Tumgik
#just like our prime minister here in australia
They’ve suspended Matt Hancock for going on I’m a celeb. Thoughts?
YEAH THEY HAVE
Okay so for those just joining us let me explain this latest dance segment in the clown show
So during the Pandemic, back in the days of Big Dog the Clown being our Prime Minister and encouraging us all to go out and catch COVID because he thought that would make us all stronger, our Health Secretary was a terrifyingly incompetent humanoid blancmange called Matt Hancock. As with all of BlowJo's Cabinet, Matt got the job because he was absolutely fucking terrible at everything except being an oily sycophant. Imagine, if you will, they looked around the circus and saw, not even a clown, but one of the freaks in the freak show; not because he even fit the profile for 'circus freak', but because all he had to do was sit there and guard the bin or something equally useless, and that was all he could achieve (for about 71% of the time, and he would otherwise get distracted by candy floss, which he would try to eat by ramming it into his own nostrils and then get into a muddle and cry); and then imagine that guy is who they selected to be in charge of safety for the acrobat show, and called him Chief Safety Clown.
This guy.
So obviously Britain immediately generated one of the worst covid mortality rates on the planet.
But he didn't stay in position too long, because in the summer of 2021, he broke his own lockdown rules by, yes you guessed it, having a greasy affair with an aide in his Downing Street office and taking her on taxpayer-funded dates. And obviously, that was a big problem because the public were super furious with politicians breaking the lockdown rules, so Boris Johnson did the sensible thing and fired him LMAO LOL ROFL I'm sorry I can't keep a straight face, Boris Johnson said it was completely fine and he could stay.
But uh. Matt Hancock decided a lynch mob was not a scenario he'd planned for, so he resigned, and bumbling ham Sajid Javid took over instead.
So, that explains who he is. Now, his signature move is basically to just fellate whichever ringmaster will give him a job, because as you may have guessed, he certainly is not capable of getting a job otherwise, other than guarding the bin. So as the latest ringmaster auditions began, he immediately set about making little "Rishi is the Greatest Briton" badges and generally doing a really good imitation of Nadine Dorries, except for Sunak instead of Johnson.
...which didn't work because Rishi Sunak passed him up for a job entirely lol
So as far as I can see I think Matt Hancock has finally realised that the only reason he was given a job was because Boris gave him one for doing good cheering. I think he's actually spotted that no one else even likes him, because he's greasy and disgusting and also killed loads of people. So if he wants to get back into politics - or indeed if he wants to move from there into the lucrative world of after dinner speaking - he needs to build his public profile as someone who is likeable and doesn't kill a chunk of the country and doesn't have grubby wandering hands like moist prehensile plums.
So, he decided to go on I'm a Celebrity, Get Me Out of Here.
(???!?!?????)
Except the thing is, "being an MP" is actually a job, and you are actually expected to pretend to do that job. I don't know how anyone else's jobs work, Tumblrs, but I personally am not allowed to just... go to Australia for three weeks without taking any annual leave and abandon the office, and also get paid to do so while still drawing my salary. And it turns out nor are MPs.
His excuses so far are:
I can be an MP in the Australian outback, I'm going to talk about dyslexia so really I'll still be working
I don't think I can work in politics for much longer because I'm bad at guarding the bin and Rishi won't let me do anything else even though I said his hair looks nice :(
Let's see how this is going down!
Oh to have a job where you can decide for yourself you're taking a month off, abandon your work and responsibilities, get paid shedloads and face little consequence. I'm sure he'll be an inspiration to other public servants
-Dave Penman, general secretary of the FDA union which represents senior civil servants
The prime minister believes that at a challenging time for the country, MPs should be working hard for their constituents, whether that's in the house or indeed in their constituencies.
-Rishi Sunak's spokesperson
Matt Hancock isn’t a ‘celebrity’, he’s the former health secretary who oversaw the UK having one of the highest death tolls in the world from Covid-19 while breaking his own lockdown rules. The fact that he is trying to cash in on his terrible legacy, rather than showing some humility or seeking to reflect on the appalling consequences of his time in government, says it all about the sort of person he is.
-Lobby Akinnola, from the Covid-19 Bereaved Families for Justice campaign
Following a conversation with Matt Hancock, I have considered the situation and believe this is a matter serious enough to warrant suspension of the whip with immediate effect
-Conservative chief whip, Simon Hart
I’m looking forward to him eating a kangaroo’s penis. You can quote me on that.
-Deputy chair of the West Suffolk Conservative Association, Andy Drummond
So there we have it, folks! It's going super well!!!!
But having the whip suspended means "expelled from the party until the matter is resolved", which means he is, as of now, no longer a Tory - he's an Independent. I imagine his constituents are delighted.
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luthienebonyx · 6 months
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I've seen some misinformation spreading around tumblr about the Australian Voice referendum to be held this Saturday, 14 October 2023, so here are some actual facts about what it is and why Australians should PLEASE vote YES.
So, what is the referendum question?
The referendum question is about recognising Indigenous Australians in the Constitution, and setting up a body to be known as the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice, so that Indigenous representatives have the right to provide advice to government about decisions that affect Indigenous people.
Here’s the actual referendum question:
A Proposed Law: to alter the Constitution to recognise the First Peoples of Australia by establishing an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice. Do you approve this proposed alteration?
The new chapter and section to be added to the constitution are:
Chapter IX Recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples
S 129 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice
In recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the First Peoples of Australia:
1. There shall be a body, to be called the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice;
2. The Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice may make representations to the Parliament and the Executive Government of the Commonwealth on matters relating to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples;
3. The Parliament shall, subject to this Constitution, have power to make laws with respect to matters relating to the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice, including its composition, functions, powers and procedures.
Source and more info
That’s it. That’s all it is.
The No campaign is spreading lies about the Voice, suggesting that it will somehow take rights or property away from non-Indigenous Australians. They’ve also been using social media - and some elements of mainstream media - to stir up fear and racism, using tactics with a vibe that will be all too familiar to our American friends who have lived through Trump, or our British friends who have been through Brexit.
Here are a few simple facts to counter some of the misinformation that's out there.
Why do we need a body like the Voice?
Indigenous people experience a level of disadvantage that applies to no other group of Australians. As the Prime Minister has said on numerous occasions, a young Indigenous man in this country today is more likely to go to jail than to go to university. Meanwhile, the periodic closing the gap reports show that Australian governments continue to fail in their aim for Indigenous Australians’ health and life expectancy to be equal to that of other Australians.
These sorts of outcomes are typical of a system that has always been about doing things to Indigenous people, rather than with them. Indigenous people need to be in the room when decisions are made about matters that affect them.
So yeah, we need an advisory body that has the ear of politicians. Seems simple enough, so why not just legislate it?
That’s the thing: we’ve already tried that.
We need an advisory body like the Voice to be enshrined in the Constitution because we’ve HAD advisory bodies before – bodies like the former Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC). ATSIC was abolished in 2005 by a government that was hostile to ATSIC’s aims – something that government could easily do since there was no obligation for a body like that to exist. Other similar bodies have gone the same way. 
Putting the Voice in the constitution means that it will always exist. The actual decision-making power continues to reside with our elected politicians, but having the Voice means that they will be obligated to listen to the perspective and suggestions of Indigenous representatives before they (the politicians) make decisions affecting Indigenous people.
The politicians will still have the power to legislate the details of how the Voice works, just like any other body set up under legislation - but once it's in the constitution, they don't get to decide whether it exists or not.
Where did the idea for the Voice come from?
Indigenous people have been calling for something like the Voice since the 1920s, but the current proposition originated in the Uluru Statement from the Heart. This is a petition created by Indigenous delegates to the First Nations National Constitutional Convention held at Uluru in 2017. The Uluru statement from the heart is only 439 words, but they’re very powerful words. Read it here
So if you hear the No campaign trying to say that the idea for the Voice comes from Canberra or from politicians: no, it doesn’t. It comes from Uluru, in central Australia, and it comes from a request by representatives of a large number of Indigenous people. The government is responding to that request by holding this referendum.
Do all Indigenous Australians support the Voice?
Have you ever known any group of people that share 100% support for anything? Of course there isn’t agreement by every single Indigenous person that this is the right way to proceed. HOWEVER, that said, polling shows that around 80% of Indigenous Australians  support the Voice, and of the remaining approximately 20%, many don’t support the Voice because they believe it doesn’t go far enough. Some want a treaty before anything else.
But you wouldn’t know that by the way the Australian media has reported the campaign.
I’m not going to repeat that No campaign slogan. If you’ve watched or read any reporting about this issue, you know the one I mean. The one that panders to ignorance and fear.
Instead, I’m just going to say: if you don’t know, FIND OUT. And then VOTE YES.
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youtube
Douglas Murray: I don't want them to live here. I don't want them here. They came under false pretences. Many of them came illegally and continue to come illegally. And we don't want them here. And I'm perfectly willing to say that because it needs to be said.
If I hated Australia, hated the Australian people, hated Australian history, hated the Australian way of life, broke into the country illegally and spent my time trying to undermine Australia, why should I be in Australia? Why? What would I have brought the country? What benefit? What moral benefit? What financial benefit? What social benefit?
The answer is you'd have brought no benefit. So why just hope that those people are not in large enough numbers and keep your fingers crossed and put it off for another day?
I think we have to start saying very clearly, if you don't like it here, go. And if you don't like it here and you intend to make it worse, we will make you go.
We stripped citizenship from ISIS members, members of ISIS who, even if they had British citizenship, we stripped their passports. We need to start doing the same thing with Hamas. We have Hamas leaders in the UK, Hamas members in the UK. I'm calling on the foreign secretary, the Home Secretary, the director of public prosecutions, the Attorney General, prime minister and others to start doing this. To start taking the passports away and start deporting people who support Hamas in the UK.
John Anderson: Is there the willpower to listen?
Murray: Absolutely. Well, I mean, we have a couple of choices clearly at this point. One of them is, and I say this metaphorically for the time being, but it's not that metaphorical. One is to stand up and the other is to beg on your knee.
I don't think that the British public should be on their knees, begging. Particularly not to people who dislike them. So best to be on your feet.
The soul of England, the soul of Britain is about to be trampled on very, very visibly by people who are gleeful in their trampling. And they have defaced and defiled all of our holy places. And I think -- I know that the British soul is awakening and stirring with rage at what these people are doing.
These people came into our house, many of them broke into our house illegally, many of them were never wanted here. And they have come here, they have betrayed all of our attempts at hospitality, they've spat in our faces and now they want to trample everything we have underfoot. No. No.
We have a crux point in my view coming up in the UK on the 11th of November, when there is Muslim groups, Palestinian groups, pro-Hamas groups in the UK have announced what they call the Million Man March in this city, on Remembrance Day, on Armistice Day, when they will again defile the cenotaph and the statues of our dead and our war leaders. And I believe that the British people will not take this lying down.
==
We're not obliged to tolerate people who hate us, who hate our countries, and want to destroy them and turn them into the same kind of theocratic hellholes they pretended to be escaping in the first place.
The correct response from Denmark - and there was one - rather than the implementation of blasphemy laws, was to say, no, and if you demand them, especially with threats of violence, we will remove you.
And the starting point is to stop pretending that "Islamophobia" is actually a real thing, when we all know it's not.
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intersectionalpraxis · 3 months
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I don't know exactly how elections work in Canada so I'm sorry if this is a dumb question but would you vote for Trudeau after all his genocide support? I'm asking because I can't bribg myself to vote for Biden and Trump is out of the question. A third party will never win here. ☹️ In good conscience, I can't vote for a man who allowed thousands of kids to be murdered.
When there is a federal election in Canada (in order to elect a Prime Minister), we vote for the political party running in our 'riding.' To compare a riding to the American Electoral College system, it's similar to how you vote for candidates to represent you depending on the system (since I know it varies across states) -in Canada, those in 'ridings' represent the people in their specific area. If they win, they have a 'seat' in Parliament (which is located in Ottawa on unceded and unsurrendered Algonquin territory).
Canada functions under a first past the post system [FFTP] (as this is the most common method in the US, if I'm not mistaken?), which means that even it's a 48% to 50% vote between Conservatives and Liberals then the later would 'win' (I believe in Australia, due to their system, citizens would have to re-vote again if it's that close). I digress, but that's how it 'works' here.
Also, due to the parliamentary system, whether a voted-in party has a majority or minority of votes, will determine their position (and degree of power) in the House of Commons (which is like your Congress). Right now we are yes, currently run by a Liberal minority government -back in 2019 Trudeau was I believe shy of a dozen votes from being a majority government. The next federal election date in in 2025, usually it's in the fall.
So, complex parliamentary system aside -who you vote for in Canada is a Member of Parliament (an MP) from the 'riding'/area you are in, who represents you in the House of Commons, and they function under the leadership of 'X' party that is elected.
I have voted Liberal in the past because I loved the MP in my riding. She's done a lot of amazing work in the community. Over time, however, I have voted NDP (New Democratic Party), which is led by Jagmeet Singh right now. Of the over 300 seats in Parliament, they have 25 seats. I align with them on a lot of their ideologies, namely because they are more left-leaning than Liberals, but due to what happened recently - I can't look at them the same way, in the same respect I can't for Liberals either.
What they did to MPP Sara Jama (a disability and housing activist), by expelling her from the Caucus (which is just a collective term for those sitting in Parliament), because she openly supported Palestine. The 'Progressive' Conservatives voted to censure her and they successfully did. And over what, you might ask? She said she wanted an "end to all occupation of Palestinian land" and called for a ceasefire. You can follow her on X here, for folks interested in learning more about her work; she also has the video (that I believe went viral on tiktok about her demanding a ceasefire)- @/ SarahJama_)
So, for me, there will be some time to think about what I would like to do, but I will most definitely not be voting for a Liberal MP, that's for sure. As for the US, I have spoke about the socialist party running right now -Claudia De La Cruz and Karina Garcia (for President and VP, respectively) -they have supported Palestine and do a TON of advocacy work. If I could, I would vote for them.
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cosmicanger · 5 months
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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.
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intheshadowofwar · 9 months
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19 June 2023
The Imperial Metropolis
London 19 June 2023
So I was just settling into bed tonight, thinking about what I needed to do tomorrow, when I had an inkling that I’d forgotten to do something. Something important. Now, I’d had my meds, so it wasn’t that, I’d eaten dinner, showered, all that good stuff, so what could it be?
Oh. Right. Log.
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I woke up very early this morning to get the train from Edgware to Victoria, meeting the group at our hotel just before nine. We proceeded from there to Westminster Cathedral, briefly exploring that building and looking at the Martyr’s Memorial within, before carrying on to the somewhat more famous Westminster Abbey. After a brief interrogation of the statuary on Parliament Square, we went inside.
I highly doubt Westminster Abbey needs an introduction - it’s Britain’s most famous church, and dozens of kings and dignitaries are buried inside. To this day, Britain’s heroes are commemorated in these hallowed walls - Isaac Newton lies next to Stephen Hawking, and there’s Prime Ministers from Pitt to Wilson. It’s absolutely packed, of course, but I’d say it’s well worth a look. The main reason we visited, of course, was the Tomb of the Unknown Warrior, the representative of all Britain’s (and previously the Empire’s) war dead. It is interesting, considering the secular nature of most WWI commemoration, just how Christian the tomb is - but I suppose it ought to be, given its place in an abbey. Still, one must remember that he ostensibly represents the Catholic and Jewish soldiers of Britain, not to mention the Hindus and Muslims of the Indian Army.
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After the Abbey, we proceeded up Whitehall, looking at the Cenotaph, the Women’s Cenotaph for the Second World War, and the statue of Field Marshal Haig. We went through Horse Guards (Life Guards on duty today) and observed the memorial to the Foot Guards, and then carried on via the Royal Marines Memorial next to Admiralty Arch (a Boer War Memorial, as I can’t escape my thesis topic) to Trafalgar Square. We broke for lunch here, and I had mine in the crypt beneath St. Martin’s in the Field church. It was a nice little cafe, and only a few sandbags and posters away from looking like something right out of the Blitz. Maybe I shouldn’t give them ideas.
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After lunch, we looked at the Edith Cavell Memorial. Cavell, for the uninitiated, was a British nurse in Belgium shot for supposed espionage on 12 October 1915 - the monument is tall and heroic, a real ‘King and Country’ sort of thing; the words are even emblazoned on it. This makes the addition of a quote from Cavell in the 1920s - “Patriotism is not enough. I must have no hatred in my heart for anybody.” - a rather curious juxtaposition. Still, it is well worth a look if one is at Trafalgar Square.
From St. Martin’s, we walked down to the Victoria Embankment Park, where a small memorial to the Imperial Camel Corps is situated. There was a brief discussion of Australian troops on leave in London, and then we carried on back up to the Strand and over to Australia House. Australia House, they say, is ‘our house’ in London; but security arrangements had fallen through, preventing us from going inside. Canada and New Zealand, we were told, are not so paranoid about security, and we would have had no problem going inside.
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On the other side of the road was the St. Clement Danes Church, which served as a centre for Anzac and Armistice Day services for Australians in London during the interwar years. Today it’s the official church of the Royal Air Force. Statues of Air Marshals Dowding and ‘Bomber’ Harris stand sentinel outside, and the floor is marked with the crests of various RAF, RAAF, RCAF, RNZAF and affiliated squadrons. A panel lists the RAF’s VC and GC holders - notably Guy Gibson, commander of the Dams Raid in May 1943. Gibson’s been in the news lately - the conversion of RAF Scampton into a refugee torture chamb- I mean internment centre has placed his office and the grave of his dog under threat. Many people are very emotional about this grave - yet, in an absurdly farcical situation, they absolutely cannot mention it’s name. (The dog was black. The name rhymed with trigger. I’m sure you can put this one together.)
We broke up shortly after, and after a quick visit to Foyles and a brief rest at the hotel, I went with the professor and a few others to Skygarden. This is basically a garden and cafe on top of a skyscraper, and the views are spectacular. Best of all, entry is free. On the way home I fell down the stairs at Monument, and now there’s a big lump on my left arm. These things happen I suppose.
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Tomorrow, we head to Green Park to interrogate the memorials there, before spending the lion’s share of the day at the Imperial War Museum. If it goes anything like today did, it’ll be a blast.
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joeynewgarden · 11 months
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i am so sorry but i need all of you “xyz is happening in america and no one is talking about it but f1 is still racing” people to never speak on american issues again. y’all are so fucking loud and so fucking wrong.
americans, especially the texans and floridians who are impacted by these laws (like me), have been speaking up about it. we’ve been protesting, we’ve been organizing, we’ve been donating, we’ve been preparing for the worst. we’ve been screaming our lungs out at protests, we’ve been beaten, we’ve been arrested. just bc we’re not fucking writing essays on social media doesn’t mean no one is talking about it.
italy just elected another fascist as prime minister and no one is saying cancel imola or monza. britain is about to put a racist, genocidal sexual abuser on the throne and no one is saying cancel silverstone. all the antisemitic and islamaphobic shit that was happening in france for years and no one was calling to cancel paul ricard. have y’all seen what canada is doing to their indigenous and homeless populations? australia is still stealing aboriginal children and putting them in white homes, but y’all enjoyed melborne just fucking fine.
every time there is a human rights issue when it comes to racing, everyone says “let’s think of those impacted,” and rightfully so. but y’all NEVER do the same with americans. we didn’t ask for this, we didn’t want this, and we certainly didn’t vote for this, but somehow y’all seem to justify your ignorance about what is actually happening here under the guise of we “deserve it” for being american.
if you do not understand what it is like to live here while your rights are slowly stripped away, shut the fuck up, ESPECIALLY if you’re european. it is exhausting to come on here and watch a bitch who doesn’t even know what gerrymandering is, call me and my loved ones every name under the goddamn sun. you do not get to oh and ah about logan or jm or kyle or romain or rinus and call them names in the same breath.
enjoy miami. it’s a beautiful place with just a rich history and culture. florida is one of the most biodiverse places in north america. the state has become a racing powerhouse, many world class drivers being born here or calling this place home, and several of the world’s biggest races being held here. there are so many initiatives in florida to help women and people of color get into motorsports in any discipline, at any level. you can help support that.
y’all want to brag about the growth of motorsport, well it’s growing here, in america. you want our money and our tv ratings, but not our people, not our culture. and honestly? fuck you. have the week you deserve.
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aressida · 5 months
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AUSTRALIA POLITICS - THE REFERENDUM: The Aftermath, The Treaty and the Meltdown. 19/10/23. (11PM)
-------------------------------------------------------------------------Welcome to Totalitarianism in its entirety.
Our freedom is about to be undermined unless we continue to apply pressure and watch our Australian government's house of cards collapse. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- A reminder: There is NO answer in any kind of terrorism, genocide, war, or retaliation. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- I think it's unusual that some of our politicians are taking positions at the World Economic Forum, especially after the resignation. Take Dan Andrews, for example. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- A question: Is Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk attempting to secure a position in WEF?
-------------------------------------------------------------------------Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk stated that, "all Australians agreed that there was a need to improve the wellbeing of First Nations people". "We are a generous nation. And we extend our hearts and our hand to all," she continued. She clearly does not accept NO for an answer.
Their strategy? Uses the power of manipulation based on The Voice's most emphatic rejection mechanism.
We've all attained a dangerously high level of liberty; we voted NO, and the result was "NO." NO! said Australia! -------------------------------------------------------------------------
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------------------------------------------------------------------------- I know they are trying to take away Australia's constitution.
Our Australian Human Rights Commission, our culture, which is intertwined with Marxism, activism, and antifascism, the Albanese government, and Indigenous people are all seeking to support for the treaty. A treaty based on the heartfelt Uluru statement, 'UNDRIP.' It's important for us, Australians, to dive into the history of UNDRIP.
Jacinta has recently called for a Royal Commission investigating child abuse in indigenous communities, but Labor, the Greens, and the Teals have all voted solidly against it.
A question: Is the Royal Commission involved?
A royal commission into Indigenous child sexual assault has been denied by the government. Most likely, reveal the aboriginal funding gravy train.
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Link -> https://www.skynews.com.au/australia-news/politics/unfathomable-prices-motion-calling-on-government-to-hold-royal-commission-into-abuse-of-indigenous-children-voted-down/news-story/acb042fa7bbebbe832e8a1c467a66aa6 -------------------------------------------------------------------------That just goes to show that long-serving politicians do not care about native children. They were never sincere about assisting our First Nations people, as you are well aware.
More evidence that the referendum was never about Indigenous peoples - something we free-thinkers suspected all along. -------------------------------------------------------------------------Let's see what more there is.
Why are we as close as China? So who needs enemies? Because The Voice and the Chinese are still eavesdropping on us right now. "Five Eyes."
It violates the constitution. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ If calls for a second referendum are made, I won't be shocked. This is getting out of control; $400 million dollars have already been spent on the previous nonsense voice vote.
Our Prime Minister has let Australia down; the Voice referendum alone cost the Australian Electoral Commission more than $400 million. That's a $100 million overrun. Additionally, I don't believe he has offered an apology yet.
Enough of our country going bankrupt. We demand that the Voice Referendum be AUDITED. We are not here to serve you.
Sick of Zionist America owning Australia's ruling elite.
We, the Australian people, are on the verge of economic and financial disaster. From the expense of living to the unemployment rate. Put an end to the monopoly. This is why we must pursue the money.
We know they no longer reflect the values and beliefs of ordinary Australians. This is the ultimate kind of treason.
Do you think this will go well? ------------------------------------------------------------------------- Meme:
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It's time for the rest of Australians to stop submitting and start standing on our own, supporting our neighbors and being united instead of dividing our loyalties.
For all Australians, Australia FIRST. -------------------------------------------------------------------------
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blubushie · 8 months
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I know your away right now so i dont expect an answer any time soon. I noticed that there's a way of shortening names and adding suffixes to them in australian slang. Are there specific rules to this? {I looked at your infodump masterlist and didn't find a link like this so sorry if you already talked about it}
Here are my questions:
What are the social expectations for the slang names? Who, in relation to the person whose name is being australiafied, uses them? Family and friends, or is it something anybody can do for anybody? Is it ok to use them in formal situations? Are there certain people where it is unacceptable to shorten their name?
Does it only apply to first names? Or can middle names and surnames be used? Is calling someone exclusively by their middle name or last name something people even do in australia?
Is gender taken into consideration? Is age?
Does it depend on the length of the name? Does the sound of the name affect the way it becomes australianified? Does it depend on consanants and vowels? Are there names too short to australianify? Are there names too long to australianify? Are there names that are impossible to australianify?
How would you shorten these names {you dont have to do all of them but i would like it if you did}?
Male names: Mark, Jack, Xavier, Silvio, Peter, Luc, Emile, Chuckie, Dave, Steven
Female names: Alice, Isabelle, Zehra, Yasmina, Saraphina, Simonne, Amy, Rebecca, Chantal
Thats it! Thank you and hope you had a good trip!
I have a post about how Australia adapts nicknames here! :]
As for your questions? Let's go!
Who uses nicknames?
Family and mates, but they're also used by coworkers in more casual work settings where you're generally mates with your coworkers, like trades or agriculture. You wouldn't call a stranger by a nickname.
Is it okay to use them in formal situations?
No, not unless you're very close with the person and you're alone. I would call my boss drover by his nickname but only when I was talking to him man-to-man and not as my boss.
Are there certain people where it's unacceptable to shorten their name?
No. Even our prime minister was called ScoMo (short for Scott Morrison), and by the press no less!
Does it only apply to first names, or can middle and surnames be used?
Nope! If your surname starts with Mc (like McDonald) then you will be called Macca or Mac. That's your nickname now and you're gonna hafta deal. Additionally if your hair colour is red you're gonna be called Blue as a joke. Or Red.
Is calling someone exclusively by their middle or surname something people do in Australia?
Only in formal situations ("Mr Carter") and/or if your surname is the root of your nickname, like in the case of Macca.
Is gender or age taken into consideration?
Not really! Hazza = Harry, but Shazza = Sharon.
Does it depend on the length of the name?
Nah. Generally shorter names are harder to abbreviate into nicknames though, so you'll often be called by a identifier instead. For the first few years of my life I was Blue because I was a strawberry blonde when I was that was often mistaken for a ranga. Part of the reason I was called this is because "Joseph" only has "Joey" and "Joey", which I went by (and still go by) more often than my full name, is already a nickname.
Does the sound of the name affect the way it becomes a nickname?
Not really.
Does it depend on the consonants and vowels?
Not in my experience. More just... what feels right? Hard to explain.
Are there names too long to make into nicknames?
Nah! The whole point is Aussies hate long words and love to shorten them.
Are there names that are impossible to make into nicknames?
Joey, apparently.
How would you shorten Mark, Jack, Xavier, Silvio, Peter, Luc, Emile, Chuckie, Dave, and Steven?
Marko/Marco, Jacko, Xavo, Silvo, Pete, Luca, Emile I don't reckon we'd shorten, Chuck, Davo, Stevo.
How would you shorten Alice, Isabelle, Zehra, Yasmina, Saraphina, Simonne, Amy, Rebecca, and Chantal?
Alice wouldn't be shortened, Isabelle would be Isa/Izzy/Belle/Bella, Zehra wouldn't be shortened I don't think (never heard the name before), Yazza, Sara, Simonne wouldn't be shortened I don't think, Amy, Becca, Chazza.
Thank you for the ask and the well-wishes! :]
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The honorable former Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir, First, congratulations on the publication of your new book Capturing Hope: The Struggle Continues for A New Malaysia. The name of the book offers one hope again. This reminds me of the excitement when you led Pakatan Harapan to topple Barisan Nasional in the 14th General Elections where people were looking forward to a better nation. At that moment, all believed that a new Malaysia was finally born. The Barisan Nasional, described by you as a regime tainted with corruption and power abuse, was finally defeated. Due to the excitement shared by the nation, many were unable to sleep that night. The Chinese was even more passionate and emotional, thinking that a new Malaysia had taken shape. The Chinese extended you and the Pakatan Harapan strong support hoping that the country would be better under your helm the second time. Generally, the Chinese felt that you would make use of the second chance to rectify the errors in the 22 years when you first became the Prime Minister. However, the Pakatan Harapan collapsed in less than 22 months. You passed the blame to others again, not thinking that you should shoulder some of the responsibilities. With your silent approval, the Malay Dignity Congress was held in 2019, hitting out at the Chinese education that caused the Chinese, who had voted for you, think that you burned the bridge after crossing it. You also said the Pakatan Harapan election manifesto was not a bible. Hence, the abolition of toll charges, recognition of the United Examination Certificate (UEC), the different stand on Lynas before and after the election have disappointed many Pakatan Harapan supporters. At the launch of your new book, you shared some of your views. More than 90% of the Chinese voters who had voted for the Pakatan Harapan in the 14th General Elections were upset by your views. First, you said a single stream in education would be the best education system for Malaysia. The existence of multiple streams hampered national unity and the shaping of a true identity. You said this: “In Malaysia, we have 26 to 30% of Chinese and 10% of Indians where they maintain their culture and customs such as the Chinese eat with chopsticks while we use hands. “Malaysians are very accommodating people. Because of this, assimilation is difficult for the Chinese. Instead, when the Arabs and Indians came to Malaysia, they were assimilated as Malays where they spoke Malays and behaved like the Malays. Hence, for the Chinese to be accepted by all, they should learn from the Indians and Arabs to assimilate and live like the bumiputras. “ In fact, I wish to inform you that a single language is not the only tool to unite the people. Otherwise, the Malay society would not be divided now. Furthermore, not 100% of Malays send their children to national school. Many Malays send their children to private schools, Chinese primary schools and Islamic schools to study. Some financially capable ones send their children to France, United Kingdom, Australia and other western countries for primary schools. Hence, your allegation against Chinese education is full of bias. Parents generally place emphasis on their children’s education and hope to achieve some form of security for their children’s future through education. Chinese is the same. Hence, if the government does a good job in national education, Chinese will send their children to national primary schools without coercion, just like how many parents sent their children to English medium schools back then. In addition, I would like to say the fact that the Chinese eat with chopsticks and study in Chinese primary school do not cast negative impact on the love and loyalty to the country. Born and raised here, Malaysian Chinese are well versed in Malay Language. We recognize that Malaysia is our country and not China. Strictly speaking, there are fewer local Chinese who can’t speak Malay nowadays. Do not continue to have such stereotype on the people in your country.” Those described by you who refused to integrate and only have China in their hearts are not the majority. They are unable to represent the majority of the Chinese. Just like those extreme right wings who continue to highlight Malays first, they do not represent the majority moderate Malays. So, Tun Dr Mahathir, you are wrong. Secondly, during movement control order, people of all races live in hardship. The politicians, who should be looking after the welfare of people, are trapped in power struggle, regardless of the well-being of the people. At this juncture, we see many capable Malaysians from different education background extend a helping hand to many regardless of their ethnic groups. In order words, people of different ethnic groups live in harmony and care for each other. There is no issue on racial unity nor language barrier. The unity issue that you mentioned earlier is a fake issue. In fact, politicians like you are the main culprit, not the type of schools. In reality, there are many people who actually work on fostering national integration. Instead, politicians are the ones who continue to divide the people with half-truth racist remarks. Please do not have the narrow thinking of treating Chinese education as a grain of sand in your eye. Instead, multiple streams in education should be seen as the advantage of the nation. For many years, multiple streams in education had groomed many talents, including the Malays. These talents are shining at international arena and are proud Malaysians. So, Tun Dr Mahathir, you are wrong. You also said that in order to progress, we should learn to accept a single identity, not Malays, Chinese or Indians but Malaysians. We totally agree with you on this. You cited United States as an example. You said: Look at US, who are Americans? They speak American English, embrace American culture, love US and even see their country of origin as an enemy. They go to battle field when necessary, regardless of their names. Your name could have reflected Dutch, German or Kenya descent but all these are not important because you are an American. Can we have the similar approach to be Malaysians? “ However, I feel that you have too many biased views and misunderstanding about the local Chinese. Since independence until today, the racial harmony that we enjoy is shaped naturally through mutual understanding, mutual respect and tolerance through interactions in daily lives but not assimilation. The diversity, inclusion and tolerance that we enjoy have been the scenic landscape of Malaysia. I wish to say that the younger generation of Chinese may keep their culture and mother tongue but they regard themselves as Malaysians. Instead, politicians are the ones who repeatedly shout about national integration but continue to tarnish the fundamentals of unity with their actions. For instance, the sudden announcement of converting national language to Malay language to highlight Malays first. Some of the Malay politicians continue to stress Malays come first and not Malaysian first. Then you take US as an example to say that despite having a black president, please take a look at the blacks who speak fluent American English in US. How is their fate? Tun Dr Mahathir, you are wrong again. At last, you drag Sin Chew Daily into the muddle by saying that Sin Chew Daily continues to attack DAP which leads to Pakatan Harapan losing support from the Chinese community. You cited this as one of the factors. On this, I feel that you have overstated. Maybe there are someone continue to demonize Sin Chew Daily before you that lead you to have such perception. Based on the state poll results in Malacca, the Chinese are still supporting DAP. As a privately-owned newspaper, Sin Chew Daily has been playing the role as the fourth power in the past, at present and in the future. We support and agree with good policies while we, without fear, criticize policies which harm the fundamentals of the state including the rights of the Chinese community. The story of a demonized Sin Chew Daily may include the allegation of frequently sensationalizing racial issues. To prevent you from being misled further, I would take this opportunity to share the editorial policy of Sin Chew Daily with you that apart from being transparent in handling news to offer a balanced and fair coverage, we insist on running the newspaper in a proper manner, upholding journalistic standard, values and ethics. We do not sell newspapers by sensationalizing news nor infringing privacy of others. At the same time, our editorial policy also covers giving emphasis to national integration, creating a society with positive energy through media influence. Sin Chew Daily is a responsible local newspaper. Hence, Tun Dr Mahathir, as a smart person, how do you end up being fooled by those with an evil heart? It is getting late at night after penning my thoughts. I hope that when I wake up tomorrow, Malaysia will be a better place because this is my country and where my home is. Thank you. Yours sincerely, Sin Chew Daily editor-in-chief KUIK CHENG KANG
*_Tun Dr Mahathir, you are wrong_* – An open letter to former PM by Kuik Cheng Kang, sinchew.com.my
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Hi, born and bred Kiwi here. Can’t say I’ve seen ableism to any extreme degree here, no more than anywhere else in the western world.
The main issues here are racial, more than anything. Much like the Aboriginal people in Australia or Native Americans, the indigenous people of Aotearoa (the Māori) were pretty massively screwed over by European colonisation and the subsequent Treaty of Waitangi, that like many indigenous cultures around the world ultimately put them right at the bottom of the social pecking order, causing generational trauma and poverty. While there has been work put in to right said wrongs, casual racism is still very prevalent in modern day New Zealand, with the added bonus of attitudes like “the Maoris just need to get over it” or that the Māori language is somehow being “forced down our throats” etc, etc.
The racism in Aotearoa isn’t as outwardly violent as some other countries, but it’s there all the same and very conservative attitudes still linger. National (the main centrist-conservative NZ party) are very likely to win the upcoming election this year, and our most recent Prime Minister (Jacinda Ardern) has become a maligned figure and a target for pretty disgusting gendered based insults.
In most respects, New Zealand/Aotearoa is an amazing country to live and/or visit for many reasons, but it is by no means perfect.
Hmm….it’s very interesting and if anything a big honor that I had an actual Kiwi to speak about their country to me like you do, Anon
I appreciate the time you took to set some records straight about what goes on in your country and what must be done to right those wrongs, and being especially respectful and honest about it
Thanks for the heads up, Anon. 👍
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charlesandmartine · 1 year
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Saturday 11th March 2023
The Brisbane City Hall was built in 1930 and was the largest clock tower in Australia at 92 metres in height, the tallest building in Brisbane until the 1960s. Cannily this beats the clock tower at the GPO building in Sydney which tops out at a mere 73 metres. No competition there then. The tour of the tower needs to be quick to get 4 people at a time up the top in a very old clanking lift, wave a hoof at the view and the bells and back down again before the clock does its Westminster chimes all over again. There's always going to be casualties in a tour program with limited time available. In this case having been able to view the views from the top it was thereafter basically: there's the bells made in the Loughborough foundry and there's a clock down there somewhere now all back in the lift, we're off. Um, is it weight driven and is it still wound by hand? Don't really know much about the clock as such. I expect you could look that up he said. For the horologists, the tower has 4 x 3 ton bells for the chimes and 1 X 4.3 ton bell for the hour strike. Lovely tones I must say. The clock itself is electric driven and operates from a master pendulum on the same basis as the Greenwich Observatory.
We then crossed the river to have a flat white in the Art Gallery Café. It would appear that the streets on the North Bank of the Brisbane River are named after English monarchy and across the river after British Prime Ministers. One person said, and I thought this was quite witty, they don't have a Truss street because there aren't any streets short enough! Anyway we had our coffee, popped into the Queensland Museum and popped back out again rather quickly because it was crawling with kids, then went to check on the theatre situation at the Queensland Performing Arts Centre to see if there were by any chance any tickets that had become available for tonight's play. No luck so we crossed the river again to do a bit of shopping. We really like the South Bank complex of theatre, art galleries and museums. It has a lovely relaxed feel about it and you can just meander around soaking up the atmosphere and today also the rain.
Being Saturday the shopping area has a bit of a carnival touch and with St Patrick's day not too far away now there was an Irish Band, possibly called Silken Thomas, playing sentimental tunes from the Emerald Isle. It's a universal ting that all nationalities seem to unite with a tear in the eye to the playing of an Irish ballad, as though we all have a longing for the old country. We've seen it in New York, Australia, Scotland, Birmingham and most weirdly in Amsterdam! How do these Celts do it? Just hope for Ireland's sake they don't all feel the pull and decide to return home. Martine who is half Irish had a lump in her throat. Even I did and I'm Anglo Saxon. (I think). So to the strains of Danny Boy, Whiskey in the Jar, Leaving of Liverpool and feeling all didley didley we ambled off to take a look at the next celebration, that of the Pakistan Australian Cultural Association that is setting up in George Square. We were hoping they might have food. No genetic ties there. (I don't think).
Our last evening here we began with a one venue pub crawl involving some Aussie beer. It wasn't one of those pub restaurants that Martine was hoping for as they are in the outback where everyone goes quiet when you walk in. Quite the opposite, it was very noisy but very atmospheric. Then we moved on to Betty's Burgers for, well a burger actually. It's our first time with Betty's and we wondered if we would be safe with her but I have to say, a burger with king prawns on board was rather nice. Then back to the hotel to pack again ready for a really early Virgin Australia flight to Sydney tomorrow morning. Yawn.
Brisbane is a very pleasant modern city which I can see would really appeal to a younger generation with the opportunities it offers. She appears to strive to present herself as a contemporary place to live, work and play although there have been times in the past when the town elders have been accused of sacrificing some of the old in order to facilitate the new. Bold new schemes are underway to add three new river crossings including a CrossRiverRail connection. This is indeed a city of investment in its future. We have had a brief but good time here. It's a shame that we view Brisbane at the moment of our trip as we prepare, with great regret, to returning home on Wednesday.
ps on the eve before our little flight to Sydney, we were watching Sully on the telly.
pps look how small and insignificant the Albert Street Congregational Church looks against the skyscrapers
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pynkhues · 2 years
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Hi! I was reading your tags on your black phone ask and it actually reminded me of something similar I’ve experienced recently with ST. I found out that both my mom and aunt didn’t realize Billy is racist.
My mom is still convinced that he didn’t like any of the boys for being “nerds.” My aunt had wondered if Billy might be racist but said that she decided he wasn’t bc that would be a mean thing to think of someone. Which is like a lot to unpack from both of them.
I know you mentioned in your post that you feel like there’s a lack of media literacy but do you also feel like this is connected to the anti-intellectualism culture shift that we’re going through as a society and how do you feel like it’s affecting things you see as somebody so steeped in fandom?
I know that’s like a really big question that somebody could probably do a dissertation on (which is actually why I stayed on anon so you don’t like hate me lol) but I always enjoy your thoughts and figured if it was something you didn’t want to delve into you could just ignore.
Love your blog. 🤍
Hey! Thank you for your kind words, anon, and I don’t hate you sending a complicated ask at all! I love complicated asks!
It’s actually kinda good timing too, because I’ve been reading a bit about race and Stranger Things at the moment and especially recommend Kaiya Shunyata’s article on Roger Ebert The Antagonism of Blackness in Stranger Things and Khalisa Rae’s article on Jezebel The Black Kids in ‘Stranger Things Never Get the Story They Deserve, both of which are brilliant, incisive reads. I know racism in the show / Billy being racist isn’t actually what your ask is about, but still! I love to spruik great criticism, haha.
That’s so interesting about your mum and your aunt, especially your aunt realising and then feeling the need to correct herself, and I think does speak to the inherent bias we bring to the stories we consume, and that even when that’s challenged, as it seems it was with your aunt, the ways we’re socialised can still have our heads trying to flip the switch back, so to speak.
I love that you asked me about anti-intellectualism, because y’know - - I’m Australian! Which as a country is one that I think is very anti-intellectual, and I hope you don’t mind me speaking to that for a second, just because I think it’s kinda relevant here.
The Land of Luck
I’ve actually had a lot of long conversations with @foxmagpie over the last few years about the difference in cultural identity between America and Australia, and in the process of that we’ve talked quite a bit about these sorts of ‘national slogans’ as almost like, this type of cultural endorsement.
America is ‘The Land of Opportunity’ and Australia is ‘The Lucky Country’ and how that filters down into a public consciousness is pretty different.
Being The Land of Opportunity creates a sense that everything in America is yours for the taking, which means that any failure is an individual’s alone. An American has every chance to succeed, so anything less than that is not America’s problem. Being The Lucky Country though means ultimately you’re lucky to live in Australia, and if you don’t like it, you can fuck off.
As cultural messages, weirdly, they’re not actually that different on paper, and certainly have similarities in the sense of how they shut down criticisms of country and culture, but they also have very different outcomes, with America putting a lot of onerous on individuals to eschew community and government responsibility, whereas in Australia, I think it does sort of the reverse. There’s this contempt for individualism and the country has a severe case of Tall Poppy Syndrome, anyone who rises above the field, particularly to challenge the status quo, is swiftly cut down to size.
What’s interesting to me right now is the different political trajectories of the countries.
We had an election recently where a very anti-intellectual, incompetent, religious zealot prime minister was ousted in favour of a softer-spoken, more empathetic, intelligent and progressive prime minister who's an atheist (and one, importantly, from a very working class background who grew up with a single mother in government housing – he was of the people, for the people, and the fact that he reflected the background of many Australians was important – he’s a part of the field, not seeking to outgrow it, and for once that feels like a positive), and he’s built a government that will hopefully reflect that over the next few years.
It's kind of this fascinating thing, because I do think that the election was in part a result of people seeing the rise of anti-intellectualism in other countries, and this conservative regression in both the UK (after all, Australia’s still a part of the Commonwealth) and the US which as you said, seems to be experiencing a very significant culture shift at the moment. There’s a lot to be said about Australia having a ‘little sibling’ mentality with a lot of countries, particularly UK and the US, and I think the culture shift that’s happening in Australia right now – in my most hopeful moments at least – is indicative of a sort of national coming of age in response to her ‘big brothers’.
Again, that’s very optimistic though, I know, because I also do think something we’re seeing now more than ever, is that national identity is kind of irrelevant and that these sorts of things are cyclical – times of progress are met with backlash, and that backlash is usually felt in the rise of conservatism, which in turn results in loss, both literal and metaphorical, and eventually enough pain and anger and purpose is built again to claw forwards in a way that feels like progress, and then the cycle repeats.
Time isn’t a flat circle, it’s a human centipede, and I do think Australia’s at the nicer end of the chain right now, but at the end of the day, we’re all still eating shit.
Pop Cultural Powers
In no small part, a lot of that is because America does have a stranglehold on pop culture and media. I’m not saying that in any sort of accusatory sense, it’s just a reality, and I think it does shape global issues, both for the better (shows like Pose and When They See Us for instance creating international dialogue around trans history and the wrongful convictions of Black men, issues topical in every country) and for the worse (Joe Rogan springs immediately to mind).
There are other powers of course – Kdrama and anime and what feels like a once-in-a-generation British property juggernaut that swoops in to flatten any and all competition (James Bond and One Direction leap to mind) – but at least in the West (and lbr, outside of the West too), American pop culture tends to dominate.
I could talk a lot here about the reasons for that, but I don’t really think it’s relevant. What I think is relevant is that the rise of conservatism in America has trickle down effects that impact media consumption the world over. American platforms like Facebook, Twitter, TikTok and even Netflix go global, and they snuff out local competition while bringing with them an American centro-ism, and with that, ultimately, their politics.
And when the politics are fucked, everything is, and we saw that with the way separatism under Trump compounded through social media, as did the rise of Christian evangelicalism, the alt-right, and QAnon; and in these new global platforms, other countries throw their own grenades into the mix with fake news and bot armies and deepfakes and their own conservative governments, and we’re left with a pop culture that’s become synonymous with actual culture and politics and social issues and international discourse, and oh my god, how does anyone keep up?
And then we hit the natural breaking point –
Maybe people don’t want to.
A quick note on the technological revolution
I feel like this is really important to include here.
Do you remember in highschool or college when people talked about the Printing Revolution, the Agricultural Revolution and the Industrial Revolution?
Well, there’s a huge argument to be made that we’re in the Technological Revolution (also known as the Fourth Industrial Revolution) right now.
When I was studying history in my undergrad back in 2009, one of my lecturers said it to the class, and it was the first time I’d ever heard it, but it pops up a lot these days. Revolutions are a time of sudden, radical or complete change, and they usually involve the overthrow or renunciation of a government or ruler, so - -
Take that as you will.
Another quick note on social progress (and another on revolutions)
Another sign of revolution?
A fundamental change to society.
What we’re seeing at the moment is a lot of radical change. To bring it back to your ask a little – think of Friends. Think of the jokes they could get away with, the cast they could get away with twenty years ago. I know in so many ways progress feels non-existent because change has been met so bitterly by some, but the way we consume media and what we expect of that media, has changed so radically in the last thirty years that it shouldn’t be surprising people aren’t willing or able to keep up.
Technology itself is an instrument of social change, and revolutions are a time of invention and political upheaval usually as a result of said social change and invention, and those things together create - - well - -
A Time!
For everyone!!
An Era in History!
It’s always progress and regression and depression and anger, and they’re often tied up with things like plagues (does this sound familiar?) and there are people who can’t keep up, people who don’t want to keep up and, genuinely infuriatingly and despicably, people who weaponise both.
Ch-ch-ch-changes
It’s also I think a time where the reality of social issues comes to the fore again.
I could talk a lot here about how feminism in particular has been watered down to give women permission to do whatever they want, instead of being a political movement that yes, seeks to protect all women, but also is fundamentally about challenging the patriarchy and the political structures that imprison women, and as a result, the women who are complicit in that, but feminism is just one movement reconnecting to itself.
We’ve seen this in the last few years with a wide range of civil rights movements, from Black Lives Matter and the backlash to copaganda and military-backed blockbusters, to Anti-Asian racism and quite specifically Asian women feminism in response to MRAsians, to the urgency in protecting trans rights, gay marriage and more.
The backlash to progress is always an attack on the human rights that have been fought for already, because Western society is a white patriarchy, and without systemic change, all progress is temporary.
As the saying goes, those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it, and we are repeating it. I used this expression in a post a while ago, but I'm gonna use it again – just because we’re no longer handcuffed to the bed doesn’t mean we're out of the house.
Between the witch trial of Amber Heard and the repeal of Roe v Wade and the resurgence in modern day lynchings, that’s becoming increasingly apparent.
Okay, so let me put my benefit of the doubt hat on
I’m a pretty hopeful person, and I like to think the best of people, and in saying that, I want to say that this resurgence of conservative ideas and anti-intellectualism are a symptom, not a cause. I think this is a time of huge social revolution and a pandemic that is devastating people’s lives and livelihoods, and I think broadly people are afraid of change and the internet is bombarding people with information and misinformation all the time, and they’re being asked to take that on and dissect that without being given the tools to actually do it.
I think some people create often-but-not-always faceless campaigns under the cover of platforms like Facebook and TikTok to prey on and reinforce people’s ignorance, anxieties and insecurities, as well as deep running social bigotries and minorities’ internalised hatred as a result of said social bigotries, and use those to further a conservative agenda.
But what does this mean for fandom?
Well, I mean, fandom doesn’t exist in a vacuum, y’know?
Just like your mum and your aunt struggled to put aside their inherent bias when watching Stranger Things, I think a lot of fandom feels their interpretation of a show is inherently the right one and one that – particularly if they like the show – shouldn’t be challenged.
Fandom’s been around forever, but the current wave really is inherently entwined with the Technological Revolution a few times over – with the invention of the internet and social media and even the pandemic – and it makes sense that it would be tied up in current social issues too. The reality is that the internet has broken down a lot of walls in terms of location, accessibility, class, context, race and background which has some amazing positives, particularly when it comes to diversity of opinions, but it can also be a bit of a melting pot for negatives too.
In particular, I think it’s easy to find an echo chamber, which can reinforce someone's opinion as a fact, which I’ve seen a lot of, oh my gosh, haha. It also creates space for bad faith arguments and for cults of personality (which the latter I try very actively and very hard not to be – I really do just try to be myself on here – but know at points in time I likely have been).
In many ways too I think it both entwines with and weaponises a lot of the social issues and civil rights moments that are currently so prevalent globally as a result of the times that we’re all living in. We saw that especially disgracefully with the Deppford Wives and the Amber Heard and Johnny Depp defamation trial which was treated concurrently as entertainment, a showcase of internalised misogyny catfishing as moral grandstanding for male victims (would love to see some of these ladies defending actual male victims like Anthony Rapp), and lack of media literacy.
Anti-intellectualism definitely feeds into that.
It's a culture of individualism that tells people they know better than others, and the perceived amount of work I think it takes these days to actually explore a topic. It's an encouragement of personal interest, comfort, want and even desire, over reality. Because the new world is complicated, and the one they know is safe.
On my most hopeful days, I think it’s not deliberate. I think that we have a generation of people who are overwhelmed by the current state of flux and the information they’re bombarded with and an education system that hasn’t caught up to teach them how to truly engage with it. On these hopeful days, I think these are people who are socialised in a certain way, and as a result rely of that socialisation form their opinions, and don’t necessarily realise that critical engagement is more than a feeling, a keyboard and a platform.
On my least hopeful days - - well.
I don’t think that, haha.
Regardless though, we all bring our shit to what we watch – we’re all a part of the human centipede!! – and I think that’s always going to open up doors to interesting conversation, especially during times of real social upheaval, like we see now. I think stories though always offer the space to open doors to conversation and real change, regardless of media literacy, and the fact that you sent me this ask, it seems like maybe you’ve had the conversation with your mum and your aunt, and personally I think that’s where the real dialogue happens.
Change, education and literacy (media and otherwise) starts at home, and I think it’s awesome that you’ve started that at yours. 😊
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cowboyviolence · 1 year
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One moment I will never forget from my time abroad in Australia is when a local student was showing us around and brought us to a spot on the water and was like "fun fact about the ocean. One of our prime ministers just up and walked into the ocean one day and was never seen again. Anyway" and then turned around and pointed to a statue of a guy and said "This is the guy who thought he fucked up building the Weir so bad he killed himself. But turns out he just forgot that water takes time to travel long distances and it started working the next day." And we were like. Okay so it's just Like That here then
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realasslesbian · 1 year
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Gonna get on my Australian politics for a minute here, but the entire media narrative irt That Shooting and how anti-authoritarians are responsible for it is actually getting kinda ridiculous.
But firstly, lemme just express my sympathy for those two fresh outta the academy cops and the innocent old man who died at the hands of these legitimate lunatics. Because I ain’t defending that. What I’m complaining about is the inaccuracy and disingenuity of laying the blame for this sorry situation (and every other sorry situation of the past couple years) squarely at the feet of anti-authoritarianism. 
There is good fucking reason to have a healthy dose of anti-authoritarianism in this country. Increasingly over the last decade our government have be doing some very shady things and quietly bringing in a lot of very invasive laws. For example:
The Greenfields Foundation and all the subsequent fake charities whose sole purpose is to funnel Australia tax-payer dollars directly into the bank accounts of politicians
That time Australia withdrew from widely ratified international treaties so it could take East Timor hostage for its oil fields, and even went so far as to plant listening devices in the East Timor Prime Minister’s office, and when one of Australia’s spies snitched to the East Timor PM about it (bc apparently that was too evil even for an ASIS spy), instead of showing any remorse Australian authorities aggressively pursued that spy and his legal team, even raiding their offices and homes so they could destroy evidence
The ongoing situation where people who are assessed to have incapacity irt their finances (which is often a very flimsy assessment in itself) have their estates taken over by the Public Trustee who then force these unfortunate souls to live in poverty while the government frivolously spends their money, banning them or anyone else from speaking publicly on it, and ignoring/deliberately making it difficult to prove return to capacity
The entire Robodebt Scandal wherein people forced to live in the abject poverty afforded by welfare payments were then deliberately shackled with fake debts by authorities and forced to pay money they did not in fact owe on pain of jail time, a lot of people (myself included) still have not been released from these fake debts
Speaking of arbitrary jail time for Robodebt victims, statistics show that women are twice as likely to be jailed for ‘welfare fraud’ than men and that the ‘welfare crackdown’ (aka the Robodebt Scandal) is pretty much solely responsible for the huge inflation in Australia’s female prisoner population
The continuing wrongful imprisonment of Kathleen Folbigg who was falsely accused of killing her four children and is now halfway through a forty year jail sentence with no signs of authorities intending to release her, despite evidence having since proven her children died of natural causes
And what about the new and extensive laws which punish ‘unauthorised protesting’ with YEARS in jail, especially if any coal mining companies were inconvenienced
That time an Australian politician got upset when a comedian made some jokes about him so he had plain clothes federal police abduct said comedian from his home, assault his mother and his dog in the process, load him into a black car and drive off, and this was all perfectly legal and actually the politician then went on to successfully sue this comedian for defamation
*not an exhaustive list, there’s definitely more
So, as you can see, there is plenty reason to be questioning the Australian government. And yet the primary narrative irt this shooting and any other situation that might make authorities look bad is to blame it on the conveniently faceless boogeyman of ‘crazy extremist anti-authoritarian anti-vaxxer right-wing conspiracy theorists from the US’. Despite that being such a fantastical mash-up of conflicting ideologies, that’s what the media are going with for a strawman (probably at the behest of the government who in fact can utilise gag laws and imprison journalists who don’t comply). 
Without free and open journalism to offer critical insight into how Australian authorities are at fault and could do better you get other explanations gaining traction. And, for certain demographics, these other explanations can seem more believable than the government-approved message. These are demographics who are often from low socio-economic backgrounds (most people living in those Tara bush blocks are living in poverty), are from First Nations backgrounds (the offenders had Aboriginal heritage), are extremely disenfranchised women (Stacey Train was being abused by the male offenders), or otherwise from various vulnerable demographics, aka the usual choice of punching bag for a government whose apparent sole purpose is to move money from poor people to rich people. These are people who know something isn’t right, have maybe already been victims of the government, but perhaps don’t have the education or resources to form an accurate critical opinion. So instead their opinion is ‘I can just not pay my traffic fines and violently defend my land because subsection SovCit of the US Constitution applies in Australia’ or whatever other crazy shit (which tbh as crazy as some of this shit is, the government cover stories are often even crazier, hence why we got articles about anyone without a sewerage connection being sus)
So when the Australian government has displayed such an obvious lack of transparency, when they keep making mistakes and trying to cover them up, and even when they can no longer hide they don’t show any remorse, no matter how blatantly evil the shit they’ve done is, then you can see why their favourite demographic of underdog punching bags might develop some reactionary views.
In any case, I think rather than trying to turn anyone questioning the Australian government into the new societal pariahs, a better use of journalist resources would be to seriously consider questions like:
a) how were authorities not aware of previous government employees, who posted frequently about their violent views, and who had been reported to police multiple times
b) what truth is their to the accusation that police had been ‘casing the joint out’, which probably resulted in the Trains deciding to fortify their property
c) who made the decision to send two rookie cops into a ‘routine’ missing persons check (as if there is such a thing lmao)
d) why are Australian authorities trying to purchase the property this took place on, and don’t tell me it’s gonna be a ‘beauty spa for stressed coppers’ when it’s surrounded on all sides by similarly anti-authoritarian preppers 
e) and while we’re questioning the government why don’t we start asking these type of questions BEFORE people start dying, not after, whether that’s irt police shootings or robodebt victims who committed suicide, or people dying of starvation in East Timor as a result of our government’s actions, or people rotting in prison cells despite being innocent, etc, etc, etc
Anyway, call me a right-wing anti-authoritarian conspiracy nutjob, I guess. But imo the Australian authorities are just as responsible for this situation as any ‘crazy hillbillys’, and if they actually stopped for a moment to consider putting the welfare of the Australian people before their profits then this and plenty of other bullshit might not have happened.
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uswnt5 · 2 years
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Anon, as someone who lives in NZ I can assure you that the chances of us letting in unvaccinated internationals into the country for the WC is essentially zero.
We have recently only just opened our borders to international travellers without mandatory government quarantine… and it’s mid 2022. We aren’t America or Europe and the pandemic has been handled very differently to the way people in those countries have dealt with it. Our government has been much more strict due to our strained healthcare system, and it’s worked very well. Currently the only unvaccinated people allowed into our country are NZ citizens, even NZ permanent residents aren’t allowed into the country without vaccination. 2023 will also be heading an election campaign year, if our current Prime Minister wants to be re-elected she’s not gonna change her stance to what the opposition leaders stance is. From a political standpoint she’s will not be letting unvaccinated Americans (or other nationality’s) in, Arderns biggest political points have come from her hard stance with covid, becoming too lenient could cause her supporters to vote for someone else.
There may be a change Australia opens up, but the changes NZ follows suit when the WC is only next year are slim. Mal and Rodman will be left at home without getting the shots.
OMG you're in NZ RIGHT NOW! That's so cool. #1 on my bucket list place to visit.
Yeah don't you guys go into a complete lockdown any time you have like 2 cases?
Meanwhile it's literally just vibes over here. No plans or regulations just vibes.
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