Young artist falls asleep with ‘papier maché’ mask of Marlene Dietrich on her lap, 1950

femme comics by Gerard Donelan

DR ADAM LEVY ClimateAdam ROSEMARY MOSCO

I'm reading about how Israel, in the immediate aftermath of the 1948 Nakba, deliberately replaced olive trees and other indigenous flora with European plants. This ecological disaster, which is now proudly hailed under the banner of 'making the desert bloom,' was done to 'de-Arabize' the landscape, and to cover up - often with fast-growing European pine trees -the ruins of Palestinian villages that were destroyed by Zionists forces.

And I just need everyone to read this passage from Pappé, because the symbolism of what happened to those European pine trees in the desert speaks for itself:

1. “If the Brits didn’t come here, someone else woulda.” If I didn’t bash that nerd in school someone else woulda. If I didn’t abuse that frail homeless girl someone else woulda. If I didn’t put a sweatshop in that country someone else woulda. But *you* did it, son. Take some personal responsibility. “Someone else woulda” doesn’t justify anything.

2. “The Brits were a more advanced society.” They had more advanced weapons, that doesn’t make them a more advanced society. North Korea has nukes. They could blow us up tomorrow. Does that make them more advanced than us? Nah.

And seriously, compare how 1700s Brit society and 1700s Aboriginal society treated their citizens. Women? Kids? Disabled? The hungry? Paint the worst possible picture of both if you like, you’d be hard pressed to say Brit society comes off looking better (and I’m not saying Aboriginal society was a utopia either). And that’s not even taking into account land management. Aboriginal people lived sustainably here for millennia. Brits’ land management, with all their “advanced” tech, was so shocking that huge bulks of the population would die from famine and poor-land-use diseases pretty regularly.

3. “What’s the point of going on about it, it’s in the past.” *Rafiki coconut staff to the head* The past still hurts in real tangible ways. One example, from about 1910-1970 Aboriginal people were forced, by law, to work and live where the Government put them, but then in many cases the Government “withheld”/“lost” their wages. These are the “stolen wages” cases.

Now, lots of these people are still alive. They are now old and they have bugger-all money for their retirement even though they worked hard for decades. This didn’t happen to white fellas, just black ones? Why? Well, to fully explain it we got to talk about how disempowered Black people became due to invasion. This put them in such a crap position, that they could be exploited like this But if you still think there’s no point going on about tragedies from the past, let’s scrap Anzac Day.

4. “It was normal at the time.” Should we cut 1940s Germans slack because heaps of them really normalised the idea that Jews are awful and Nazis are great? Should we cut current Saudi Arabians slack because heaps of them really normalised the idea that treating women as second class citizens is fine? Nup. There were heaps of people back in the 1700s, 1940s and now that knew and shouted loudly that the Brits, Germans and Saudi Arabians respectively were doing something crap. It was normalised at the time because it was spectacularly profitable and advantageous to normalise it. That doesn’t justify it.

Think about it. “I sincerely believe that black people are inferior so I am entitled to take their land and all of the incredible wealth buried in it and have sex with the ones I find hot whenever I like and use them for slave labour so I don’t have to do the hard work.” What a spectacularly convenient thing to “sincerely believe.”  

Master post of details about the Voice and addressing misinformation

What is it? It’s an advisory body to be comprised of Indigenous people, chosen by Indigenous people, to give perspective and input on Indigenous matters.

Why put it in the constitution? Because if we didn’t the Coalition would abolish it like they did with most of the other many many Indigenous advisory bodies in the past. The instability of being unsure if a body will only exist for 3 years or less doesn’t help it grow, develop, or become effective. 

Even a report on closing the gap that was written under the Coalition government says the Voice would be useful for holding governments to account and improving outcomes for Indigenous people because the current structures and organisations aren’t effectively consulting with Indigenous people.

Don’t we already have the equivalent of the Voice already in pre-existing advisory bodies? No. Bodies like the NIAA aren’t the same in terms of scope, accountability, independence, and representativeness, etc. 

Will it affect Aboriginal sovereignty? No. Sovereignty can only be ceded if explicitly agreed upon by both parties - it can’t be implicitly taken away. As the word “sovereignty” is nowhere to be seen in the wording of the Voice it cannot even remotely be misinterpret to imply sovereignty is being undermined by its existence. Indigenous people are already required to obey the law of the Crown - but the Voice will empower them to have a say on how to make that law less discriminatory.

Can it veto bills? No. Absurd nonsense. Not every bill will even be relevant to the Voice and it’s not constitutionally able to introduce, vote on, debate, or veto, a bill in any way. It’s an advisory body. Such a claim violates literally the first clause of the constitution, followed by a dozen more, and is the most ridiculous and willful disregard for the very fundamental basics of Parliamentary democracy and the constitution. This isn’t even remotely debatable. This is flat earth theory of constitutional law.

Is it a third chamber? No! IT’S AN ADVISORY BODY NOT A LEGISLATIVE POWER ON PAR WITH THE REST OF PARLIAMENT!

Again! Flat earth theory of constitutional law. What the actual fuck is this nonsense???

Will it lead to endless High Court cases? How? Seriously - how? 1) The Voice was designed specifically to avoid that 2) High Court cases are costly and risky 3) What basis would the Voice have for a High Court case anyway? It’s just an advisory body, it doesn’t have any obligations written into it, and the internal workings of Parliament are immune to the jurisdiction of the High Court so any law Parliament makes, so long as it is within the constitutional powers for Parliament to do so, is entirely up to Parliament to decide - and if it decides to ignore the Voice then that’s just bad governance. That’s NOT grounds for a High Court case. That’s absurd. The Voice won’t just take the Parliament to the High Court if it doesn’t get its way because that’d just be throwing limited resources down the drain for no reason. If the government ignores the Voice we should vote for a new government.

A former High Court Justice has said there’s “little to no” scope for litigation over the Voice. The focus on the courts is a “red herring” as the Voice’s design is to bring agency to Indigenous people when discussing laws and policies that’ll impact them. The fixation on the courts in this instance is heavily exaggerated by those who want to scare you.

The possibility of a court case relies on there being a piece of legislation that specifically requires a particular Minister (like the Minister for Indigenous Affairs for example) to consult the Voice before making a specific administrative decision over a government department. That’s normal though. That happens occasionally and why should we fear the idea of Ministers having to OBEY THE LAW? If Parliament creates this legislative requirement for a Minister to consult Indigenous people then… good. They should. What’s the issue here? This part isn’t even relevant to it being in the constitution - a Voice created by legislation could have the same restrictions and legal requirements on Ministers because that’s optional and dependent on the laws Parliament makes. This isn’t scary - whatever court cases do happen are a GOOD THING.

Why don’t we have the legislation to see how it works yet? You’ve never read legislation in advance of an election because that’s not the order it goes in. The constitution isn’t about complex details, it’s about establishing the basic foundations to build up from - and so all the details we need about the Voice were released several months ago. The wording of the amendment says its an advisory body and that’s it. 

We don’t have more details because that’s the kind of thing that gets developed over time - there’s plenty of legislation that’s different to how it was 20 years ago, and different 40 years ago before that, because the point of Parliament is to develop this over time. But it all has to stick to the fundamental rules of the constitution. Putting it in the constitution provides you more guarantees about its future limit, function, and scope, than just legislation because it’s guaranteed to not change without a future referendum.

The claim “we don’t have the details” is nonsense. Want the details of the Voice in 5 years time? Tell me who is in government and their policies in 5 years time. This is the same level of absurd request.

Will it lead to us all paying reparations? Parliament has the power to make that happen already. We’re not paying reparations because the government doesn’t want to. The Voice can’t force the government to pay reparations. This is a hypothetical scenario being pushed by the Right to scare people over their money and exploit people’s ignorance. The government won’t even pay people on welfare to be above the poverty line - why do we think they’re going to pay reparations?

Will it prevent a treaty from happening? No. It could be useful for negotiating and writing a treaty. What is in a treaty is up to that particular treaty so no further details can be commented on that - but the Voice isn’t a replacement for it. It’s not analogous and it doesn’t prevent it. If anything it makes the outcome of a treaty happening MORE likely.

But what about (insert hypothetical thing here)? The Voice is an advisory body designed to help Indigenous people provide perspective and input on matters that affect them. If anything you hear involves claims of forcing the government to do X or Y or whatever then it’s misinformation. It can have influence - but it doesn’t make decisions. The Parliament makes decisions and it’s accountable to the public so if it makes a bad decision then protest/vote differently. The hope is that if the Parliament actually fucking listens to Indigenous people it’ll get better outcomes for Indigenous people.

So it’s kind of telling that conservatives are so heavily campaigning against something that doesn’t even have legal decision making power. Conservatives aren’t even obligated to care about the advice the Voice gives and they STILL think that’s too much agency for Indigenous peoples!

Really the problem for conservatives and the Coalition if the Voice is successful is that this provides another way for the government to held accountable, to have its actions scrutinised, to inform the public of what the government is/isn’t doing and provide everyone with detailed information about how things COULD be better but the government refuses to act.

The scary thing about the Voice isn’t power - it’s accountability. It’s transparency. Conservatives don’t fear the courts, or vetoes, or whatever fictional scenario they create - they fear that the next time an Indigenous person says “this is unjust and we want action” that there’ll be too many eyes watching that it’s harder to say “I don’t care.” Conservative governments survive because they’re good at hiding the full extent of how awful they are - and the Voice is trying to lift the corner of the rug to show us what vile shit they’ve swept under there.

Vote Yes.

Plain and simple.

Vote Yes to make it harder for governments to ignore what’s right.

Keep reading

ERICA GOLDSON: Graduation speech

Erica Goldson must have had some serious balls to give this speech

This is beautiful.

this is so wonderful 

This hit hard. Our education system is desperately in need of fixing.

Better to throw it out and start over

"[A]ctually Caucasoid, Mongoloid and Negroid – there’s no such thing. These are so-called anthropological terms that were put together by anthropologists who were nothing but agents of the colonial powers, and they were purposely given that status, they were purposely given such scientific positions, in order that they could come up with definitions that would justify the European domination over the Africans and the Asians. So immediately they invented classifications that would automatically demote these people or put them on a lesser level. All of the Caucasoids are on a high level, the Negroids are kept at a low level. This is just plain trickery that their scientists engage in in order to keep you and me thinking that we never were anything, and therefore he’s doing us a favor as he lets us step upward or forward in his particular society or civilization."

- Malcolm X, Afro-American History (1964)

The Great Pyramid of Giza Ukraine-based photographer Alexander Ladanivskyy using a drone shot The Great Pyramid of Giza from different altitudes creating a visually stunning zoom in.

fucking assho

Weekly World News (June 25, 1991)

i often wonder how many ppl from 2012 tumblr are still active on here

are u also still here, lurking in the shadows????

Forbidden tinies