Fight Like a Fool! A comic about a court jester that goes on a quest :o)

List of some Resources and stuff related to Iran and more specifically the 1953 coup d'etat, that I've read and watched and listened to this year.

istg if one more person recommends me "All the Shah's Men the ROOTS OF MIDDLE EAST TERROR" I'll start eating gravel. I do not care for the writings of an usamerican liberal journalist.

If there's anything I haven't given a direct link to, let me know and I can just send it. My favourites are in Bold :D

5 part series on Iranian history from 1906 to present day by The Dig (podcast)

The History and Impact of Sanctions on Iran by Guerilla History (podcast)

End of Empire (1985), chapter 7: Iran (documentary)

Coup 53 (2019) dir.Taghi Amirani (movie)

Behind the 1953 Coup in Iran: Thugs, Turncoats, Soldiers, and Spooks by Ali Rahnema (book)

The Rise of Modern Despotism in Iran: The Shah, the Opposition, and the US, 1953–1968 by Ali Rahnema (book)

Call to Arms: Iran's Marxist Revolutionaries: Formation and Evolution of the Fada'is, 1964–1976 by Ali Rahnema (book)

This Post and This

Short History of Modern Iran by Ervand Abrahamian (book)

The Cat and the Coup (2011) (game)

Persian Poetry (resources)

I'll add to this later if I missed anything. I might make a post about Persian language resources as well if I remember to :P

Do you want to know how to help the people of the DRC? Go donate money to focuscongo.com, that's one possibility.

You can also donate physical objects in high demand right now, if you have the $ to pay for international shipping prices, and send to this address [10 Avenue Des Messagers, Quartier Les Volcans, Commune de Goma, Ville de Goma, Province du Nord-Kivu, République Démocratique du Congo]. They need just about everything you use in a day to get by.

However! If you are in the U.S., you can send (shoes only) your packages to this address in the U.S. [Exile International, Entrance F. 3534 West End Ave. Nashville, TN 37205, United States] which will ship them to the previously listed address, so it's less cost for you!

And finally, you can also go volunteer with Focus Congo! Fill out the application here, and email them at info@focuscongo.com, make sure to attach your resumé / CV, so they assign you to work that best suits your capabilities. Foreverjuicebae / juicebaeinthewild is one such volunteer and she posts regularly about the conditions of Congolese people in the DRC.

Please reblog! Likes don't help, reblogs spread the word.

Focus Congo is highly rated by Charity Navigator

love it when a nondog baby animal is called a pup anyway

hi dogys

wuppies ☝️

ouppy

The Bird Daughters. A comic about a bird woman and her dreams. made in the spring of 2023.

The concept of Israel being corrupt or the aggressor is a new concept for many people. Especially those people who grew up in the west/other states that benefit from their colonial past. I don't blame people who have a lot of unlearning to do about Israel but let's talk about some of the stuff you might not know. Israel's occupation of Palestine isn't the only human rights violation under its belt.

Again, for a lot of people, the idea that Israel is evil is very new but the world is more connected than ever before and we can share information to combat all of this. Israel, and its allies (other settler colonial states like US/France/UK) have an incentive to block this information. In fact, when you go through these sources, you'll notice that Israel gets a lot of support/arms/funding from these states so it can carry out these atrocities. Also keep your "whataboutism" to yourself. Any country that does this is in the wrong. Nationalism has no place when discussing human rights violations and its time you changed your stance on Israel and see them for what they are: evil.

I wanna add to this by talking about two groups in the US that are responsible for why this country is so Pro-Zionist. 1. AIPAC (American Israel Public Affairs Committee). If you live in the US you've probably heard of them as one of the many domestic lobbying groups. They've been active since the 70s and like many other domestic lobbying groups, they carry a lot of power. But unlike many domestic lobbying groups, AIPAC works for the interest of a foreign government. So what role do they play in all of this and how does that impact your view on Israel? For one, they play a HUGE role in American policy by pouring millions against progressive candidates. So they will support either Dems or Reps that are challenging progressive candidates. They do this through UDP (United Democracy Project) and AIPAC PAC and through this approach critics of Israel have an extremely difficult time winning seats and that translates into a very right leaning overton window on this occupation. AIPAC is so dangerous and scary that it deserves a post of its own so I'll give you a couple of sources to check out as a starting point on them. (Source) (Source) (Source)

2. CUFI (Christians United for Israel). Surprisingly (or unsurprisingly if you're familiar with how insane Evangelicals are) this is the largest pro-Israel lobby in the US with almost 10 million members (AIPAC has like 3 million btw). It was founded by David Lewis, an Evangelical minister back in the 70s. They do everything AIPAC does times 5 and have a massive presence within the US government. CUFI doesn't stop at congress, they literally have a chapter dedicated to going on Campuses across the country to stop anti-Zionist movements while preaching pro-Israeli propaganda. Why is this right-wing, often anti-Semitic group (please look up John Hagee and read about him for yourself), so pro-Israel? Well it's because evangelicals see Israel’s existence connected to the biblical prophecy about the world ending and Jesus returning. That is the underlying motive. Don't be confused, CUFI is riddled with anti-Semites and they don't care about Jews. For them this is a means to an end but people like Netanyahu or orgs like AIPAC align with them anyway which reaffirms that you can be anti-Semitic and pro-Zionist at the same time.

Me and the girls after 2 cups of suspicious stew

"Re-Coil" and a little ramble about authenticity and original characters.

Genocide experts warn that India is about to genocide the Shompen people

Who are the Shompen?

The Shompen are an indigenous culture that lives in the Great Nicobar Island, which is nowadays owned by India. The Shompen and their ancestors are believed to have been living in this island for around 10,000 years. Like other tribes in the nearby islands, the Shompen are isolated from the rest of the world, as they chose to be left alone, with the exception of a few members who occasionally take part in exchanges with foreigners and go on quarantine before returning to their tribe. There are between 100 and 400 Shompen people, who are hunter-gatherers and nomadic agricultors and rely on their island's rainforest for survival.

Why is there risk of genocide?

India has announced a huge construction mega-project that will completely change the Great Nicobar Island to turn it into "the Hong Kong of India".

Nowadays, the island has 8,500 inhabitants, and over 95% of its surface is made up of national parks, protected forests and tribal reserve areas. Much of the island is covered by the Great Nicobar Biosphere Reserve, described by UNESCO as covering “unique and threatened tropical evergreen forest ecosystems. It is home to very rich ecosystems, including 650 species of angiosperms, ferns, gymnosperms, and bryophytes, among others. In terms of fauna, there are over 1800 species, some of which are endemic to this area. It has one of the best-preserved tropical rain forests in the world.”

The Indian project aims to destroy this natural environment to create an international shipping terminal with the capacity to handle 14.2 million TEUs (unit of cargo capacity), an international airport that will handle a peak hour traffic of 4,000 passengers and that will be used as a joint civilian-military airport under the control of the Indian Navy, a gas and solar power plant, a military base, an industrial park, and townships aimed at bringing in tourism, including commercial, industrial and residential zones as well as other tourism-related activities.

This project means the destruction of the island's pristine rainforests, as it involves cutting down over 852,000 trees and endangers the local fauna such as leatherback turtles, saltwater crocodiles, Nicobar crab-eating macaque and migratory birds. The erosion resulting from deforestation will be huge in this highly-seismic area. Experts also warn about the effects that this project will have on local flora and fauna as a result of pollution from the terminal project, coastal surface runoff, ballasts from ships, physical collisions with ships, coastal construction, oil spills, etc.

The indigenous people are not only affected because their environment and food source will be destroyed. On top of this, the demographic change will be a catastrophe for them. After the creation of this project, the Great Nicobar Island -which now has 8,500 inhabitants- will receive a population of 650,000 settlers. Remember that the Shompen and Nicobarese people who live on this island are isolated, which means they do not have an immune system that can resist outsider illnesses. Academics believe they could die of disease if they come in contact with outsiders (think of the arrival of Europeans to the Americas after Christopher Columbus and the way that common European illnesses were lethal for indigenous Americans with no immunization against them).

And on top of all of this, the project might destroy the environment and the indigenous people just to turn out to be useless and sooner or later be abandoned. The naturalist Uday Mondal explains that “after all the destruction, the financial viability of the project remains questionable as all the construction material will have to be shipped to this remote island and it will have to compete with already well-established ports.” However, this project is important to India because they want to use the island as a military and commercial post to stop China's expansion in the region, since the Nicobar islands are located on one of the world's busiest sea routes.

Last year, 70 former government officials and ambassadors wrote to the Indian president saying the project would “virtually destroy the unique ecology of this island and the habitat of vulnerable tribal groups”. India's response has been to say that the indigenous tribes will be relocated "if needed", but that doesn't solve the problem. As a spokesperson for human rights group Survival International said: “The Shompen are nomadic and have clearly defined territories. Four of their semi-permanent settlements are set to be directly devastated by the project, along with their southern hunting and foraging territories. The Shompen will undoubtedly try to move away from the area destroyed, but there will be little space for them to go. To avoid a genocide, this deadly mega-project must be scrapped.”

On 7 February 2024, 39 scholars from 13 countries published an open letter to the Indian president warning that “If the project goes ahead, even in a limited form, we believe it will be a death sentence for the Shompen, tantamount to the international crime of genocide.”

How to help

The NGO Survival International has launched this campaign:

From this site, you just need to add your name and email and you will send an email to India's Tribal Affairs Minister and to the companies currently vying to build the first stage of the project.

Share it with your friends and acquittances and on social media.

Sources:

heron puppet wip 3

URGENT EMERGENCY

Hey guys? I could really use some help paying rent this month. My court date to be evicted is on the 22nd of April. My boyfriend lost his job recently, but has gotten a new job. However, the first paycheck won’t be delivered in time.

I… really need help. I don’t have much food. Most of my money is going to gas to get my boyfriend to work. I’m… running out of options. I need help. Please. Even a share helps.

I can’t work because my back is really messed up but the disability process where I live can take YEARS.

Another thing: I have an emotional support cat and I really don’t want to give her up but I’m not gonna make her live out of a car. I’m really scared of losing her.

Please help if you can.

Cshapp | Vnmo | PayPl

I could also really use help getting dinner. They canceled my food stamps and I haven’t been able to eat yet today :(

Hi everyone

I’m fatma from Gaza Strip and I really need your help

We need you now more than ever- please donate what you can even if 1$ it will be a big help & share my GoFundMe widely. I'm depending on you. Thank you🙏🇵🇸

If you can’t donate help me share it widely like comment and reblog this post!

fatma's campaign has been vouched for by womenshub_australia, sanela_hm, rhitanattah, and _amna_mk on instagram!

fatma's instagram is fatmabassem61 and you can see the verifications from the above users in her "Sharing 🙏" story.

please share and help her out!

seeing this part is what actually convinced me that ryoko kui knew about autism and wrote the siblings like that on purpose

i struggled finding way to explain why until now

as you can see ever since he was a kid Laios was especially sensitive to other people's expectations, which stresses him out. but Falin herself didn't seem to notice.

yet as adults we see that they grow up to be seemingly opposite of who they were as kids. as per his relationship with Shuro we could see that Laios didn't notice Shuro's distaste against him at all until he was told and with Falin she pays special attention to people and takes care of them to the point that becomes her most memorable trait to her teammates.

honestly it's the kind of progression that i've seen a lot among autistic adults. for laios i usually see it among people who finally found a comfortable space to be themselves and be immersed in their special interest. the happiness can get you kinda tunnel-visioned.

while with falin i feel like she's similar to me where we realized that the things other people usually notice easily doesn't come naturally at us so we end up compensating by working hard at being considerate to our friends but ends up being able to notice little tells others don't usually see

sometimes it's not even two different people, sometimes it's the same autistic person going through all of that

Fahmida Riaz, "A Woman is Laughing", trans. Ankita Saxena, pub. Modern Poetry in Translation [ID'd]

Help Hamza get his family out of gaza.

There’s gonna be a party when the wolf comes home