Quick Psa!🇵🇸

“Safe zone” was always a lie. I hope this is clear to everyone. “Evacuate to the safe zone” always meant “consolidate for slaughter” and that is exactly what is happening now

Hey you know how I said I was going to make a workbook on the kind of bullshit you need to do when someone you love dies? I actually did that.

HERE IS THE VERSION WITH LOTS OF SWEARING AT THE USELESS, SHITTY SITUATION YOU’RE IN.

HERE IS THE VERSION WITH A FAIR AMOUNT OF BLACK HUMOR BUT NO CURSEWORDS.

Featuring Helpful Sections such as:

Death Certificates – What you need, why you need them, and how to get them

Prepare to spend a long and miserable time on the phone

What the Everloving Fuck is Probate

Some Simple Dos and Don’ts

Shitty Mad Libs – Templates for writing Obituaries and Memorials

How to plan a non-religious death party

So you suddenly have to become some sort of hacker or some shit

This is an eighteen page book that you can print out, download, share, and give away; it is meant to be used to collect information about funeral planning and account management after a death OR you can use it BEFORE you die and give people information so they’re not stuck playing Nancy Fucking Drew while trying to keep seventeen cousins who crawled out of the woodwork from gutting each other in front of the fucking casket as they argue about who’s inheriting grandma’s favorite dentures.

It’s not exactly cheerful and it’s full of things that are probably going to feel really fucking raw if you’re processing a fresh death.

I’m sorry! I love you! Death is shitty! I’m trying to laugh about it a little and I hope you can laugh a little too because otherwise we’re all just going to cry together.

Good luck!

(in memory of my weirdo mother and her weirdo siblings who all died too fucking young and left me holding this flaming bag of dogshit)

🍉Data sources under the cut🍉

Please consider spending time to learn more about Afro-Palestinian experiences and living under occupation while Black and Palestinian, along with Afro-Palestinian resistance efforts throughout the years. Here are some valuable articles and resources:

Articles:

In the heart of the Old City, generations of Afro-Palestinians persevere in the face of occupation by Mousa Qous

Putting the pieces together: Fragments of oral history in exile by Samah Fadil

‘Afro-Palestinians’ forge a unique identity in Israel by Isma'il Kushkush

The Africans of Jerusalem by Mousa Qous

The History Of Afro-Palestinians, Past And Present by Fayida Jailler

African-Palestinian community’s deep roots in liberation struggle by Electronic Intifada

Remembering Fatima Bernawi: Historic Palestinian fighter and liberated prisoner (1939-2022) on Samidoun

Fatima Barnawi, founder of Palestinian Women's Police and veteran prisoner, dies at 83 by Middle East Eye

On Fatima Bernawi, Women's Struggle, and Black-Palestinian Solidarity by Elom Tettey-Tamaklo

Afro Palestine: the African Diaspora in Palestine (not an article but a quick video summary of Afro-Palestinian history)

Note: highly recommend checking out Mousa Qous, the founder of the African Community Society, for his writings above all!

African Community Society of Jerusalem:

Their website— organization centered around the Afro-Palestinian community in Jerusalem.

General info about the group

ACS's instagram to learn more about Afro-Palestinian history.

Here is a write-up about the African Community Society, their impact within Palestinian society, and Afro-Palestinian history in Jerusalem specifically. Highly recommend taking the time to read this if you can.

Please take the time to watch this Documentary by Stephen Graham about former Israeli prisoner Ali Jiddah where he takes the viewer on a tour throughout Jerusalem and describes the unique struggles the Afro-Palestinian community face. He is quite a friendly guy and very funny:

Laptops are always so much more Fucked than phones in my experience. A laptop is like a beautiful horse that wants nothing more than to break all of its legs. A decently solid android phone will act normal

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:

Survival International

The Shompen face obliteration: they urgently need your support

Take action for the Shompen now! The Shompen are one of the most isolated tribes on Earth. They live on Great Nicobar island in India, and

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:

India’s plan for untouched Nicobar isles will be ‘death sentence’ for isolated tribe, 7 Feb 2024. The Guardian.

‘It will destroy them’: Indian mega-development could cause ‘genocide’ and ‘ecocide’, says charity, 8 Feb 2024. Geographical.

Genocide experts call on India's government to scrap the Great Nicobar mega-project, Feb 2024. Survival International.

The container terminal that could sink the Great Nicobar Island, 20 July 2022. Mongabay.

[Maps] Environmental path cleared for Great Nicobar mega project, 10 Oct 2022. Mongabay.

Your 20s are for lusting after furniture you can’t afford actually

" Men in Gaza do cry.

When they lose their homes that they spend their

whole lives building, they cry

When they see their dreams and hopes getting destroyed, they cry.

When they realise how scary and uncertain their future is, they cry.

And because they are human beings, full of feelings and emotions, they cry."

This is an excerpt from a 35-year-old Palestinian's account of life in Gaza under siege.

Ziad has been writing for the Guardian about the realities of the Israeli bombardment, as he, his sister and their pets, flee their home in Gaza City in the hope of survival.

You can read his diary entries in full via the link:

Israel blows up Gaza's "Palace of Justice" compound which housed the Palestinian Supreme Court, the Court of Appeal, the Court of First Instance & the Magistrate. 100,000s of vital case documents are gone. Deliberately targeting civilian infrastructure is a War Crime!

Israel's soldiers took victory images inside the Palestinian Supreme Court before blowing it up into pieces. This proves the facility constituted ZERO danger to the Israeli military & no militants were hiding inside it at the time it was destroyed. Again, a war crime!

Middle East Monitor

Israel army blows up main courthouse in Gaza Strip

The Israeli army, on Monday, blew up the main courthouse in the Gaza Strip, known as Palace of Justice, located in south Gaza City, Anadolu