I Lost My Ball Of Wool I Was Playing With 😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭😭

27 YEARS

and that's just the children

take a second to take it in..

and we didn't get a cease fire.

Reblog if you support people of all genders and sexualities 🌈🏳️‍🌈❤️💛💚💙💜🏳️‍🌈🌈

UNRWA, ANERA and WCK have all been forced to pause or halt their humanitarian operations in Gaza because Israel has deliberately targeted any means of lifesaving aid to a starved, maimed, and tortured population of over 2 million Palestinians, almost half of which are children.

This has been broadcasted by Israel so that it sets the precedent of what is deemed permissible in the face of "international law". I said it before, it does not get any more obviously genocidal than this.

@/upstreampodcast

The state of affairs in Palestine, 10/23/23

Conditions on the ground in Gaza continue to deteriorate. Gaza has no fuel, electricity, or clean water, and it remains under constant bombardment.

Humanitarian aid is beginning to make its way through the Rafah border crossing (Gaza's border with Egypt) but the current quantity is completely insufficient. There have been two convoys. The first convoy of 20 trucks contained enough water for 22,000 people, or ~1% of Gaza's population, for a single day. It's unclear what was in the second convoy, but it only had 17 trucks.

Israel continues to gear up for a ground invasion of Gaza. It's unclear what exactly they will do or what the end result will be, to the point that the US is calling on Israel to publicize its goals.

In the meantime, Israel has aggressively increased its air bombardment of Gaza. [CW for the header image on the red link: wounded young girl] This, along with the lack of fuel and supplies, is causing the complete collapse of the Gaza hospital system.

There is a very real risk of further escalation of the war. Israel has repeatedly raided and airstriked the West Bank and targets in Syria, continuously exchanged volleys with Hezbollah on the Israeli border with Lebanon, and hit the Egyptian border (allegedly by accident).

Protests around the world are rallying to bring attention and support to the Palestinian cause.

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.

reminder that bisan is only 25. reminder that motaz is only 24. it may seem like months of siege have aged them beyond their years, but at the end of the day they’re both in their early 20s—and yet they’ve both witnessed enough death and destruction to last them a lifetime. they deserve to see and live through a free palestine. all of palestine deserves to see and live through a free palestine. keep calling your reps and pressuring for a ceasefire.

Reblog for a larger sample size!

No "show results", if you're not a fanfic writer just be patient.

I saw a post about an anon saying it was embarrasing to have an ao3 account in your 30s (it's absolutely not), so I want to do a poll and see what the age range actually is.

mbav as vines