Important Shit - Tumblr Posts - Page 2
I never want to hear conservatives go on about repressive censorship in China, North Korea, and Iran ever again
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:
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.
Vote for every Democrat on the ballot. We have to stop The Republicans so we will still live in a democracy.
“By the usual measures, Biden should be cruising to reëlection. Violent crime has dropped to nearly a fifty-year low, unemployment is below four per cent, and in January the S. & P. 500 and the Dow hit record highs. More Americans than ever have health insurance, and the country is producing more energy than at any previous moment in its history. His opponent, who is facing ninety-one criminal counts, has suggested that if he is elected he will fire as many as fifty thousand civil servants and replace them with loyalists, deputize the National Guard as a mass-deportation force, and root out what he calls “the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country.””
— Joe Biden’s Last Campaign
Saying "voting doesn't matter" might reach your younger peers online but it certainly hasn't reached Clangus Hargbarg who was part of the kkk in 1951 and still sends in his ballot. He hasn't missed a one.
i have to go to bed every night knowing that people i’ve blocked from my page are still able to view it, so if i blocked you and you happen upon my page again, play this video and ignore the caption at the beginning. special thanks to staff for not fixing this crap
i support a variety of kinks when they’re consensual but this is sick and disgusting and should be illegal if it isn’t already
my kink
making ppl feel good abt themselves
The greatest video I have ever found on the internet oh my god.
It’s come to our attention that there’s a message stream going round about certain girls of the school.
"Now, I don’t know about y'all, but I sure as hell didn’t come down from the goddamn Smoky Mountains, cross five thousand miles of water, fight my way through half of Sicily and jump out of a fuckin’ aer-o-plane to teach the Nazis lessons in humanity. Nazi ain’t got no humanity. They’re the foot soldiers of a Jew-hatin’, mass murderin’ maniac, and they need to be destroyed. That’s why any and every sumbitch we find wearin’ a Nazi uniform, they’re gonna die."
Batman: Post-Crisis #647
if i was the joker id just get a restraining order on batman and superman whataere they gonna do? break the law? then theyre no better than me, a cold blooded murderer. and this would 100% work, because superheroe movies have the shittiest takes on ethics since fucking kant
Anyway, daily reminder from a culturally isolated Romani person.
Gypsy does not mean wanderer.
It literally means ‘people from egypt’ or similar, as europeans believed Romani people were from Egypt. It has become known similar to nomad due to how our ancestors have been forced to be nomadic due to racism and ostracization, but it is a SLUR.
Romani people are STILL being forcibly sterilized.
Romani people are STILL being forced into ghettos.
Romani people are still facing violence and danger in countless European countries- and recently, I’ve seen the beginnings of the extremes in the United States.
Have a little fucking respect and DON’T USE A SLUR THAT’S BEEN USED FOR CENTURIES AGAINST US.
And for the love of whatever’s up there, ESPECIALLY do not use it to describe your witchcraft. It is playing on the 'magic gypsy’ trope, and is EXTREMELY insulting.
non romani people, please reblog this.
lynch mobs are making a comeback and this is why gun control as public safety measures in the US is a farce.
[link to tweet]
In a letter addressed to the district attorney’s office Thursday, attorney James Lea claimed that an armed group of people, all white, knocked on the door of the home of Monica Shepard late Sunday night. She was asleep, but her son, Dameon, a high school senior, was awake and playing video games and answered the door.
Lea said the group demanded to know information about a young missing girl. The group was apparently looking for an individual named Josiah, who lived next door to the Shepards but left that neighborhood a month earlier.
Lea said Dameon identified himself by name several times, but the group continued to press for information that he did not have.
Among the people on the Shepard’s porch demanding answers was a person carrying an assault weapon and another with a shotgun, Lea wrote in the letter.
Also part of the group was an off-duty member of the New Hanover County Sheriff’s Office. Deputy Jordan Kita, who was assigned to the detention division, was in uniform and armed, according to David.
When Dameon attempted to shut the door after telling the group who he was, Lea says the New Hanover County deputy stuck his foot in the door and demanded to come inside.
Shepard woke up during this commotion and also tried to get the group to leave her property, indicating the person they were looking for did not live there. Once again, according to Lea, the group continued to question the Shepards, demanding to come inside.
The deputy also blocked Shepard from closing her door.
Lea says at some point the group realized they were at the wrong residence and started disbanding, but by that time the Pender County Sheriff’s Office was called to the disturbance. [WECT6]
history repeats itself the problem is y’all don’t care to listen to it. stripping guns away from marginalized communities has been intentional and has directly contributed to the efficacy of and prevalence of lynch mobs and other white terrorist threats in the US throughout the “post-slavery” era.
never forget that the NRA supported the Federal Firearms Act of 1934 and the Gun Control Act of 1968. Both of these laid the groundwork for current gun control measures, but the 1968 Act specifically began the ban of specific weapons and firearm categories to disarm the Black Panthers, who would patrol local police to discourage them from brutalizing Black and other marginalized communities.
white people can storm capitols fully armed in the same weeks that Black people are brutally detained for wearing or not wearing masks during a pandemic because the history of gun use in this country has always rested on the idea that the state has a monopoly on the use of force, but any white person can act as an arm of the state should they feel like it. it’s terrorism they sell as patriotism. it’s purposeful. this shit isn’t accidental or arbitrary.
deeply glad that this family was unharmed, physically, but this cannot continue.
Our country’s national crime is lynching. It is not the creature of an hour, the sudden outburst of uncontrolled fury, or the unspeakable brutality of an insane mob. It represents the cool, calculating deliberation of intelligent people who openly avow that there is an “unwritten law” that justifies them in putting human beings to death without complaint under oath, without trial by jury, without opportunity to make defense, and without right of appeal.
But the spirit of mob procedure seemed to have fastened itself upon the lawless classes, and the grim process that at first was invoked to declare justice was made the excuse to wreak vengeance and cover crime. It next appeared in the South, where centuries of Anglo-Saxon civilization had made effective all the safeguards of court procedure.
No emergency called for lynch law.
It asserted its sway in defiance of law and in favor of anarchy. There it has flourished ever since, marking the thirty years of its existence with the inhuman butchery of more than ten thousand men, women, and children by shooting, drowning, hanging, and burning them alive. Not only this, but so potent is the force of example that the lynching mania has spread throughout the North and middle West. It is now no uncommon thing to read of lynchings north of Mason and Dixon’s line, and those most responsible for this fashion gleefully point to these instances and assert that the North is no better than the South.
This is the work of the “unwritten law” about which so much is said, and in whose behest butchery is made a pastime and national savagery condoned. The first statute of this “unwritten law” was written in the blood of thousands of brave men who thought that a government that was good enough to create a citizenship was strong enough to protect it.
Ida B. Wells, 1900
[blackpast.org]