Darkora - Nik's Blog

Vote Harris.

You have no excuse to be silent about the genocide in Palestine.

If you can’t reblog the posts about dead Palestinians, at least reblog posts about the history of Palestine.

At least reblog posts showing art made by Palestinians.

At least reblog posts that show fundraisers for Palestinians, e-sims that you can donate, and the arab.org website that helps you donate to Palestine flr free.

At least reblog posts showing Zionist companies that we need to boycott.

That is the absolute least that we can do for Palestine.

The Palestinians are begging for us to use our voice. Some of them don’t even have access to internet, so their suffering goes unnoticed.

Please. Speak up for Palestine.

Mourn the dead, fight like hell for the living.

Free Palestine.

GNU Sir Terry Pratchett

28 April 1948 - 12 March 2015

G: Send the message on to the next Clacks Tower.

N: Do not log the message.

U: At the end of the line, return the message.

“A man’s not dead while his name is still spoken.” ~ Going Postal

Day Twelve - Relationships with My Parents

"Bloody parents - they're worse than children" ~Me

My relationship with my parents hasn't always been perfect, like all children I started off seeing them as opponents - everything was a struggle, everything was a contest, but thankfully as I grew up I began to realise that they were actually there to help and that between us we could get far more done by pulling in the same direction than in opposites and I can safely say now that while we don't always see eye to eye, we're always there for each other.

My parents have always been fantastically supportive of everything I've tried to do and always been there with advice and gentle guidance to help me find the right path.

"Just because you know how it's done, doesn't make it any less magical"

I've always been somewhat in awe of my dad; his musical talent (and his humility when anyone comments on it) and his ability to do DIY tasks that almost seemed mystical to me, when I was growing up he always had a little story or a joke for every situation and it was always him that made me feel better when I'd fallen over, he's also always protected me as best he can (an example that springs to mind is him making a particularly draconian English teacher of mine actually cry infront of me) I think it's because of this that I've always strived to make him proud of me (though I have occasionally missed the mark considerably).

"Any mother could perform the jobs of several air traffic controllers with ease." ~ Lisa Alther

My mother has always been the organiser from my experience; while she insists that she doesn't hold the power in our household, in truth she does (our house operates on a fully democratic system: myself and my father get one vote each, my mother gets four votes) Again really, I've been in awe of my mother for a long time, she works very hard for our family, keeping up fairly long hours in a job that was the only thing that kept us afloat for the last few years, in that time she's had to cope with a lot of stress and while I would hope that we've helped her through that as best as we can, she's mostly coped by herself and for this reason it is my firm belief that my mum is truly the strongest person I know.

If either of you are reading this (which I don't doubt will happen) I love you both so very much and am truly grateful for everything you've done for me over the last 22 years.

Nik.

Two of my main mtg decks need tokens, so I figured rather than shelling out on some, I'd make my own

If you want to use them for your own decks, feel free

Alternately if you want me to make any more in this style, inbox me and I'll see what I can do

Your annual reminder to not donate to Salvation Army!

People seem to think this is fake because it's written in English. Apart from the racism in believing that Arab doctors and nurses aren't fluent in English (a second or official language for half of Asia), Palestinians have deliberately been addressing their audience in English on every social media, from journalists to children, because they know speaking English to Westerners immediately makes people more human in their eyes. Because language is one of the ways the imperial cultural hegemony conditions us (yes, everyone in the world) to see who qualifies as "people" and who are simply a mass of bodies who were always made to suffer and die. Gazans know this deeply, which is why they have been using English to beg and plead through social media, "We're not numbers! We're not numbers! We're people like you, we speak your language, we deserve to live!" all the while they're systematically slaughtered.

Israeli forces also encircled Al Shifa Hospital yesterday and bombed it for several hours while shooting dead anyone trying to flee including medical staff moving between buildings. Not sure whether it's still continuing because WHO lost all communications with its staff there a few hours after. The last new report said that thirty-nine babies had been removed from the incubators before the power went out. It's extremely unlikely they will survive.

Please understand that these atrocities depend on the war of attrition between governments and public attention. The momentum of public outcry is difficult to sustain through repeated stonewalling and bureaucratic intractability. When we're flooded with these reports and a sense of futility and despair replaces the anger, it allows compassion fatigue to set in and the violence to become normalized. Massacring hospitals, killing sick children and openly targeting humanitarian aid workers (Netanyahu just declared the UNRWA is in league with Hamas) will become simply more news articles that fade into the background, and open genocides will soon become part of the "lesser evil".

Take care of yourselves how you can, take distance where needed, but please never tune out and give up on the two million people for whom we are the only witness and hope. Never stop boosting and sharing the news and posts you find, never stop getting out there and joining every protest you can, however small. Anger burns out, which is why activism must depend on an immovable sense of justice and uncompromising value for human life. It's not just about Gaza, it's about the kind of evil our generation will be coerced into accepting as unchangeable and inevitable hereafter.

To my uk trans people and allies out there.