#balfour baby

[despite-what-we-both-know]

I love them and their aesthetic ❤️

[immediatebreakfast]

"Zi means a boy and xi means a baby, and that name exactly accords with the fundamental Doctrine of the Baby Boy."

This is actual translated dialogue taken from the naming ceremony scene of Sun Wukong by the immortal Patriarch Subodhi in the 431 years old book Journey to the West...

This whole thing is amazing.

[zipadeea]

Honestly, if the From Blood and Ash series doesn't end with Poppy and Casteel happily married with a little baby daughter named Coralena then what was the point??

[hawkefaery]

Millicent and Malik in the final battle in The war of Two Queens

Jen didn’t even know this existed lmao but she says this might be Malik and Millie

[ahsokaisawesome]

managed to pump out one last big picture before school, thank you mister jade tales of the abyss <3

[studiodaydream]

genuinely, genuinely, in the most neutral way possible: zionism in no way claims that jews control the world. idk where you got that from. all zionism is is the belief that jews should be able to live in their ancestral homeland freely. it's not white supremacy, because not all jews are white. please stop spreading hate ❤️

There is no hate for Jews here, only for White Supremacist ideologylies like Zionism.

I have proof that Israel mutilates, and guns down African Jews, who are not the so called "Evil Muslims" that Zionist love to kill and murder for their land and resources.

Most of this is about Ethiopian Jews but the treatment of Refugees from African Countries is even more so appalling.

You cannot tell me to do my research and all I've found is Racism, Islamophobia, Genocide, Mutilation and Murder.

Talks about a Chosen Race, and Superior Bloodlines and not see the White Supremacy that has plagued America and Europe for hundreds of years.

You can not tell me to do my research about Zionism and tell me I don't know anything only to see that your so called "Jewish Nationalist Independence" came from an Antisemitic British man

So no im not spreading hate, I'm spreading facts about the White Supremacist ideology of Zionism. That believes that it shouldn't be criticized because it's Jewish White Nationalism and it's different from regular White Nationalism and if you compare the two and criticize Israel you're antisemitic and you hate Jews.

Judaism is a non violent religion. Jewish Culture is non violent. What is Violent is Zionism and its settler colonialist aggression towards its neighbors, relentlessly bombing them out of "self defense" well the world is watching what youre so called "self defense" looks like.

It looks like dead babies left in hospitals that have been bombed

Isreal's "self defense" looks like a father asking for help with his child, as his dead child's REMAINS are stuffed in bags and yet he begs for help

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Joudie Kalla - جودي القلا 🧿 (@palestineonaplate)

Israel's self defense looks like White Phosphorus being dropped on innocent civilians

https://youtu.be/geqdxdNEToU?si=js5ZGZC4eajY7uO2

These links show that Israel is not only a White Supremacist Nation like its parents The US and UK but also that Zionism is a White Supremacist Ideology.

I am not spreading hate Anon, I am spreading facts. To deny these facts is to spread hate. To deny that Israel is not a criminal empire and is simply "defending its right to exist" is to spread hate.

Antisemitism is on the rise and it's not because of people like me Anon is it because of Israel and Zionist Settler Colonialist Aggression towards the Palestinians and towards its Arab Neighbors. Israel denies the Nakba and that it stole land at all claiming that "no one lived here before we came" a "empty land with no people". Well there were people and those people had neighbors who saw what Zionist did to their defenseless neighbor with the backing of terrorist countries like the US and the UK. Terrorist Nations that destabilized and murdered millions in 3 separate nations in their "War on Terror".

White Supremacy has no ally on this blog, including Zionism.

If you want to unfollow me go ahead. I will not be swayed by Zionist Propaganda that this is all in "defense" of Jewish Nationhood, and how the only way to "defend" Jewish Nationhood is to invade other countries and murder other people who look different from them because they are the "Chosen People".

We've heard it all before, when the Europeans said they were bringing "civilization" to Africa and the Americas by enslaving our people and stealing our land and resources. When America had its "Manifest Destiny" which led to the genocide of countless Native Americans and the stealing of their land and resources. To Nazi Germany and the "Superior Ayan Race" which killed millions and invaded other nations killing millions of more.

You might be familiar with that last one, the Holocaust. Where millions of Jews were brutally and systematically murdered. But not only Jews but Black Europeans, Romanian Immigrants and LGBTQ Europeans.

But it seems like Israel has forgotten history because it does not treat African Jews equally to its European Jews and is actively Hostile to Refugees from African countries. While committing Genocide against the Palestinians as I type this out.

So if you're reading this I implore you to donate if you can or spread awareness of what's happening in Gaza

https://buildpalestine.com/2021/05/15/trusted-organizations-to-donate-to-palestine/

And your daily clicks

https://arab.org/click-to-help/

Do not allow Zionist to call you antisemitic for calling them out on their lies.

Palestine will be Free, From the River to the Sea

[socialfilter]

Red Dead Redemption 2 Characters as ABBA songs

- a 7am thought come to fruition by me, a deluded little guy

Arthur Morgan - The Winner Takes It All

The gods may throw the dice, their minds as cold ice, and someone way down here, loses someone dear.

John Marston - Name of the Game

If I trust in you, would you let me down? Would you laugh at me, if I said I care for you? Could you feel the same way too?

Lenny Summers - Take A Chance on Me

Gonna do my very best and it ain’t no lie. If you put me to the test, if you let me try.

Susan Grimshaw - Fernando

If I had to do the same again, I would, my friend, Fernando.

Tilly Jackson - So Long

Tracy, Daisy, they might be crazy but I’ll never be your girl.

Mary-Beth Gaskill - Honey Honey

the way that you kiss goodnight, the way that you hold me tight.

Karen Jones - Chiquitita

you’ll be dancing once again, and the pain will end

Sean Maguire - Does Your Mother Know

Now you’re so cute, I like your style, and I know what you mean when you give me a flash of that smile.

Molly O’Shea - SOS

so when you’re near me darling, can’t you hear me? SOS

Dutch Van Der Linde - Angeleyes

and one day you’ll find he wears a disguise. don’t look too deep into those angel eyes.

Hosea Matthews - I Still Have Faith In You

do I have it in me? I believe it is in there.

Marion ‘Bill’ Williamson - Me and I

yes, I am to myself what jekyll must be to hyde

Micah Bell - On and On and On

keep on rockin’ baby till the night is gone

Javier Escuella - The Visitors

Voices growing louder, irritation building, and I’m close to faintin’- crackin’ up!

Charles Smith - When All Is Said And Done

It’s so strange, when you’re down and lying and on the floor. How you rise, shake your head, get up and ask for more.

Mary Linton - Knowing Me Knowing You

here is where the story ends, this is goodbye

Charlotte Balfour - Andante Andante

play me time and time again, make me strong

Jack Marston - I’ve Been Waiting For You

I love you, I adore you, I lay my life before you.

Abigail Roberts - Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!

Won’t somebody help me chase the shadows away?

Sadie Adler - Voulez-Vous

masters of the scene, we’ve done it all before and now we’re back to get some more

Josiah Trelawny - Eagle

And I dream I’m an eagle, I dream I can spread my wings and fly

Kieran Duffy - Suzy Hang-Around

Nobody wants you around here and that’s for sure. So get off our playground and stay away.

Rains Fall - Slipping Through My Fingers

Then when she’s gone, there’s that odd melancholy feeling and a sense of guilt I can’t deny.

Eagle Flies - Lay All Your Love On Me

Now everything is new, and all I’ve learned has overturned, I beg of you.

Reverend Swanson - I Have A Dream

I believe in angels, something good in everything I see

Bonus:

Arthur/Mary - My Love, My Life

you are still my love and my life, still my one and and only

Sadie/Abigail - One of Us

one of us is crying, one of us is lying in her lonely bed.

Arthur/Charles - Our Last Summer

living for the day, worries far away.

John/Abigail - Super Trouper

The sight of you will prove to me I’m still alive.

[famsource]

It'll probably fascinate me for the rest of my life - the serendipitous timing of this show and this role coming into my life as it did. But beyond the entanglement of art and life, the other thing I'll keep coming back to is just the wild privilege of getting to tell this story, with these people. From sweet baby Ellen Waverly, one of the first women to become an astronaut in our fictional 1970's world, to twice elected President Ellen Wilson, the first woman and openly gay person to hold the office... the things we got to imagine together!? It still blows me away. Makes me emotional. The talent, love and care imbedded in this project is immense. The writers, actors and crew are truly a FAMily (started out as a cute little but stopped being a joke very quickly). I'll forever-forever be grateful I got to be a part of it. Thank you for watching, if you did (keep going, duh!) and send a postcard to the ranch every now and then!? Pam and Ellen will miss you. xo @/forallmankind_ 🌹

Jodi Balfour on her Instagram post.

[fairuzfan]

yeah it kinda sucks how like. Liberal Zionists (tributary, for example) will engage in genocide denial or argue the threat of Hamas is so big it warrants mass killing and then pivot to saying stuff about how people respond to being relatively powerless in the face of atrocity by getting morally righteous at other people online. Because they’re right, that’s a thing some people do, but it also retroactively frames everyone getting mad at them for the genocide both sides rhetoric as whiney babies. Very annoying

so i dont think tributary (to my knowledge) specifically has been engaging in rhetoric thats like "hamas warrants mass killings," i think they've been consistent about not wanting mass killings (again, to my knowledge) just wanted to clear that up and to not attribute things they did not say to them.

With what i see sometimes is that these types of people where they're like "stop being morally righteous at other people online" is that they fail to understand for palestinians this is literally a matter of life or death with rhetoric being spread because a lot of the time, they're used to justify our killings OR to justify our oppression.

Because like, I do things that are. Not online lol, I am active in my community. To retroactively label me, for example, as someone who just stays online (which, i've talked about this before on this blog, is kinda ableist in that it assumes that people can leave the house in the middle of a pandemic to participate in physical resistance + they aren't using online tools to organize within their communities) and judges other people for "not using the right language" when language is the primary qualifier for enabling genocide and violence is frankly pretty insulting and dismissive of the main victim's concerns.

Both sides rhetoric is harmful because its not new. It's literally how Palestinians grow up all over the world. We literally learn "both sides" as the primary viewpoint of our lives that we have to work around. So we're sensitive to these things because, again, we see it to justify our oppression or to silence us. Rhetoric that's like "i want peace and love" is so harmful because people assume its an issue where they just are so mean to each other for no reason when Palestinians face structural violence that erases them CONSISTENTLY since '48.

The erasure and prevention in allowing us to speak for ourselves or to spread information about ourselves is actually one of the key reasons we're at this point. For the first like... 20+ years after the Nakba, Palestinians were just blatantly ignored. Like, Balfour ignored us in the Balfour Declaration completely. Security Council Resolution 242 doesn't mention Palestinians AT ALL despite them being the primary cause of it's inception.

So yeah, erasure is a part of the issue, actually, I would argue its a key part and by perpetuating that (ie: encouraging defining zionism by excluding palestinians from the discussion in citation or any other material way) is in fact enabling our oppression.

[brokeyuppiepunk]

I promise I’ll stop soon I’m just having too much fun with these

[dogstarve]

                    TALIA  BALFOUR                AKA:  THE  DOG  TOOTH.

basics.

given  name.     talia  balfour. nickname.     tally,   give  her  some. age.     twenty-nine   (   january  29,   1995   ). place  of  birth.     manhattan,   new  york. gender  identity.     cis  woman   (   she   +   her   ). orientation.     bisexual,   would  probably  say  she’s  never  been  in  a  relationship,   even  though  she  absolutely  has  been.     give  her  psychosexual  nonsense  or  give  her  nothing. occupation.     pharmacist  for  cloyne  pharmacy. song.     girl,   you’ll  be  a  woman  soon  by  urge  overkill. moral  alignment.     neutral  evil. character  inspiration.     lee  harker   (   longlegs   ),   emma  frost   (   marvel   ),   sofia  falcone   (   the  penguin   ),   audrey  horne   (   twin  peaks   ),   lily   &   amanda   (   thoroughbreds   ),   victoria  neuman   (   the  boys   ),   mima  kirigoe   (   perfect  blue   ),   amma  crellin   (   sharp  objects   ),   eve   (   the  bible   ).

background.

you’re  not  a  miracle;   you’re  barely  a  statistic.     pink  fruit  from  a  round  womb.     grown  at  a  hill’s  crest,   a  strand  of  wet  grass  below  the  peach  tree,   overlooking  a  herd  of  sun-dried  cows.     no  one  would  notice  your  cotton  cradle.     no  one  but  the  stars.     and  your  mother’s  eyes  do  not  glisten  upon  watching  your  first  blink.     nor  your  first  day  at  school.     nor  your  first  ballet  recital.     without  a  picture,   you  wouldn’t  even  know  she  was  there.     you  forget  her  youth   ––   in  your  wet  baby-toothed  way   ––   for  there’s  nothing  to  chew  from  her.     bent  from  its  frame,   your  memory  holds  a  father’s  smile,   and  his  heavy  hand  upon  your  lithe  shoulder.

the  eve  of  your  fourteenth  birthday,   your  mother  cups  your  jaw  in  both  hands.     splayed  fingers  brush  against  your  slow  pulse.     your  breath  dampens  her  skin.     you  feel  it,   now,   more  than  she  did.     her  warmth  spilled  across  your  neck  like  air-thickened  blood.     this  is  before  the  second  step-mother,   right  at  the  precipice  of  your  first.     watch  him  for  me,   your  mother  says,   watch  him  at  night  for  me.     for  me.     almost  too  easy,   your  mother  would  say.     a  simple  kiss  at  their  temple,   and  a  child  remembers  their  mother.     quiet  malice,   salted  to  taste,   by  your  father  forgetting  to  call  you  his  favourite  girl.     and  there,   the  axe  earns  its  first  swing.

flesh  is  sweet  and  bought  hostility  is  sweeter.     levied  by  her  parents,   held  like  a  serrated  knife.     where  love  should  be  milk-bathed  and  pat  dry,   your  definition  curdles  into  a  tight  smile.     rehearsed  in  the  dark  mirror  of  another’s  pupil.     by  your  twenties,   you  reach  a  third  step-mother.     and  yet,   there  is  only  one  that  you  call  father.     the  game  loses  its  fresh  scent   –   stale  like  wrinkled,   doughy  hands   –   and  your  teeth  grow  sturdy.     their  quiet  plea  for  your  return  wafts  close  to  your  ear,   like  the  sound  of  crashing  water  from  a  seashell  as  the  sea  rolls  against  your  feet.

[thepastisalreadywritten]

By Dina Fine Maron

January 24, 2024

Scientists have cleared a significant hurdle in the years-long effort to save Africa’s northern white rhinoceros from extinction with the first-ever rhino pregnancy using in vitro fertilization.

The lab-assisted pregnancy, which researchers will announce today, involved implanting a southern white rhino embryo in a surrogate mother named Curra.

The advance provides the essential “proof of concept” that this strategy could help other rhinos, says Jan Stejskal of the BioRescue project, the international group of scientists leading this research.

Curra died just a couple months into her 16-month pregnancy from an unrelated bacterial infection, Stejskal says.

However, the successful embryo transfer and early stages of pregnancy pave the way for next applying the technique to the critically endangered northern white rhino.

The process was documented exclusively by National Geographic for an upcoming Explorer special currently slated to air in 2025 on Nat Geo and Disney+.

BioRescue expects to soon implant a northern white rhino embryo into a southern white rhino surrogate mother.

The two subspecies are similar enough, according to the researchers, that the embryo will be likely to develop.

Eventually, this approach may also help other critically endangered rhinos, including the Asian Javan rhinoceros and the Sumatran rhinoceros, which each now number under 100 individuals, Stejskal says.

But the northern white rhino’s current situation is the most pressing by far.

There are no males left, and the only two remaining animals are both elderly females that live under armed guard on a reserve in a 700-acre enclosure in Kenya called Ol Pejeta Conservancy.

The boxy-jawed animals once roamed across central Africa, but in recent decades, their numbers have plummeted due to the overwhelming international demand for their horn, a substance used for unproved medicinal applications and carvings.

Made from the same substance as fingernails, rhino horn is in demand from all species, yet the northern white rhino has been particularly hard-hit.

"These rhinos look prehistoric, and they had survived for millions of years, but they couldn’t survive us,” says Ami Vitale, a National Geographic Explorer and photographer who has been documenting scientists’ efforts to help the animals since 2009.

“If there is some hope of recovery within the northern white rhino gene pool — even though it’s a substantially smaller sample of what there was — we haven’t lost them,” says conservation ecologist David Balfour, who chairs the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s African rhino specialist group.

Blueprints for rhino babies

To stave off the animal’s disappearance, BioRescue has used preserved sperm from northern white rhinos and eggs removed from the younger of the two remaining females.

So far, they’ve created about 30 preserved embryos, says Thomas Hildebrandt, the head scientist of BioRescue and an expert in wildlife reproduction based at the Leibniz-Institute of Zoo and Wildlife Research in Berlin.

Eventually, the team plans to reintroduce northern white rhinos into the wild within their range countries.

“That’d be fantastic, but really, really far from now—decades from now,” says Stejskal.

Worldwide, there are five species of rhinoceros, and many are in trouble.

Across all of Africa, there are now only about 23,000 of the animals, and almost 17,000 of them are southern whites.

Then there are more than 6,000 black rhinos, which are slightly smaller animals whose three subspecies are critically endangered.

In Asia, beyond the critically endangered Javan and Sumatran rhinos, there’s also the greater one-horned rhino, whose numbers are increasing and currently are estimated to be around 2,000.

The BioRescue effort has experienced many setbacks, and even though the team now has frozen embryos, the clock is ticking.

The researchers intend to use southern white rhinos as surrogate moms for the northern white rhino embryos.

However, scientists want any northern white rhino calves to meet and learn from others of their kind, which means they need to be born before the two remaining females die.

“These animals learn behaviors — they don’t have them genetically hard-wired,” says Balfour, who’s not involved with the BioRescue work.

But birthing new animals in time will be a challenge.

“We’re really skating on the edge of what’s possible,” he says, “but it’s worth trying.”

Najin, the older female, will be 35 this year, and Fatu will be 24.

The animals, which were born in a zoo in the Czech Republic, are expected to live to about 40, says Stejskal, who also serves as director of international projects at the Safari Park Dvůr Králové, the zoo where the animals lived until they were brought to Kenya in 2009.

Impregnating a rhino

The next phase of BioRescue’s plan involves implanting one of their limited number of northern white rhino embryos into a southern white rhino surrogate mother — which the group plans to do within the next six months, Stejskal says.

They’ve identified the next surrogate mother and set up precautions to protect her from bacterial infections, including a new enclosure and protocols about disinfecting workers’ boots.

But now, they must wait until the female rhino is in estrus — the period when the animal is ready to mate — to implant the egg.

To identify that prime fertile time, they can’t readily perform regular ultrasounds at the conservancy as they might do in a zoo.

Instead, they have enlisted a rhino bull that has been sterilized to act as a “teaser” for the female, Hildebrandt says, adding that they must wait a few months to make sure that their recently sterilized male is truly free of residual sperm.

Once the animals are brought together, their couplings will alert conservancy staff that the timing is right for reproductive success.

The sex act is also important because it sets off an essential chain of events in the female’s body that boosts the chances of success when they surgically implant the embryo about a week later.

"There’s little chance the conservancy staff will miss the act. White rhinos typically mate for 90 minutes," Hildebrandt says.

What’s more, while mounted on the females, the males often use their temporary height to reach tasty plant snacks that are generally out of reach.

Boosting genetic diversity

With so few northern white rhinos left, their genetic viability may seem uncertain.

But the BioRescue team points to southern white rhinos, whose numbers likely dropped to less than 100, and perhaps even as few as 20, due to hunting in the late 1800s.

Government protections and intense conservation strategies allowed them to bounce back, and now there are almost 17,000.

“They have sufficient diversity to cope with a wide range of conditions,” says Balfour.

Researchers don’t know exactly how many southern white rhinos existed a century ago, he says, but it’s clear that the animals came back from an incredibly low population count and that they now appear healthy.

Beyond their small collection of embryos, the BioRescue team hopes to expand the northern white rhino’s gene pool by drawing from an unconventional source — skin cells extracted from preserved tissue samples that are currently stored at zoos.

They aim to use stem cell techniques to reengineer those cells and develop them into sex cells, building off similar work in lab mice.

According to their plan, those lab-engineered sex cells would then be combined with natural sperm and eggs to make embryos, and from there, the embryos would be implanted into southern white rhino surrogate mothers.

Such stem cell reprogramming work has previously led to healthy offspring in lab mice, Hildebrandt says, but rhinos aren’t as well-studied and understood as mice, making this work significantly challenging.

A global effort

The northern white rhino revitalization venture has cost millions of dollars, supported by a range of public and private donors, including the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research.

Other partners on the effort include the Leibniz Institute for Zoo and Wildlife Research, the Czech Republic’s Safari Park, Kenya Wildlife Service, Ol Pejeta Conservancy, and also Katsuhiko Hayashi, a professor of genome biology at Osaka University in Japan who conducted the mouse stem cell research.

Building upon Hayashi’s stem cell techniques could ultimately bring the northern white rhino gene pool up to 12 animals — including eggs from eight females and the semen of four bulls, according to Stejskal.

An alternative approach to making more babies, like crossbreeding northern and southern white rhinos, would mean the resulting calves wouldn’t be genetically pure northern white rhinos, Hildebrandt notes.

The two subspecies look quite similar, but the northern version has subtle physical differences, including hairier ears and feet that are better suited to its swampy habitat.

The two animals also have different genes that may provide disease resiliency or other benefits, Hildebrandt says.

There are unknown potential differences in behavior and ecological impact when populating the area with southern white rhinos or cross-bred animals.

"The northern white rhino is on the brink of extinction really only due to human greed,” Stejskal says.

“We are in a situation where saving them is at our fingertips, so I think we have a responsibility to try.”

🩶🦏🩶

[laurelrusswurm]

"Like Taking Candy From A Baby" Israeli soldiers flaunt the "spoils of war" like this "Mickey Mouse" doll pressed into service as a hood ornament decorating a military vehicle. The doll is was captured from the remains of the homes of the children Israel's "War" has killed, wounded or displaced.

The Israeli War on Gaza is not a war. War is something that happens between countries, and Gaza is not a country. The Gaza Strip is part of one of the pieces of Palestinian Territory that was meant to become the state of Palestine after the "Great Powers" divided the Land of Palestine roughly in half, granting the larger piece to the new State of Israel, and the smaller to the majority Indigenous population.

To effect this change, in 1920, the League of Nations granted the British Empire control of Mandatory Palestine, part of the territories the Ottoman Empire ceded after its World War I Defeat. The Zionists seeking to retake a Jewish Homeland abandoned in the diaspora two thousand years previously, were involved in the decision making. The Palestinian people were not consulted at all.

Naturally the British were disappointed when the existing majority Arab population took issue with the appropriation of slightly more than half of the land to create the new Jewish Homeland promised by the Balfour Declaration. The British felt Palestinian Arabs should have been grateful for the liberty of half their ancestral lands as a reward for fighting the Ottoman Empire alongside the Brits, instead of angry their people would be displaced from the rest of their territory to make room for a new state for immigrant European Jews.

Instead of fulfilling the terms of the Mandate, by overseeing the Partition of Palestine, the British washed their hands of the mess they had created to the Zionists, who had no compunction about going to war to "liberate" the land to which they believed themselves entitled in 1948.

The result has been ongoing unrest in the Middle East, the brunt of which has been felt by the Palestinian population, whose territories have been shrinking for 76 years, as they've been denied the self determination to decide their own future by the Israeli occupation.

[good-old-gossip]

Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah: ‘Tomorrow is a Palestinian day’

On April 12, the German government prevented Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah from entering the country to address a conference in Berlin as a witness to the genocide in Gaza. The day before, on April 11, Abu-Sittah was installed as Glasgow University Rector in Bute Hall following his landslide election with 80% of the vote. Below is a transcript of Dr. Abu-Sittah’s address. 

“Each generation must discover its mission, fulfill it or betray it, in relative opacity.”Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth

The students of Glasgow University decided to vote in memory of 52,000 Palestinians killed. In memory of 14,000 children murdered. They voted in solidarity with 17,000 Palestinian children orphaned, 70,000 wounded — of whom 50% are children — and the 4-5,000 children whose limbs have been amputated.

They voted to stand in solidarity with the students and the teachers of 360 schools destroyed and 12 universities completely leveled. They stood in solidarity with the family and the memory of Dima Alhaj, a Glasgow University alumni murdered with her baby and with her whole family. 

At the beginning of the 20th century, Lenin predicted that real revolutionary change in Western Europe depended on its close contact with the liberation movements against imperialism and in the slave colonies. Glasgow University students understood what we have to lose when we allow our politics to become inhuman. They also understand that what is important and different about Gaza is that it is the laboratory in which global capital is looking at the management of surplus populations. 

They stood next to Gaza and in solidarity with its people because they understood that the weapons that Benjamin Netanyahu uses today are the weapons that Narendra Modi will use tomorrow. The quadcopters and drones fitted with sniper guns – used so deviously and efficiently in Gaza that one night at Al-Ahli hospital we received over 30 wounded civilians shot outside our hospital by these inventions – used today in Gaza will be used tomorrow in Mumbai, in Nairobi and in Sao Paulo. Eventually, like the facial recognition software developed by the Israelis, they will come to Easterhouse and Springburn. 

So, in reality, who did these students vote for? My name is Ghassan Solieman Hussain Dahashan Saqer Dahashan Ahmed Mahmoud Abu-Sittah and, with the exception of myself, my father and all of my forefathers were born in Palestine, a land that was given away by one of Glasgow University’s previous rectors. Three decades before his forty-six-word declaration announced the British government’s support for the settler colonization of Palestine, Arthur Balfour was appointed Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow. “A survey of the world… shows us a vast number of savage communities, apparently at a stage of culture not profoundly different from that which prevailed among pre-historic man,” said Balfour during his rectorial address in 1891. Sixteen years later, this antisemite masterminded the Aliens Act of 1905 to prevent Jews escaping from the pogroms of Eastern Europe from coming to safety in the United Kingdom. 

In 1920, my grandfather Sheikh Hussain built a school with his own money in the small village where my family lived. There he set the foundations for a relationship that made education central to my family’s life. On May 15, 1948, Haganah forces ethnically cleansed that village and drove my family, who had lived on that land for generations, into a refugee camp in Khan Younis that now stands in ruins in the Gaza Strip. The memoirs of the Haganah officer who had invaded my grandfather’s house were found by my uncle. In these memoirs, the officer notes with incredulity how the house was full of books and had a certificate for a law degree from the University of Cairo, belonging to my grandfather. 

The year after the Nakba, my father graduated from medical school at Cairo University and moved back to Gaza to work in UNRWA in its newly formed clinics. But like many of his generation, he moved to the Gulf to help build the health system in those countries. In 1963, he came to Glasgow to pursue his postgraduate training in pediatrics and fell in love with the city and its people. 

And so it was that in 1988, I came to study medicine at Glasgow University, and here I discovered what medicine can do, how a career in medicine places you at the cold face of people’s lives, and how if you are equipped with the right political, sociological and economic lenses, you can understand how people’s lives are being shaped, and many times contorted, by political forces beyond their control. 

And it was in Glasgow that I saw for the first time the meaning of international solidarity. Glasgow in that time was rife with groups that were organizing solidarity with El Salvador, Nicaragua, and Palestine. Glasgow City Council was one of the first to twin with cities in the West Bank and Glasgow University set up its first scholarship for the victims of the Sabra and Shatila massacre. It really was during my years in Glasgow that my journey as a war surgeon started, first as a student when I went to the first American war in Iraq in 1991; then with Mike Holmes to South Lebanon in 1993; then with my wife to Gaza during the Second Intifada; then to the wars waged by the Israelis on Gaza in 2009, 2012, 2014 and 2021; to the war in Mosul in Northern Iraq, to Damascus during the Syrian war and to the Yemen war. But it wasn’t until the 9th of October that I got to Gaza and saw the genocide unfold. 

Everything that I had known about wars compared to nothing that I had seen. It was the difference between a flood and a tsunami. For 43 days, I watched the killing machines tear apart the lives and the bodies of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, half of whom were children. After I came out, the students of Glasgow University reached out for me to run for election as rector. Soon after, one of Balfour’s savages won the election. 

So what have we learned from the genocide and about genocide over the last 6 months? We’ve learned that scholasticide, the elimination of whole educational institutions, both infrastructure and human resources, is a critical component of the genocidal erasure of a people. 12 universities completely flattened. 400 schools. 6,000 students killed. 230 school teachers killed. 100 professors and deans and two university presidents killed. 

We also learnt, and this is something I found out when I left Gaza, that the genocidal project is like an iceberg of which Israel is only the tip. The rest of the iceberg is made up of an axis of genocide. This axis of genocide is the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Australia, Canada, and France… countries that have supported Israel with arms – and continue to support the genocide with arms – and have maintained political support for the genocidal project so that it would continue. We should not be fooled by the United States’ attempts at humanitarianizing the genocide: Killing people while dropping food aid by parachute. 

I also discovered that part of the genocidal iceberg are genocide enablers. Little people, men and women, in every facet of life, in every institution. These genocidal enablers come in three types. 

The first are those whose racialization and total othering of Palestinians has rendered them unable to feel anything for the 14,000 children who have been killed and for whom Palestinian children remain ungrievable. Had Israel killed 14,000 puppies or kittens they would have been completely destroyed by the barbarity of it. 

The second group are those whom Hannah Arendt said in ‘The Banality of Evil’, “had no motives at all, except for extraordinary diligence in looking after his personal advancement.”

The third are the apathetic. As Arendt said, “Evil thrives on apathy and cannot exist without it.”

In April 1915, one year after the First World War began, Rosa Luxemburg wrote about German bourgeois society. “Violated, dishonored, wading in blood… the ravening beast, the witches’ sabbath of anarchy, a plague to culture and humanity.” Those of us who have seen, smelt, and heard what the weapons of war do to a child’s body by design, those of us who have amputated the unsalvageable limbs of wounded children can never have anything but the utmost disdain for all involved in the manufacture, design, and sale of these instruments of brutalism. The aim of weapons manufacturing is to destroy life and to ravage nature. In the arms industry, profits rise not only as a result of the resources captured in or through war, but through the process of destruction of all life, both human and environmental. The idea that there would be peace or an unpolluted world while capital grows by war is ludicrous. Neither the arms trade nor the fossil fuel trade, have any place at University. 

So, what is our plan, this “savage” and his accomplices? 

We will campaign for divestment from arms manufacturing and the fossil fuel industry in this University, both to de-risk the University following the International Court of Justice’s ruling that this is plausibly a genocidal war and the current case brought against Germany by Nicaragua for complicity in genocide. 

Genocidal blood money made as a profit from these shares during the war will be used to set up a fund to help rebuild Palestinian academic institutions. This fund will be in the name of Dima Alhaj and in memory of a life cut short by this genocide. 

We will form a coalition of student and civil society groups and unions to turn Glasgow University into a campus free from gender-based violence. 

We will campaign to find concrete solutions to end student poverty at Glasgow University and to provide affordable housing to all students. 

We will campaign for a boycott of all Israeli academic institutions that have progressed from being complicit in apartheid and the denial of education to Palestinians to genocide and the denial of life. We will campaign for a new definition of antisemitism that does not conflate anti-zionism and anti-Israeli genocidal settler colonialism with antisemitism. 

We will fight with all othered and racialized communities, including the Jewish community, the Roma community, Muslims, black people, and all racialized groups, against the common enemy of a rising right-wing fascism, now absolved of its antisemitic roots by an Israeli government in exchange for their support for the elimination of the Palestinian people. 

Only this week, just this week, we saw how a German government-funded institution censured a Jewish intellectual and philosopher, Nancy Fraser, because of her support of the Palestinian people. Over a year ago, we watched the Labour Party suspend Moshé Machover, a Jewish anti-zionist campaigner, for antisemitism. 

On the flight up, I was fortunate enough to be reading ‘We Are Free to Change the World’ by  Lyndsey Stonebridge. I quote from this book: “It is when the experience of powerlessness is at its most acute, when history seems at its most bleak, that the determination to think like a human being, creatively, courageously and complicatedly matters the most.” 90 years ago, in his “Solidarity Song,” Bertolt Brecht asked, “Whose tomorrow is tomorrow? And whose world is the world?”

Well, my answer to him, to you, and to the students of Glasgow University: It is your world to fight for. It is your tomorrow to make. For us, all of us, part of our resistance to the erasure of genocide is to talk about tomorrow in Gaza, to plan for the healing of the wounds of Gaza tomorrow. We will own tomorrow. Tomorrow will be a Palestinian day. 

In 1984, when Glasgow University made Winnie Mandela its Rector in the darkest days of P. W. Botha’s rule under a brutal apartheid regime, supported by Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, no one could have dreamt that in 40 years South African men and women could be standing in front of the International Court of Justice defending the Palestinian people’s right to life as free citizens of a free nation. 

One of this genocide’s aims is to drown us in our own sorrow. On a personal note, I want to hold space so that I and my family can grieve for our loved ones. I dedicate this to the memory of our beloved Abdelminim killed at 74 on the day of his birth. I dedicate it to the memory of my colleague Dr. Midhat Saidam who had stepped out for half an hour to take his sister to their house so that she could be safe with her children and never came back. I dedicate it to my friend and my colleague Dr. Ahmad Makadmeh who was executed by the Israeli army in Shifa Hospital just over 10 days ago with his wife. I dedicate it to the ever-smiling Dr. Haitham Abu-Hani, head of the Emergency Department at Shifa Hospital, who always met me with a smile and a pat on the shoulder. But most of all we dedicate this to our land. In the words of the ever-present Mahmoud Darwish,

“To our land, and it is a prize of war, the freedom to die from longing and burning and our land, in its bloodied night, is a jewel that glimmers for the far upon the far and illuminates what’s outside it … As for us, inside, we suffocate more!”

And so I want to end with hope. In the words of the immortal Bobby Sands, “Our revenge will be the laughter of our children.” 

HASTA LA VICTORIA SIEMPRE!

Source -

[arthur-kilgore]

Ask Game

Tagged by: @piddgeon and @vendigool

Last song: Harder it Breaks by TALK

Currently watching: MojaveD's RDR2 playthrough on Youtube (it's excellent, 11/10) Three ships: Charthur, Charles Smith x Charlotte Balfour (CharLotte as I like to refer to them), Sadie x Charlotte (Sadie x any of the women let's be real she deserves a millions girlfriends) Fave color: This particular shade of purple

currently consuming: Had a glass of milk for breakfast

First ship: Finnpoe (still haven't forgiven Lucasfilms for all that)

Relationship status: in a long term relationship

Last movie: Madame Web (it was... not great)

Currently working on: Music League!! And my wip Echoed Fragments, and also finding a new job after getting laid off

Tagging (yes some of you have been tagged already, yes I will still be annoying about it): @cowpunch-em @blanche-elizabeth-devereaux @cowboah-baby @mayalacookie @farm-paws and anyone else who would like to!

[ghostofaboy]

Hi, I was wondering if you had any face claims for the “rock bottom” boys. How do they look like in your head when you write them? I’m so curious lol

When I wrote Tilly I had Francisco Denis in my head from Narcos season 3.

Gavin kind of looks like a blond Cameron Monaghan.

I think Tyler is the only one without a firm face claim in my head. He sort of looks like a young Eric Balfour but a bit goofier. Like if young Eric and young Pedro had a baby. 😂

I'm curious how other people picture them. What do they look like to you?