mewlabu

[mewlabu]

[mewlabu]

A dear filmmaker friend of mine recently congratulated me & said "you have achieved what 95% of filmmakers never achieve - you have actually made a film." My directorial debut The Battle for Kyiv premieres in London in less than 48 hours, and I can't wait to share it with you.

[mewlabu]

1930s reporting on Stalin's Holodomor genocide in Ukraine. 1 2

[mewlabu]

[mewlabu]

Ahmed's family is in Rafah and their evacuation campaign is almost at its goal after much patience and enduring unimaginable hardship. Please donate and share so that they may reach their goal to get to safety as soon as possible!

[mewlabu]

fully understand why you would want to stop using this site, the indefensible amount hate and indifference towards Ukrainian accounts is just sickening. Thanks for ever sharing updates, history, culture, and literature on Ukraine here. Tangibly, info you've shared has helped. I was able to get coworkers to actually see Russia's criminal invasion for what it is, instead of them just brushing it off the way some tankies do as "two empires fighting"; I know more than a few people who've shared donation posts I reblogged from you who proudly donated, and a few keeping it up regularly. Freedom for Ukraine!

Thank you for sharing this. It helps to hear my time and effort were able to make any difference. And thank you for keeping Ukraine in your heart, it means a lot to know people don't forget about us. 💙💛

[mewlabu]

Today is a 37st anniversary of the Chornobyl Nuclear Plant disaster. It's hard to talk about one unprocessed national tragedy while living through another.

The Chornobyl disaster was totally preventable and it took away countless lives of people living in the region, especially in Ukraine and Belarus - both the liquidators and the civillians. Despite the very air and dust being literal poison, the soviets had not only hid this information from the people, but forced everybody to partake in the May the 1st parade - because god forbid we lose our face before the international community as a working class paradise! If not for the nuclear scientists in Sweden who raised the alarm about the dangerous levels of nuclear particles coming from northern Ukraine, who knows what would have happened. It definitely would have been swepped under the rug and forgotten by the international community, together with its victims - just like Semipalatinsk in Kazakhstan is barely known abroad.

With russia constantly threatening to turn Zaporhizhzha nuclear plant into second Chornobyl, the wound caused by this tragedy is cut open again.

We all love the HBO Chornobyl series, and I genuinely am grateful to Craig Mazin for the amount of empathy and respect he brought to the series; but for today I indulge you to watch something made by ukrainians, to try to understand what this tragedy means to us and how it influences our lives even today.

For the documentaries, my favourite series by this day remains the "Dragons live here" by Your Underground Humanitarian School Youtube channel, which, unfortunately, can only offer automated english subtitles - they should, however, be sufficient.

As for the feature films, I recommend "Gateway" (you can stream it online with english subtitles here). And here is the official english trailer:

[mewlabu]

I'm fine, actually (russian fascist regime is bombing every plant in the city I grew up in, like an angry child stomping on someone's carefully built sandcastle, and millions of people watch and say: "well, maybe he has a right of destruction after all"

[mewlabu]

Region: Zaporizhzhia Settlement: Priazovske Full name: Yuliya Viktorivna Radeva Date of birth: 07/06/1982 Circumstance: On August 20, 2023, she was abducted from the house by FSB officers

https://t.me/poshuk_znyklyh/37364

[mewlabu]

i don't know if this is being talked about outside of australia, but recently there was a mass stabbing event in my city. six people are dead and eight more badly injured.

the media coverage and public conversation around the stabbing has been really awful. it started with frenzied theorising- without any evidence- that the perpetrator was a muslim extremist, a palestinian hamas agent, including spreading false information about the victims to create a narrative of islamic violence. when it resulted that the perpetrator was a white man from queensland, the coverage instantly shifted- instead of a terror attack, it was now a lone wolf, a non-ideological result of an individual's mental health issues. this is typical of the framing when it comes to perpetrators: a white person is an individual, a brown person is a faceless member of an ideology. but, crucially, the attack was not non-ideological. the perpetrator specifically targeted women, specifically avoiding men except where they were preventing him from getting to women. six out of seven of the deceased victims were women, and in interviews with the perpetrators parents, they talked about his anger at not having a girlfriend. misogyny is ideological, and men are trained to harbour deep resentment towards women that regularly manifests in violence. this event was a targeted act of femicide. while it is unclear if the perpetrator was involved in any specific right-wing groups, that the attack was driven by hatred of women is not in doubt.

the new narrative is one of demonising mental illness, because the perpetrator was diagnosed with schizophrenia and there is no avenue to blame his race. there are now open calls in the media for stricter use of sectioning and more oppressive tracking, forced medication and indefinite institutionalisation of the mentally ill. it is the mentally ill who will suffer from this narrative, while the fostering of violent misogyny goes unchecked. this country never stops letting us down

[mewlabu]

I recently had surgery, and at the time I came home, I had both my cat and one of my grandma's cats staying with me.

- Within hours of surgery, I wake up from a nap to my cat gently sniffing at my incisions with great alarm.

- I was not allowed to shower the first day after surgery, and the cats, seeing that The Large Cat is not observing its cleaning ritual, decided I must be gravely disabled and compensated by licking all the exposed skin on my arms, face, and legs.

- I currently have to sleep with a pillow over my abdomen because my cat insists on climbing on top of me and covering my incisions with her body while I sleep (which is very sweet but not exactly comfortable without the pillow). She also lays across me facing my bedroom door, presumably on guard for attackers who may try to harm me while I'm sleeping and injured.

That's love. 🐈‍⬛🐈❤️

[mewlabu]

A lot of pop psychology gets thrown around and since I already have a headache, here's preventing you lot from making it worse.

Love-bombing: A manipulation tactic of increasing affection and grand gestures before or after doing something abusive, specifically to weasel one's way out of consequences.

What it is not: A streak of affection and generosity towards friends/loved ones.

Trauma-bonding: Knowingly traumatizing someone to take advantage of their vulnerable state, to then act like the "hero" or the one who cheers them up.

What it is not: Bonding over similar traumas.

Gaslighting: *Knowingly* convincing someone they cannot trust their own perception of a situation in pursuit of one's own narrative.

What it is not: Misaligned perception of events.

Narcissist: Someone afflicted with Narcissistic Personality Disorder, a traumagenic cluster B disorder, that struggles with self-obsession, paranoia, craving validity from the public, delusions of grandeur, and social disconnection.

It is not: Your rubbish ex that cheated on you.

Thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

-Xanthe

[mewlabu]

i’m willing to believe some people are genuinely idiots who don’t know that 90%+ of polish jews were killed in the holocaust (and made up half of all poles killed in wwii), but. it’s almost like this shit helps nothing and no one

[mewlabu]

i think the world doesn’t know what it really means to live in a theocratic dictatorship. Let me tell you about our experiences living in the islamic regime of iran.

1. Your parents were born to muslim parents so they’re automatically muslim. You’re automatically a muslim too. You didn’t choose your religion and you can’t opt out of it or you will be executed.

2. The compulsory hijab law makes you a criminal if you choose not to wear hijab even tho you didn’t choose to be a muslim and you don’t consider yourself a muslim but the regime has forced you into that role whether you like it or not. And when you ‘break that law’, they can do with you as they please.

3. little girls as young as 7 yrs old are forced to wear hijab at school even tho the islam itself says the age is 9. and all the schools are gender segregated so imagine how they force you to get used to hijab even when you’re just surrounded by other girls. And all day long at school they tell you horrible stories about what will happen to you in hell if someone sees even a strand of your hair.

4. the regime modifies all the textbooks, story books, cartoons and movies to represent the ideal woman with full on hijab. The iranian media is ordered to photoshop every photo of a woman that may be showing a little skin. And if they’re iranian, no hair is supposed to be seen or that will be photoshopped away. Women are mostly excluded from billboards and tv commercials.

5. imagine going to work or meeting up with a friend when suddenly the morality police kidnap you in broad daylight and force you into a van to take you to a station where they will treat you like a criminal and if you don’t agree to get humiliated and do as they say, they will put you in prison. And in case of Mahsa Amini and so many more before her, they will beat you to death. My sister was barely 18 when she got kidnapped and they didn’t let her call home and she’d been so fucking scared and we had no idea where she was. Imagine all the psychological trauma.

6. If you’re in a car and not wearing hijab they will fine you and seize your car. So when u get into a taxi the driver will ask you to keep your hijab on otherwise they’ll get fined. And if you refuse they’ll ask you to get off the car.

7. And its not just about hijab. In Ramadan, they get even more vicious. If they catch you eating or even drinking water on the street they will give you lashes as punishment and even imprison you for breaking the law. If you work in a state-owned company it’s even worse. They will close the cafeteria and take away the water dispensers. All restaurants are banned from delivering food before iftar. It’s a fucking mess. Everyone has to pretend they’re fasting or they’ll be severely punished.

8. And how could I forget about this! iranian women are banned from singing! the islamic regime prohibits women’s singing voices to be heard by men so imagine the horror of having 50% of the population banned from ever becoming a singer. If they identify a female singer in iran, they will take her to jail and force her to repent her sins in the most humiliating way so that she will never dare sing again.

9. And every time the regime gets wind of a private gathering of men and women trying to have fun and live their fucking private lives, the police crash the party and take everyone to jail bc the Islamic regime bans iranian men and women from having fun.

10. Did you know that the islamic regime doesn’t allow women’s faces to be printed on their obituaries or headstones? They put a flower for our faces instead and if they see a headstone with a woman’s face printed on it they’ll smash it to pieces. That’s how religious dictatorship continues to oppress and erase women even after their deaths.

11. For some reason, women aren’t allowed to ride motorcycles and the government won’t issue any license for them. In some cities, women are barred from riding a bicycle.

So if you see Islam has become for many iranians a symbol of oppression and torture and discrimination, that’s why. The regime uses islam as a weapon to silence and punish anyone who opposes them. You can love islam all you want from the safety of your home in a free country and talk about how kind and benevolent the religion is, but in iran, it’s a whole different story.

Our economy is fucked. All govt officials are corrupt as fuck. Most websites are banned in iran. Even tumblr is banned. The world has cut the iranian ppl from many services. We don’t have intl credit cards like visa card. Amazon doesn’t do delivery to iran. We cant get netflix, spotify or even a gamepass subscription. we don’t get any Apple services here. iran isn’t listed as a country you could choose when signing up for a lot of services. and when we decide to leave iran and escape this hellhole, every country out there will make it sooo much harder for us to get a visa just bc we had the misfortune to be born in iran at the wrong time.

This is the story of iran for the past 44 years. Held hostage by a corrupt regime that uses religion to suppress and torture the people and being abandoned by the rest of the world bc our lives don’t matter.

Please be our voice. Once they shut down the internet completely and silence our voice, they will start slaughtering us to stifle the protests just like they did in 2019. Please help us. We want this fucking regime gone.

[mewlabu]

I wish I knew what I was doing with my life at a time of war of elimination of my people, when permanence and stability have died as concepts to me, when I have changed in ways I could have never predicted that scare me at times.

How does one live out their truth in a time like this? I don't know if I have the capacity to live the truth that I want to see in my life.

I say that, carrying on.

Cause despair is evil and hope is a skill.

I will overlook this world from a pieceful home yet.

[mewlabu]

War tw

War trigger warning, proceed with caution

During tonight's mass attack on Dnipro a center railway station was hit, resulting in deaths of 9 civilians and 25 injured people, as of now at least. It is 8 kilometres away from where we live and it also used to be a station we'd pass, as we drove to our university. It's.. horrifying to say the least. Not only am i scared about our city as a whole and people that live in it, but I'm also terrified about our own life

I wish the war would end soon

[mewlabu]

russia commits ecocide in Ukraine