Before:

After:

The Directions Tree was something that was also called a Spirit Tree, a tree of huge spiritual and cultural importance to Australian Indigenous people. When a child is born, the afterbirth/placenta is taken by the child's parents and mixed with earth and a single seed, which is then planted. The tree and the child grow up alongside each other, and the two of them are spiritually connected. Its a place where the individual can go and reconnect with themselves and the land; a place they can go to seek direction and guidance throughout their life.

After the child has grown up and grown old and eventually passed away, their tree becomes a place that their family and friends can go to connect with that person's spirit - where later generations can go to remember and connect with their ancestor. Its a place of enormous spiritual significance to the Djapwarrung people.

The Directions Tree pictured above was one of the last - if not the last - remaining Directions Trees in Victoria. All others have been destroyed. She was somewhere between 300 to 350 years old.

She was destroyed on 26 October 2020 -- against staunch opposition from the Djapwarrung community, who were not consulted at any stage in the planning process and who's concerns and objections were ignored for over three years.

There were protectors onsite on the day of the destruction, and they were violently removed. Their campsite -- which was an officially registered Embassy, and which has been their home for nearly three years -- was blockaded off and destroyed, and they were not allowed to go in and get their belongings, or their wallets and ID, and any of their other important items.

Children were violently separated from parents -- parents who tried to get through the police line to get to their crying children were told "you can get them later." One protector's arm was dislocated by police. One young man was grabbed by the hair and dragged away, even though he was not resisting arrest in any way.

It's now been nearly a week since the Directions Tree's destruction. Police and hired Security Guards are still blocading access to the campsites and the Embassy, despite the fact that we've managed to get an injunction preventing any more destruction from happening between now and November 19. The trunk and branches of the Directions Tree have been taken away by VicRoads and we dont know where she is.

Here's an article about the destruction of the Tree and the arrest of the protectors. Note: Eastern Maar Coorporation are the Registered Aboriginal Coorpoation who greenlit this destruction and who were bought off long ago, and nothing they say should be given any weight.

There are still multiple trees that need protection. Grandfather Trees, Birthing/Grandmother Trees, scar trees, and a host of other culturally important trees and landscape that we are trying to save.

Please donate to help support protectors.

Funds will be used for food/water/shelterfor protectors, and to pay for fines issued to people who were arrested/charged for trying to protect the area, and pay for other requirements that mean that these peopls can keep protecting the sacred land and trees.

Please raise awareness of this issue -- spread this post, talk about it on other platforms, etc.

Heres a link to an email form that will email various MPs and ask them to protect what's left. Please remember to change the subject line -- often, politician offices will set up rules to direct mass emails straight to the trash, but changing the subject line and/or body of the email will circumvent this. Feel free to delete the pre-filled message body and replace it with your own message instead, if you like.

Here are two petitions to protect the trees.

Genocide is still happening to Australia's indigenous people, and its happening today. The destruction of the Directions Tree was a deliberate, targetted attack. They hoped to break us and defeat us with this destruction. They hoped that by destroying her, we would give up and let them destroy the rest of the area.

But she was a Spirit Tree, and her spirit has gone into all of us who've spent the last several years trying to protect her. We are not done fighting. We've got more to protect, and we will not yield.

The 700-900 year old Grandfather trees still need us, the Birthing Trees who have sheltered 50 generations of Djapwarrung babies still need us. They murdered the Directions Tree, but that's just fired us up even more.

Stand with the Djabwarrung, and help us save these remaining sacred trees.

(i.e. perfectly legal slavery)

New Orleans is one of the hardest hit cities in the United States, but I haven’t seen that point get much national mainstream media coverage. Furthermore, the racial disparities in access to medical care and healthcare outcomes in general in Louisiana are staggering, and this crisis has made that clearer than ever. This is truly atrocious

link to their gofundme

Botanical Sexism Cultivates Home-Grown Allergies 

and the kicker:

I learned about this when my Chinese supervisor at work (who lived in and went to school in Sweden) mentioned offhand that Sweden covered up its cooperation with the Nazis and how this was well known even back then when she was in school.

what the article doesn’t mention but adam tooze does mention is that swedish iron ore imports were the primary factor allowing nazi germany to build up its forces against the red army and then sustain that war effort through 1943. difficulties in lorraine and the ukraine left germany with a huge shortage of high-quality iron ore, which was desperately needed for the entire war effort - tanks, shells, guns, ships, railways, and basically everything else required massive quantities of steel, which in turn required massive quantities of swedish ore. without that ore, operation barbarossa might have been stopped at smolensk, and case blau would have been a fantasy. on top of all that, the swedes were paid very well, and their postwar industrial success owes a lot to that money.

in other words, the swedes helped the nazis far more than any of their actual allies, to the point that the war would have been impossible without them, and no-one was ever punished.

That and so so much more. The Swedish government put swedish communists and other dissidents in work camps, it was always clear which side of the war Sweden was on, we just didn’t want to actually fight ourselves. And Raoul Wallenberg that is mentioned in the article, the “white buses” that saved so many jews in many places chose to first save people of the “nordic races” and in many places even opted to save nazis from the soviets instead of actual holocaust survivors. One of the biggest nazi parties in Sweden after the war was founded and led by two actual nazis from Germany, one of whom is still alive and an active nazi today. We even have at least 15 people that gets “german war pension” from fighting in the war on the nazi side living in Sweden today.

the Swedish aristocracy was heavy on the Hitler train to the point that many families changed their family name after the war to hide from the fact that they had put their names very prominently out for fascism.

The RNC sent me a notice of official census material that was actually a fundraiser for the republican candidates running in the midterms. The paperwork was presented as being an official document required to be filled out by law, but it was patently false. This is corruption. This is meant to deceive people into giving data and money to a political party under the guise of nonpartisan census data. This undermines trust in the census, local government, and the democratic process. This is beyond disgusting, and I’m mailing back the form to tell the RNC how I really feel about their bullshit.

Underlined PSA

Figment, the recently closed writing website, has just launched (after a long delay) their long-awaited successor to figment known as Underlined, where users can post their work and receive feedback, supposedly.

DO NOT USE UNDERLINED. DO NOT POST YOUR WORK ON UNDERLINED.

Underlined’s terms and conditions contains a clause stating that the rights to all your work that you post on their website belongs to them!!!!

Underlined belongs to Penguin Random House. This is an extremely dirty trick for them to play on writers, especially young writers and children, who come to the internet to get feedback and will lose the rights to their work. Please boost!!!

For my writing friends looking for an online writing community, DO NOT USE Underlined. 

I went to confirm @greater-than-the-sword‘s post, because seriously publishers are still pulling this garbage?  And yes, they are.  If you want to check out the full terms and conditions, have at it.  They are full of writers’ nightmares, a few of which I’ll highlight under the cut.

Keep reading

What the actual FUCK

Nazi symbols cover NYC subway train

Manhattan’s S train has been turned into the SS train, and many straphangers are pissed. Train seats on one side of the subway car feature the stylized fascist version of the Reichsadler (Imperial Eagle) with the swastika replaced by an Iron Cross. On the other side, the Rising Sun Flag, often associated with Japanese WWII forces. It’s all for a TV show.

this is nasty and disrespectful

WHAT IN THE HELL?

nah dudes it’s fine it’s not like NYC has a huge population of people who were terrorized by the nazis or anything

Well this just reached a new level of fucking awful and insensitive

please don’t say that 

Women love it when you explain things to them

disgusting

yeah don’t give to homeless people, they might spend it on booze. Give to charities, who might spend it funding the international arms trade

FUUUUUCK THIS AAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

someone please destroy england

(via charlesneedsfeminism)

"but men get raped too-"

AND LOOK HOW YOU HANDLED THAT

(via booooost)