexy

[the-far-bright-center]

There's a fundamental disconnect between my view of Star Wars and that of, well.... the majority of the SW fandom these days. Whether this is due to lingering disdain for the Prequels (despite fandom claims of acceptance, there's still plenty of prequels-hate going around, it's just taken on a different guise) or the constant onslaught of Disney’s big-budget fanfic muddying the waters, or a combination of both, I don’t know.

But ultimately, it's quite simple. I view 'Star Wars' as the Skywalker saga...aka the six-film Lucas saga, which tells the story of Anakin Skywalker's rise, fall, and redemption. I don't personally see 'Star Wars' as some ongoing, open-ended franchise that can or even should have indefinite *canonical* additions to it. (An optional expanded universe is one thing, but additions that we, as fans, are just supposed to accept as canon without question because Disney says so is another thing entirely.) Because 'Star Wars' is not just some cinematic universe that exists for its own sake. The fact is, almost the entirety of the world-building from the Lucas-era was done in service of the story and characters of the Original Trilogy and the Prequels. The galaxy far, far away was created specifically to be the backdrop for the Skywalker saga.

So when people debate topics like ‘pro-Jedi’ vs. ‘Jedi critical’, I’m often unable to relate to the angle that these discussions take because I feel like they are largely missing the point. Story-wise, the Jedi don’t exist for their own sake, they (along with the Jedi vs. Sith struggle) are simply part of the mythic backstory of the saga. As a concept, the Jedi exist primarily to serve Anakin and Luke’s respective journeys. So, the Jedi Order of the Prequels-era is written as having become rigid and flawed because that is the necessary context for Anakin’s fall to the Dark Side. And likewise, Luke bringing Anakin back to the Light through the power of love and familial bonds is what rectifies the Old Order’s failings and thus restores the Jedi to the galaxy.

That's just... the story. As in, how it was told. So when I write meta about the Prequels and Original Trilogy, and how they work together as one story, my descriptions and interpretations of both the Jedi Order and the Jedi religion (these are related but not exactly the same thing) are simply neutral in my mind. I'm just talking about what the story is trying to convey. I can't relate to this idea that we must leap to the Jedi Order's defense, nor the converse, that we must condemn the Jedi eternally for having lost their way by the time of the Twilight of the Republic. Rather, I step outside of the story for a moment, and look from the outside in to try to see what is happening from that perspective.

I'm not sure that everyone in the fandom is willing or even able to do that.

Whether that is because very few people actually appreciate the Skywalker saga as Lucas told it to begin with (many people still loudly proclaim that 'Star Wars sucks!', which leads me to believe they must not value the core story at its heart), or they have been so confused by the Disney nonsense that they think the 'new canon' has automatically overridden any meaning that once existed in the PT x OT saga...again, I don't know. I have purposefully tried very hard to stay away from any Disney-related SW discussions for years now, so this is just all what I've gleaned from glimpses here and there.

But it seems to me that many SW fans have trouble accepting that the concept of the Jedi (and the Sith) are inextricably linked to the Skywalker saga and the Skywalker saga alone. These things would never have been created in the way they were without that story. But to acknowledge this would means fans have to accept how central Anakin is to the entire thing. All of it exists for Anakin's story. There are fans who don't like this for a slew of reasons, whether it be that they became attached to a certain idea of the Jedi based on how they were portrayed in Expanded Universe stories that came out during the interim between RotJ and the release of the Prequels (stories that were largely jossed by Lucas' canon), or because they hate Anakin for in-story reasons and have never been able to accept that Star Wars is about him whether they like it or not.

It certainly doesn't help that Disney has played into this discomfort by largely ignoring Anakin (at least, until fan-demand forced their hand) or even outright denying his importance to the story as Lucas told it. (Anakin is the Chosen One whether Disney or fans want him to be or not. Being the Chosen One is not about whether he 'deserves' it, it's literally just his role in the story. And Lucas' saga simply doesn't work without Anakin in the central role.) If fans are confused and disoriented these days, I can't entirely blame them. Disney's version of SW doesn't 'match' the Lucas saga and in many places outright contradicts it. But everything can easily be made clear if people step back (and put aside the Disney stuff for a moment) and just look at the actual story being told in the PT and OT. Likewise, any debates about the Jedi can easily be resolved in the same way. It's really not about how much fans like the Jedi as a group or as individual characters, or how much fans might wish they could be a Jedi themselves. It's about the role the Jedi play in the story, and it's about acknowledging whose story it really is.

[ichigo-dream]

Matthew 11:12

This fic has some heavier themes: Non-Con/Dub-Con, Somnophilia, Violence, Blood, if that isn't your cup of tea then I recommend not reading!

Let me know what you think! I hope you enjoy xoxo

-Ichigo

18+ only, Minors DNI, NSFW.

Includes: Dacryphilia, Dub-Con/Non-Con, Somnophilia, Violence, Blood

All rights reserved: do not translate, plagiarize, claim my writing or cross post it on any other platforms, leave my writing alone.

The night had arrived with the grace of a glass falling to the tiles, shattering into a plethora of lights and stars that could barely be seen. The streets and the nights were what Dabi knew; he could map the back streets and the vendors with the ease of someone all too used to passing by unnoticed.

He hurried through the crowds, turning sharply down a grimy back alley that many passed without so much as a sideways glance, all too eager to hurry past it. Another turn and he was climbing the stairs of an apartment building that looked like it should have been condemned a decade ago.

In that apartment, amongst the dregs of society, Dabi’s heart rested, behind locked doors, vulnerable to no one but its owner.

Everything Dabi had in life, he had because he took it. He had the money for this shitty apartment because he took it from those who didn’t deserve it. He had the clothes on his back because he took them from shops that wouldn’t even notice they were gone. He didn’t have to worry about people fucking with him because he burned them to ash like the trash they were. He took to survive. Dog eat dog world.

the violent take it by force. 

And yet. And yet, standing in the doorway of his room, small enough to make a cupboard look like the Hilton, he watched you as you slept in his bed, unaware and vulnerable.

He didn’t have to take you. You were the only thing in his life that had given itself to him willingly. When he met you that night in the club, he’d thought you were just going to be a way to pass the time, make the night more interesting. How wrong and right he was. You certainly made his night more interesting, only you had bewitched him, even when he’d fucked you that night, even though he’d just came he felt like his heart was going to burst when you stood up to leave; he felt like his self-control was going to snap when you winked and promised him more.

Dabi looked at you now. The girl with no fear. The girl who didn’t look at him in disgust. The girl that picked him. That chose him. He was that girl’s number one, her first choice, the man she’d chosen over everyone else.

In return, you didn’t ask anything of him. Dabi didn’t know what to do with that.

the violent take it by force. 

You’d fallen asleep waiting for him, dressed in a t-shirt you’d stolen from him, claiming that you loved the smell of him, that it made you feel safe and comfortable. Dabi’s insides had twisted when you’d told him that; what the fuck was wrong with you? You loved the scent of burning human flesh? Of smoke? Of misery and ineptitude? You’d smiled and laughed, kissing him gently and simply saying you liked him.

What was there to like? Dabi wasn’t a good person. Good people would see a pretty girl lying in their bed wearing their clothes and tuck them back under the duvet that they’d kicked off of them. Good people didn’t think about how your thighs looked so soft, spread open and inviting to any sick fucker that could have walked through the door

No one would dare. Under pain of death.

Good people wouldn’t be thinking about shoving themselves into vulnerable places, disregarding your tears and taking, taking.

Good people wouldn’t get turned on by the thought. Dabi was harder than he could handle.

the violent take it by force. 

He locked the door behind himself. Setting down the bag by the door and kicking off his boots and coat. He undressed himself silently, unable to take his eyes off you.

Settling between your legs, Dabi spread your thighs, scarred hands a stark contrast to the unmarked glory of your skin. You hadn’t bothered with underwear, and he wouldn’t pretend that that would have stopped him.

He dragged one finger over the hood of your clit, pinching it and then running it between your folds. You were already wet. Already ready for him. Always so willing.

After shimmying down the bed, he ran his tongue through your labia, fingers digging into the plush meat of your thighs and spreading you open so he could spear you on his tongue. Above him, he could see you shifting, moaning quietly as he lapped at your cunt and clit, drinking down everything you gave him. You always just gave to him. Always so wiling. You seemed so much softer and warmer than normal.

Even as he violated you, desecrated you, you were totally at ease under his hands.

the violent take it by force. 

He rose up, spitting into his hand and stroking over his hard cock, weeping with precum and a violent red. Dabi hiked your hips up to rest on his thighs, pushing his shirt up to grasp at your little tits that he loved so much as he slammed himself home.

He was brutal, stretching you open with little prep and finally, finally you woke up, eyes snapping open and mouth opening to scream.

Narrowing his eyes, Dabi wrapped his hands around your throat, ignoring the burning behind his eyes when yours, so wide, so confused, met his.

the violent take it by force. 

“Shut up,” he said, choking on a groan as your walls clenched around him, body relaxing as he continued his assault on your cervix, slamming his cock into you like he wanted to burst through your stomach. You tried to choke out something, cut off sounds spilling from your open mouth.

“Shut the fuck up.” He whimpered, arms beginning to tire and shake. “Shut up, or I’ll fucking kill you.” He leaned his weight down over you, and he felt his cock twitch as your eyes widened when the pressure on your throat increased to unbearable. He was so close. Close to coming, close to losing you, close to crying.

Those beautiful hands he loved, that had been scrabbing at his arms pathetically reached up to grasp his face, fingers finding purchase between the staples that held him together. And then they dug in, and pulled.

You touched skin that hadn’t been touched in nearly a decade, so delicate and painful.

The skin of someone he had buried and burned.

Dabi’s hands left your throat as he screamed, coming up to grab at yours, not pulling them away for fear you’d tear his skin off.

You gasped loudly, drawing in deep breaths, moaning pathetically around the cock that was invading you. What a wakeup call. Your hands fell down beside your head as you gasped, Dabi’s own grasping at his face as he whimpered.

You held one before you, noting that it was drenched in blood. Between the gaps you saw azure flames staring back at you.

Holding Dabi’s eyes you drew the fingers into your mouth, moaning deeply at the metallic iron that washed over your tongue. Not unlike the taste when you’d run your tongue over Dabi’s staples, laving kisses on them.

Dabi groaned at the sight, at the wild look in your eyes, unable to stop himself from grinding forward, loving how your body not once tried to reject him, always sucking him in, demanding more.

Your legs crossed behind his arse and pulled him closer. To say he was shocked was an understatement. Staring down at you through his fingers, hands on his cheeks, holding himself together, weeping blood, he saw that you weren’t angry with him. The look in your eyes was greedy, dark, and so loving.

It drew a sob from his throat.

“It’s okay.” You said, other hand of bloodied fingers coming down to rub at your clit, head thrown back in ecstasy, “It’s okay, Dabi. You’re being so good for me. My baby taking such good care of me.”

Dabi couldn’t stop the bloody tears as they spilled down his cheeks, sobbing desperately as he began to fuck back into you, drawing his hips back and swivelling them up. A wet sob caught in his throat as it was replaced by a moan, the sounds of your sopping wet cunt squelching as he defiled you bringing him to a precipice.

Panting in your face, eyes ablaze, you thought Dabi was beautiful. He was setting a brutal pace, and you knew you’d be aching tomorrow, but you didn’t care. He was filling the emptiness inside you, forcing himself into places that you were too afraid to let anyone else into. Dabi was the only one that would dare to clamber over your defences, and to make sure that you wouldn’t ever forget him.

A particularly brutal thrust had you wailing, legs trembling, and back arching as you came.

“Fuck, please, baby, please, I’m gonna cum, please, please.” Dabi begged, hands clutching at the sheet by your head desperately, and you threw your arms around his neck, breathing into his ear,

“Come for me, that’s it, my good boy, such a good boy.”

With a sob, with a screech, Dabi bottomed out in you, wailing into your neck as he emptied himself in you. Between his incoherent wails, you could’ve sworn you heard him say -

He collapsed on you, breathless, and you peppered kisses on the skin of his forehead, his eyes, lapping up the bloody tears.

A moment passed, and he reared his head,

“I’m sorr-“ you pressed your lips to his, tasting yourself on his tongue, both groaning. The amount of time you both spent kissing each other was endless.

“Shut up, Dabi.” You murmured against his lips, “You were so kind, darling, eating me out like that. I was planning on surprising you, but you wanted to surprise me instead. Such a sweet boy.”

Dabi began trembling and you shushed him, running one hand through his hair, pressing him into your neck, the other running up his spine as he cried.

“You didn’t hurt me, Dabi. You’re not a bad person. I love you too.”

You felt his cock stiffen inside you again, and you grinned into his hair.

“I want you to make sure to kiss me this time.”

Nodding, Dabi swivelled his hips, heart soaring in joy when you giggled.

He was good. He was good to you. He didn’t have to take from you. You would give him everything. He would give you everything. No matter what. You had clawed under his defences, and devoured him.

“I love you, Dabi.”

He’d give you everything. Every part of him. It was yours to use.

He rose and pressed a deep kiss to your lips, and as your lips parted to accept his tongue, he let you swallow and devour the last piece of him.

“Touya.”

From the time of John Baptist hitherto, the kingdom of God suffereth violence,

and the violent take it by force.

[doodlegirl1998]

Oh my god...

I just realized something about how some characters are treated, so I'm gonna quote Joshscorcher from one of his fails videos

"You aren't a person, you ARE a disability! You're not a human, you ARE a skin color! You're not alive, you ARE a checkbox!"

Doesn't that just fit some of the characters in BNHA to a T?

We got the crazy yandere! The hotheaded rival! The hardass teacher with a heart of gold! The black guy!

And of course! The disabled kid who magically gets cured to be like everyone else!

Hori seems to believe that if he just adds pieces of representation or tropes that people like, they will just eat it up without question.

Not even considering or bothering to think about actual backstory, personality, goals, likes or dislikes.

You know, things that make a character an actual character!

Hi @theloganator101 👋,

This fits how MHA treats it's characters to a T or at the very least they develop from Nuanced characters to a stereotype which is never what you want from a series. Also Hori even fails at fitting these characters into the cookie cutter molds he tries to contort them into at times.

Let's give a few examples based on what you have said above:

"Crazy Yandere and Token Bi" = Toga (which the LGBTQ fans of MHA should be offended by, because having a Yandere who is coded very creepily (yet also not condemned for her creepy behavior in general or how she groped Uraraka without consent) as prominent representation is not good...

"Sweet generic shonen love interest" = Uraraka (well this is what Hori intends for her with IzuOcha endgame even with how weakly its built in the series. And Uraraka herself denying her feelings for Izu and freely simping for Toga. I feel so sorry for Ocha fans, how she has been written with Toga is a complete mess.)

"Hardass Teacher with a heart of gold" = Aizawa (or this is what Hori intends for him realistically a lot of his actions under a critical lense read as malice at worse and negligence at best but go off about how he cares about his kids, Hori. Despite dropping a building on them and making them believe their parents are kidnapped by villains. Or the fact that he expelled tonnes of other students prior to 1A without a care - what makes 1A so special?)

"Hot headhead rival" = Bakugou... (Well this is meant to be him, narratively speaking, but rivals are meant to inspire and respect each other. Bakugou doesn't respect Izuku, Bakugou abuses Izuku and acts as his parasite. Bakugou brings Izuku down at every opportunity.)

"The 'token black/ blasian' characters" = Rumi and Rock Lock. (While I'd say Rock Lock is good black representation. Rumi... She's not my favourite. I like strong female characters but the way she's so aggressive and violence hungry as a hero - that rubs me the wrong way. Realistically, I could see her killing a villain by accident through use of excessive force. And I can't ignore that she's used as a stick for Hori's gore porn fetish which isn't a great look as one of Hori's few Blasian characters.)

"The disabled kid who gets magically cured to be like everyone else." - Midoriya Izuku. (You could say this is the case for All Might and Aoyama too but Izuku is the most prominent example as the main protagonist.) Izuku's story and the lack of how his backstory is touched on is one of the one that's the most upsetting parts of MHA to me. Personally, I have a disability and mine can't be fixed, while I accept and embrace it now, I didn't when I was Izuku's age. I would daydream about getting "fixed" and being like everyone else so I could fit in. As an adult, I have now achieved many things that I was told that I could not hope to ever be able to do - and I didn't need to be "fixed/ made normal" to do it. Instead, I worked my ass off to achieve those things.

Izuku's story would have been way more powerful if he trained relentlessly with All Might, stayed quirkless and achieved as much as his quirked peers.

OR, if he had to gain OFA, the cognitive dissonance between how he was treated then in his backstory vs now should heavily influence him. Either way, he should have grown out of "Kacchan" and told Bakugou, his bully and abuser, to fuck right off.

The fact that Izuku isn't allowed to think of his backstory or one negative thought of Kacchan severely limits him. And it's one of the things that has stunted him as a character. All Izuku is now is OFA 'generic shonen protagonist' who will save Shig and destroy All for One. What a waste.

TLDR - developing good characters is like nurturing a particularly fussy plant, you can put down the right soil (backstory) to get readers hooked but if you get lazy and don't water it regularly (develop plot points, think through what is in character rather than what you as the Author want them to do, have them show up regularly) it (the characters) will never grow.

[scythemichaelfaraday]

“A Nice Guy”

Edgar Vargas is painted as a kind Christian soul with conviction and faith that was tragically brought to an untimely death at the hands of Johnny C.

Sure no one wants to die horrifically by the works of a homicidal maniac, but the way that Edgar goes about attempting to do so is quite covert and sheds a lot of light on who he is not only as a character but as a self-proclaimed person of faith.

Also to note before I begin: this is not a personal attack against those that see Edgar in a positive light.

Playing Nice to Get You to See Their Way (And Get What They Want)

A common tactic of Christians is to find the downhearted, the “broken”, the outcasts and build them up with friendship, affection, and support that susceptible people often lack. But their goal is not to make a lasting relationship, it’s to chip away at the person’s boundaries ever so slowly until they can indoctrinate them.

Now, Edgar’s goal obviously is not to indoctrinate Johnny, but he uses the same tactic of listening to Johnny rant about the mistreatment he experiences, offering some degree of sympathy, and ultimately showing that his primary goal of hearing Johnny out is so that he can slip in the request that he be freed. And he does this several times, most prominently, here.

The common pattern of listen, wait, and ask for what they really want.

Christians Don’t Deserve Bad Things Obviously

When asked about what he’d done to Johnny to end up in the torture device, Johnny responds that he hadn’t really done anything except for being a person.

When Edgar learns about this, he questions why then Johnny, as person, doesn’t kill himself.

The first hint that he believes only the bad, the unworthy (whatever that could mean to him) should die. Johnny is just one of the unsavory, evil people that Christians like Edgar believe deserve to be condemned (unless they ask for divine forgiveness).

And the second hint is illustrated here:

“What if I’m not like all those goblin people? You just randomly picked me out, when you could’ve taken someone more deserving.”

Many Christians like to believe that they are holy people divinely picked by God himself to show the people of this Earth how wrong they are and to come to faith to be fixed. So why would bad things happen to them? Are they not God’s special children, his “Army?”

Don’t those queers, those atheists, those left-wing lunatics, that street performer who impersonates robots and makes that irritating wheezy whistle noise more deserving of this anguish than them?

Christians don’t see any other line other than “people of Faith and my lifestyle” and “people not of Faith and my lifestyle” and anyone who fits into the latter is grouped altogether whether they be child abusers, people who get abortions, or a little child in Africa that worships another higher being than them.

Why poor innocent undeserving Edgar?

“A Heaven for Me, and a Hell For You”

This deserves its own point because in addition to claiming he is undeserving of his death, he also makes it clear that he believes in divine punishment (and reward) as all Christians do. And finally the niceties that Christians wear falls away.

He doesn’t know really anything about Johnny other than he’s a deranged, ill murderer, but he has already decided that he is deserving of Hell. Again, anyone that a Christian perceives as not being of their lifestyle and Faith is condemned to Hell.

In fact, as a bit of an anecdote, a youth group leader at a church I used to attend was very adamant and very certain that children who die before they are “saved”(including infants) go to Hell. It doesn’t matter that they are innocent and have done nothing wrong, just because they don’t serve their God, that person deserves to go to Hell.

If one takes all of this into account, the only thing we can credit Edgar with is that he was civil with Johnny until he wasn’t (I think telling someone they’re going to Hell kinda ends a civil streak). We don’t really see much more about him outside of this brief interaction, but I think most people who have been burned by Christians can see through the kind façade that he puts up.

Again this is all just my personal opinion. Take what you like and leave the rest.

[bobgoesw00t]

I wanna take a moment to talk about a few things in regards to the comments and discussions this post on twitxter has brought up, as basically 99.99% of the comments are all the same thing over and over and over again.

A. First off, if you plan on boycotting the final season because of the various things Noah Schnapp has been up to in his personal life/social media when it comes to the conflict in Gaza...don't even fucking bother. Stranger Things is on its final season now so there's literally NO POINT IN BOYCOTTING IT AS IT'S ALREADY AT THE FINISH LINE!!!!!!! If this happened even before the last season, then I would understand the need to boycott it, but we're not...we're on the FINAL SEASON....so if you don't want to watch it, please SHUT THE FUCK UP, DON'T WATCH IT, AND LET THOSE OF US WHO WANT TO SEE HOW IT ALL ENDS ENJOY IT!!!!!

B. Seeing as how all of this "boycott the final season" crap is stemming from Noah's stance on the Gaza conflict and that he's a Zionist, all of you dumb fuckers are forgetting one VERY CRUCIAL ASPECT: THE CONFLICT IS ONE OF THE LONGEST (if not THE LONGEST) TUG-OF-WARS BETWEEN RELIGIOUS GROUPS IN THE HISTORY OF OUR PLANET!!! This debate over which religious folk deserves the land has been happening for centuries now, and there are SO many layers to it that it's gotten to the point where unless someone builds a time machine to go back to when the core issue of the conflict happens, witness it and bring back irrefutable proof for all to see...the only real "answer" (if there even is one right now) is that both sides are neither right nor wrong...just in some sort of weird purgatory. Hell, even if someone DID use a time machine to go back and bring proof, there would be a good chunk of people who would disagree with what was brought forth.

C. Noah Schnapp isn't a god...HE'S FUCKING HUMAN AND HUMANS ARE NOT PERFECT!!!!!!! Everyone, AND I MEAN EVERYONE makes mistakes and has their own thoughts on various things that are a part of the world we live in today. Just because ONE PERSON says or does something you don't agree with, and/or their friend/s agree with them or remain friends with them, doesn't mean it's the end of the world. In the event it happens to be a celebrity of a wildly popular show on Netflix, feel free to say your stance on the issue, then please SHUT THE FUCK UP!!! No one is FORCING YOU TO WATCH THE SHOW/MOVIE OR SUPPORT ANYONE WHO WORKS ON IT. Not to mention EVERYONE IN ENTITLED TO THEIR OWN OPINION.

My personal stance on the crap that's happening in Gaza is that as someone who doesn't have all the facts but believes humans should learn to accept one another regardless of any differences we may have...I don't actually have a stance, rather I'm very neutral and find both sides to be at fault. Same thing with Noah Schnapp, I don't know him personally, and the only time I really hear anything about him or other celebs is if they're trending on tumblr and I just randomly happen to check that part of the website. Therefore, I can't agree with his actions, but I also can't condemn them as I don't have all the facts and I really don't care that much about what he does in his personal time.

More people need to learn how to separate celebs from other aspects of life and remember that they're human just like the rest of us, they make mistakes and either learn from them or don't. ...I also feel like people need to avoid social media more often as it tends to be a place where negativity festers into something that can consume you until you're nothing but a toxic husk of who you once were.

Now despite what I first said, feel free to boycott the final season of Stranger Things if you want to, I won't stop you just like you can't stop me from watching it to see how the journey all these characters have been on concludes. Let people make their own decision on if they want to boycott or not, and if they decide not to, respect their decision and don't harass them about how, "THEIR SUPPORTING GENOCIDE" especially when BOTH SIDES ARE GUILTY OF THAT!!!

[rihon-scribe-some-writer-guy]

I’m not a hard core Superman Fan. I only have a adequate amount of knowledge to understand enough to pull up a price of media and not ask annoying questions about what’s going on. Superman is OP. His kryptonian birth name is Kal-El. The original story was an allegory of the struggles of an immigrant living in a strange world. Kryptonite is a elementally impossible substance that acts as reverse photosynthesis.

Anyways, it seems that there’s a new series in which Lois Lane jumped off a building in order to prove that Clark Kent and Superman were one in the same in its fifth episode. It has caused some fuss within the fan base. Half believe that Lois shouldn’t have taken drastic measures, while the other half believes her actions were justified.

My take: Both sides kinda have their points.

Originally I thought that Lois throwing herself off a skyscraper was irrational and manipulative. I feel like she didn’t have to resort to jumping off a building to prove Clark Kent = Superman. One of Lois Lane’s positive qualities should be her intelligence. Maybe she could have swiped Clark’s glasses and realized that they’re non-prescription. Maybe she could have taken a fingerprint sample of Superman and Clark. Maybe she could disguise herself as Wonder Woman and have a heart to heart conversation with Superman about his alter ego. There’s multiple alternative scenarios that would allow Lois to prove the truth in a way that showed that she was smart and resourceful without causing the person who she was considering to be in a relationship to divulge information about themselves that they weren’t ready to do. Considering that said information was something that Clark believed that she would exploit for her own benefits, I get why some individuals don’t like this episode.

Meanwhile, I also understand the argument that Lois was making. Clark was keeping a secret from someone who he was developing a relationship with. Lois was hurt because Clark couldn’t trust her in the same degree that she trusted him.

Part of the problem is that the story of Superman is struggling to adapt to the 2020’s. When Clark decided to take a career as a journalist, it kinda made sense in the 1930’s because it was a job that allowed the employees to leave their desk for hours. As long as Clark turned in an assignment, he could Superman to his hearts content. The Daily Bugle also gave him access to the current news which allowed him to stay on top of crimes. Now that the new series is set relatively in the present, all this starts to make less sense. We have work from home jobs and breaking news reports coming at us through the speed of internet now. Clark doesn’t have to work for the paper whose Pulitzer Prize winner reporter is trying to out the identity of Superman. In this why, the whole unhealthy relationship can be avoided.

Yeah, it’s my opinion that Clark’s and Lois’ relationship is unhealthy. Each one of them is expecting something from the other person. Lois wants the truth over care while Clark wants care over truth. Their lack to compromise led to Lois threatening suicide and then breaking off further relational development once she confirmed the truth, which probably was the most damage that anyone could inflict on the man of steel. Clark isn’t ready for a relationship as well since he is not willing to let Lois know his full story. Both of them hold certain ideals too high.

Now while I personally don’t enjoy how the plot has developed, I’m hesitant to condemn the writers because I don’t see where they are taking the story down the road. I recall when the comic writers ones wrote about Superman denouncing his American citizenship. When they faced major backlash because such a choice went against Superman’s ideals of fighting for the American Way, they stop pursuing that story and simply went into the next as if both happened. I found that more disappointing because there was justification for Superman’s choice. So while I am not thrilled in the manner of how the new series set Lois realization of Superman’s identity, I would be interested to see how they explore this imperfect relationship and attempt to resolve it to a reasonable conclusion.

[cosmicanger]

SAREE MAKDISI

No Human Being Can Exist

How can a person make up for seven decades of misrepresentation and willful distortion in the time allotted to a sound bite?

RECENTLY, AN AUSTRALIAN-PALESTINIAN friend of mine was invited to appear on Australia’s national television network to discuss the situation in and around Gaza.1 His white interviewers posed all the usual questions: Can you defend what we’ve seen from Hamas militants? How has the Palestinian cause been helped by this violence? How can anyone defend the slaughter of young music lovers at a music festival? Do you defend Hamas? They probably expected a defensive reaction from him, but calmly, in his smooth Australian-accented English, my friend had already turned the interview on its head. “I want to know why I’m here today, and why I haven’t been here for the past year,” he said gently. By the eve of October 7, he pointed out, Israeli forces had already killed more than two hundred Palestinians in 2023. The siege in Gaza was more than sixteen years old, and Israel had been operating outside international law for seventy-five years. “Normal” in Palestine was a killing a day—yet a killing a day in a decades-old occupation was hardly news; it certainly wasn’t justification for a live interview on a national television network. Palestinians were being given the opportunity to speak now because the Western media suddenly cared, and they cared (“as we should care,” my friend added) because, this time, the victims included Israeli civilians. In the days after October 7, Australia made a strong show of support for Israel: Parliament and the Sydney Opera House were lit up in the colors of the Israeli flag; the Prime Minister said pro-Palestinian rallies should be called off out of respect for the Israeli dead; the foreign minister was lambasted for saying Israel should endeavor to minimize civilian deaths in Gaza. “Well, what about our lives?” my friend asked.

What about lighting up a building for us? When our government lights up every building blue and white, how are we [Australian Palestinians] supposed to feel? Are we not Australian? Should nobody care about us? A 14-year-old boy was set on fire in the West Bank by Israeli settlers. What about us?

The news anchors were caught off guard. This isn’t how these interviews are supposed to go.

Those of us, like my friend, who are summoned by Western media outlets to provide a Palestinian perspective on the disaster unfolding in Gaza are well aware of the condition on which we are allowed to speak, which is the tacit assumption that our people’s lives don’t matter as much as the lives of the people who do. Questions are framed by the initial Hamas attack on Israeli civilians (the Hamas attack on Israeli military targets and Israel’s belt of fortifications, watchtowers, and prison gates surrounding Gaza goes unnoticed), and any attempt to place it in a wider historical framework gets diverted back to the attack itself: How can you justify it? Why are you trying to explain it instead of condemning it? Why can’t you just denounce the attack? If Palestinian commentators want to be asked about Israeli violence against Palestinian civilians—about the history of ethnic cleansing and apartheid that produced the contemporary Gaza Strip and the violence we are witnessing today; about the structural violence of decades of Israeli occupation that cuts farmers off from their fields, teachers from their classrooms, doctors from their patients, and children from their parents—we have to ask to be asked. And even then, the questions don’t come.

I’ve spoken to a lot of journalists from a lot of different media organizations over the past two weeks. With rare exceptions, the pattern is consistent, as it has been for years. A recent appearance on a major US cable news channel was canceled at the last minute, immediately after I sent in the talking points the producer requested I submit; they clearly weren’t the talking points they had in mind. For years, I was on the list of regular guests for BBC radio and television interviews concerning Palestine—until, during a previous Israeli bombardment of Gaza, I told the interviewer he was asking the wrong questions and that the questions that mattered had to do with history and context, not just what was happening right now. That was my last appearance on the BBC.

How can a person make up for seven decades of misrepresentation and willful distortion in the time allotted to a sound bite? How can you explain that the Israeli occupation doesn’t have to resort to explosions—or even bullets and machine-guns—to kill? That occupation and apartheid structure and saturate the everyday life of every Palestinian? That the results are literally murderous even when no shots are fired? Cancer patients in Gaza are cut off from life-saving treatments.2 Babies whose mothers are denied passage by Israeli troops are born in the mud by the side of the road at Israeli military checkpoints. Between 2000 and 2004, at the peak of the Israeli roadblock-and-checkpoint regime in the West Bank (which has been reimposed with a vengeance), sixty-one Palestinian women gave birth this way; thirty-six of those babies died as a result.3That never constituted news in the Western world. Those weren’t losses to be mourned. They were, at most, statistics.

What we are not allowed to say, as Palestinians speaking to the Western media, is that all life is equally valuable. That no event takes place in a vacuum. That history didn’t start on October 7, 2023, and if you place what’s happening in the wider historical context of colonialism and anticolonial resistance, what’s most remarkable is that anyone in 2023 should be still surprised that conditions of absolute violence, domination, suffocation, and control produce appalling violence in turn. During the Haitian revolution in the early 19th century, former slaves massacred white settler men, women, and children. During Nat Turner’s revolt in 1831, insurgent slaves massacred white men, women, and children. During the Indian uprising of 1857, Indian rebels massacred English men, women, and children. During the Mau Mau uprising of the 1950s, Kenyan rebels massacred settler men, women, and children. At Oran in 1962, Algerian revolutionaries massacred French men, women, and children. Why should anyone expect Palestinians—or anyone else—to be different? To point these things out is not to justify them; it is to understand them. Every single one of these massacres was the result of decades or centuries of colonial violence and oppression, a structure of violence Frantz Fanon explained decades ago in The Wretched of the Earth.

What we are not allowed to say, in other words, is that if you want the violence to stop, you must stop the conditions that produced it. You must stop the hideous system of racial segregation, dispossession, occupation, and apartheid that has disfigured and tormented Palestine since 1948, consequent upon the violent project to transform a land that has always been home to many cultures, faiths, and languages into a state with a monolithic identity that requires the marginalization or outright removal of anyone who doesn’t fit. And that while what’s happening in Gaza today is a consequence of decades of settler-colonial violence and must be placed in the broader history of that violence to be understood, it has taken us to places to which the entire history of colonialism has never taken us before.

AT ANY MOMENT, without warning, at any time of the day or night, any apartment building in the densely populated Gaza Strip can be struck by an Israeli bomb or missile. Some of the stricken buildings simply collapse into layers of concrete pancakes, the dead and the living alike entombed in the shattered ruins. Often, rescuers shouting “hadan sami’ana?” (“can anyone hear us?”) hear calls for help from survivors deep in the rubble, but without heavy lifting equipment all they can do is helplessly scrabble at the concrete slabs with crowbars or their bare hands, hoping against hope to pry open gaps wide enough to get survivors or the injured out. Some buildings are struck with such heavy bombs that the ensuing fireballs shower body parts and sometimes whole charred bodies—usually, because of their small size, those of children—over surrounding neighborhoods. Phosphorus shells, primed by Israeli gunners to detonate with airburst proximity fuses so that incendiary particles rain down over as wide an area as possible, set fire to anything flammable, including furniture, clothing, and human bodies. Phosphorus is pyrophoric—it will burn as long as it has access to air and basically can’t be extinguished. If it makes contact with a human body it has to be dug out by scalpel and will keep burning into the flesh until it’s extracted.

“We live,” one of Al Jazeera’s Arabic correspondents said, talking over the ubiquitous buzz of Israel’s lethal drones, “enveloped in the smell of smoke and death.” Entire families—twenty, thirty people at a time—have been wiped out. Friends and relatives desperately checking on each other often find smoking ruins where close relations once lived, their fate unknown, vanished either under the concrete or scattered in the remnants of other increasingly unrecognizable areas. Survivors find themselves in one of the most crowded areas on earth with crumbling telecommunications, faltering electricity, failing medical systems, a looming internet outage, and an uncertain future.4

In 2018, the United Nations warned that Gaza—its basic infrastructure of electricity, water, and sewage systems smashed over years of Israeli incursions and bombings, leaving 95 percent of the population without ready access to fresh drinking water—would be “unlivable” by 2020. It’s now 2023, and the entire territory, cut off from the outside world, is without any access to food, water, medical supplies, fuel and electricity, all while under continuous bombardment from land, sea, and air.5 “Attacks against civilian infrastructure, especially electricity, are war crimes,” pointed out Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission. “Cutting off men, women, children [from] water, electricity and heating with winter coming,” she continued—“these are acts of pure terror.” Von der Leyen is right, of course, but in this instance she was referring to Russia’s attacks on Ukraine’s infrastructure. As for Israel’s attacks on Gaza’s infrastructure, Von der Leyen says that Israel has the right to defend itself.

900, 1000, 1500, 1800, 2600, 3500, 4600, 5000, 5900, 6500. The fatality figures, with which no one can keep up, are augmented every few hours with another twenty here and thirty there as this building or that is brought down in a cataclysmic burst of fire, smoke, and rubble. Three or four hundred people—or more—are being killed every day. At one point, health sources in Gaza reported 100 fatalities in a single hour. For every person killed there are two or three or more wounded, often severely. Almost half the dead and wounded are young children; some of the most painful images coming out of the current bombardment of Gaza, as in the ones past, are those of dead children, battered, ashen, covered in soot and dust, wrapped in the final embrace of parents who were killed trying to protect them. So far, with no end in sight, Israel has killed almost three thousand children. The dead and wounded or often simply recovered body parts—charred legs, trunks, heads—are taken to hospitals overflowing with casualties, running out of medical supplies and fuel for their emergency generators. Hospital beds have long since been fully occupied; new arrivals to Gaza’s hospitals crowd together in their own blood in hallways or on the pavements outside; doctors report napping on operating tables on which they now have to operate without anesthetic by the light of mobile phones, using household vinegar to clean wounds because they’ve run out of everything else.6

With morgues full to capacity and cemeteries running out of space, health authorities in Gaza have started storing bodies in ice cream trucks, with blood dripping slowly from doors emblazoned with the bright childish colors of ice cream brands.7 In alleys, courtyards, and makeshift mosques, those who are able gather in silent tears and prayers over arrays of bodies, large and often pitifully small, wrapped in blood-soaked shrouds in preparation for burial. Relatives sob over each bundle, give a bobbing forehead one last kiss as it is taken away for the last time, leaving only weeping mothers, fathers, brothers, sisters, uncles, aunts, and cousins in each other’s arms, their own turn in their shrouds surely not far away. Sometimes there are no relatives; they’re all gone, too. The scale of the death and destruction is so massive, so unrelenting, there’s often no time to mourn, and every day, every hour, the Israelis shower more death on Gaza. One hospital has begun burying the anonymous dead in mass graves for lack of any other option.8

In the first week of the round-the-clock bombardment, the Israelis said they had dropped 6,000 bombs on Gaza, a number equivalent to about a month of bombing at the peak of the American wars in Iraq and Afghanistan—countries many, many times larger than the Gaza Strip.9 (Iraq is over a thousand times the size of Gaza.) They also claimed to have dropped over a thousand tons of high explosives; by the end of week one, we were, in other words, already into the kiloton measurements of nuclear weapons, and weeks two and three are upon us.10 In the first week of bombing, 1,700 entire buildings in Gaza were destroyed. Many times that number were damaged, often beyond repair. Each building includes seven, eight, nine, or more separate apartments, each one the former home of some family now either homeless once more or dead. As ever, the Israelis claim that they are targeting “the terror infrastructure.” As ever, the bodies (or body parts) actually pulled from the rubble or picked up from the neighboring streets are mostly of women and children, unlikely constituents of the phantom “terror infrastructure” from which the occupying power—with the blessing and benediction of its superpower patron—claims to be defending itself.

It is obvious from the harrowing footage coming out of Gaza that the Israelis, unable to locate any clear military targets—no guerrilla fighters in the history of anticolonial struggle have ever stood around waving their hands and making themselves obvious targets—are indiscriminately striking civilian targets instead, systematically destroying one concrete building after another, often annihilating entire neighborhoods at a time; the UN estimates that Israel’s bombing campaign has already damaged or destroyed 40 percent of all of the housing units in Gaza.11 On its websites and social media accounts, the Israeli state proudly boasts of the success of its campaign against Hamas, but the evidence it musters generally amounts to photographs of urban ruin, and the result is the carefully calculated infliction of mass homelessness on an entire population.

On October 12, the Israelis told one million people in the northern part of Gaza to flee for their lives.12 But there is nowhere for them to flee to, and those who attempt flight compound risk upon risk. The Gaza Strip is all of 140 square miles; it is already one of the most densely populated areas in the entire world. If the United States had the population density of Gaza, it would have 60,000,000,000 inhabitants. That’s sixty billion. And now the Israelis are bellowing that they want the tiny territory’s population to somehow squeeze into half the remaining area—and anyway they are bombing the south of Gaza as well as the north and the center. Nowhere in Gaza is safe.

Already refugees once or sometimes twice over (80 percent of Gaza’s population are refugees, survivors or descendants of survivors of the ethnic cleansing of the rest of southwestern Palestine in 1948), new refugees find themselves in search of refuge once more, even as the Israelis warn darkly that there is far, far more to come.13 On October 14, a column of terrified refugees making their way north to south down Salah al Din Street in Gaza City—specifically singled out by Israeli leaflets as a safe corridor—were bombed, and seventy survivors of other bombings were killed and scores more injured. Doctors in clinics and hospitals in northern Gaza refused to move altogether, saying that it would be impossible primarily because there’s nowhere to move their patients to. All the other hospitals are full, said Dr. Yousef Abu al-Rish of the Shifa Hospital in northern Gaza. “And the other thing,” he added, “most of the cases are unstable. And if we want to even transfer them, even if there [are] extra beds in the other hospitals, which is not true, they will die because they are too unstable to be transported.” Patients in the ICU, newborns in incubators, people on ventilators—they would all just die if they were moved. Of course they might die if they stay put too, especially once the last drops of diesel run out and the lights go off. Or if the Israelis continue to bomb hospitals and ambulances as they have been doing. Already, a third of the hospitals and clinics in Gaza have had to shut down due to a lack of resources.14

“The specter of death is hanging over Gaza,” warned Martin Griffiths, UN Undersecretary General for Humanitarian Affairs. “With no water, no power, no food and no medicine, thousands will die. Plain and simple.”

A few days ago the Israelis said that it would be best, on the whole, for the entire population of the territory—over two million people, half of them children—to leave, either to Egypt or to the Gulf. We aim, the Israeli analyst Giora Eiland said approvingly, “to create conditions where life in Gaza becomes unsustainable.” As a result, he added, “Gaza will become a place where no human being can exist.”15 Major-General Ghassan Alian of the Israeli army, echoing the Defense Minister’s recent reference to Palestinians as “human animals,” said, “human animals must be treated as such. There will be no electricity and no water [in Gaza], there will only be destruction. You wanted hell, you will get hell.”16

What kind of people talk like this, with a godlike sense of their power over literally millions of people? What mindset produces such genocidal proclamations on the disposition of entire populations?

WHAT WE ARE WITNESSING before our eyes is, I think, unprecedented in the history of colonial warfare. Ethnic cleansing, in itself, is unfortunately not as rare an occasion as one would like; only a few weeks ago, 130,000 Armenians were driven in terror from their homes in Artsakh by (not coincidentally Israeli-armed) Azerbaijan. In the Yugoslav wars of the 1990s, thousands of people of the “wrong” religion or ethnicity were expelled at a time from their communities in Bosnia, Serbia, and Croatia. Almost all—90 percent—of the Christian and Muslim population of Palestine itself was ethnically cleansed by Zionist forces in 1948. And we can go back to the 19th, 18th, and 17th centuries and recall the sordid history of genocide, extermination, and slavery with which Western civilization made its enlightened presence felt all around the planet.

But in no instance that I know of has ethnic cleansing been accomplished through the use of massive ordnance and heavy bombardment with ultra-modern weapons systems, including the one-ton bombs (and even heavier bunker-buster munitions) used by Israelis flying the latest American jets. Such matters are normally conducted in person, with rifles or at the point of the bayonet. The ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948 was carried out almost entirely with small arms, for instance; the Palestinian civilians massacred at Deir Yassin, Tantura, and other sites to inspire others into terrified flight were shot with pistols, rifles, or machine-guns at close range, not struck by thousand-pound bombs dropped from F-35s flying at 10,000 feet or higher.

What we are witnessing, in other words, is perhaps the first fusion of old-school colonial and genocidal violence with advanced state-of-the-art heavy weapons; a twisted amalgamation of the 17th century and the 21st, packaged and wrapped up in language that harks back to primitive times and thunderous biblical scenes involving the smiting of whole peoples—the Jebusites, the Amelikites, the Canaanites, and of course the Philistines.

What’s worse, if anything could be worse, is the near total indifference on display by so many in and out of government in the Western world. Given the shock and outrage over the Palestinian massacre of Israeli civilians expressed by journalists, politicians, governments, and university presidents, the nearly blanket silence concerning the fate of Palestinian civilians at the hands of Israel is deafening: an earth-shattering, bellowing silence. We who live in Western countries didn’t support or pay for any Palestinian to kill Israeli civilians, but every bomb dropped on Gaza from aircraft the US provided is added to a bill that we pay for. Our officials are falling over themselves to join in the encouragement of the bombing and to rush the delivery of new bombs.

State Department officials issued internal briefings calling on spokespeople not to use phrases such as “end to violence/bloodshed,” “restoring calm,” or “de-escalation/ceasefire.”17 The Biden Administration actually wants the bombing and killing to continue. Asked about the tiny handful of more or less progressive congressional voices calling for a ceasefire and a cessation of hostilities, White House Spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre said, “we believe they’re wrong. We believe they’re repugnant, and we believe they’re disgraceful.”18 There are “not two sides here,” Jean-Pierre added. “There are not two sides.”

Government spokespeople are calculating and insincere; the ultimate nihilists, they don’t actually believe in anything, least of all anything they say themselves. But the same cannot be said of the people all around us who, so desperately moved by the images and narratives of Israeli suffering, have nothing to say about Palestinian suffering on a far greater scale. How can anyone be so heartless? I’m not talking about overt racists who explicitly call for the destruction of Gaza and the expulsion of the Palestinians. I’m talking about ordinary people, many—maybe even most—of them solid liberals when it comes to politics: advocates of gender and racial equality, anxious about climate change, concerned for the unhoused, insistent on wearing face masks out of humane consideration for others, voters for the most progressive of Democrats. Their indifference is not personal, but a manifestation of a broader culture of denial.19 Such people seem not to see or to recognize Palestinian suffering because they literally do not see or recognize it. They are far too intent, far too focused, on the suffering of people with whom they can more readily identify, people they understand to be just like themselves.

Of course, the corporate media know how to encourage such forms of identification, how to construct protagonists, and how to make viewers sympathize with a subject, to imagine themselves in her shoes. In throttling information, Western media outlets cut off access to identification with Palestinians, and reaffirm the perception that there is only one side. Meanwhile on Al Jazeera Arabic—whose team of correspondents in Gaza and elsewhere in Palestine and Lebanon have been providing gripping and unflinching coverage of the catastrophe in Gaza—tragedy unfolds in real time. On October 25, the Gaza bureau chief Wael Dahdouh was on air when he received news that his wife, son, and daughter were killed in an Israeli airstrike nearby.20 Footage shows him on his knees as he weeps and places a hand on his teenage son’s chest.21 “They’re taking their revenge on us through children?” Dahdouh says. For those of us glued to Arabic Jazeera these days, to whom Dahdouh is a familiar face, the loss feels personal.

Some lives are to be grieved and given names and life stories, their narratives and photographs printed out in the New York Times or the Guardian along with photos of mourning parents. Other lives are just numbers, statistics coming out of an accounting machine that doesn’t seem to stop adding new digits, twenty or thirty at a time.

[snowflake-of-destruction]

Another Umbrella prompt!

☂️ he was a bad person and a worse father. ☂️

KH? SK8? Prodigal Son?

The options are limitless

Replies to an ask a year late with a fandom not mentioned in it.

I may have absorbed one too many spoilers. Do as I say and not as I do, and look away if not completely caught up on MHA

"He was a bad person, and a worse father." Shoto's monotone lacked conviction, and his face warred, halves split along a horizontal line for once. Grim set jaw that wanted to spit not just those words, but so many others he still felt like he'd held back even though he'd never exactly been secretive about his opinion of the number one hero he'd been so unfortunate as to share genes with--at least not among people who counted-- warred with the contrast of sad and softened eyes that wanted to temper the claim with a follow-up about new pages turned and new promises. 

It would have taken a lot of work on all sides to build lasting trust, much less genuine closeness.

There would be no such distractions or demands on his time now.

The counter around the sink frosted with ice and the pipes creaked a protest. Shoto's reflection looked tired, beyond even what it should, like he hadn't slept in weeks not even days. Pale enough that it could be his funeral today.

"You're not going to say that." Izuku was in the doorway. His suit was wrinkled, but he wore proper shoes (Shoto missed the red sneakers). He wasn't condemning. He wasn't asking either. His tone was sympathy backed by a solid, blind confidence. Shoto wasn't going to start his eulogy with words like those.  Shoto was a better person (a better son) than that. 

Just like Midoriya to come in with his unwavering faith. Pity in his eyes too. Pity Shoto wasn't sure he needed. 

He felt fine, honestly.

Except when he felt like he was fracturing to pieces. But he was used to that.

Shoto didn't remember leaving any doors open or implying that he welcomed anyone invading his space today. His face was buried in Midoriya's neck and Midoriya's arms were locked around him before he decided how he felt about the intrusion. Shoto didn't feel any of Midoriya's solid warmth transfer to him, but he didn't freeze his friend, so that was a victory in itself. 

When he took a deep, gasping, shuddering and too wet breath in, his lungs filled with a sick sweet and sharp chemical mix of cheap body spray. Mighty All Mighty from Hatchet's Zero to Hero line. Classic Midoriya. There was a more mellow sweetness underneath it though (caramel?) and a hint of wood smoke that only grew strong the more Shoto dry sobbed into Midoriya's neck and the tighter he was held. That was new. For Midoriya at least.  It was a familiar enough combination on its own.

At another time when his brain wasn't breaking for other serious reasons he would ask about that. Possibly in front of an audience of common friends. Why was Bakugo sweating on you?

Not that he couldn't figure out several possible answers, most of them innocent. It would be funny though, seeing both of their faces when he asked. Someone needed to keep the mood light in these trying times.

Midoriya shushed him softly even though he wasn't making noise, petted his hair. Shoto felt like a horse being tamed.  For some reason it wasn't an unpleasant or insulting feeling.

Some time (half a minute or half a century) passed in comfort. Shoto's breath started to even out. The Great Explosion Murder God Dynamight smell increased, and Shoto raised his head to find an extremely uncomfortable looking Bakugo only inches away, shifting weight awkwardly between his feet, ready to spring into action and crowding in instead of hanging back in the attached bedroom he apparently had also invaded without invitation.

There were others behind him. Many others.

Too many people had seen Shoto (almost) cry. Perhaps he should be upset. Perhaps he should feel touched.

Perhaps he needed more security.

"Listen up, you candy-cane headed bastard," Bakugo spoke through the silence. "You still have family, alright? Right here."

Shoto found himself grateful that Bakugo's own death had proven to only be a minor setback. He deserved the second chance.

Others had too, but Shoto was too exhausted to let more of the bitter in with the sweet. He wanted to be happy about something. Surrounded by friends and the prickliest among them admitting they were bonded for life. That was something that could be celebrated. 

He didn't admit the silver lining though, instead just blinking owlishly up at Bakugo. "So if your heart explodes again I can still use my eulogy? Horrible person and worse father?" Shoto repeated the last for the benefit of anyone who hadn't been there before (Just how long had his audience been lurking before he noticed? Would he ever know?).

Midoriya thought he was funny at least. That, among other things, was why he was the best friend.

[finiffy]

Warning its 2720 word. And it may need a few more proofreadings. And Agent Ukulele suffers for most of it.

~~~

Agent Ukulele hissed in pain when he got shoved and pinned to a brick wall, luckily missing a metal pipe that would have surely given him a migraine. The uneven points in the brick digging into his neck and back. It was sudden and unexpected.

He had just finished one of the Type Green bounties. Elusive one this one was, keep escaping from other Ichabod agents. The GoC was getting quite annoyed with this thing, well it was a person but after years of conditioning reality benders slowly became less of a being than a mosquito, so they sent out a hodgepodge group of their better and available agents. After one of the explosive experts smoked the building the panicking Type Green jumped out of just the right second story window for Ukulele to take the shot and boom a corpse. Well it was more messy than normal, having your brains shot out mid air makes all that body matter paint whatever was in its way before hitting the ground. Gross and a mess, but at least he's not responsible for the clean up.

The mixed sounds from bombs exploding and gun shots going off with the visuals of black smoke and lightning strikes within, some dumbfuck must of thrown an EMT, had caused quite a commotion from the people passing by outside. Anyone working for the GoC ran for hiding spots to draw the least attention and call for pickups. The last thing they needed is un-amnesitived civilians talking about a strange group of armored individuals leaving the scene of a collapsing building or worse it getting linked back to the United Nations. Whoever the spokesperson gets to explain this to the public is going to have a field day.

Ukulele had found himself a nice little alleyway seven blocks down he could wait in. And by nice he meant more that it looked so abandoned that not even homeless people staked out there for the night in a long long time. The alley itself was wet with varying pools of water swarming with insect larvae, glistening oil leaks, and whatever in his damned god's name was in the puddle that looked bright neon yellow, any metal here rusted and began to degrade, mold and mildew covering most of the nooks and cranny it could cling too. Disgusting really, Agent Ukulele didn't have the best hygiene or care for cleanliness from places he came and went from. He lived mostly off greased gas station food, been running around in his own sweat soaked all black clothing for a whole week by now, and been sleeping in motels that should really be condemned. But this place was honestly the worst, he felt a massive urge to scrumb his body so much that it might wash off some of his sins in the process. He wouldn't be here for long thankfully.

However while waiting he got immensely bored. He fiddled with his gun, listening into the coalition's radio, kept checking his pockets, even started trying to comb out his hair with his fingers. Nothing was filling that void, an itch that grew stronger and stronger, an old desire he wished he could have stomped out decades ago whispering as the devil on his shoulder in the back of his head.

Hypocritely Ukulele himself was a Type Green, a reality bender, shifter, didnt matter what you called it in the end just a ticking time bomb to bend everyone and everything to their will, a monster at the end of the day. As much as he wished he wasn't, it was bestowed upon him at birth, it's his curse to bare and hide. He hated his abilities even as a child, the sense of power and the physical sight of how he could warp his environment, it was addicting, satisfying some kind of primal desire for superiority and control. It scared him in a small way, he didn't mind hurting people, punch them in the face and hearing the small bit of the nose bone crack would savice, but knowing he could just stare at people who were miles away and cause their eyes to melt out of their sockets like warm butter or turn every nerve in that person body into thumbtacks, well it horrified him.

He hadn't done any major shifts in a while, only small things to help get by like getting clumps of tangled matted hair out, rewarming his coffee, wrinkles out of his hat was mostly what he would do. Also he was in a private place away from any Kant counter, away from his coworkers, away from the public in general. He even kept a small counter device on him to keep himself in check, that if he did bend reality ever so slightly it would only appear as a slightly higher or low fluctuation that was completely normal for humes to do once in a while.

He was hoping for a chase today. In his head, hyping himself up to start bolting after the other green, he would be free to contort reality as he pleased for just a few minutes, no one would notice as it would all be placed on the new rotting mass of meat that masqueraded in human form. But nope, didn't happen. A sniper shot, clean and simple. He'd at least get his fat sum of money and a tick up in his kill count. But as the initial adrenaline left his body after running for a pick up point that thought kept ruminating. He's need to reality bend. It ate at his very soul, his sense of awareness, threatening to take away the one thing he truly had: dominion and control over his powers. Maybe he could get away with just a little something. Give that scream part in his brain its desire spike and feed the addiction fully when he gets back home. He was due for a break anyways, his superiors were hinting at him using his vacation days for bureaucratic reasons so why not finally get them off his back.

He took a deep breath and cleared his mind. He listened to reality itself, just like how mama taught him. Listen to the sounds around him, listen to how the distant cars move, how the sound dictated their locations, speed, and directions they were traveling. The humming of the airplanes above to hear the wind resistance in the air, the bustling of the trees and their leaves told him where each branch had grown as they bumped into one another. The crunching sound of his own feet on the old broken asphalt told him where every pebble was and where they'd fall if moved. The buzzing of insects coming and going and the birds squawking and chirping. To concentrate on feeling his own weighted clothing pulling down on his body and how his own fat warped, folded, and shaped itself around himself. To the feeling of the bumps and curves of the brick wall noticing how rough, sharp, and jagged each section was compared to smoother and flatter sections that were merely inches away from one another. Or how the uneven ground causes his foot to divit and rotate to find a stable position with gravity. He inhaled to take in the smells around him at least to understand and keep track of, but they were absolutely repulsive, he could barely figure out where or what just went up his nose was or came from.

Fuck it he's getting rid of that first. With one last deep breath he refocused his thoughts inward. Any pleasant smell he could think of. Sandalwood and chestnuts? Yeah that seemed good enough. Slowly with each time he filled his lungs with air, the more and more it became defined as he kept slowly changing reality around him. He could finally stop gagging and started to automatically take in longer breaths.

The next thing he knew, however, was that of being slammed hard, unnaturally hard at that, into the wall only half a foot behind him. He could hear his kant counter hit the asphalt ground beeping quite a bit and the curdalling sound of the radio being crushed down by a boot. He felt his hand, that had at least gotten a hold of his rifle, be twisted and dislocated, dropping his main safety line down to the ground and then having it kicked away.

Expecting someone from another anomalous occult group had ambosed him. Who was actually in front of him made his heart drop, his skin went completely pale, adrenaline began to rerush through his veins but made him stiffer than the wall he was held up on: D.C. al Fine, the GoC's secretary general, the person people would just use 'fucking scary' to describe them to others. To say Agent Ukulele was fucked in this situation was an understatement. They know he's a Type Green now, he'll soon be executed, one of the best Ichabod agents soon to be left as a memory of infamy and shame in the Coalition's history. Man did he want to die in a much cooler way than a shameful and shambling walk to a shooting range with a bag over his head in complete silence. He won't fight his own death, it was probably for the best if he's becoming more unstable if the fantic counter was anything to go by.

"What the fuck are you doing?!" D.C's sneered out quietly right next to his face. Her teeth never opened and her lips were stretched far enough to see their gums, honestly they might just start bleeding from how much they clamped those poor suckers down.

Ukulele had never been this close to them. He might love to annoy his coworks and commanders, but he's not stupid enough to get into a general's face. He could see her eyes burrowing right through him, a dulled green, as if they had left them to sun bleach for a week, some color but it's fading away. Strangely beautiful if they didn't read as 'I'm about to snap your neck in half.'

"W-Waiting for you bastards to pick me up. What the fuck else would I be doing?"

Ukulele couldn't help but stammer his words out; a hand still pressed firmly around his neck, throbbing pain from the impact, and still being a bit disoriented would be the main things he'd point to for sounding this weak and pathetic right now. And it had nothing to do with any amount of fear he's definitely not feeling either. Just praying that maybe they didn't notice the reality bending he did, it at least wasn't visible to the eye, maybe it was the dangerous fiddling of his rifle or he was too out of it to hear the commands they barked at him.

"Don't try playing that game with me Ukulele," their grip tightened around his throat blocking his airway until she finished her sentence, "count this as your lucky day it was only me who found you. So I'll give you another chance to answer me. What. Were. You. Doing?"

Fuck if they already knew than why the fuck not shoot him in the head a moment ago, he was already distracted enough that he didnt hear someone coming right up on him and let them smashed his head into a brick wall.

"Less chatting in your head and start using your voicebox. We're both aware of what you were trying to pull, I just want to hear it from the source. My patience is running low, so unless you want your corpse to be found in a muddy tench..."

"You can read minds!?"

The grip returned and somehow even stronger than the last, it closed off his exsoficas and he could swear that his neck got compressed further than what he thought feasible. His kant counter was now in D.C.'s hand and lifted right next to his ear. The beeping was picking up pace and volume as it got more and more abnormal readings. Fuck he could of sworn he never let that blasted thing get to that point, how'd he get this bad within the last minute or so.

He took his first opportunity he could once he got air back in his body to concede. "Fine. Fine. Fucking fine. You caught me, I'm a Type Green and shifted the smell of the area to not gag in here. J-just give me a chance to explain to the Coalition why I'm working here or at least..." the agent gasped for more air "...at the very least.. allow me to message my roommate to hear her voice one last time."

Everything that was allowing him to still stand up gave way and he collapsed to his hands and knees. Still gasping for his body's basic needs and haphazardly coughing to not start choking on his own saliva and mucus. The counter was still going off but seemed to slightly calm down as D.C. al Fine took one step back. He didn't want to raise his head up, he knew he'd only be greeted by having their eyes borrow even deeper into him as she towered over the green caught in hunter's clothing.

As he got more and more ability to regain his senses and thought, he took note of somethings that didn't quite line up. That kant counter had hit the ground and rolled a bit away, how the hell did Fine get it into their hands. And why was it still going off when he had fully stopped bending by this point? The abnormal grip and strength, he knew the GoC had some strong ass people in power and DC definitely looked the part but it still felt unnatural in some way. And with the mind reading, while a strangely normal thing in the anomalous world, just felt off to how he expected telepathy to work.

Then he realized something, he had seen there was a shimmer in D.C. al Fine's eyes when they were in his face, one not too unlike that of the one's he looks at in the mirror every day. He looked up hopeful to see if his short term memory had gotten that detail wrong, but it was not.

"You're one too, aren't you?"

"Took you long enough to notice. Shame really, I thought you were better than that. Now get up, put your hand back in place, and grab that modified rifle before I send in a consideration to dock your paycheck."

D.C. al Fine started to walk back out of the alleyway motioning Agent Ukulele to follow.

"But why?"

"What kind of bullshit question is that!?, 'but why,' really now."

"Why the fuck did you feel the need to stop me? Why save me when you could have killed me and wipe either of our hands from knowing what we are? Why trust that I wouldn't tell others just because you know about me?"

"Oh no, I don't trust you not to tell," they stopped right on the sidewalk as Ukulele had regained his footing, without looking back they continued in a hushed tone, "but because I made a promise to someone to keep you out of trouble than that's what I will do."

Before Ukulele could form another full sentence one of the Goc's unmarked black van pulled up with a few of his other colleagues already inside. They were all looking a bit confused to why the commander was here but no one spoke out to verbally question. He shuffled his way in as he swung his rifle back over his shoulder, took a seat on the cold metal bench inside, leaned back and tilted his black sun hat over this face, and listened to the comradery of the other agents as he felt the bumpy road roll over the van as it took them back to the nearest base.

He quietly groaned to himself, he was going to need a few pints at the pub before taking in what happened just now. He'll take his life and the now absent need to shift his surroundings over a shameful bullet or handcuffs any day of the week and he wasn't in the mood nor place to keep pressing for answers. At least for now.

~~~

~ Mold Anon

!!!! Holy shit I love this. It really is so refreshing to read about this guy during his GOC era and also D.C, absolutely nice

[katebushsbabushka]

I want to build off my post from yesterday, and I want to talk about moms who have autistic kids.

I want to be clear. I'm not defending any ableist bs that my mother or any other parent of an autistic child spews out at their children, but I've been thinking about this since yesterday. This isn't a post really condemning or defending. Consider it more like a diary entry.

I can get really pissed off at my mom. Sometimes, she makes me want to cut contact with her. But, damn, yesterday really showed me how hard society is on moms of disabled kids.

I know that there are some people out there who intentionally do things to hurt their kids, but I really think my mom never meant to hurt me. My mom has a lot of generational trauma -- a LOT of generational trauma.

See, my mom is most definitely also neurodivergent. I've had her tell stories of her own mother putting hot peppers on her lips to break tics and on her fingers to force her to stop biting her nails. My grandma and grandpa were second generation Italian immigrants who had their own severe issues. My mom talks about growing up in a severely dysfunctional and verbally/physically abusive home.

By all accounts, what she gave me what was better than what she had. Even if it wasn't perfectly, I consider it a success, but she still felt like a failure.

My mom denied my autism and probably will continue to fight with her acceptance for years to come because society has taught her that my autism is her fault. I saw it in the way she tried to justify her gestational habits with me, the way she said "I was always cuddly with you." The vague way she says "I don't know what I did wrong to make you like this." It doesn't make it right, but I can't even begin to describe how I would feel if I had a child with a disability that would impact their life forever, and society told me that the whole reason for its existence was my fault.

My mom saw me get bullied for years because of these traits she feels like she has to accept blame for giving me. I know that couldn't have been easy for her. I know it can't be easy on her. It doesn't make it any less right for the way she took her traumas out on me, but damn I feel bad for her.

The concept of "refrigerator mothers" pisses me off so much because why is the mother always blamed for her kid's disability? My mother could have accepted me long ago if ignorant society didn't tell her that she was at fault for giving me autism. My mom starts finally coming to grips with my autism, and the first thing she does is blame herself for making me have to go through everything negative I've experienced as a result of it. In some ways, I'm really sick of the concept that "people should know better by now" because sometimes your ability to grow is hindered by circumstances you don't have complete control over. Just because you have access to better information doesn't mean that the mental processes of overcoming your own internal biases is automatic. I'm fully convinced my mother would have accepted my ASD a long time ago if she didn't have my father breathing down her throat, among other factors I've already discussed. She's a completely different person when he isn't around, and I can't blame her when I too have been in a toxic relationship that hindered me as a person.

Society produces damaged women which ultimately results in damaged children, and the damage only gets worse if you don't have the privileges of being able bodied, white, straight, etc. This isn't to say that there some parents are just toxic and need to be cut off, because there absolutely are. I'm just beginning to realize that my mother is just as damaged as I am. She tried to protect me the best she knew how with the resources and coping mechanisms she had. It just happens that most of them came from ill informed doctors and religious indoctrination -- factors I can't entirely blame her for. It doesn't make her a bad mother or a good mother in my eyes.

It just makes her a person, trying her best in a system that, in every way imaginable, is set against her. And I think that's so incredibly, frustratingly brave of her.

I'm determined to have a good relationship with my mother, because that's exactly what society doesn't want me to have.

[schraubd]

The (Hopefully More Symmetrical) Future of Congress' Black-Jewish Caucus

Rep. Brenda Lawrence (D-MI) was one of the key forces behind the founding of Congress' Black-Jewish caucus. The caucus is nominally bipartisan, though with regard to both "Black" and "Jewish" Congress offers slim pickings amongst Republicans. The only Black GOP member, Rep. Will Hurd (R-TX), has already left Congress, and the only GOP Jewish member, Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-NY) will depart at the end of this term. All other members are Democrats.

But now Rep. Lawrence is retiring (redistricting scrambled her district -- Lawrence endorsed Rep. Haley Stevens in the district that's the closest to being its successor), and the JTA has an interesting article about the vitality of the caucus in the future.

One unfortunate fact about the caucus, Lawrence suggested, is that it has been almost entirely silent on matters of racism. Despite the fact that its existence is nominally about providing a vector where both Black and Jewish members can learn about and be responsive to the sensitivities of the other, in practice the caucus has almost exclusively tackled matters of antisemitism and made little progress in addressing issues of racism.

In addition to the antisemitism she has confronted throughout her tenure, another disappointment, she said, has been the reluctance of her Republican colleagues to call out anti-Black racism. 

“They just put their head down because they’re so committed to a Republican agenda,” she said. “They are not willing to stand up and call a colleague out if their rhetoric is one that promotes racism or antisemitic behavior.”

A review of statements from the caucus suggests that it has only substantially addressed antisemitism, and its most egregious expressions — the hostage-taking at a synagogue in Colleyville, Texas this year; the stabbing attack at a Hanukkah celebration in Monsey, New York, in 2019; and the anniversary of the 2018 massacre of Jewish worshippers in Pittsburgh. 

When the group has made references to anti-Black racism, the caucus talks about it as if it were a thing of the past — in commemoration of the 1960s civil rights cooperation between Jews and Blacks at an opening session in 2019, or in a celebration of Juneteenth, the holiday marking the end of slavery.

Lawrence described with frustration her attempts to get Republicans to talk more about anti-Black racism. She recalled that one Black Republican she would not name said “Look at me, I’m a Black and I made it,” and how conversations with other Republicans devolved into calls on Democrats to condemn Antifa, the loose-knit network of far-left protesters, or the Black Lives Matter movement.

This was always going to be a point of concern.  And it is tremendously disappointing, and a discredit to the hard work persons like Rep. Lawrence have put into this initiative, that the caucus thus far has been so overtly asymmetrical in its focus.

A Black-Jewish caucus is unabashedly a good thing. But it has to be a relationship of equals, not one of Jewish tutors and Black pupils. Ilhan Omar should learn from her Jewish colleagues some things about antisemitism she perhaps hadn't thought of before. But also and equally, Lee Zeldin should learn some things about racism from his Black colleagues that he perhaps was insufficiently attuned to (like why it's offensive for the Capitol Building to honor men who committed treason in defense of slavery). It's absolutely good to come together to denounce contemporary instances of antisemitism such the attacks at Colleyville and Monsey. But it is troublesome that this is not paired with denunciations of contemporary instances of anti-Black racism. In a Black-Jewish caucus neither component should be the junior partner. If the caucus is going to carry forward and do justice to Rep. Lawrence's vision, things need to change.

via The Debate Link https://ift.tt/71Q8lSp

[readingsquotes]

"Six thousand. Eleven thousand. Twenty thousand. This steady rhythm of fatalities marked the progression of the following pieces, which I wrote  during Israel’s bombardment of the Gaza Strip this autumn. The official number of people Israel has killed in Gaza now approaches thirty thousand, but in reality that number has already been surpassed. Israel is killing two hundred and fifty Palestinians per day, ten people per hour, one person every six minutes. Each figure corresponds to a life snuffed out by a merciless killing machine for which killing has become an end in itself."

...

October 25, 2023

Recently, an Australian Palestinian friend of mine was invited to appear on an Australian national television network to discuss the situation in and around Gaza. His white interviewers posed all the usual questions: Can you defend what we’ve seen from Hamas militants? How has the Palestinian cause been helped by this violence? How can anyone defend the slaughter of young music lovers at a music festival? Do you condemn Hamas? They probably expected a defensive reaction from him, but calmly, in his smooth Australian-accented English, my friend had already turned the interview on its head. “I want to know why I’m here today, and why I haven’t been here for the past year,” he said gently. By the eve of October 7, he pointed out, Israeli forces had already killed more than two hundred Palestinians in 2023. The siege in Gaza was more than sixteen years old, and Israel had been operating outside international law for seventy-five years. “Normal” in Palestine was one killing per day — yet one killing per day in a decades-old occupation was hardly news; it certainly wasn’t justification for a live interview on a national television network. Palestinians were being given the opportunity to speak now because the Western media suddenly cared, and they cared (“as we should care,” my friend added) because, this time, the victims included Israeli civilians. In the days after October 7, Australia made a strong show of support for Israel: Parliament and the Sydney Opera House were lit up in the colors of the Israeli flag; the prime minister said pro-Palestinian rallies should be called off out of respect for the Israeli dead; the foreign minister was lambasted for saying Israel should endeavor to minimize civilian deaths in Gaza. “Well, what about our lives?” my friend asked.

What about lighting up a building for us? When our government lights up every building blue and white, how are we [Australian Palestinians] supposed to feel? Are we not Australian? Should nobody care about us? . . . A 14-year-old boy was set on fire in the West Bank by Israeli settlers. What about us?

The news anchors were caught off guard. This isn’t how these interviews are supposed to go.

Those of us, like my friend, who are summoned by Western media outlets to provide a Palestinian perspective on the disaster unfolding in Gaza are well aware of the condition on which we are allowed to speak, which is the tacit assumption that our people’s lives don’t matter as much as other people’s. Questions are framed by the initial Hamas attack on Israeli civilians (the Hamas attack on Israeli military targets and Israel’s belt of fortifications, watchtowers, and prison gates surrounding Gaza goes unnoticed), and any attempt to place it in a wider historical framework gets diverted back to the attack itself: How can you justify it? Why are you trying to explain it instead of condemning it? Why can’t you just denounce the attack? If Palestinian commentators want to be asked about Israeli violence against Palestinian civilians — about the history of ethnic cleansing and apartheid that produced the contemporary Gaza Strip and the violence we are witnessing today; about the structural violence of decades of Israeli occupation that cuts farmers off from their fields, teachers from their classrooms, doctors from their patients, and children from their parents — we have to ask to be asked. And even then, the questions don’t come.

I’ve spoken to a lot of journalists from a lot of different media organizations over the past two weeks. With rare exceptions, the pattern is consistent, as it has been for years. I’ve experienced it too. A recent appearance on a major US cable news channel was canceled at the last minute, immediately after I sent in the talking points the producer requested I submit; they clearly weren’t the talking points they had in mind. For years, I was on the list of regular guests for BBC radio and television interviews concerning Palestine — until, during a previous Israeli bombardment of Gaza, I told the interviewer he was asking the wrong questions and that the questions that mattered had to do with history and context, not just what was happening right now. That was my last appearance on the BBC.

How can a person make up for seven decades of misrepresentation and willful distortion in the time allotted to a sound bite? How can you explain that the Israeli occupation doesn’t have to resort to explosions — or even bullets and machine guns — to kill? That occupation and apartheid structure and saturate the everyday life of every Palestinian? That the results are literally murderous even when no shots are fired? Cancer patients in Gaza are cut off from life-saving treatments. Babies whose mothers are denied passage by Israeli troops are born in the mud by the side of the road at Israeli military checkpoints. Between 2000 and 2004, at the peak of the Israeli roadblock-and-checkpoint regime in the West Bank (which has been reimposed with a vengeance), sixty-one Palestinian women gave birth this way. Thirty-six of those babies died as a result. That never constituted news in the Western world. Those weren’t losses to be mourned. They were, at most, statistics."

[grandpageepa]

Seasons - Master A

I’ve eaten an entire bag of trader joe’s organic cheese crackers. This is why I can not be exposed to things I love, it comes with an addiction and excess that supersedes my high wall of self control and self containment. Most days, I don’t feel like writing anymore because I feel so cemented in the ground, glued to a chair, have my eyes held open for me while the days pass me by. Sorry to be so gloomy in the morning. It is raining after all. Days that don’t start with sunshine fail to move me. In fact, it feels that it condemns me but that is all perspective. Even in this momentum, I would never go rain on someone else’s parade. I want the very best for you, unless you’re a horrible person. Then you should feel the wrath of life, and all its miseries in its full integrity. I believe in the kind of justice that changes you and your whole being. Humbles you, until you can’t fight it. Then something insane happens, you change. I didn’t realize how hard it was to actually change your life but then again, I am in disbelief on a daily basis - how many people spend every waking moment hating every waking moment of their life and accept it. To me, that always seemed crazy. How can we allow ourselves to be so unhappy? and still stay within the lines? There’s so much rage, frustration, so much artistry that comes with effort that doesn’t translate well into life, it takes shape in another form. Be it that comes with great force, tears through the continuum with consciousness never felt before. 

Sometimes when you feel stuck, you start to believe where you are now, is where you’ll always be, and where you’re destined to be, all you’ll ever be. This is for me and this is for you. Don’t let that shit define you, and break you down. We facilitate our own prison by comparing ourselves to others and trying to hold ourselves to something that isn’t part of our being. We don’t aspire for that, why do we keep pushing? You know what you do well, you know what makes you happy, people will try to twist that shit left and right, as if you don’t know what makes you whole...but you do and you should not let anyone tell you what that consists of. If you take a minute to sit in your own head, you exist there without someone else’s nonsense brewing in your mind’s eye and you should be very protective of who you let sit with you in your head - maintain yourself within yourself. That’s how it should be because shit gets dark, and we need to find a way out. It’s so easy to succumb to depression, I speak in my own context. Also, don’t let anyone downgrade your experience, judge your emotions where you hold them, don’t hand those off for someone else to carry. You own that shit and you don’t let it slide off like you don’t matter. Don’t let them break you down, because they will try, and when you stand, they will try to fold you. We learn lessons the ultra hard way when we repeat them but when we actually learn the lesson, there’s no substitution for that. To know ourselves, is to detox and rid ourselves of the things that detonate us. We can fuck ourselves over, we can build ourselves up, without tearing others down because that kind of mentality only manifests a weak person in a weak mind in a broken chair. That’s all I have for now, unscripted and demotivated. Hoping to find my way out in a way no one can cultivate for me, thanks for trying.