One of mine is also lupus. Thankfully it has mostly spared internal organs but it really likes skin and veins in addition to joints in my case, veins being the biggest problem. I also have EDS so the genetic lottery really didn’t like me. I joke with my friends that someone should tell my body that diseases are not Pokemons.
I call mine overeager and incompetent. It likes to attack everything but what it is supposed to attack. The running tally of autoimmune diseases is currently at 4. It is bad enough that I am eating medication that is used also in higher doses for chemotherapy. In other words, if I trusted my immune system I would have died long ago as it also doesn’t really function against infections either.
Just be warned Moomins are a gateway to communism (Weird internet theory). Or at least to more Moomins. We literally have Moomin everything here.
My personal favourites from Finnish.
“Ei ole kaikki muumit Muumilaaksossa” “Not having all the Moomins in Moomin Valley” Used for people who are either stupid or lack sanity. There are other variants of this and Moomin one is not older than a couple of decades.
I find our version of Grammar Nazi pretty great. We call them comma fuckers.
“Ei voi kauhalla ottaa jos on lusikalla annettu” “You can’t take with a ladle if it was given with a spoon”. This refers also to a lack of something, usually a lack of intelligence or sense.
Coming from the non-profit world, it is never that easy. Even when there is no one officially making any money, there are people who will see it as a way to make some bank. There is also a drawback in that not making money can and will affect the amount of time people can put in unless there is a fair way to get them compensation. Volunteering also brings a huge amount of interpersonal and inter-organizational drama. That is why grassroots organizations and movements have a habit of fracturing into smaller groups.
At the same time, there is power in goodwill and being non-profit. You just really need to be careful in vetting your instance and keep an eye on issues in a way people not used to this type of world are not familiar with.
But I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t have a belief that it could be successful enough as a community. I also wouldn’t have been working in the NGO world for the past decade if I didn’t believe in that. But let’s not have too rosy glasses on. Growing slowly will also give this community a chance to work out the kinks and not die in a blaze of fire.
It is complex and yet it isn’t. There are understandable psychological and historical causes for the current state. It is not black and white. But nothing is. We just want to make things to fit nice boxes.
If you want to understand it, you need to understand radicalization and how it applies to MENA including Israel. Actions do not come from the vacuum and people are messy. Every person has an agenda.
At the same time, in this specific situation, there are what according to well-established parameters amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity. While there is terrorism committed by Palestinian groups, these crimes are largely committed by Israel. It might be that if the power imbalance were a little less we would see similar actions from the Palestinian state. But it is not.
Just in the last week, we have seen apartheid, ethnic cleansing, what could be genocide, collective punishment, embargo and cutting vital supplies to the area you are occupying. This list is not exhaustive. This is univocally wrong.
The most complex part is not understanding it. The most complex part is solving it.