Authorities find rocket launcher, pipe bombs during raid on Florida white supremacist gangs

quakerjoe:

Nearly 40 members of two white supremacist gangs in Florida were arrested as the result of a massive drug trafficking sting, authorities announced this week.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Florida announced Thursday that 39 members of the Unforgiven and United Aryan Brotherhood gangs were charged with various federal firearms and drug violations.

Authorities seized more than 100 illegal firearms, a rocket launcher and several pipe bombs as part of the raid, local ABC affiliate WFTS-Tampa Bay reported. Authorities also reportedly found several pounds of crystal meth and fentanyl.

Authorities find rocket launcher, pipe bombs during raid on Florida white supremacist gangs

thecringeandwincefactory:

venusmacabre:

sanguine-sangheili:

tariqah:

tariqah:

Link

“We want the museum to understand that the moai are our family, not just rocks. For us [the statue] is a brother; but for them it is a souvenir or an attraction,” said Anakena Manutomatoma, who serves on the island’s development commission. “Once eyes are added to the statues, an energy is breathed into the moai and they become the living embodiment of ancestors whose role is to protect us.”

isnt the point of a museum to preserve history though? id prefer something be in a controlled environment than outside in the elements.

The moai have been standing JUST fine in the open in the island for literal centuries. Believe it or not, the Rapa Nui are NOT stupid; they know their island, how to live in it, and what materials and treatment to those materials do or do not last in the island they’ve called their home for ages. The moai are MADE to be “outside in the elements”.

And preserved for whom? I’m sure my ancestors wouldn’t feel it’s preservation to have a LIVING piece of their culture stolen by colonizers and kept away from them all this fucking long when I assure you, no one asked for their permission to take it in the first place.

That’s not fucking “preserving”, that’s just fucking stealing.

Even with regard to objects built outside that are made of organic, friable materials – totem poles on the Northwest Coast, say – if the intent of the culture is to have those object naturally decompose, so be it. 

A lot of non-Natives are deeply uninformed about the fact that the collapse of these objects is in fact intentional and part of a cycle of rebuilding, rededicating, and redistributing cultural wealth. 

The West does not get to decide how the rest of us practice our cultures, full stop.

Sincerely, as someone who is Native, has been a museum curator devoted to Native objects, and has been an employee of a State Historic Preservation Office, few people outside of these categories are genuinely knowledgeable about this topic. But plenty of materials about it exist – read some of them.

Censorship is a tool that gives power to abusers

lines-and-edges:

meeedeee:

Thread here. 

Read 

Defending Pornography: Free Speech, Sex, and the Fight for Women’s Rights by Nadine Strossen

Excerpts:

“In the late 80s and early 90s there was a vocal group of radical feminists who believed that pornography inherently harms women, not just in its production but also in its consumption…

These anti-pornography feminists teamed up with the religious right and managed to get anti-porn laws passed. In particular, a law was passed in Canada preventing the importation of “obscene” material”..

….

Guess what was seized first? “The Joy of Gay Sex” and the like. Guess what businesses started finding all their shipments seized or delayed – sexually explicit or not – to the point where they were being put out of business? Gay bookstores.  Guess what wasn’t seized at all? Mainstream porn made for straight men…..

Here’s the key point: Strossen is a legal scholar who’s looked at a lot of attempts at censorship, and you know what she found happened every time? When you try to censor pornography, even in the interests of protecting vulnerable people, that censorship will be applied first, and hardest, against the people who are most vulnerable. They won’t come for actual abusers, they’ll come for the abused, and prevent them from accessing resources, education, talking to each other, creating art to express themselves, or organising against those who are actually causing harm. 

This is old, old business, we’ve seen it more than once before, and it never goes the way the antis think it will. Censorship is a tool that gives power to abusers and lets them inflict more harm on those who are abused, vulnerable and discriminated against. Don’t fall for it.

Water is wet, the research is done to confirm that water is wet, and some jerks out there are still going around saying that this time it’s different, our new authoritarianism is OK, don’t mind the screaming disenfranchised LGBTQ+ people!

Let’s circulate this post far and wide. People should know the consequences of what they’re doing.