What’s happening?
In 2014, the government wanted to completely privatise and americanise the university system by allowing universities to charge as much as they wanted so that universities could make a larger profit (which would mean degrees that could cost hundreds of thousands for prestigious universities) . These never got through because of massive student protests that forced them to rescind these attacks. But this year, they plan to slowly implement similar attacks by first increasing student fees by 8% (on average $3,600 per student), all while cutting university funding and lowing the amount you need to earn before you have to pay it all back (to just above minimum wage – $42,000 pa).
Why is this totally unfair?
In Australia, it would cost only $8 billion to make education free for all students (including international students), but the new budget instead is giving $10 billion to the coal industry and implementing $50 billion in corporate tax cuts. And to able to do this they’re passing the bill onto students, when two thirds of Australian students live below the poverty line. We’ve also seen massive attacks on working class wages that affect students more than anyone (attacks on penalty rates, attempts to lower minimum wage, decreases to centrelink payments and the influx of centrelink debts).
Ordinary people deserve to be able to get an education and absolutely should not be barred from it because they cannot afford it.
What can you do:
Right now we absolutely have the potential to fight back against these attacks. We’ve won against attacks like this in recent years and we can do it again. And protests are really make or break for fighting these attacks on students.
If you live in Australia you should come along to the protests that are happening in literally every state on May 17th 2017: you can find where your closest one is here or check out the Make Education Free Again facebook page. This protest is being organised by the National Union of Students (NUS) and is going to be NATION WIDE. Bring anyone and everyone you know
If you live outside of Australia, SHARE THIS POST and sign the petition
The wild is an integral part of who we are as children. Without pausing to consider what or where or how, we gather herbs and flowers, old apples and rose hips, shiny pebbles and dead spiders, poems, tears and raindrops, putting each treasured thing into the cauldron of our souls. We stir our bucket of mud as if it were, every one, a bucket of chocolate cake to be mixed for the baking. Little witches, hag children, we dance our wildness, not afraid of not knowing.
Emma Restall Orr
(via thatkindofwoman)
I’ve been waiting what feels like a week for a second interview that was supposed to be scheduled like the day after. I offer to Hermes today and literally like an hour later I get the call I’ve been waiting for
point taken
Trump fires FBI Director James Comey
President Donald Trump has fired FBI Director James Comey—a move that comes as the FBI is probing contacts between Trump’s campaign aides and Russian officials ahead of last year’s presidential election.
Regardless of how you feel about his timing of talking about the Clinton Email Mess, this is not good.
With the FBI Director gone, Trump can appoint his own, and given the nature of his administration, it will be someone who will kiss his ass, who will not be inclined to prosecute, and might well try and dismiss information.
The President firing someone investigating the White House is insane, and the reasons that are stated make it even more suspicious:
Memos released by the White House show that Rod J. Rosenstein, the newly sworn-in deputy attorney general, recommended that Mr. Comey be fired over how he disclosed the investigation into Mrs. Clinton. (X)
Fired because of how he handled the Clinton investigation?
While many people had an issue with it, Trump and his election committee were not any of them.
Let’s not forget his instances of insisting she was hiding things. He even advocated treason in asking Russia to hack her to find these emails.
Don’t forget this infamous bit:
“Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” Mr. Trump said during a news conference here in an apparent reference to Mrs. Clinton’s deleted emails. “I think you will probably be rewarded mightily by our press.”
Trump as a candidate did not care about how Comey handled the investigation. He thrived on it.
Saying Comey was fired for how he handled things months ago is not only laughable, it’s suspicious.
In fact, it has been drawing comparisons to the Saturday Night Massacre, and with good reason. (To sum up a more complicated event:)
That was when Richard Nixon fired independent special prosecutor Archibald Cox during the Watergate Scandal.
Let’s not forget that Trump has also been insisting that it’s not his fault Michael Flynn ended up being a problem, because Obama was the one that hired him originally. Only, Obama told him not to hire Flynn when Trump visited two days after he won the election. In fact, Sally Yates expressed concerns as well a week after inauguration.
And if Miss Yates sounds familiar, she was the Attorney General until Trump fired her for saying that the Justice Department wouldn’t uphold his travel ban.
So he, at least twice, ignored people who warned him about the issues with Flynn, and now he’s fired the FBI director, who was in the middle of investigating his White House, with a shitty excuse, blaming behavior he has never at all hesitated to praise.
And don’t think it was just Flynn either. Trump’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort was investigated too.
But what does it say that Comey was fired the day after Sally Yates testified that she’d told the White house about Flynn before?
You can only see smoke so long before you notice the flames.
If there was anything to make hell about right now, this is it.
Here’s how to find your Representative.
We need an independent prosecutor and we need them now.
security called me at work today and told me they saw me outside chasing a frog around on the security cameras. i wasnt in trouble they just wanted to let me know they saw me. i didn’t catch him.
Crystal Valentine – “And the News Reporter Says Jesus Is White”. Support the artist, check out the full poem here.
Paul Ryan has TURNED OFF HIS PHONE AND FAX so as to no longer hear the overwhelming protests of repealing the ACA, Obamacare.
So here is a new tactic:
Since Paul Ryan has blocked his office phones and fax numbers, and is turning away people who show up to deliver petitions, time to change tactics.
Please mail postcards to his HOME address saying NO to defunding Planned Parenthood, NO to repealing the ACA, and NO to privatizing Medicare!
PAUL RYAN
700 ST. LAWRENCE AVE.
JANESVILLE, WI 53545
Please reblog this info. Let’s see what 67 million cards in the driveway looks like!Ya know, putting his address up on a public forum is kinda fucked up, right?
Ya know, taking healthcare away from thousands of people and making it near impossible for them to voice their opinions on this very much life or death matter is kinda fucked up, right?
I always see people refer to Hephaestus as the ugly god or the ugliest of the gods, and I can’t help but wonder–
I read a comment earlier about Hephaestus frequently being headcanoned in rps as the sole POC individual, meaning the “ugly” god would also be the POC god. Super racist, regardless.
I’ve straight up ignored the script of Hephaestus being the ugly god, in my own practice. I don’t see him as ugly. I think they meant imperfect, because at the time physical “perfection” (aka able bodied societal aesthetic pleasing people) was seen as favor from the gods.
If he was cast down and disabled because of it, that would make him lose favor via aesthetic perfection. I hate even typing that, but that’s how I understand that system to have worked.
So, I don’t think Hephaestus is ugly. If anything, I think he’s normal looking. Not even super buff. Just a hard working human-shaped divine being who has a disability.
Anyways, my mental picture of Hephaestus is non-white, in the sense of a typical “olive” or “bronze” skin color. I don’t even think I did that intentionally, meaning I picked that up from his aether/astral representation, but I wanna be clear that I wasn’t doing it because of racist undertones.
The idea that Hellenic gods would all be white is laughable anyways, so I imagine others of that pantheon appear to pagans and polytheists alike as non-white individuals all the time.
I just hope the rpers figure out how shitty that is, and cut it out.
The Carving Witch 