Learning this was an intentional genocide changed me.
I know most of those following me know this, but just to make it super clear. An Gorta Mór (The Great Hunger/the Great Famine) was a deliberate genocide of the Irish people. There was enough food grown in Ireland to make sure everyone was alive and healthy and survived. Instead it was exported, sent to England and elsewhere for profit while men, women, and children starved in the streets. While the English landlords fucked off and evicted starving families who couldn’t afford rent. While babies were too weak to cry and died at the side of the road.
They tried to kill us, but they did not succeed. And we owe so much thanks to the other oppressed peoples, in particular the Choctaw Nation and the Masai, who sent money and grain to us.
Let me repeat that. The Choctaw Nation who had just gone through the Trail of Tears sent us money to try save Irish lives. It’s led to an understanding between Irish people and Native American tribes, most recently when we donated to the Navajo and Hopi fundraisers for COVID-19 relief, because while it may be a different tribe, Irish people will never forget those who helped us and we’ll help back.
The entire population of the island is less than seven million people. We’re still a million less on this island than pre famine. And it’s not that long ago. My grandmother’s grandparents lived through it. We’ve told the stories, it literally changed the DNA of the country. We have a national fear of renting, because so many people were evicted. People joke about Irish people always offering loads of food, but it’s because there’s that cultural memory of not being able to.
They tried to kill us, but they did not succeed. We will not let them take our lives, we will not let them take our language. We lost so much, but we will not lose it all.
This is why I get so angry when people say “it was the potato famine, it was because of monoculture/microbes.”
Nope. The potatoes were the only thing Irish people were allowed to fucking eat, because as pointed out, the rest of the crops they were growing were for their landlords to ship to England. So when the one “worthless” crop they were allowed to eat rotted in the field, the English crown, empire, landlords, all shrugged and carried on. People starved to death lying next to productive fields.
If you haven't seen it yet, Amazon is stopping returns of ebooks that are more than 10% read thanks to the pushback. (Statement about it is linked on the Society of Authors twitter) Thanks for being willing to discuss money in the book industry and the ways Amazon finds to screw over authors.
I just saw it via the Author’s Guild! This is such good news!
Link for anyone who wants it:
ALT
🎉🎉🎉🎉
Republicans will be all like "save the children" but then turn a blind eye to the horrific abuse of children in ICE custody and throw their own LGBT children to the wolves by kicking them out to the Streets. 🐸☕
(content warning for discussion of child sexual abuse)
If right-wingers were actually concerned about saving children from sexual abuse, they’d be focusing their efforts on where most children are being sexually abused. The trouble for them is that the same institutions they actively participate in and/or support (e.g. their fellow right-wing extremists, the Southern Baptist Convention, CPB/ICE, the Catholic Church, Donald Trump, etc.) are regularly accused of the worst examples of systematic child sexual abuse, with the accusations coming from actual people making credible allegations, usually backed by substantive evidence. There are media reports from well-respected outlets; publicly-accessible court documents and hearing transcripts; and public statement made by some of the victims that anyone could find to verify the claims with just a little effort.
But right-wingers don’t actually care about child sexual abuse. They don’t raise money for counselling and therapy for survivors of child sexual abuse (and as politicians they often block access or prevent funding for therapy for survivors). They don’t support NGOs that do credible work fighting human trafficking. They actively work against providing the kinds of supports that are the most effective at preventing children from being sexually exploited to begin with.
What they do instead is use terms like “groomers” and “paedophiles” to tar-and-feather any outgroup they want to portray as “the baddies” in an effort to rally their troops to attack a scapegoat - both to distract people from the actual problem and what could be done about it and to build their followings and encourage violence against those outgroups. Currently it’s trans people that are being subjected to this abuse; previously it was Muslims, then LGBTQ+ people before them, and so on.
We’re not saying that child sexual abuse is not horrific and that the problem does not have to be addressed, obviously. But the way the right accuses any group they’re currently scapegoating as “groomers” allows the institutions the right supports that are currently and have historically engaged in the systemic sexual abuse of children to get away with it and even continue the abuse and shelter abusers without accountability. It also does real harm to legitimate organizations doing legitimate work combatting child sex trafficking because it takes resources away from them and diminishes the credibility of the movement as a whole. It’s a cynical weaponization of child sexual abuse to gain political points against the perceived “enemy du jour” for the far right.
It is especially ironic that people holding this viewpoint would then use it to justify ostracizing and rendering their own LGBTQ+ children homeless, since doing so makes their own children extremely vulnerable to sexual exploitation and abuse.
That’s a long way to say that the right-wingers are disgusting hypocrites, but there you go!
“In the mammoth royal love in we are enduring, we are told about the Queen’s cordial relationship with numerous PMs. But not Gough Whitlam. That would upset our colonial mind set. We try and shut out the Queen’s implausible and misleading denial on the Whitlam sacking.
It beggars belief that the Queen did not know that John Kerr was planning to sack Gough Whitlam. She may not have known the detail of the coup in progress, but she knew the substance and so did her family and particularly Prince Charles. But like Lord Nelson she pretends she did not see anything. Nonsense. She is trying to mislead us. That is not surprising for the Queen of Australia who lives in London.
Upper classes do stick together and will break rules and conventions when it suits.
Prince Charles, now King Charles 111 and King of Australia wrote to Kerr after the dismissal, ‘what you did last year was right and the courageous thing to do’
There are many reasons to reject the Queen’s cover-up and the cover-up done on her behalf. Importantly the Queen is formally responsible for what her staff do in her name. Her Private Secretary, Martin Charteris was her alter ego. We also know that the Queen was extraordinarily close to Charteris. …” continue
Why has there been so little said about this since the queen’s death? Or in general?
I’m not sure whether I’d just forgotten or never knew about this.
Gough Whitlam was apparently the first PM (1972-1975) to actually start restoring land rights to indigenous “Australians” after decades of false promises by his predecessors.
He came to power in 1972, ending decades of Conservative rule, and proceeded to abolish the death penalty and university fees, establish legal aid, and finally bring to an end the racist White Australia policy which had virtually banned non-white immigrants. And so much more.
After less than 3 years, Whitlam was sacked by the queen through the Governor-General John Kerr, in what seems often to be referred to as a coup. It is also widely suspected that the CIA was involved in these events, as they were closely tied to Kerr and others in the political right.
This blog is mostly so I can vent my feelings and share my interests. Other than that, I am nothing special.
If you don't like Left Wing political thought and philosophy, all things related to horror, the supernatural, the grotesque, guns or the strange, then get the fuck out. I just warned you.
ALT
Anonymous
