Wednesday, December 31, 2008

Happy New Years

2008 hasn't been that great and I doubt 2009 will be much of a change.

An Austalian woman has been constantly attacked and harassed for the past 18 months. Her, her 13 year old daughter, and a friend have been moving around constantly after "Alice" (not her real name) was first attacked.

...when she was walking along the esplanade at Golden Beach with her daughter last week she was verbally abused by a young man aged 18-21 who yelled abuse such as, “You fucking AIDS-carrying tranny fag”.

Alice said when she held her phone up to record the abuse the young man proceeded to attack her.

“I ran across the road leaving my daughter unprotected, he chased me into a playground threatening to get me,” she said.

“I screamed to units above to call the police, I screamed at the families in the park to help me. Several men who are strangers to me came to my assistance, they tried to hold the offender back.

“Then a car pulled up and two blokes jumped out of the car, one with a metal baseball bat who then started to chase me. A family in a four-wheel-drive let me in and drove me to the police station.”

Helen has the full article up.

Eclexia has up an update about the trans* woman shot in the face (she's still in critical condition). And a new murder.

It looks like Angie may get justice; the prosecution plans to add habitual criminal charges (which would multiply the sentences of other charges by 4) if he is not convicted of 1st degree murder.

As I said in my last post, Gaza is covered in blood (and Israel says this is just the beginning).

This summer, my grandpa was diagnosed with lung cancer. He went on chemo (I stayed with him and my grandma a lot because the chemo was really hard on him), the chemo did nothing but make him feel worse and weaken him. A week before he was diagnosed, he was at his "farm" (an old farm he bought a long time ago that is now a lake and a lot of forest and swamp) chopping wood; he can barely walk now.
He'll be going into hospice now.
He taught me how to fish, how to make maple syrup, how to drive (automatic and stick)... We made applesauce and apple pies during Autumn (as a kid, I'd get in the bucket of his tractor and he'd raise me up with some buckets and I'd pick apples off the top of the big apple tree). Until a few years ago, he and my grandma would drive down to Arizona to go rock-hounding and camping with their relatives there. When I was a kid, we'd sometimes go with them--one winter, we visited Mexico and it snowed.
I am not close to any of my relatives. I left for all of last year and never called--and I didn't care.
But I've always liked my grandpa; I think its impossible not to like him.
He served in WW2, was a police officer and a detective, drove a bus... He visited nearly every state over the years; usually to search for rocks. He's got everything from Herkimer diamonds to Mozarkite, to Star Garnets. He learned how to cut and polish these stones; my family all have jewelry he had made out of his stones. When I learned how to make wire-wrapped jewelry, he gave me my first stones (the very first was rainbow obsidian).

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Tuesday, December 30, 2008

Gaza


I'll admit I don't know a whole lot about the history between Israel and Palestine.
But fucking hell, airstrikes against a mostly unarmed populace that can't get out or get food/supplies?
(btw, Galling Galla, I miss you! <3) some of those comments are just so bigoted/racist...and just failures)
Also, little light has an incredibly moving post up.
Here is a bit of it:

...
I just want to say, to all the people demonizing Palestinians right now, saying that this was all a sinister plan to get a bunch of their children killed to make Israel look bad, that this would all just stop if they'd put down the rocks and handmade mortars and listen to reason, they're all terrorists anyhow, they'll push every Jew into the sea--how? How? What is all this "self-defense" defending against?

How could they manage? Gazans live in an open-air prison. They are literally walled-in to one of the most densely populated places in the world. Walled in. No food coming in, no medicine, no fuel, unless they break an unjust law. No leaving, not without humiliation, harassment, assault, and death. There is nobody in there who hasn't lost someone. How many of those women have not been raped? How many of those children have parents? How many Gazans had a meal this week?
They are mostly fighting with old rifles, handmade short-range explosives, rocks and slings, against one of the best-equipped militaries in the world. Don't put that fact aside. Are people in Gaza committing acts of violence that have killed innocent people? Yes. They're hurling a handful of rickety rockets over the wall. In response, they're up against fighter jets, tanks, a navy, and a well-outfitted corps of the best-trained soldiers in the world, well-fed and sharp and with access to nuclear weapons. And this military they're fighting already has them walled in and starving, their neighborhoods smoking rubble, too many of them missing limbs. Tell me this is just an eye for an eye, what a shame. It's not an eye for an eye. It's a fingernail for a torso, at best. Tell me which Gazans have fighter jets. Tell me who in Hamas, even, has a nuclear-capable military unit that could wipe out their enemy at the press of a button. Show me one Palestinian tank.

Knock it off, you kids. Just put down the weapons, no, I don't care who started it. Ahmad, put down your slingshot. Avi, put down your F-15. You're both equally responsible here.

What the hell is this? How are we saying these things? An eye for an eye?
...

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