At least, Be human

http://www.nola.com/politics/index.ssf/2017/05/what_state_prisoners_get_to_wo.html

you've seen the jokes. india is "dirty", indians are "everywhere", why don't they fix their own country. ok. let me tell you why, and what's happening right now while nobody's watching.

first, the history you skipped: britain ruled india for two centuries and drained it. economist utsa patnaik's research estimates around $45 trillion in today's money was taken. the india that got independence in 1947 was one of the poorest countries on earth. every "why is india like this" question starts there. you don't get to profit off a robbery and then mock the crime scene.

now, what's happening RIGHT NOW:

in may the question paper for NEET leaked. that's the national medical entrance exam. over 2.2 million students took it. cancelled. years of studying, families' savings poured into coaching, gone overnight because someone sold the paper. students died by suicide after. these were kids who wanted to be doctors.

and out of that came a protest movement. a gen z group called the cockroach janta party, started by a 30 year old named abhijeet dipke, got 22 million instagram followers within DAYS. they've been doing a sit-in at jantar mantar in delhi demanding education minister dharmendra pradhan resign.

and then there's sonam wangchuk. if you've watched 3 idiots, he's the real engineer the character was based on. built solar schools in ladakh. invented ice stupas so himalayan villages have water. spent his whole life on education. he's 59 and he's been on hunger strike for 17+ days now. reporters went to see him this week and he was too weak to talk. and the troll armies are calling him "anti national" and "foreign funded". a man starving himself for other people's children. that's the thing here, anyone who asks a question is suddenly a traitor.

it's not one incident, it's everywhere you look:

• infrastructure worth thousands of crores failing within months of the ribbon cutting. tunnels collapsing in regions where heavy rain is a guarantee, not a surprise.

• youth unemployment near 10% for ages 15 to 29, 13.6% in cities. in a country of 1.42 billion where more than half the population is young.

• only about the top 3% of indians earn above 10 lakh a year. meanwhile billionaire wealth keeps ballooning and the headlines celebrate it.

• manipur burned for over two years. an ethnic conflict, tens of thousands displaced, and the prime minister barely said the word manipur while it happened.

• journalists raided. critics' houses bulldozed. activists sitting in jail for years without trial under laws like UAPA. our press freedom ranking has cratered.

• even the petrol is a fight now, ethanol blending pushed through while drivers complain about their engines and get no straight answers.

and through all of it, the PM, who came to power on religious polarisation (americans, sound familiar?), travels abroad for photo ops and has not held one single open press conference in over a decade. not one.

what i'm asking:

if you're not indian: share this. our media mostly won't cover any of it because the big outlets are owned by the same billionaires the government serves. the only reason wangchuk's fast is getting any coverage is people refusing to look away.

if you ARE indian: speak up even if you're comfortable. especially if you're comfortable. join the protests. add to this, correct me, translate it. staying quiet is a choice when nothing in this post touches your life.

india is not "dirty". india was robbed, and it's being robbed again, from the inside this time. but it's also the country where a 59 year old will starve for strangers' kids and 22 million young people will rally behind a party literally named after cockroaches, because cockroaches survive everything.

we can still save her. but only loudly.

Supporters of India's youth-led Cockroach movement said Tuesday they will continue their protest in New Delhi, refusing to leave their sit-in site a day after police used tear gas and batons to disperse thousands of them as they tried to march toward Parliament. Hundreds of protesters camped at Jantar Mantar, a designated protest site, under heavy police presence, saying they would stay until Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan resigns over alleged failures in India's examination system. "We are going to continue our protest," said Abhijeet Dipke, founder of the Cockroach Janta Party, which emerged just two months ago. The movement, drawing students, professionals and families, marks a rare public challenge to Prime Minister Narendra Modi 's government in its third term, reviving criticism over its handling of dissent and its use of force to respond to protests. [...] Sona Bisht, a 20-year-old student who was part of the protest, said the confrontation strengthened her resolve. "If the government thinks that doing this with Gen Z, they can stop us, then that won't happen. We are here talking about education, talking about securing our future. And till the time our demands are not met, we will not move from here," she said.

"Definitions developed thus far about youth, like the Gen Z narrative, have largely been linked to roles attributed by the dominant system. The rulers have invented a whole range of terms — rebellious, irresponsible, apolitical, extremist, consumerist — not to understand youth, but to neutralize it. They know as well as we do that whoever wins over the youth wins over society. [...] Thus the question is not whether youth is powerful, but in whose interest this power is directed. Today’s uprisings — such as those in Nepal, Bangladesh, Madagascar, Indonesia, Kenya, Morocco, and beyond — demonstrate that youth continues to emerge as a decisive actor. Young women like Deniz Ciya have proven this with their lives. These uprisings are not expressions of generational temperament. These „Gen Z uprisings“ are expressions of a social force confronting structural crisis inherent in the current system. [...] Recent youth uprisings — whether in the form of environmental justice protests, labor movements, or uprisings against authoritarian governments — are proof that youth worldwide are not only responding to a set of circumstances; they are consciously and collectively rejecting the narratives that seek to define them. Thus, it is crucial to analyze what transpired, and draw lessons from these uprisings, particularly in the context of building a global youth democratic confederalism. For the power of youth movements is interconnected, despite being geographically distant." — "Beyond "Gen Z": Defending Revolutionary Youth Spirit" by Lêgerîn

Source 1

Zatanna finished (finished really means when my finger cramps too bad and I'm too tired)

All we hope for is a tent designed to withstand the summer heat—a shelter with proper insulation and the basic necessities that would allow our family to live with dignity and safety.

We need $1,200 to build and equip a tent that can protect us from the extreme temperatures. While this amount may seem small, it would make a life-changing difference for a family trying to survive in these harsh conditions.

Every donation, no matter how small, brings us one step closer to replacing this unbearable heat with safety, comfort, and hope. Your kindness can help transform our tent from an oven into a true shelter where our children can finally breathe, rest, and feel protected.

✅Vetted by @gazavetters, my number verified on the list is (#514)✅

I’m vetted by gaza-evacuation-fund

click here

Hello my friends, I will always be grateful for your support, but Tumblr deleted my main account and I honestly do not know why.The truth is that I have no source of income and no stable way to survive. I urgently need your help.

Everything here has become extremely expensive, and the war has never truly stopped. Every moment, every day, and every night, there are more martyrs and more rising prices.

I truly need your support. Even if you cannot donate, please at least share and support my campaign. And if you are able to help, even a small donation like $15 can make a difference for me.

So any donation or contribution you make will help me buy basic living necessities and at least provide simple crochet supplies so I can continue making and selling my work to earn some money.I am only trying to provide food, water, and the most basic crochet tools — just the essential things.

Please try to support me.

And these are some of the crochet pieces I have made recently.

Please donate & share 🤍

I reverse image searched the selfie, which brought me to this twitter of an Iranian woman, abandoned in 2020. This twitter marks this woman's location in Tehran, Iran. I then zoomed in on the photos with the business card. The only thing I could accurately make out without question was the phone number, which doesn't have a country code, so I just for shits and giggles looked it up with Iran's code. That showed me that this phone number is registered to someone in Tehran, Iran. Most likely, the woman whose image was stolen.

Aya's photo was stolen from an account belonging to this Twitter account which is verifiably located in Iran.

Aya's phone number is registered under a Tehran, Iran area code.

Aya's business cards have Persian on them instead of Arabic.

Let's start with the first claim then.

This is the account linked:

Do note that that individual hasn't posted any photos of their own, besides their profile picture. How would Aya have sourced her photos from this woman who has never posted on X?

Her profile picture does not resemble Aya's photos either. Here's a side by side. You cannot even claim these are the same woman, and if you struggle with face blindness, please note the different mole patterns on the women's faces, their eyebrows and eyeshapes are different, etc...

Left is random Iranian woman, right is Aya, a photo taken and posted by her.

Aya's photos have been consistent as well. This is her with her family in front of the rubble of their home in Ghazzah. And she is identifiably the same woman. It's the first photo in her Chuffed fundraiser for her family. This is clearly not Tehran now is it?

2. The phone number on the business card being a Tehran area code number is a baffling statement to make considering it's verifiably a Palestinian-registered mobile phone number beginning in 56. There's also likely an international number that comes before it that's omitted from the business card (either 972 or 970 which are the 'area codes' although that's not the name), one that is not necessary to list for people who are also Palestinian as they would know it and know what to dial (likely 970 since she writes it as 056) before beginning the phone number that starts with 56, a Palestinian mobile phone registration number that matches up with Aya's phone number beginning in 056 followed by 7 digits, the standard for Palestinian mobile phones.

This phone number of hers is in line with Palestinian mobile phone numbers. There are no Iranian mobile phone service providers who use this same phone number structure.

What this means is that individual was lying about finding the phone number in Iran. It's not like they provided proof anyway!

3. And onto their final point, well most of the card is illegible because the font is too thin to distinguish from this distance / blurriness (refer to the previous business card photo), but the bottom line literally says "Alaa's crochets" in Arabic. It's not Persian. It's Arabic. How did this person decide the illegibly blurry writing that even I and others can't read as native Arabic speakers is actually 'Persian'? (You know, it's actually called Farsi :) )

So if they're wrong about all of this, why are they so confident in their claims?

This person isn't confident in their claims, and is not trying to help anyone.

They lied about reading Farsi or Arabic, they lied about the phone lookup, they lied about the reverse Google image lookup. And look at that! We just verified their claims ourselves above ^^^

The reality is they're just hellbent on trying to prove that verified fundraisers who belong to Ghazzawi individuals and their families, their fucking lifelines, are actually scams, so they can ignore them and not have to think about the suffering of brown people on this planet because it makes them uncomfortable. And Westerners would rather kill brown people by attempting to cut off their lifelines in a genocide than even think about helping them.

Please try to support and help us.

Please try to share our story and speak about our suffering. 🥹💔

Over the past few days, I asked for your help to cover Eid expenses and to buy medication for my parents. Yesterday, we experienced a very nearby airstrike that caused significant damage, including damage to our tent.

We are living with fear every moment. Every minute feels uncertain, and the war has never truly ended. The situation continues to worsen, and I could lose my life at any moment.Please do not forget my family and loved ones. Any support you can provide, even to help us repair the damage, would mean so much to us. We urgently need your help.These are some photos showing the damage and the area that was bombed. Please support and help us in any way you can. We need everything.😭💔

You can watch a wider video of the area through this link.Click here