becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

My grandmother Naifa al-Sawada was born in June 1932. A beautiful girl with blue eyes, she was the only daughter to her parents. They were originally from Gaza but moved to nearby Bir al-Saba, where Naifa’s father Rizq worked as a merchant. She did well at school and in 1947 obtained the necessary certificate from the British – then the rulers of Palestine – to attend university. She did not do so, however. Her father was fearful about what could happen to her at a time when war in Palestine appeared imminent. At a young age, she married my grandfather Salman al-Nawaty and went to live in Gaza. Between 1947 and 1949, Zionist forces expelled approximately 800,000 Palestinians from their homes. Among those directly affected by the Nakba – Arabic for catastrophe – were Naifa’s own parents, who fled their home in Bir al-Saba for Gaza. Having witnessed the Nakba, Naifa encouraged her own children to defend Palestine. Naifa gave birth to four girls and six boys.Like so many mothers in Gaza, she experienced great loss. Her son Moataz went missing while traveling to Jerusalem in 1982. It is still not known what happened to him. Another son Moheeb, a journalist, left Palestine for Norway in 2007. Three years later he traveled to Syria. In January 2011, he went missing. The Syrian authorities subsequently confirmed to the Norwegian diplomatic service that he was imprisoned. But he has not been allowed to contact his family.We do not know his current whereabouts or even if he is alive or dead. My grandmother witnessed the first intifada from 1987 and 1993. On the streets around her, youngsters with stones and slingshots rose up against armed Israeli soldiers in tanks and military jeeps. During that time, her son Moheeb – the aforementioned journalist – was held for more than a year without charge or trial. That infamous practice is called administrative detention. My grandmother lived close to al-Shifa, Gaza’s largest hospital. She took great care of arranging everything in her home with her delicate hands. She used those same hands to comb her hair into braids. She memorized the Quran and took great interest in the education of her children and grandchildren. On 21 March this year, Israeli troops broke into my grandmother’s home. The soldiers displayed immense brutality. They ordered the women in our family to evacuate on foot and arrested the men. They would not allow the women to take my grandmother, who had Alzheimer’s disease, with them. The soldiers claimed that my grandmother would be safe. That was a lie. The invasion of my grandmother’s house took place amid Israel’s siege on al-Shifa hospital. My grandmother’s house was destroyed during that siege and she was killed. Her remains were found days after the Israeli troops eventually withdrew from the hospital earlier this month. She was killed – alone – in the same house where she had lived since 1955. We do not know if she suffered or if she died quickly. We do know that she was older than Israel’s merciless occupation.

#israel #palestine #genocide

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

The Rwanda bill has been passed. People seeking asylum in the UK are no longer safe. This bill has been criticised by many human rights groups, yet parliment have still decided to go ahead with it. People are seeking safety in the UK, and are being turned away. Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states that "Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.". The Rwanda bill prevents this. There is no conformation that people sent to Rwanda will be safe there. This is a blatant violation of human rights. Asylum seekers are human too, and they should be treated as such.

#jesus #politik

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

Excerpt:

The development follows the recovery of hundreds of bodies “buried deep in the ground and covered with waste” over the weekend at Nasser Hospital in Khan Younis, central Gaza, and at Al-Shifa Hospital in Gaza City in the north. A total of 283 bodies were recovered at Nasser Hospital, of which 42 were identified. 

“Among the deceased were allegedly older people, women and wounded, while others were found tied with their hands…tied and stripped of their clothes,” said Ravina Shamdasani, spokesperson for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights. 

#israel #palestine #genocide

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

I think it was put 10 million years ago just for cats

#this cat has no respect for historical sites #animalia

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

"In a historic “first-of-its-kind” agreement the government of British Colombia has acknowledged the aboriginal ownership of 200 islands off the west coast of Canada.

The owners are the Haida nation, and rather than the Canadian government giving something to a First Nation, the agreement admits that the “Xhaaidlagha Gwaayaai” or the “islands at the end of world,” always belonged to them, a subtle yet powerful difference in the wording of First Nations negotiating.

BC Premier David Eby called the treaty “long overdue” and once signed, will clear the way for half a million hectares (1.3 million acres) of land to be managed by the Haida.

Postal service, shipping lanes, school and community services, private property rights, and local government jurisdiction, will all be unaffected by the agreement, which will essentially outline that the Haida decide what to do with the 200 or so islands and islets.

“We could be facing each other in a courtroom, we could have been fighting each other for years and years, but we chose a different path,” said Minister of Indigenous Relations of BC, Murray Rankin at the signing ceremony, who added that it took creativity and courage to “create a better world for our children.”

Indeed, making the agreement outside the courts of the formal treaty process reflects a vastly different way of negotiating than has been the norm for Canada.

“This agreement won’t only raise all boats here on Haida Gwaii – increase opportunity and prosperity for the Haida people and for the whole community and for the whole province – but it will also be an example and another way for nations – not just in British Columbia, but right across Canada – to have their title recognized,” said Eby.

In other words, by deciding this outside court, Eby and the province of BC hope to set a new standard for how such land title agreements are struck."

-via Good News Network, April 18, 2024

#first nations #indigenous people

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

When public services are affordable and convenient, people will always choose those resources. They are not supposed to be a capitalistic profit-seeking initiative, they are developed for the benefit of the people, for a better life, just as government resources should be used. (tweet)

#environment!

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

Lindt, Mondelēz, and Nestlé together raked in nearly $4 billion in profits from chocolate sales in 2023. Hershey’s confectionary profits totaled $2 billion last year. The four corporations paid out on average 97 percent of their total net profits to shareholders in 2023. The collective fortunes of the Ferrero and Mars families, who own the two biggest private chocolate corporations, surged to $160.9 billion during the same period. This is more than the combined GDPs of Ghana and Ivory Coast, which supply most cocoa beans. Decades of low prices have made farmers poorer and hampered their ability to hire workers or invest in their farms, limiting bean yield. Old cocoa trees are particularly vulnerable to disease and extreme weather. Many farmers are abandoning cocoa for other crops, or selling their land to illegal miners.

#capitalism

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

i’m going to kdxjdhdjhddjjdhs

#jesus christ #environment!

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

#artz

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

Ah, good context.

As a side note, though, they weren't 'Gaelic' singers - they were Irish singers. The language is called Irish. That's the name they've used for their own language, and there's a lot of politics behind the names of Celtic languages and countries, so you should use it too.

💀

#no shade but this is a hot button issue with celtic languages and cultures so it's something to be aware of #(plus it's generally respectful to use the names people have expressed they want used for themselves/ their culture/country/language etc) #fascism #linguistics

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

💀

#fascism #racism

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

Y'all. elderly American Zionists are mailing my Russophone Australian grandparents favourable material about Boris Johnson. in the post.

#what #politik

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

Good grief... this stupid woman Truss is a danger to Britain and the whole world.

A failed Tory prime minister who only lasted a few disastrous weeks in office, but who managed to crash the British economy in that time, now suggests Trump should win?!

She shouldn't be allowed out into the community, never mind being given political power.

#good lord Liz #politik

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

#trans issues #lgbtq issues

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

hard to describe the feeling of finishing inside

#lol #also it's a fantastic game

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

tom animal crossing nook made you work for like 3 minutes and you spit on him like this god damn

#agreed and I will kill on this hill #animal crossing

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

It's not.

This translation is extremely good precisely because it's a modernised one - it uses both contemporary references (e.g. knickers) and ones a contemporary audience would consider period-appropriate despite not being (e.g. Beowulf), all in order for a modern reader to get the point Gwerful was putting across. It's also great for conveying that content slide from formal love poetry into pure filth from start to end.

Welsh poetry has its own poetic forms, which are a lot stricter than most English poetry (and a lot more complex). So the one thing the translator can't get across is the meter - English as a language is actually literally not built to accommodate true cynghanedd* (there's a semi-serious theory that Welsh developed mutations to allow cynghanedd more easily, which is funny until you learn the whole thing and then you go "Oh wait, hang on...") This is a cywydd, so it's written to incorporate cynghanedd forms in every line, plus to then have its own number of lines and pattern of syllables and pairs of stressed and unstressed lines; kind of like how sonnets do, but with slightly more rules. And you just can't convey that in English! But the translation you see above is very good, so imagine that, but also written in a rich and sumptuous rhyme scheme that makes your brain fizz.

*In (very) short, it's a system of internal rhyme and alliteration that comes in four main flavours. Longer explanation under the cut.

First of all: the caesura. This is a term in poetry referring to the pause in the middle of a line. Cynghanedd's four forms all make use of it. I'm going to show it with a stroke like this: /

OKAY SO LET'S START EASY

Cynghanedd lusg: rhyme the penultimate syllable with one in the first half. From Cywydd y Cedor:

duw er ei radd / a'i addef

An English equivalent is possible for this one: We tried to time the climber

Cynhanedd sain: my personal favourite! This time, you split the line into three instead of two. The first two sections rhyme, the second two repeat their consonants IN ORDER. From Cywydd y Cedor:

pant yw hwy / na llwy / na llaw

The repeated consonants are a sequence: n ll n ll. A sort of English equivalent is Make fish the dish of the day. But already, the issues are creeping in; the 'of' causes an off-beat that shouldn't be there.

Cynghanedd groes: the hardest one to do. Cut the line in half, and repeat the consonants in order on each side. The caesura placement is dependent on the stresses of the syllables too, which is why English can't do this one - stresses are all over the place in English, whereas they're regular in Welsh. From Cywydd y Cedor:

clawdd i ddal / cal ddwy ddwylaw

Sequence: c l dd dd l c l dd dd l

This is very, very hard, even in Welsh. Which leads us nicely to:

Cynghanedd draws: like croes, but rather than repeating every consonant, you can ignore one (1). Cywydd y Cedor:

dabl y gerdd / a'i dwbl o goch

Sequence: d b l g dd d b l g ch

An English example of this that I like is "Wet t-shirt competition". Again, it doesn't totally work (too many ignored consonants for strict adherence), but it comes close.

The syllable stresses are complex and mysterious, though, and very much play a big part, but I'm not explaining those. Except to say that you need to pair lines of cynghanedd as stressed and unstressed line endings, among other things, and alternate them. And then different poetic forms want different numbers of syllables and lines and such. And on and on it goes.

Anyway if you do it all really well you can win a chair.

Anyone wanna read a 500 year old Welsh poem about Pussy?

#poetry #WALES! #closed for cleaning on mondays