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animentality · 2 years

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People's reactions to the queens death piss me off because at face value, sure you shouldn't mock the dead because "basic human decency" but also.

Also.

I resent westerners who proclaim "basic human decency" but only as a matter of principle and noble aspirations.

There's no basic human decency in colonization and imperialism and racism. I resent the Brits and Americans and other western citizens caring more about propriety and social misconduct and the social system they worship than they care about the rights and abuses of people of color across the globe.

It's just the will smith Oscar slap again on a grander scale. You care about the propriety and the disrespect because it fundamentally shakes you, when someone acts against your silly little social rules but don't care about the systematic violence perpetuated by your general social rules.

You don't mind violence or disrespect when it happens to unknown people of color.

You don't mind violence or disrespect or dehumanization in economic systems and politics. The invisible violence that affects people's livelihoods.

I resent the moralizing and the dismissive, disdainful gaze of those who are pro cop, pro system, and pro colonialism.

Liberals, who believe they're progressive but are not radical enough to truly effect change or understand that violence can be necessary.

Violent words are hardly anything.

You live on stolen land, feed from the crops grown on bloody soil, and want to clutch your pearls over people making a mockery over the death of a woman who isn't here to see any of it and even if she was, well.

She was a privileged rich white woman who was never going to be hurt by mean internet comments.

Why do you feel the need to defend her?

You didn't know her personally, nor did you ever owe her your allegiance.

Exactly what is your purpose then?

It isn't basic human decency at all.

Basic human decency would be asking why so many countries would have such negative and hateful feelings for the crown.

It would be listening when the colonized speak with hatred and trying to sympathize rather than shutting them down with a "she was a PERSON."

she was a symbol and a figurehead of an archaic social system based on the hoarding of wealth and the divine right of a single family to rule.

She was the figurehead of a massive colonial empire whose policies hurt and still hurt people to this day.

You should be fucking ashamed, actually.

You fucking idiot.

Stop being such a spoilsport too.

You gonna cry when Bill Cosby dies too?

Gonna insist he's just a person?

We do not owe the wealthy our tears. We do not owe politicians our respect.

You should stop pretending to care about people being respectful of the dead and just be honest and say that you care more about propriety than real people.

#queen elizabeth

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soulsanitarium · 1 year

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Here in Finland, Thanksgiving is not celebrated at all. On the subject, however, we have a national cornucopia myth. The national epic Kalevala focuses on the Sampo story, which is a kind of miraculous mill, whose forging and the struggle to own it are told in the poems.

Keywords: cornucopia, folklore, Kalevala, witches, envy

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🎧Is from Hunger Games The national anthem Horn of Plenty. In the film (s) it is like the goddess Diana is fighting against the evil ideology, but she herself becomes an ideology.

In the Greek mythology Zeus as a child broke his nursemaids horn (she was a goat Amaltheia), that became a Horn of plenty. A kind of magical phallos - mother was no longer needed.

Miracle mills can be found in fairy tales and folklore round the world. Philosophers have always been preoccupied with the question of whether man would be happy if he did not have to strive for his livelihood. Even Neurological research supports the idea that the search itself gives a meaning, the seeking process. (Panksepp).

In the ancient Finnish (Baltic-Finnish peoples) poems Sampo had a very prominent role. The most familiar story we find in the Kalevala. The main characters in the Sampo poems are: the wise man Väinämöinen, the blacksmith Ilmarinen, the queen of the north Louhi. All of them have magical powers. I have made some non-serious “player cards” that might make it easier to remember these characters.

Matriarch Louhi helps the wizard Väinämöinen, basically saves his life. As a reward she asks a Sampo, magical mill. Väinämöinen knows that a blacksmith Ilmarinen could make it. Mistress Louhi has also a lot of daughters. Both Ilmarinen and Väinämöinen start a competition where they try to prove their value to Louhi.

Finnish myth Sampo is also a cornucopia myth. Like so often in the myths, things go badly and the task remains unreachable. In the myth of the Sampo men of the väinöland are trying to steal the Sampo back from the phallic woman, by using phallic means.

It is suggested that the Finnish word “kateus” (envy) is synonymous with “Noita” (witch). It is oftentimes suspected that part of the 15th-17th century witch-hunts was the result of hunger. That people lived through particularly bad harvests. But the Envy does not explain the phenomena fully. Surely it is one emotion that featured in those times, between the neighbors.

Psychoanalytical point of view: As Melanie Klein has stated, envy is in all of us and the lack reinforces it. Magical phallos is denial of the lack - in the perverse universe (Chassequet-Smirgel) the lack is denied and the desired thing is stolen rather than worked through.

The opposite is to tolerate the rejection and trauma of smallness. Integration of good and bad images of the mother/object (and your self), and acceptance of the difference can lead to growth. Inner space - mother’s special force stays with her like the lid of the Sampo in the myth is finally scattered for everywhere. In many magic mill -tales it is lost in the sea. “Pushed back in to the subconscious” - like G.Hägglund & V.Hägglund have suggested.

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misflintchblog · 7 months

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When a family experiences death, it is humbling when people come together to help the family of the deceased. This is the case for a Zimbabwean waiter found murdered in South Africa. For his final journey home, well wishers have raised funds to assist. Total costs are known and well over the required amount has been raised. The intention is to give the balance of the resources to his young son. This is so humbling. Although this act of kindness has only come to light through death, this is the Africa I would want to live in. where each person is there for the next. All the best on his last journey back to Zimbabwe.

Then the question what kind of Zimbabwe is this becoming? Why? The acts ongoing that aren't even political. Fine, scams online make sense and many get caught off guard. The natural barriers that make the region unable to access many online activities, protect many. However in Beitbridge a family has been left homeless and in debt after such a scam caught them off guard. Very unfortunate indeed.

In error a home for 43 years was used to acquire a loan in relation to the scam, a lottery win and this house was lost leaving the family sleeping outside. Then some days later the town began to show signs of the Zimbabwe I believe we can be. An effort to crowd-fund for the family has been successful. Well done Beitbridge.

In a sad incident in the same Beitbridge, a couple died on the rail way line. They were either love making or asleep. The train did raise alarm and try to stop but it was too little too late.

Then in Matebeleland investigations are ongoing over the death of a six year old found hung on some roof trusses. Scary indeed.

What gets one worried even more is a seventh grade student that committed suicide in Mutare. Whaaaat? What would posses a child to consider taking their own life. Even if the parent reprimanded them. Taking of one's life should not be the answer.

Then from Eastview a sister was abusing her sister's daughter. Why then would she offer to look after her niece? Tying her up and beating her for damaging utensils. Wow. Worse still even having the audacity to say a friend suggested it to her. Wow, such cruelty makes no sense.

Then from Gokomere high, a boy caught with 40 girls underwear. Huh? What on earth did he need so many of them for?

On the other hand, although it is not the best, a woman whose cellphone and 200 dollars was stolen was helped by fellow citizens. The cash was not recovered but the cellphone was. The thief received a thorough beating and was then taken into police custody.

Then as the president was away, his security team was asking for beer from a passerby. It initially was nice to see the human side of them, but the indiscipline, no, not right. Anyway this is the Zimbabwe we have in place.

Then you hear of a missing officer from the prisons and correctional facility. As a citizen, that gets me worried especially if I start to make assumptions. Could a former prisoner be the cause of the officer's disappearance? How then will officers trying to tame the traffic behave, if that is the case? They recently began an operation to do just that. This has left many having to walk into town. Quite unfortunate. Hopefully this will also help reduce the number of accidents being recorded. Over 22 thousands motorists have been found guilty of one thing or another, including not being adequately licensed.

The same police is being forced to intervene in Kariba. Armed robbers are stealing from the kapenta fishermen. Come on, why do that to hard working citizens? Kapenta fishing which is done 23 days at a time with breaks taken for seven days because of the moon cycle, is the source of livelihoods for many. A group of seven with two of them armed, are stealing dry kapenta, fresh kapenta and anything else that is available on boats. This is very disturbing.

On a great note, we will be represented in a chess tournament to be held in Mexico. From Mpopoma high school, Zimbabwe chess federation is proudly represented by a seasoned player. Wishing him and Zimbabwe as a whole the best.

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satansjit · 4 years

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Reflections on the Color of My Skin

By Neil DeGrasse Tyson

Wednesday, June 3, 2020

My colleague had other encounters with the law that he shared later that night, but his first story started a chain reaction among us. One by one we each recalled multiple incidents of being stopped by the police. None of the accounts were particularly violent or life-threatening, although it was easy to extrapolate to highly publicized cases that were. One of my colleagues had been stopped for driving too slowly. He was admiring the local flora as he drove through a New England town in the autumn. Another had been stopped because he was speeding, but only by five miles per hour. He was questioned and then released without getting a ticket. Still another colleague had been stopped and questioned for jogging down the street late at night.

As for me, I had a dozen different encounters to draw from. There was the time I was stopped late at night at an underpass on an empty road in New Jersey for having changed lanes without signaling. The officer told me to get out of my car and questioned me for ten minutes around back with the headlights of his squad car brightly illuminating my face. Is this your car? Yes. Who is the woman in the passenger seat? My wife. Where are you coming from? My parent’s house. Where are you going? Home. What do you do for a living? I am an astrophysicist at Princeton University. What’s in your trunk? A spare tire, and a lot of other greasy junk. He went on to say that the “real reason” why he stopped me was because my car’s license plates were much newer and shinier than the 17-year-old Ford that I was driving. The officer was just making sure that neither the car nor the plates were stolen.

Among my other stories, I had been stopped by campus police while transporting my home supply of physics textbooks into my newly assigned office in graduate school. They had stopped me at the entrance to the physics building where they asked accusatory questions about what I was doing. It was 11:30 p.m. Open-topped boxes of graduate math and physics textbooks filled the trunk. And I was transporting them into the building, which left me wondering how often that scenario shows up in police training videos.

We went on for two more hours. But before we retired for the night we searched for common denominators among the stories. We had all driven different cars—some were old, others were new, some were undistinguished, others were high performance imports. Some police stops were in the daytime, others were at night. Taken one-by-one, each encounter with the law could be explained as an isolated incident where, in modern times, we all must forfeit some freedoms to ensure a safer society for us all. Taken collectively, however, you would think the cops had a vendetta against physicists because that was the only profile we all had in common. In this parade of automotive stop-and-frisks, one thing was for sure, the stories were not singular, novel moments playfully recounted. They were common, recurring episodes. How could this assembly of highly educated scientists, each in possession of the PhD—the highest academic degree in the land—be so vulnerable to police inquiry in their lives? Maybe the police cued on something else. Maybe it was the color of our skin. The conference I had been attending was the 23rd meeting of the National Society of Black Physicists. We were guilty not of DWI (Driving While Intoxicated), but of other violations none of us knew were on the books: DWB (Driving While Black), WWB (Walking While Black), and of course, JBB (Just Being Black).

None of us were beaten senseless. None of us were shot. But what does it take for a police encounter to turn lethal? On average, police in America kill more than 100 unarmed black people per year. Who never made it to our circle? I suspect our multi-hour conversation would be rare among most groups of law-abiding people.

As I compose this, about 10,000 chanting protestors are filing past my window in Manhattan. And because of the intermittent looting and related violence, the curfew for this evening has been pushed earlier, to 8 p.m., from 11 p.m. in the preceding days. The most common placard was “Black Lives Matter.” Many others simply displayed the name George Floyd, who was handcuffed face-down on the street with a police officer’s knee on the back of his neck, applied with a force of at least half the officer’s body weight, resulting in his death. Curious irony that NFL star Colin Kaepernick offered a simple demonstration of care and concern for the fate of black people in the custody of police officers, by taking a knee during the Star Spangled Banner before football games. (One media outlet mangled the moment by describing him as protesting the national anthem.) The outrage against his silent act of concern for a national problem persisted through the 2017 season when, as a free agent, he went unsigned by any team to continue his livelihood.

So, we went from a peaceful knee to the ground to a fatal knee to the neck.

The way peaceful protesters and the press are being shoved, maced, tear-gassed, pepper-sprayed, and tackled in the streets of our cities (when the police should have focused on arresting the looters) you would think the protestors were doing something illegal or un-American. But, of course, the U.S. Constitution has something to say about it:

Congress shall make no law … abridging the freedom … of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Which amendment was that? The First Amendment. So, the founders of this nation felt quite strongly about it, empowering one to declare that protesting for redress of grievances is one of the most American things you can do. If you are the police, pause and reflect how great is the country whose Constitution endorses peaceful protests.

What do we actually expect from our police officers? To protect the peace and arrest the bad guys, I presume. But also, to be armed with lethal force that they can use when necessary. That part clearly requires training on how and when to use (and not use) the power of your weapons. The rigorous Minneapolis Police Academy training lasts 4 months. The slightly more rigorous NYC Police Academy lasts 6 months.

Yet to become a certified pastry chef at a prestigious culinary academy requires 8 months. The perfect croissant demands it. So maybe, just maybe, police recruits could benefit from a bit more training before becoming officers.

In 1991, Rodney King (age 25) was struck dozens of times, while on the ground, by four LAPD officers, with their batons, after being tased. The grainy 1990s video of that went media-viral, inducing shock and dismay to any viewer.

But I wasn’t shocked at all.

Based on what I already knew of the world, my first thought was, “We finally got one of those on tape.” Followed by, “Maybe justice will be served this time.” Yes, that’s precisely my first thought. Why? Since childhood my parents instilled in me and my siblings, via monthly, sometimes weekly lessons, rules of conduct to avoid getting shot by the police. “Make sure that when you get stopped, the officer can always see both of your hands.” “No sudden movements.” “Don’t reach into your pockets for anything without announcing this in advance.” “When you move at all, tell the officer what you are about to do.” At the time, I am a budding scientist in middle school, just trying to learn all I can about the universe. I hardly ever think about the color of my skin—it never comes up when contemplating the universe. Yet when I exit my front door, I’m a crime suspect. Add to this the recently coined “White Caller Crime,” where scared white people call the police because they think an innocent black person is doing something non-innocent, and it’s a marvel that any of us achieve at all.

The rate of abuse? Between one and five skin-color-instigated incidents per week, for every week of my life. White people must have known explicitly if not implicitly of this struggle. Why else would the infamous phrase, “I’m free, white, and 21” even exist? Here is a compilation of that line used in films across the decades. Yes, it’s offensive. But in America, it’s also truthful. Today’s often-denied “white privilege” accusation was, back then, openly declared.

The deadly LA riots associated with the Rodney King incident are often remembered as a response to the beating. But no. Los Angeles was quiet for 13 months afterward. Everyone had confidence, as did I, that the video was just the kind of evidence needed to finally bring about a conviction in the abuse of power. But that’s not what came to pass. The riots were a response to the acquittal of the four officers in the incident, and not to the incident itself. And what is a riot if not the last act of helpless desperation.

The 1989 film by Spike Lee “Do the Right Thing,” which explored 1980s black-white-police tensions in Brooklyn, New York, ends with a dedication to the families of six people. Eleanor Bumpers (age 66), Michael Griffith (age 23), Arthur Miller (age 30), Edmund Perry (age 17), Yvonne Smallwood (age 28), and Michael Stewart (age 25). All are black. One was killed by a white mob. The rest were unarmed and shot by police or otherwise died while in police custody. All deaths occurred within the 10 years preceding film, and all occurred in New York City. None of the police-induced deaths resulted in convictions, as continues to be true for 99% of all police killings.

We know of these events because they each ended in death. But even so, back then, it was just local news. Was this just NYC’s problem? I asked myself. But for every police-related death anywhere, how many unarmed victims are shot by police and don’t die, or are wrongfully maimed or injured? Most of those cases didn’t even make the local news. But if you lived there, you knew. We all knew. For what it’s worth, NYC now has the lowest police-caused death rate per capita among the sixty largest cities in the US. Is it that extra two months training in the Police Academy?

The corrosion and ultimate erosion of our confidence in the legal system in cases such as these, even in the face of video evidence, has spawned a tsunami of protests. With sympathetic demonstrations across the United States and around the world. If the threat of prison time for this behavior does not exist—acting as a possible deterrent—then the behavior must somehow stop on its own.

Some studies show that the risk of death for an unarmed person at the hands of the police is approximately the same no matter the demographics of who gets arrested. Okay. But if your demographic gets stopped ten times more than others, then your demographic will die at ten times the rate. I suppose we first have to get the bias factor down to zero, but then there’s still the matter of police killing unarmed suspects, white people included.

I talk a lot. But I don’t talk much about any of this, or the events along this path-of-most-resistance that have shaped me. Why? Because throughout my life I’ve used these occasions as launch-points to succeed even more. Yes, I parlayed the persistent rejections of society, which today might be called micro-aggressions, into reservoirs of energy to achieve. I learned that from my father, himself active in the Civil Rights Movement during the 1950s and 1960s.

In a way, I am who I am precisely because countless people, by their actions or inactions, said I could never be what I am. But what if you don’t have this deep supply of fuel? What becomes of you? Who from historically disenfranchised communities, including women, LGBTQ+, and anybody of color, are missing—falling shy of their full potential because they ran out of energy and gave up trying.

Are things better today than yesterday? Yes. But one measure of this truth is a bit perverse. Decades ago, unarmed black people getting beaten or killed by the police barely merited the local news. But now it’s national news—even breaking news—no matter where in the country it occurs.

So how to change all this? Organizations have surely assembled demands for police departments. Here, I offer a list of my own, for policy experts to consider:

Extend police academies to include months of cultural awareness and sensitivity training that also includes how not to use lethal force.

Police officers should all be tested for any implicit bias they carry, with established thresholds of acceptance and rejection from the police academy. We all carry bias. But most of us do not hold the breathing lives of others in our hands when influenced by it.

During protests, protect property and lives. If you attack nonviolent protesters you are being un-American. And you wouldn’t need curfews if police arrested looters and not protesters.

If fellow officers are behaving in a way that is clearly unethical or excessively violent, and you witness this, please stop them. Someone will get that on video, and it will give the rest of us confidence that you can police yourselves. In these cases, our trust in you matters more to a civil society than how much you stick up for each other.

And here’s a radical idea for the Minneapolis Police Department—why not give George Floyd the kind of full-dress funeral you give each other for dying in the line of duty? And vow that such a death will never happen again.

Lastly, when you see black kids, think of what they can be rather than what you think they are.

Respectfully Submitted

Neil deGrasse Tyson — trying hard to Keep Looking Up.

#neil degrasse tyson #reflections on the color of my skin #reflections #black lives matter #justiceforfloyd #blm movement #blm #support blm #science #george floyd #justice for black lives #justice for poc #no justice no peace #know justice know peace #white silence is violence #physics #amerikkka #blacklivesmatter

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lifeofresulullah · 3 years

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The Life of The Prophet Muhammad(pbuh): His Youth, Trade Life, His marriage to Hazrat Khadijah

The Kaaba is Restored and the Prophet Acts as a Judge

The Master of the Universe (PBUH) was 35 years old.

During this time, the Quraysh had decided to tear down the Kaaba’s walls so they could renew them. Nevertheless, the floods that resulted from years of pouring rain had corroded this structure that was not sturdy to begin with. Since the Kaaba was roofless at the time, the rains had affected its base and caused the building to crumble.

The last great flood had eroded the Kaaba completely. This condition had awoken feelings of fear and worry in the Meccans.

In the meantime, another incident took place; a woman lit a fire in the temple mount (Harem). The jolting sparks from the ember caught the Kaaba’s curtain and caused it to burn.

And when a treasure from the Kaaba was stolen, the Meccans were determined to execute their plan immediately.

A Ship Loaded with Construction Materials

The Qurayshis were consulting with one another on which materials they should use to reconstruct the Kaaba.

In the meantime, a Byzantian ship that had set sail from Egypt to Jeddah was found stranded in a location that was close to its destination.

The Quraysh sent a committee to the ship’s spot upon hearing this news. The ship was loaded with soft white stone, wood, beams, and steel; they were materials that the Quraysh had been looking for and had not been able to find till then.

The committee reached an agreement with those on the ship and purchased the timber from them. In addition, they guaranteed the merchant on the ship that he would be able to freely enter Mecca and sell his goods without having to pay tariffs since the Meccans used to collect tithes from those who sold trade goods in their city.

Furthermore, a Byzantine architect by the name of Bakum was found on the ship and they reached an agreement that he would reconstruct the Kaaba. According to these terms, Bakum would reconstruct the Kaaba’s walls, and a craftsman, who lived in Mecca and was of Coptic descent, would be involved with the carpentry.

The Apportionment of the Walls

The reconstruction of the walls of the Kaaba was divided among four tribes through drawing lots. According to this, Abd-Manaf and the Sons of Zuhra would have the Kaaba’s front and its side with the door; Abduddar, Asad and the Sons of Adiy would have the side facing Damascus (the side of Hijir, Hatym); Sham, Jahm (Jumah), and the Sons of Amir would have the space in between the Yemen corner and the corner where the Hajarul Aswad would be placed; Mahzum and the sons of Taym were given the construction of the Yemen side which was adjacent to Safa and Aryad.

The Shaking of Mecca

Every tribe demolished their designated side. They descended all the way down to where Hazrat Ibrahim laid the foundations. At that point, they saw green stones which had all been fused with one another.

Their intention was to go further down; however, they were unsuccessful. When someone shook these green stones while trying to extract them, they all suddenly saw Mecca shaking as if it were experiencing an earthquake. Everyone began to panic and got scared. Afterwards, they understood that they were not allowed to dig further; thus, they were content with what they had excavated.

The Tribes Disagree

Everyone was carrying rocks and putting up walls for their designated side. The building had risen all the way to where the Hajaru-l-Aswad was going to be placed. However, a disagreement broke out because each tribe wanted to position this holy stone in its place. Every tribe believed that they were most deserving in this matter. At a time in which every tribe was a bigot, which tribe would want another to get this honor? The issue escalated; the arguments and the controversy hardened so much that they swore they would fight one another.

There was a chaos and a clash was expected to take place at any minute. If a clash was to take place, then many people would lose their lives and many commodities would perish.

A solution had to be found.

The Qurayshi tribes waited for four to five days without putting a single stone into the Kaaba’s walls. Afterwards, they gathered at the Masjid Haram (Mosque) once again. They spoke and argued with one another.

During this time, there were some individuals who suggested that the tribes compromise/reconcile.

The Offer that Secures a Compromise!

While a bloody battle was expected to break out at any moment, Huzayfa bin Mughira, who was a well-known individual, one of the oldest men in the Quraysh, and known as Abu Umayya, proposed the following solution:

“Oh, Qurayshis! Appoint the first person who comes through this door (he pointed to the Bani Shayba’s door) as the judge in this disputed matter so that he can bring an end to this.”

The tribes accepted Abu Umayya’s unexpected proposal without hesitation.

“Muhammad-The Trustworthy and Faithful One- Was Coming!

All eyes were now on the door of Bani Shayba.

Who was going to come and how was this dispute going to be solved? How was this going to be settled without hurting any of the tribes’ feelings?

Everyone’s gazes were filled with curiosity as they looked attentively towards the Mosque’s aforementioned door.

Somebody is seen at the gate!

They immediately noticed and recognized his unique height, build, and dignified walk from afar and shouted with happiness: “He is Muhammad, the Trustworthy One! We will agree with and consent to his ruling.”

Yes, he was Muhammad-al –Amin (Muhammad-The Trustworthy, the Faithful One). He was an honest individual who had earned everyone’s trust.

For this reason, the glances that were filled with curiosity were immediately transformed into looks of happiness because they were all undoubtedly certain that he would issue a fair decision.

Of course, the arrival of our Master (PBUH), who never stumbled in making the most appropriate decision, was not a coincidence. He would affirm his ability to think deeply, before his Prophethood, with the ruling that he was about to give.

The Quraysh explained the situation to him.

Our Master’s (PBUH) mind was as clear and clean as his heart was. He did not delay in providing an appropriate answer; he issued an order:

“Quickly bring me a cloth!”

hey immediately brought one and according to a narration, this cloth was Walid bin Mughira's garment. According to another narration, our Holy Prophet (PBUH) used his own rida in this situation.

The Master of the Universe (PBUH) spread this cloth out on the ground.

Everyone’s stares, from young to old, were focused on our Holy Prophet (PBUH). What was he going to do with that cloth?

Their curiosity did not last long. Our Beloved Prophet (PBUH) placed the Hajaru-l-Aswad on the middle of this cloth and said, “Have someone from each tribe hold a corner of this cloth!”

They followed directions and lifted the cloth that was holding the Hajaru-l-Aswad to the location where the latter was to be placed.

Our Holy Prophet (PBUH) then fulfilled this honor by placing the Hajaru-l-Aswad in its place with his own hands.

Afterwards, they began building the wall and completed it within a short time.

With his decision, which was a work of Divine benefaction, Allah’s Messenger (PBUH) was able to prevent a bloody battle from taking place among the tribes.

With this decision, our Beloved Prophet (PBUH) proved that he had a more well-directed point of view, a stronger sense of judgment, and a higher intelligence (that was excessive) than those who were much older and experienced than him and that he testified to a Divine power.

According to Hazrat Ibn-I Abbas’s narration, our Holy Prophet (PBUH) placed the Hajaru-l-Aswad in its location on a Monday.

THE PROPHET SUMMONS HAZRAT ALI

The Master of Masters (PBUH) was 36 years old.

It was 607 AD.

A harsh drought and famine began to appear in Mecca.

Most families were in a miserable state as they were struggling to get by and Abu Talib’s family was one of them.

Our Holy Prophet’s (PBUH) heart was like a fountain of compassion and mercy. He never forgot favors that were done for him. He never wanted to leave appreciation that had been shown to him unrequited; he possessed such a beautiful and incomparable nature.

Now, there was somebody who was having difficulty with his livelihood. Someone who did everything he could to help our Holy Prophet (PBUH)… someone whose compassionate wings our Holy Prophet (PBUH) had been under since his childhood: Abu Talib….

How could he be comfortable and not help his uncle who was having difficulty in earning a living?

He immediately took action. He ran to his other uncle, Hazrat Abbas, who was well-off, and described the situation to him. He explained that it was necessary for them to extend their helping hands to Abu Talib, who was writhing in hardship so that they could reduce his burdens even if it was in a very small amount.

Hazrat Abbas happily accepted our Holy Prophet’s (PBUH) offer and they both went to see Abu Talib.

Their aim was to slightly reduce the number of the many individuals in his home; at least, they would lift some of the custodial responsibilities from his shoulders.

Abu Talib was pleased when they informed him of their intention. Our Holy Prophet (PBUH) took Hazrat Ali (who he had named himself), and Hazrat Abbas took Hazrat Jafar under protection.

At that time, Hazrat Ali was either four or five years old. At this age, it was an incomparable privilege for him to be under the custody of the Master of the Universe who decreed, “I have been sent to perfect good manners”. From that day forward, he would be disciplined by our Holy Prophet (PBUH) and would immediately believe in Allah when he was invited. At the age of nine or ten, Hazrat Ali had attained the honor of being the first child to become a Muslim.

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zirkkun · 3 years

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Maybe this is a bit ignorant, but god, sometimes I can’t help but feel like fanartists have it really easy when it comes to being able to make content, especially when monetizing it.

Fanfic and fangames need just as much (if not more, in the case of fangames, which requires so many different aspects to create and often a full team) work done to make them, but always seem to get the butt end of copyright. That’s not to say fanartists are impervious to it - we’re not, I know many times when people have had fanart stolen either by the companies whose characters they drew from or are sued by creators. But monetizing it is so much easier. Supporting artists is so much easier. You can post a piece of artwork anywhere on nearly any platform. It’s short and easy to digest, in many cases, which makes it a lot easier for people to see and be attracted to it.

I’m not wholly ignorant to the past that has been hell for fandom, especially with fanfic, and what is still present-day for many fangames; where people are sued even over making free content that is made out of pure appreciation with no other intent, which made and makes it incredibly difficult for people to even so much as have a place to post things, much less monetize it. Monetizing fanfic and fangames can spell certain social death for some people’s careers or even livelihoods in the current day. And it fucking sucks.

But I just wish more people, not even just the companies or creators who are so extremely against it, but those who support fanartists monetarily yet go against monetarily supporting fanfic or fangames; would be more open to monetized forms of these mediums. Especially since some fanartists can often make a whole career and make a decent living off of the money they can make. It just feels unfair.

* do note, that this isn’t in reference to small / indie creators who have specifically said “Hey, don’t make monetized work based of my stuff.” i’m not saying to have disrespect for the original creators. just that i wish it was easier or a bit nicer for fanfic and fangames to have the same treatment fanart does in fandom. but i might be just hoping for a reality that’s impossible.

#zircon rambles #rant #idk it's just on my mind #i know why we Cant #but it Sucks #and i wish i had the money to support fangame devs and fanfic authors myself #also i REALLY hope no one takes this as 'then we gotta stop supporting fanartists yea they make it too good'#NO #that's not what im saying #don't bring people down #bring others up #again i know it's not exactly a topic we can flip on overnight but #eh #maybe i'm just tossing something out there that'll never be able to happen

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ame-fanapprentice · 4 years

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@gentapprentices Gentleman Apprentice Week Day 2 His Daddy’s Son—your apprentice’s childhood or backstory

Lev grew up in a small tribe located in the Scourgelands, right in the heart of the valley in the Southern Spines. His tribe acted as a shelter to many whose homes were invaded by the Scourge of the South, or by mercenaries/ruffians looking to steal livelihoods. Lev’s mother was adopted into the tribe when she was young, and she quickly fell in love with the grumpy young man who always made sure her family had extra food to eat. He had a rather nice upbringing all things considered. Lev was a little skittish at times, but he had a nack for foraging and would often help the healers gather herbs. Had Nonna, the head healer at the time, not pushed him away he would’ve become an apprentice to her. He had three sisters (Kira, Maiya, and Yulia) and a little brother (Nikodim) that he loved very dearly.

A year or so after he reached adulthood his tribe was attacked by a band of mercenaries. Lucio was among them; he hadn’t yet found footing outside of the Scourgelands but still very much felt betrayed by his mother for forcing him to leave. The mercenaries killed Maiya and Yulia, and Lucio captured Lev as “payment” for the tribe not having enough provisions for them to take. From there Lev was forced to do grunt work, most of it being tending to weapons or doing jobs the other mercenaries didn’t want to take. Every step away from his home made him despise Lucio farther. When they reached Vesuvia, Lucio abandoned the mercenaries, claiming it had all been a ruse to appease the current count at the time and turn in the murderers as prisoners. Those that weren’t sent straight to jail were sent to the coliseum. Lev, unfortunately, was among them. In the few short weeks Lev was fighting to stay alive, Lucio was quickly making his way up the ranks. He had found it easy to please the aging count, and before long he took up the opening after marrying Nadia. Lev was finally freed after loosing a fight to the mighty Scourge of the South. All during that fight, however, Lucio was mocking Lev. He rambled about how much he hated him, how little he appreciated all Lucio gave him. He spoke as though he saved Lev from a miserable life in some tiny tribe only to have Lev spit right in his face. Nadia wasn’t amused. As soon as Lev was being dragged away Nadia excused herself and found where he had been taken. The staff were trying to close a massive wound on his shoulder as part of a big plan to bring him back into the coliseum. They’d heal him to the point where he could stand, then toss him back in with the hopes he would defeat the scourge. It’d be a large fanfare, they hoped, a big underdog story! The Phoneix (Lev’s gladiator name) would really live up to his name! Nadia was disgusted, and instead ordered the staff to heal him properly. He would be taken, secretly, to the palace to recover until he was able to safely return back to the home he was wrongfully stolen from. Lev was unconscious for days, and even after waking took another week before he could stay awake longer than an hour or two. Nadia would check up on him when she was able to slip away, making sure the palace staff was treating him nicely and to ask for his side of the story. When Lev could stand he wanted to repay the countess for her kindness. He offered to work at the palace, and when she insisted he not worry about any repayment he countered that his shoulder was in no condition to travel. The two eventually settled that until Lev was sure his body was ready to face the harsh tundra climate, he’d work for Nadia as thanks for saving his life. Of course, there’s many more things that follow but I think it’d be best to leave it up to the imagination for now :0 Here is the colorized image in case anyone was curious about it! From right to left is Yulia, Lev, Nikodim, Milana, Fyodor, Maiya, and Kira!

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protoslacker · 4 years

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[M]ining-affected communities are alleged to be working against the nation and denying society what it needs for economic growth, jobs and social programs. In other words, in defending their land, their water, their livelihoods, their health, sacred places and their self-determination – which may have been stolen or systematically denied to them and that they want to protect for future generations – they are allegedly denying others employment, health care, or education programs. Used in this way, the idea of the ‘national interest’ obscures the true challenge mining-resistance poses to the current economic development model – a model that relies on the sacrifice of lands, livelihoods and Indigenous ways of life. It pits the wellbeing of mining-affected communities against an arbitrarily defined national good. It tends to jeopardize peoples who have been historically dispossessed and marginalized, and whose communities are forced to live with the long-term damage from mining. In this way we see how the legal systems of colonial governments are pitted directly against Indigenous peoples. Such systems are instrumentalized to criminalize and dispossess these communities of their land and resources, as they have been since their inception.

Defend Land Defenders.

This site is an educational tool and resource centre that makes connections between Canadian mining interests and the growing trend of criminalization against dissent and social protest involving land and environment defenders. Learn more about Canadian complicity in violence against communities across the Americas, and find out how you can take action to support land defenders.

#law #justice #defend land defenders #indigenous wisdom

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toomanybruises · 4 years

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portia route book xiii theory

this post contains spoilers for portia’s route up to book xiii, please refrain from reading if you haven’t read the chapter yet. (❁´◡`❁)

after reading book xiii, I have a theory about tasya’s motives and plans.

okay firstly, we need to establish that tasya killed/attempted to kill the devorak family straight off the bat. as soon as she was denied her brother’s shipment fleet, she so happened to accompany them on a voyage that eventually drowned portia’s parents.

we know she wanted the fleet, and in book xii we know that she values her influence and power over others through manipulating valerius and vlastomil. she gets what she wants, when she wants it. and she didn’t get the shipment fleet. so that gives her motive to kill her brother and his wife. (i’ll explain how exactly she manages to pull this off later i promise-).

but the thing is, if she killed her brother and his wife, the shipment fleet wouldn’t go into her name, it would go into julian and portia’s name as they are the direct descendents of tasya’s brother. and who also happens to be on the ship when it gets shipwrecked? julian and portia. only they survived.

and in book xi, we are told that tasya had no idea that the siblings had survived. I have no doubt about that she believed they were dead at some point but i don’t believe it lasted long.

think about it, what would tasya, who wanted the merchant fleet in her name shipwrecks the boat out at sea with no survivors apart from herself, do straight after making it back to land? try to claim the company for herself and the fortune that came along with it.

but she can’t because the devorak siblings are alive. (or she does get it in her name for some time before it is revoked when the bank finds out that siblings are alive and did survive the shipwreck)

either way, tasya is mad and wants to kill them off to get the company/wealth for herself. however she needs to pinpoint where they are. which is quite tricky due to them living in the small town of nevivon for some time and julian going on his countless adventures across the world.

it is only when julian devorak is announced to be executed does she find the eldest’s location. now, I believe that she didn’t realise portia was also at the execution and was in attendance to make sure that julian died this time.

until she realised that portia there and that. she would have to kill them both.

(also I forgot to mention but just imagine the time between the shipwreck and the execution, tasya is investing and building her connections to be more influential and affluent).

now, tasya finds a way to get more power while in vesuvia (which i will also explain later i promise—) and realises she can obtain more power while also killing off her niece and nephew at the same time.

she needs to see both julian and portia die, and she cannot get close to portia if she lets her older brother die. so she intercepts the execution and convinces vlastomil to change the verdict through corrupt means so she can get close to the siblings so she can betray them and make sure they are dead.

and you know how I said tasya had made a plan to gain power and influence in vesuvia? well she did that by financially aiding the city projects by helping rerouting the canal. many people needed this which would give her power and support from the people for all the work she had done. but I find it suspicious that a power hungry woman like tasya would pour so much of her wealth into rerouting the canals unless it benefitted her.

which leads into my next point, tasya intentionally brought the palace down to the ground, in the process killing julian, portia and several members of the prakan royal family, including the countess.

now it is common knowledge that Muriel’s, Portia’s and Lucio’s route show a drastic different perspective than the main three and are a lot darker (like the character deaths in muriel’s route).

i believe that some major characters will die in the next book. maybe a certain countess that runs the place or our favorite himbo doctor? (which will serve as a pivotal turning point for portia’s character alongside the destruction of the palace!) and it wouldn’t be out of place due to the tonal shift the new three stories are expected to go.

anyway, I believe that by killing the countess off, tasya would be able to work her way into becoming the leader of Vesuvia. let’s think about it. she only does things for her own gain and if her plan all along was to capture nadia’s position, it would make sense why she was throwing so much money to solve the canals if she knew she would rule over it in the near future.

and by helping the city immensely, she has already got a good reputation going for her. if nadia is killed and Lucio is nowhere in sight, who will vesuvia turn to? an icompetent court or tasya who has helped improve the city and the livelihoods of others? also the fact she has a nobility title of baroness puts her in higher power than the courtiers so that’s something to think about. (and) it makes sense why she wants the palace as we have established before she is power hungry and wants money.

and the fact that portia and julian die in the process is an added bonus for tasya.

now one small detail in book xiii had me wondering. how did tasya know about asra stealing lucio’s body to resurrect the apprentice? only three people know about this. asra, who stole the body; Lucio, whose body was stolen and the devil; who was giving the body to lucio.

we know that she didn’t get the information from asra since he was surprised at her accusation. it doesn’t really make sense if the devil told her. even if they made a deal together, it would not benefit the devil to share that information. but learning from lucio makes perfect sense.

tasya was probably well acquainted with Lucio when he became count or in the very least, came across him in his goat form. we know that tasya is slightly magically talented so it is possible that she could communicate with him.

now, we know goatman lucio’s motives are getting a new body and he will do anything to be able to get it back, willingly to bargain with or sabotage someone else for it. and what if tasya bargained that she could get him a new body from the apprentice for him if she could take his place as vesuvia’s leader? or perhaps even helping him to reclaim his position as count as his new betrothed and then later betray him (or you know, just marry Lucio and be happy together, whatever floats your boat).

now you’re probably wondering how tasya managed to pull this off. well i briefly mentioned and believe that tasya has magical abilities. it is one of the only ways for her to plausibly do all this destruction if she was behind it all.

tasya could have taken the wheel of the ship and steered it into a tidal wave or into sharp rocks but wouldn’t the crew know what she was trying to do and make a commotion? wouldn’t the siblings have heard if they were being steered into the wrong direction on purpose? wouldn’t they be able to disarm tasya?

so i think that tasya has a magical affinity with water or/and air and created the storm herself to kill everyone on the ship. the crew wouldn’t expect it to be foul play/magical since it’s a storm, something that is a common occurrence out at sea. and it had to be either water or air since we know it was a storm (which are vicious winds and water) that led to the shipwreck and the eventual drowning of the crew (again too much water and not enough air). and it would give tasya a higher probability of surviving the shipwreck if she had magical powers to shield her from drowning.

now, I want to divert your attention to the main 6’s arcana patrons. all except portia have made a deal for magical abilities with one of the major arcana. however, it canonical that portia has a patron and it is the star. now, I want to dissect the star. she and portia have much in common. from physical appearance to their personality: their happy-go-lucky nature, their optimism, extraverted nature, etc. but one thing strikes me the most is the fact that the star’s symbol is water. we see her holding a jug of water, and the fact that when split, the water just floats. water being held by air. water and air.

maybe the star isn’t portia’s patron but both hers and aunt tasya’s? it would make perfect sense that tasya bargained with the star for air/water powers so she could be able to shipwreck the devorak’s. and I’ll go one step further, water has been symbolically used a lot in portia’s route, especially in book xii and book xiii book. there have been heavy storms since Julian’s trial that semi-cancel the masquerade. where does tasya invite portia and the apprentice to? a magical room that is filled with breathable water that she personally installed!

and I don’t believe we have heard the last of tasya, because I believe that she purposely brought the castle down. that’s why she holed herself up in the water room she personally installed, so that she could protect herself from the damage and herself alone.

and from reading the scene of the palace crumbling, words like “thunderous boom�� and “shards of glass raining down” and “magic that tears through the air” which can allude to tasya using her water and wind magic to tear the palace down. it even says that the apprentice recognises it as “arcane” magic. so yeah.

another thing i want to point out is that i think that portia will later make a pact with the star (I don’t totally think she’s 100% tasya’s patron and hers only) in order to be equal/overcome tasya and the situation at hand. I think that portia will either get magical powers or find newfound hope and courage to face what challenges her and her happiness. make sense to why the star is portia’s patron- we are going to see her connection to the star in current time, rather in flashbacks and recollections.

this theory I thought up in a whim and has many plot holes so feel free to add to this or suggest your own theories, I’m just distraught after the end of the book xiii I need to find some semblance of explanation to why tasya is being tasya.

also I forgot to mention that tasya’s got another motive to make people immortal which kind of throws my theory out the window/changes it drastically but you know what? I’m not going to try sorting into the theory I made, I just need a hug, a hot cocoa and a nap to reassure me that portia and her mental health will be okay in the next book.

TL:DR:

Tasya wanted the Devorak merchant fleet for herself and used her magical powers from the pact with The Star so she could drown the Devoraks. Realises that the siblings didn’t die and sets off to kill them for good by collapsing the palace, taking the leadership of the nation for herself I the process. Portia may or may not make a pact with the Star in the future.

#portia route #portia route spoilers #the arcana theory #tasya theory #portia theory #nix hydra why did you do this to us #we want portia to be HAPPY #not depressed and feel like all of her hard work has been wasted and that she cannot trust anyone

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alexsmitposts · 4 years

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COVID and the Terror of Uncertainty There are two worlds, in a way never before imagined, one of people and jobs, of life and experience, the other a shadowy world of deceit and terrorism. As the month of March 2020 comes to an end and April begins, the entire planet is being tested. As expected, as promised as any idiot might guess, political leadership has failed and the organizations intended to coordinate the planetary response to biological threats has shown itself to be politicized, weakened or possibly worse. On March 30, 2020, the Berman Law Group of Boca Raton, Florida, filed a $20 trillion lawsuit against the government of China for creating and disseminating the COVID 19 virus which has, well, we don’t really know. One has to remind one’s self of our times. A few years ago, what was termed an “Arab Spring” emerged, largely manipulated by militarized subsidiaries of Google and Facebook, funded by totalitarian regimes aligned with the US. “Spring,” as it turned out means something different to the people of the Middle East. The social reformers of the West delivered head choppers and Islamists, stolen oil and looted factories and not so much democracy as promised. Then, as so easily predicted, those who brought the disease thus offered the cure, “coalition” bombings, occupation, drone assassination and unending suffering. In Ukraine, “spring” meant false flag snipers and downing an airliner followed by a descent into politics more familiar to those who studied the last century and the fascist attempt to rule the world. Nothing is as it seems, nothing seen can be believed, nothing read is true, nothing taught exists, all is flimflammery and bluster, buffoonery and mayhem. Well, what does one see? Living in the United States, one sees a lockdown of a nation for one, two, three or more months. What one doesn’t see is where, exactly 200 million people are, how they live, where the money comes from to feed them and what the sinking feeling of hopelessness is doing to them. For the “haves,” well financed retirees or medical workers not yet infected, life may be changed, even grim but it will continue. Quite recently, a number of publications began spreading the rumor that 21 million Chinese mobile phone users had simply disappeared, meaning that they had died of COVID 19 and were now in mass graves. This type of story is common and such things spring up almost daily. The reason isn’t simple, a sea of absurd lies is manufactured by “think tanks” in order to drown those gems of embarrassing truth that escaped the Google censors or the control of the corporate media. Here in the US, the concern is generated by driving past miles of closed factories, stores and restaurants. The government plans to send out small checks to cover up to 5% of economic losses of the working poor who were always no more than 3 weeks from homelessness. Now they can’t be thrown out on the street, not for awhile anyway, law has prevented this but the lost income will never be replaced, income that paid insurance, health care for children, bought food and clothing and that American lifestyle of fast food, cable television and continual texting. Those jobs, the restaurants and shops, many of the factories, no longer exist. No bail out can save them in a permanently retracted economy that will never be able to reabsorb millions of workers whose livelihood was governed by economic fakery. Where two weeks before stores were emptied, now the money that financed buying carloads of toilet paper has dwindled away. No one talks of this. No one reports this. No one asks where 200 million Americans are, how they feed their kids, how they spend their days, and how fear is playing on their vulnerability. There is no social welfare state in America. The benefits for retirees, Medicare and Social Security, are being chipped away by “conservative” politics. Health care for veterans, and there are many millions of former military whose lives were destroyed while America destroyed the Middle East, has disappeared, unspoken of and unreported. Veterans are being told they are being removed from health care and can no longer be treated, including and especially the totally disabled combat veterans. Supplies don’t exist, the pharmacies are out of medications and it didn’t start with COVID 19, it began with Donald Trump. Veterans’ health care, the largest health care system in the world, disappeared when no one was looking. It is dead and gone. It will never be reported, no organization will complain to congress because, you see, if you aren’t a bank or oil company, one of those with their hands out for $6 trillion in free money from the Trump regime, you don’t exist. A few paragraphs ago we mentioned the massive lawsuit against China. The assumption that China created COVID 19 is based on an important research paper written in 2015 that tied a research facility in Wuhan to a study on a bat virus that created something capable of infecting the world, a disease exactly like COVID 19. This is the origin of the “blame China” ploy, just like the blame Russia for fake gas attacks in Syria or when the Kiev regime shot down MH17. All that was needed was a fake court, fake evidence and controlled media. With the accusation against China, all that is needed is for China to be tied, in this case for supplying a virus, to a dangerous terror group, to a global pandemic. The terror group, as we discovered was the USAID, a CIA affiliate that used the Wuhan virus to create something frightening at the University of North Carolina, not in Wuhan. A lawsuit and trial will condemn China in a rigged American court. Experts, so many experts, who saw China defeat the disease in weeks while it has run rampant across the US, have come to believe that the US was always the origin and that COVID 19 had been around for some time inside the US before showing up in China. What is strange is that some questions are never asked. Why so many die in Northern Italy? The best hospitals in the world are there, no transportation hubs, no ties to “Wuhan” and no bio-warfare labs? Are they being experimented on? Then we have Detroit, another anomaly. A city of all private homes, a city filled with poor, a disease spread rapidly through a community that uses no public transportation and that has been housebound by weather for months. No one looks for a “patient zero” or “super-spreader,” a term used in studies on bio-terrorism. The other untold story is the restructuring of America’s employment environment, no trade unions anymore, no contracts, no benefits, no guarantees, the war on the worker that Reagan began and Bush (43) won behind the smokescreen of 9/11 and the fake War on Terror. You see, injured workers seldom qualify for benefits and those laid off because of economic slowdowns are denied benefits though processes of fake accusations and legal trickery. It gets worse, if you are injured on a job, let’s say a piece of heavy equipment breaks and you are seriously injured. Not only will you likely never receive wage compensation, but you are likely to be denied needed medical care as well. Medical treatment is often withheld, other than enough to make sure you don’t die right away, until a “hearings process” is exhausted, which can take up to two years. During that time, a physical injury will often lead to permanent crippling and care, when it becomes available eventually, is palliative only, often opiate pain relievers. This is what is meant when it is said that the social welfare “SafetyNet” in the US has disappeared. This is where 200 million Americans without hope now live, to fend for themselves and watch television, being told day and night to hate China and wait for a check with Donald Trump’s signature that might buy tires for a car that was repossessed.

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diaryofanne-xiety · 5 years

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Destiny Thief

I've often used the phrase "He has taken everything from me." when explaining my experience of sexual assault. The standard responses include "That's impossible" , "Take your power back" and sometimes even just a flat out "Huh?"

The truth is that your power is not something to be retrieved, like a borrowed lawn mower or book. In fact my power wasn't removed from me, but rather it was irrevocably turned off. Or maybe I turned it off because the only way I would be able to make it through what was happening to me, was to be in sleep mode or switched off entirely. But, my friends, I soon found out that I couldn't just switch back on again and carry on. I was basically like every laptop that got restarted after the Windows 365 update. Whilst my body was in sleep mode, my defences and shields were down, and the demons overpowered me and began to occupy my mental space. I can't even evict them because THEY ARE ME!

So back to the point of this post: You may ask me "So what did he take from you then?" Here goes nothing:

Simply put, he stole my sense of security. How could a man who sympathized with me about my previous traumas, a man who embraced me on difficult days, and said the most wonderful things to and about me, turn around and become aggressive toward me, disregard my protests and add to my traumas? Then again most assaults are inflicted by the people we're supposed to trust. Because of him I look over my shoulder all the time. I shy away from any physical contact with others. I fear that I will never be able to be physically intimate with a man. He has taken my dreams of companionship and a family life.

Secondly he stole my self esteem. He took something beautiful and made it hideous. He took a deeply spiritual bond and severed it, unfortunately severing a part of me too; the part of me that believed that a woman's voice matters. The part of me that thought that I had agency over my body and my life. Now neither feels sacred anymore. Now my body feels like someone else's temple, taken by force, ransacked and left as an empty shell for anyone to come and go as they please. If my life is a train, my body, mind and spirit are the tracks whose steel and beams have been stripped and stolen by a thief, a Destiny thief. Even if I could start the train's engine, it would be derailed almost immediately. I might switch tracks, but the only thing that a train that has switched lanes can do is go to a new destination. Therefore, he has taken my life's trajectory away from me.

We all have certain core values that are loosely defined but engraved in our minds, that we don't think of, but that we use as a basis for most of the decisions we make. For instance mine are:

There is justice in the world

That a woman's voice matters, and

It is ok to live an unconventional life.

The day I was assaulted and the day my assault and harassment charges were ignored (events), I didn't try to change the outcome of the event (the way the assault made me feel or the possibility of taking further action). Instead I changed the core value to:

There is no justice in this world, and

Women's voices don't matter.

So without knowing (or caring) he took my positive world view, my optimism and core values (that got me this far in my life) away from me. He might've reinforced the third core value, but not in a good way. Now my unconventional life is spent in and out of my therapist's office and on 5 different antidepressants just to make it through the day.

These, dear reader, are some of the things he stole from me, not my flat screen tv, my expensive jewellery or my early edition novel written by the obscure Brohnte sister. No, he took things that can never be replaced or retrieved, and he can't give them back to me even if he wanted to.

He took away my reasons to wake up in the morning, he took my sleep away, he took my self love away to the point where I dissociate frequently, and he took my livelihood away from me because I had to resign so as not to see his face anymore. All this and so much more that I am not brave enough to say out loud.

But, dears, he has stripped me bare (both literally and figuratively) and brought me to my knees. This is where I found my Maker, in the barren and desolate desert of the Middle East. A single tear fell from my eye to the dust, and an oasis sprouted up instantly. In the quiet and solitary nights, when my cruelest thoughts were my only companions, God's quiet whisper said: "Yes, he has taken everything from you, but your bare arms are ready to receive all My bounty. I will give you more reward than your mind can conceive." Yes the destination has changed and yes the train has changed, but He and I will steer it together.

God is great!

Man...not so much...

#anxiety #depression #ptsd #ptsdsurvivor #ptsd thoughts #ptsd recovery #ptsdisreal #ptsdisadailybattle

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the-bjd-community-confess · 5 years

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people — both anti- and pro-recasting — need to stop comparing recasts to counterfeit purses, or to shoplifting from walmart, or to stealing products made my a multibillion dollar company. the comparison doesn’t work because the scale of the industries is so incredibly different. (and honestly when you start comparing recasts to stealing from apple or gucci you’re gonna lose a lot of people like me, who think it’s so incredibly immoral for companies that rich to exist that they should be stolen from, but i digress.)

no, a better comparison would be stealing an online artist’s portfolio and commissions information, creating online accounts with an almost-identical handle to confuse people, slashing the commission prices to something the real artist can’t hope to compete with, and then filling all the commissions you get with traced art, all while doing it on a more popular platform than the one the real artist uses so that your SEO is higher. that is what recasters do.

even “large” doll companies like fairyland or iplehouse don’t employ many people, because even if they’re popular in the hobby it’s still an incredibly niche hobby. many small studios whose work has been recasted consist of a single person, who sculpts and casts and paints and packages and ships their dolls by themself. we can compare that to artists’ social media followings. online artists with larger followings may be able to keep their head above water even with their art being stolen, since their popularity gives them a small safety net, but artists with smaller followings don’t have that safety and may fold and leave the internet entirely if their entire livelihood has been siphoned away by a thief.

if you’ve ever gotten up in arms about an online artist’s work being stolen — by instagrammers for likes, by hot topic or online shirt makers for money, by RPers who edit it into oblivion but leave no credit — then you should be doing the same about recasts. if you support your artist friends and commission them instead of demanding free art, then you should be supporting the companies and studios that help these artists and sculptors do what they love for a living. period. you cannot with any conscience rally around digital artists whose art was stolen by hot topic and then turn around and support recasters.

there are many inexpensive legit companies and dolls, with incredibly beautiful sculpts. i bought my first legit doll for under $80. when that company came under fire for a different doll and i was ashamed to show off my doll in case of backlash, people on DoA encouraged me to. i’ve since purchased dolls from small studios that were more expensive, but i bought them on layaway. i am a disabled, chronically ill person who does not have a regular job. i still support the artists who make this entire hobby possible. if an unemployed cripple can, so can you.

~Anonymous

#BJD #ABJD #TrueBJDConfessions #TrueBJDRecasts

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joannechocolat · 6 years

Text

Wine

Written live this morning on Twitter...

An innkeeper resented the prices charged by a wine-merchant for his wine.

“Wine should be for everyone,” he said, “not just the wealthy.”

The vintner simply shrugged at this, and said: “And yet, this is my price.”

“Wine is nothing but crushed fruit,” went on the resentful innkeeper. “In summer, fruit is plentiful. People gather it for free. How can anyone charge so much for a handful of berries from a hedge?”

The vintner shrugged at this too and said: “Nevertheless, the price still stands.”

The innkeeper, growing impatient, said: “Any fool can make wine. All they need is fruit, and time. Sitting around doing nothing while fruit juice turns to alcohol doesn’t really count as work. Why does it deserve payment?”

But the innkeeper continued to be impervious to his arguments. “There are overheads,” he said. “Transport and storage, not to mention the fees paid to the growers and distributors, who would go out of business if they were to charge anything less.”

And so one day the innkeeper concocted a plan to steal the wine for himself.

With the help of a local bandit chief, he stole a whole consignment of wine, and served his share of the stolen goods to his customers free of charge.

People came from miles around to drink free wine at his hostelry. He maintained a brisk trade in pasties and pies, and thus kept his own business afloat. And word of the inn where wine was free spread across the country, so that for a time the innkeeper was the most popular man in the land.

No-one bought wine from the vintner, who quietly went out of business.

“Serve him right!” said the innkeeper.

“Serve him right!” said the customers.

But the vintner was not the only one whose livelihood had been affected. The vintner’s distributor; the carter who carried the barrels; the workers in the bottling plant; the farmer who owned the vineyard; the people who worked to pick the grapes; the people who cared for the young vines –

The sudden lack of demand for wine put them all out of business, too.

Many of the cast-off labourers turned out to be his customers, and little by little, the innkeeper found himself growing rather less popular.

At last, the stolen wine ran out. The innkeeper went to his bandit friend to negotiate another deal. But now that the vineyards were closed, the bandits had moved on to more lucrative business.

No-one was making wine any more. And yet the demand for it had increased.

And so the innkeeper, seeing his chance, decided to make wine himself. “How hard can it be?” he said. “All I need is fruit, and time, and labour.” And so he took over the abandoned vineyards, and set to making wine himself. It was hard work, and required a great deal more investment of funds than he had hoped.

“Still, it will be worth it,” he said. “If I charge even half what the vintner charged, I can still cover my losses.”

But when the wine was ready to drink, and the innkeeper told his customers, they seemed surprised when he mentioned the price. “You mean, you actually charge for wine?” they said. “You never did before.”

The innkeeper tried to explain about the hard work, and investment, and the many, many other things that went into the making of wine.

“But wine is just fruit,” said his customers. “It should be free for everyone.”

And besides, now that they had all lost their jobs at the vineyards and the bottling plant, no-one had any money to spend on wine anyway.

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amer-ainu · 6 years

Link

In this, our fifth and final episode, The ID Question looks at questions of language and culture in a rapidly changing world. Padmaparna Ghosh talks to people being directly affected by endangered languages and shrinking numbers of indigenous tribes – groups whose survival depends on a clear sense of identity.

As a child, Kanako Uzawa treasured her school vacations, when she traveled from Tokyo to her family farm in Nibutani, a remote village in northern Japan. “There were rice fields extending into the distance,” she said. “It was all very green with fresh air...It was paradise for kids.”

Uzawa, who was born in Tomakomai, Hokkaido, is a member of the Ainu, an indigenous group from northern Japan. The story of this small community is one of erasure instigated by the state. In the late 19th century, the Meiji government sought a unified, cohesive vision of Japan; the very existence of the Ainu and other indigenous groups threatened Japan’s national myth of homogeneity. In 1899, the government passed an act now known as the Former Natives Protection Law, which stripped the Ainu of their identity: names were changed, language was curbed, and they were forced to give up hunting and gathering and begin farming on poor land.

As long as humans have formed shared identities around ethnicity, religion, race, language, and culture, those identities have been subject to erasure, from colonialism to war to economic globalisation to linguistic homogenisation to environmental change. Just look to the island nations of Tuvalu and Kiribati, preparing to sink beneath the sea, or to Greenland, preparing for its ice to melt away.

In the previous episode, we explored how asylum seekers struggle to define their identities, caught in limbo between their home countries and their adopted ones. Governments define official, legitimised forms of national identities, the structures into which new arrivals should be integrated. But these same structures are applied to groups who have long resided within countries’ borders – or, in the case of many colonised nations, predated the groups that currently hold power. How can a given group retain a sovereign identity within those national constructs?

The map of the world has never remained static. Right now, there are secessionist movements from Scotland to Kurdistan, each with their own particular historical origins and degrees of success. The ways and forms in which groups assert themselves might differ, but what unites them all is a clear sense of communal identity: one that demands to be seen, heard, and acknowledged as legitimate.

Continuing battle

In Nibutani, the vast majority of its approximately 200 inhabitants are of Ainu descent. When Uzawa would return there, she would feel like she was part of a close-knit community. But back at school in Tokyo, she didn’t want to stand out from the crowd. “I never thought of that [Ainu] lifestyle as special or unique as a child,” she said. “But what was strange was when I would come back to Tokyo we would never talk about that life. Because nobody knew what it was and nobody asked. So I closed that part of myself and I just became a city girl.”

Now she feels pride for her heritage, inspired by her grandfather, Tadashi Kaizawa, a prominent Ainu rights campaigner. He first came to national attention in 1989, when he and a friend, Shigeru Kayano, sued the government over a hydroelectric dam that was being built on the sacred Saru River – it was being built, they claimed, on stolen land.

Close to a decade later, Kaizawa and Kayano won their case – though by the time the judge issued a ruling, the dam had been built. The judgment marked the first time that the Japanese government was forced to both acknowledge the existence of the Ainu, and to acknowledge that they had certain rights endowed to them under the country’s constitution. In the middle of the case, when Uzawa was 15, she heard her aunt say that to be Ainu is to be discriminated against. “That was the awakening, from when I started to critically think about my heritage and identity.”

Uzawa feels that many Ainu people are still afraid or reluctant to reveal their identities. When she worked in Tokyo, she kept her Ainu heritage private because she didn’t want to create a situation where she would have to defend or explain herself. “I don’t know if I would call it open discrimination,” she said. “But there is a feeling of discomfort.”

Japan did not actively recognise the Ainu as an indigenous group until 2008, and the battle continues: the Ainu still don’t have political self-determination. “Even though it looks like we have been given recognition, a large part of the struggle remains,” said Uzawa. “We still feel that we do not have the final say in matters related to us.”

“The government only said that yes, OK, you are indigenous people of Japan, but you can only promote and disseminate the historical parts and cultural parts of your group,” said Uzawa. “Under this act, rather than focusing on a comprehensive notion of livelihood or indigenous rights, there is only support for the practice of culture, and still, many problems remain.”

Catalonian struggle

Spain, like many European nations, is built out of a number of smaller medieval kingdoms, each with their own culture, language, and history. In the east of the country, Catalonia is currently caught in a secessionist struggle that’s as tense as is possible to find in a contemporary democracy in peacetime.

Some Catalonians are fighting for more independence within the existing Spanish constitution (which devolves power to the different regions, in recognition of their independent histories); some want an entirely independent state, either due to patriotism, economics, or both. Catalonia is Spain’s wealthiest region, and many Catalonians claim to be tired of subsidising the poorer parts of the nation – something seen in less popular secessionist movements elsewhere in Spain, as well as in other countries, like Italy.

What is it to be Spanish? What is it to be Catalonian? Rosalia Martinez, 38, considers her own national identity to be complex. Her father is from Galicia, and her mother, who is from Catalonia, in turn has ancestors from both Catalonia and Aragon. “My idea of being Spanish has been constructed from a mix of different regions,” she said. “It’s about sharing regional languages and identities. My parents teach Spanish and at home we speak Galician. My grandmother used to sing us songs in Catalan.” She doesn’t feel she should have to choose one of these identities over any of the others.

Like Uzawa, Martinez traces back the origin of identity to childhood memories. She speaks Galician at home, and spent her summer vacations with her grandparents in a small village in Galicia. Today, she can speak several of the Spanish languages and smoothly transitions from one to another. But her language choices at any given moment are inextricable from sense of place: when she wants to convey a feeling of wilderness, she slips into Galician, inspired by childhood memories of the natural world. “There we practically lived in a forest,” she said. “So when we have to refer to something like that, we shift, without even noticing.”

“Identity has a lot to do with language – it has poetry and literature, myths and stories and archetypes,” said Martinez. “It isn’t just day-to-day communication. You share a code when you share a language.”

In a word

When countries work to define national identities, language is key. Language links people to a communal past, and newcomers to a shared future. But it can also exclude and alienate, and forcing a language on a community can be devastating: a tool for asserting state dominance over individual and local forms of identity.

In Japan, where the various Ainu languages were banned in 1872, efforts to revitalise the last surviving dialect have only recently been supported by the state. In Catalonia, speaking Catalan can be a patriotic gesture, a recognition that centuries of suppression in favor of Castilian – what we now think of as simply “Spanish” – was not enough to extinguish the region’s identity.

According to UNESCO, there are currently 2,464 threatened languages spoken around the world. 592 are classified as “vulnerable” – children still learn them, but they are not necessarily used widely in daily life – while the rest, the vast majority of the world’s languages, are seen as “endangered.”

Many countries fund language courses for new arrivals to encourage immigrants or refugees to integrate. Between now and 2020, Germany is spending €5.7 billion on such courses – including “soft” skills like cultural understanding in addition to language instruction. This is an unusually large sum; countries like the UK or the Netherlands spend tens of millions, rather than billions, on similar programs.

The UK has shown how a country can reverse a policy of suppressing a language through reasonably small budget commitments: roughly £150 million per year is spent on tuition in Welsh schools and on subsidising Welsh-language media. A few decades ago, Welsh seemed doomed for extinction, though these programmes have slowed that decline rather than reversing it. Other languages in the UK – including Gaelic, Scots, Manx, and Cornish – have yet to receive the same kind of government support, despite being closer to extinction.

While many are still under serious threat, indigenous and minority languages in other parts of the world are experiencing a period of regrowth. According to the 2016 World Minority Report, “In New Zealand, there has been a steady increase since the 1990s in the number of children being taught in te reo Māori [the indigenous Māori language]. Policies promoting the recognition of Māori culture and the visibility of Māori identity in the national arena have been a positive factor in the revitalisation of the language.” A similar revival of Hawaiian is being used as a model for how other indigenous languages can be revitalised.

The case of Spain

In Spain in the mid-20th century, Castilian Spanish was the only language allowed. Francisco Franco’s authoritarian government revoked the official statute and recognition for Basque, Galician, and Catalan. The minority languages were banned in schools, advertising, religious ceremonies, and road signs. Rosalia Martinez didn’t live through this time of cultural suppression, but she heard about it from her parents. “My father used to tell us how Galician was forbidden at school,” she said. “Treatment of other languages was shoddy and oppressed.”

Since Franco’s death in 1975, the Spanish government has encouraged the use and revitalisation of regional languages, from making them compulsory in schools to granting them official language status, including support for public-funded regional-language TV channels. “I remember my cousins from Catalonia and Galicia complaining because they had an extra subject to learn,” Martinez said with a laugh.

But some Spaniards feel that the urge to protect and conserve regional languages can be counterproductive. Elisabeth Borras, who is half-Catalonian, thinks the government’s language revival efforts may have been taken too far. “So much money has been spent dubbing movies into Catalan. Ultimately you should be spending money on things that might be helpful to society, like more schools,” she said. “I think it was a mistake to take it so seriously.” Her mother, who lived through the dictatorship – when Catalan was banned in schools – is today learning how to properly write in the language.

Others fear that these linguistic revivals might be etching deeper divides. Anti-independence Catalonians – as well as people in other regions of Spain and across Europe – worry this might create risky precedents that could set off a series of secessionary demands.

Martinez understands these concerns: she feels that some part of the current polarisation between Catalans and Spaniards has been institutionalised by education and worsened by the financial crisis. “It serves the purpose of politics, making the identities clash, especially for regional governments,” she said. “I think it is a pity. If you ask people in Spain, we feel quite sad.”

She believes the Spanish government has done a good job reviving regional languages – but that doesn’t extend to the independence question. “The government is important in this but I don’t think you need an independent country for that,” she said. “Historically and culturally we have co-existed for the most part. I don’t understand why we can’t go on. They are a part of Spain, too, because they are a part of me.”

Uzawa, Martinez, and Borras all want to pass their cultural identities onto the next generation, whether through language or traditions or visits to specific regions. For all of them, childhood is the touchstone to which they return when their identities are in question. The next generation is the one that will have to continue the work of preserving and spreading cultural traditions, including language.

Borras attended an English school because her parents could not decide whether to put her in a Spanish or a Catalan one. But she wants to ensure that her child grows up Catalan. Uzawa, who now lives in Norway, makes sure to take her children to the ancestral village at least every other year, so they can feel a part of it. When she took them to the Tokyo Ainu cultural centre, she explained Ainu traditions. “And my daughter asked: if this is Ainu clothes and you’re Ainu, why aren’t you wearing those?” she said. “Sometimes your children ask you questions that you haven’t asked yourself.”

#endangered languages #Ainu #Ainu itak #Catalan #Catalonian

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lifeofresulullah · 4 years