Palestine Action strike three Israel-supplying weapons factories in one day

Copied from an email sent by Palestine Action:

"This morning, three simultaneous actions have targeted weapons factories across Britain, to prevent the production of weaponry destined for use by Israel in their ongoing massacre of the Palestinian people. While Israel's Instro Precision in Kent has been met with a 100-person-strong blockade, a lock-on and a rooftop occupation disrupted Leicester's UAV Tactical Systems and Howmet Fastening Systems.

Kent

Over 100 people have blockaded both entrances to Kent's Instro Precision, a weapons factory owned by Israel's largest arms firm. The blockade has made it impossible for Elbit to continue operations at the site today.

Instro precision are military specialists in target acquisition systems, which they routinely export to apartheid Israel for use against the Palestinian people. These include the XACT th64 sights, likely to be outfitting Israel's snipers which surround the captive population of Gaza.

To join the blockade, get down to Discovery Park, Ramsgate Rd, Sandwich CT13 9FF!

Leicester

In Leicester, one group of activists blockaded the entrance to Leicester's Israeli military drone factory. Whilst another occupied a weapons factory around the corner, called Howmet Fastening Systems. By occupying the roof, actionists are preventing Howmet's production of crucial components for Israel's warplanes, which continue to bombard and massacre the Palestinian people.

Get down to Howmet Fastening Systems and UAV Tactical Systems, both in Meridian East Business Park, Centurion Way.

If you're inspired to take direct action to shut down the producers of Israeli weaponry, join our upcoming workshop this Sunday at 3PM: bit.ly/Direct_Action

If you want to get involved sooner, send us an email at [email protected] with your phone number and we will get in touch.

Together, we will shut the war criminals down."

I need to vent for a little bit about this #SaveScorpion movement.  Because I’m frustrated.  I’m frustrated as fuck.  So much is being done wrong within that movement that even though I doubt we had a chance to save the show following the cancellation announcement anyway, that movement has basically dug itself into an even deeper hole.

I’m sorry if anyone reading this takes anything I say personally, please don’t.  This stuff is complicated and I wouldn’t even know about a lot of it if I wasn’t told when I was part of the campaign to #SaveTheMentalist back in 2014.  But it’s the responsibility of people who decide to take the reins of a movement to know what they’re doing, and honestly this campaign to get Scorpion a fifth season has been largely a disaster from the start.

1. It’s astronomically more difficult to save a show that’s already been cancelled. People are using Brooklyn Nine-Nine as a precedent, but NBC initially had that show and sold the pilot script to FOX, and they regretted it before the pilot even aired. They’ve basically been waiting in the wings to get it back. Scorpion doesn’t have that, but people see what happened with the Nine-Nine and think all that has to happen is an uproar on Twitter.  And we aren’t even doing that part right.  Firstly, we started way too late.  This organization that people are trying to do needed to happen when Scorpion still had (preferably 6-8) episodes left to air. 2. The “official” account for getting the show a season five drags its feet. They keep tweeting about how they’ll have a plan “soon.” As I’ve already mentioned, not only did this “plan” have to be a thing back in February/March, the show was cancelled two days ago now. If they wanted to trend something on Twitter, it really needed to happen two days ago (note that #SaveB99 trended literally within minutes of the cancellation notice and continued to trend into the next day). CBS is not constantly checking twitter to see our reactions and certainly not anymore. Their Upfronts are in two days, they’re working on that stuff now. If we had a ‘window’ it’s pretty much certainly gone.  No executive is gonna be like “we cancelled this show on Saturday and on Tuesday people got REALLY fired up so we changed our minds.” 3. None of these people have any idea how Twitter works. Trending is supposed to be difficult, and Twitter has safeguards in place to prevent spam accounts. In order to trend on purpose, there has to be a focused effort at one particular time – the @SaveScorpion account keeps telling us to keep tweeting lots with #SaveScorpion, and that’s counterproductive. If there are a lot of tweets over a period of several days but not enough to trend, that hurts the chances of it ever trending. Trends pop up when something suddenly gets a lot of attention it wasn’t already getting. When we got The Mentalist renewed, we had the generic hashtags we used to tweet about the show most of the time, and each week when we trended it, we had our #SaveTheMentalist one (or whatever it was, this was years ago at this point and I don’t remember the hashtags exactly) that we ONLY used when we were trying to trend. We trended almost every week for a while there. Trends also need at least one tweet with 100 retweets, and that needs to be a tweet that happens during the period where we are trying to trend. When I informed some people of this yesterday, they started suggesting we get tweets that already had 50+ retweets up to 100 to help it – that won’t work because those tweets are already hours old. ANOTHER THING is Tweets that are spamming the hashtag (like people using #SaveScorpion #RenewScorpion over and over again copy pasting to fill the tweet up) actively hurt chances of trending because Twitter files those as spam. Tweets with no content BUT a hashtag (i.e., tweets that are nothing more than #SaveScorpion) also don’t count.  In addition, tweets with more than two DIFFERENT hashtags in them also are filtered as spam, and it was never announced which of the popular hashtags (#TeamScorpion #ScorpionCBS #RenewScorpion #ScorpionSeason5) were supposed to be used, so some people used all of them (counterproductive as they were filtered as spam in the trend algorithm) or people all used different ones (also counterproductive as the trend algorithm didn’t know we were talking about the same thing). The @SaveScorpion account has also used the same hashtag twice in one tweet, i.e. “we need to #SaveScorpion make sure you use the tag #SaveScorpion!” Not only does that put it into the spam filter for trends, everyone retweeting it is also contributing to the hashtag being considered spam. Honestly I don’t know if it’s even possible for that hashtag to trend anymore, what with all the tweets over the past few days and with how many of those tweets were done incorrectly. 4. People are trying to prove points to CBS that are just kinda proving why they didn’t renew it in the first place. Like some of us HAD CBS-All Access and told them we would cancel if the show didn’t come back – we made good on that promise. Other people are now saying “I don’t have CBS All-Access but I’ll get it if you renew the show” and when CBS reads that they see “this show was on for four years and it never made me get CBS All-Access.” They aren’t losing those people’s money by cancelling the show because they didn’t have it in the first place. Ditto for people saying they never bought the DVDs/merch from the store but will if they bring the show back. A lot of this is just too little, too late. We knew from October the show was in danger, but people didn’t take it seriously until the finale had already aired (when I saw Kat in Chicago she kept on saying “watch Scorpion guys, we want season five!” And when I told that to people they were like “oh we’ll be fine The Cancel Bear says we should get renewed.” ) This show was on the bubble all year, and this big organization to save it happened after the season had already aired in its entirety, and then did so without warning (or even knowing, I suspect) that a good chunk of the effort was counterproductive or just seemed to validate CBS’ decision.

Everyone keeps tagging me in their tweets, and honestly, I'm just tired. I hate that this show ended with the team split up, I cried for hours when we found out we were cancelled, but at this point I've accepted that it's over. The result of that acceptance is two feelings when I see all the #SaveScorpion tweets - annoyance at wondering where all this was back when we were still airing episodes, and frustration at how much is being done wrong. Even though our chances of being saved are literally almost zero, it's still frustrating to me to see how much effort is being put out in ways that don't even count.

And yeah yeah yeah, don’t come at me with “then why didn’t you organize something months ago?”  I’ve got three jobs, other shows, and a life.  I’ve been traveling - I’ve been in five states in the past month.  I didn’t organize it because I knew I couldn’t put out the long term effort that a movement like that deserves.   When you take it upon yourself to be at the head of something like this, you have to really commit, both in time and in knowing what you’re doing.  When people decided to step up and organize something, they should have researched how to do it effectively.  Now we’re hearing that they’re “being given information by people who have saved shows in the past” but I have a pretty good idea those people and those shows had their act together before a cancellation was announced and didn’t wait days to even figure out a time zone for a trending attempt that is apparently going to happen but we don’t even know on what day.  I am still periodically responding to tweets explaining why that tweet/suggestion won’t work, but not because I think we have a shot at getting our show back.  I’m doing it because it still hurts and frustrates me knowing that these people are working so hard and have no idea that in many cases they’re not only not helping, but hurting their own movement.  I would still be trying if it was more organized, but it’s too much of a mess, and I dread logging on to Twitter because my notifications are nothing but these tweets.  

Long story short, this is too little, too incorrectly, too late.

I remember you mentioning about a Daehwi group chat and I wanted to ask, how will you describe each of your members?

Yeah! I formed a Daehwi GC a few months back with a few of my favorite Daehwi mutuals and I LOVE THEM ALL SO MUCH. In fact we’re talking right now! I love them all and am so happy that I got the chance to talk to them. They are a group of wonderful, lovely, amazing, people who always support me, and who always support Daehwi. I’ve met some of my closest online friends in this GC which says a lot to how close we are, ILY ALL!!! Anyways i’ll answer this now. We have 11 people in total ( 11 get it like w1) so there’s a lot but I still love them all. Actually when I describe them i’ll add something from their application for the gc ( I had people submit a form/ application thingy to decide who would be in the gc) since they’ve been asking me to show them the applications for a while anyways.

1. Me - the ultimate daehwi trash

2. Ashleigh @lee-daehwiis - A ballet queen. She is so gorgeous, talented, and hardworking. A soft who stans a lot of under rated groups and who just wants to spread love and happiness. Talking to Ashleigh always puts me in a good mood. Or whenever I see her snaps of her in her ballet stuff. I’m like wow Ashleigh is really out here making her dreams come true. She’s such an inspiration to me and I LOVE HER. Ashleigh said this in response to what she liked best about Daehwi in her form: “Is everything an acceptable answer? This is a difficult question! It’s hard to explain, but I feel like Daehwi has this quality that can just put everyone in a better mood. He can lighten up anyone’s day just by being around. He has a very positive attitude and pretends like nothing is wrong, even if something is. He went through so much and never complained. He inspires me in so many ways, and not just to be a better person.”

3. Amy @idaehwi - She’s such a talented GIF maker! She contributes so much quality content to the Daehwi tag and that alone makes me love her to the moon and back. She is also such a sweet pea, she’s been a bit busy recently, but we all have. When ever she does appear though she always screams about Daehwi and leaves us nice messages. When asked why she should be chosen to join the gc, Amy responded with: “bc i’m me :-)”

4. Charlie @wannaoneioi - MY FELLOW LOONA STAN. Charlie has a great taste in music and in memes. 10/10 always lights up the conversation. Even when the topics r a little weird hahahaha. Charlie introduced me to loona and dragged me down so lfjsafkajsfklj but thx charlie ;’) I love crying over girl groups. When asked what Daehwi’s best trait is, Charlie responded by saying: “screams in Daehwi” (in Charlie’s defense Daehwi does scream a lot kfljsaljk)

5. Colleen @furryowo - Colleen has to explain this at least once a day, but she is NOT actually a furry fjkdsalfjadklsf. Ok seriously tho, Colleen is probably one of the sweetest people in the gc. I first met her when I found out that she was my anon who kept leaving me sweet messages. Colleen is still as caring as when I first met her, and she always checks up on all of us and makes sure we’re ok. Colleen is kind of like the mom friend I guess. Colleen is also super smart and hardworking and I know she’s going to have a bright future. Colleen’s favorite hair color on Daehwi is Ash Grey, which is my favorite too! Surprisingly only Colleen picked Ash Grey as her favorite hair color, which further shows she is an intellectual.

6. Hana @wannabl - Hana has been super busy with school recently (me too big relate). She kinda reminds me of a younger me. Hana always stays up late cramming for tests and pushing herself to get into a great school. What I like about Hana is that she’s smart but still knows how to have fun ( LA parties seem wild). Hana is also really creative and funny and knows how to take a joke. We always tease her about her typos hahahahaha you really can’t understand what she’s saying. ILY HANA! Hana wanted to be added to the gc because, “GIRL DAEHWI MAKES MY OVARIES HURT”

7. Hatice @soweakpunchs - I am convinced Hatice is an angel. SHE IS SO NICE AND CARING AND SWEET AND ALWAYS LOOKING AFTER ME AND IM

8. Jenny @asianbro10 - JENNY THE LOVE OF MY LIFE. Jenny is one of my closest buds ever. She has helped me through so much, I am forever grateful. Another angel fkjdsaflksadfkl love her. Jenny even wrote us all some Daehwi fan fiction, it was a Harry Potter AU and it was stellar. Jenny is an amazing writer she writes so eloquently, so it was an amazing read. She would also always send us one shots which we died over. It was great. She also makes such amazing fan art. I am in awe of her tbh. She’s so hard working and puts in so much effort into school and everything she does. I have so much more to say about her, but I would probs end up writing an essay so i’m gonna end it with an “ILY JENNY”. What Jenny likes most about Daehwi is “Everything. Every. Thing. His irreplaceable talent, adorable aegyo (I’m trash), charming personality and he cuTe as heLL.”

9. Jini @daisydaehwi - Such a precious cinnamon roll that deserves so much better. She’s so nice and sweet and I wish things start looking up for her in 2018. Jini always has the best memes. Tbh whenever Jini sends memes, I save them and steal them because they’re great (sorry Jini) Jini has such a loving personality and JIULEEN IS REAL AND I SHIP IT. Jini also chose light brown as her favorite hair color on Daehwi.

10. Maria @dearestguanlin - Maria has been busy and hasn’t been too active hahaha but whenever she shows up we’re like wow it must be a Christmas miracle. I’ve known Maria wayyyyyy before the Daehwi gc, she was one of the people I became really close to when I first joined Tumblr. She has been nothing but supportive of me. Maria has put up with my screaming in caps lock for months, which is an impressive achievement. Maria is like my intellectual bestie. We always rant about school, and education in our countries and suffer together. Maria is very smart, and sweet, and creative AND I LOVE HER SOSOSOSOSOSOSOSO MUCH. Maria wanted to join the gc because “Im your mutual? Jk i love Daehwi and would like to scream about him Ex. OMG LEE DAEHWI LOOKS SO GOOD IN PINK”

11. Pingdi @dae-hwee - Pingdi our resident intellectual (she goes to an ivy league y’all!) If Colleen is like the mom, Pingdi is like the cool aunt. She’s very straight up but still very loving towards everyone. Pingdi is not only smart but an amazing dancer too! She’s shown us her covers and i’m always shook fklasdjf. Pingdi is probably one of the most determined people in the gc. She pushes herself to the limit and does her best. Pingdi is also an amazing GIF maker and always makes such smooth gifs. ILY TOO PINGDI~ What Pingdi likes best about Daehwi is “Yo his English cover that he submitted for Produce 101. He’s got those Sunday morning voice vibes and I love it.”

fljkdsajfasfkjlasdk sorry for the typos, this is really long and I didn’t feel like making sure it was grammatically correct rip but in conclusion, I LOVE MY DAEHWI GC THEY ARE ALL AMAZING PEOPLE AND I’M GLAD TO HAVE MET THEM

FORUMS!

THEY ALMOST ALWAYS SUCK, AND THAT HAS LESS TO DO WITH THE USERS THAN THE FUCKING DEVS AND MODS.

SEARCH FUCKING SUCKS - I mean way worse than web-search in general. If you are looking for a specific topic, GOOD FUCKING LUCK. Your best bet is to use a suck-ass web-crawler/search like Google if you want to find anything on a god damned forum.

Searches NEVER USE CONTEXT... if I’m on the page for WINDOWS FUCKING 7, then why are results for versions XP, Vista, 8, and 10 appearing HIGHER in the list?

Searches rarely implement TAGS well, especially the ability to CROSS-REFERENCE TAGS. So, if I search the tags #Tomato #Soup #Recipe, I would actually get ALL AND ONLY recipe results for soups that use tomato, NOT EVERY FUCKING RECIPE ON YOU SITE PLUS EVERY PAGE THAT DISCUSSES SOUPS OR TOMATOES RETURNED IN RANDOM ORDER THAT PLACES THE FIRST RELEVANT MATCH SOMEWHERE ON PAGE FOURTEEN OF FIFTY-THOUSAND!

NAVIGATION FUCKING SUCKS - and this makes the shit-sucking search process all the more painful. Less than 1% of forums are designed with LOGICAL SUB-CATEGORY LEVEL AND RECURSIVE SUB-FORUMS that are applicable to the purpose/theme of the forum. If, for example, you are Microshit and you create a user forum (especially to build free crowd-based help as so many companies are doing rather than staffing call centers with trained and experienced individuals who are competent in the technologies they are assisting with as well as the language the customers are speaking...), then you are EXPECTED to create a Super-Forum and split it first by PRODUCT FAMILY, then split the products into Sub-Forums by PRODUCT MAJOR-VERSION (not fucking build number, jackasses! The same goes for fucking Patch Notes), and then, if you aren’t a total douche you will create an ALTERNATE DIMENSION OF SUBDIVISION, this time by ELEMENT or MAJOR FEATURES - which unless you are a fargin-idgit MUST INCLUDE: “INTERFACE/USER-EXPERIENCE”, “BUGS” (and this one subdivides by the NATURE OF THE BUG AS PERCEIVED BY USERS... these bugs are DISEASES, and like diseases they should be NAMED and CATEGORIZED by SYMPTOMS, but you can skip the Latin names like Mnemitis for an Inflammation of the Memory... which is a fair description of a MEMORY LEAK.), “PERFORMANCE”, “INSTALLATION/ACTIVATION/UPDATES”, “PRIMARY-FUNCTION”, and individually listed USEFUL FEATURES with the ability to add subtopics as necessary ad infinitum. (don’t take that to mean spam us with infinite numbers of adverts)

If you’re not already familiar, check out PHP.NET’s online function reference, its like a hybrid between an authoritarian-wiki and an open forum. Each entry is RELEVANT and EASY TO LOCATE, it has ESSENTIAL INFORMATION and CONCISE EXAMPLES, and allows anyone to give direct USER FEEDBACK//NOTES - I cannot stress the importance of this last part enough, LET PEOPLE TELL YOU WHAT THE FUCK THEY THINK ABOUT EACH FEATURE/ISSUE. You don’t have to automatically make them publicly visible, but you are dipshits if you ignore the extremely valuable resource/insight into your customer-base. Too damned many companies make it unbearably difficult for users to give them FEEDBACK, then they bitch when people switch to a smarter product from a company that actually gives a shit. (hey, that’s not a bad slogan... “we actually give a shit”... the word actually serves to chide the competition here... ;p Along the same vein as, “unlike some other Robin Hoods, I can speak with an English Accent.”)

THE MODERATORS FUCKING SUCK - I’m sorry, but you guys do. I understand that you’re mainly trying to keep an amorphous blob of bile and twigs from deteriorating into complete crap... but you are FAILING, and its not your fault... the game was rigged from the start, because they were SHIT from the moment they first went online. You guys suck at your jobs because the JOB SUCKS and that’s because the fucking RULES SUCK. Whomever the fuck came up with this shit needs to have a cheese grater ran along their eyelids for an hour each morning.

THE RULES FUCKING SUCK - so of course they turn the mods into assholes and other posters into fuckwads. There are so many issues here, but I will try to focus on the biggest tossers of all the ideas that went into these digital colostomy sacks:

NO NECROS - first of all, if you can bring the dead back to life you deserve a fucking medal, not to be given shit by peers and admins alike, and it’s not like I’m advocating Necro-Larry for President.. though he really wouldn’t be any more scandalous then what we’ve already had. But, more to the point, DO YOU ASSHOLES UNDERSTAND WHAT THE INTERNET FUCKING IS??? (and I’m not being existential here, we’ll leave the philosophical impacts for the future to reflect on). THERE IS NO PAST, THE INTERNET EXISTS IN THE ETERNAL NOW WE CALL THE PRESENT. That means NO MATTER HOW OLD THE POST IS, PEOPLE WILL STUMBLE ACROSS IT IN THE FUTURE. And it will be JUST AS RELEVANT THEN AS IT WAS WHEN CREATED! Especially since BUGS DON’T STAY DEAD, so why should decriers of old problems be told to shut the fuck up? That’s like saying, “Homelessness? We talked about that once in 1932, stop bringing it up already! It’s a dead issue!” (this is the kind of shit you get from people who want to IGNORE PROBLEMS instead of addressing them - FUCK THOSE PEOPLE, THE GENE POOL IS BETTER OFF WITHOUT THEM!) [wow, if you just read the bold that’s really dark... lol. I’m starting to sound like an industrialist.]

LOCKING THREADS - fucking stupid to begin with, especially in response to necromancy, but lets not forget their monumentally fucktarded cousin, the Self-Locking Thread - what kind of cold war cloak and dagger fantasizing bullshit is this? This thread will self-destruct in 5 seconds! I don’t care if its been 10 years, if the problem ain’t been fixed, then SHUT THE FUCK UP AND GET TO WORK, don’t cry about someone posting relevant information just because you’ve given up hope of ever fixing it... or assumed no one has noticed.

YOU MUST BE LOGGED IN TO POST - that’s kinda like saying you must suck my ass to breathe... it was a shitty idea when some fuckwad dreamed up that god awful movie, and it ain’t gettin any better. Now, I’m not suggesting anons should be treated the same, but ANYONE should be allowed to post FEEDBACK or SUGGESTIONS whether or not they have an account with your fucktarded forum. Google-Tourists have the right to be heard too! If I find your thread by accident (which lets face it, any result in a Google Search is pretty much an accident), and have something to contribute, I should be able to do so without jumping through 60 billion hoops. I don’t want to be a member, but when a Medical Doctor overhears someone giving Awful Medical Advice or finds someone that ISN’T GETTING THE HELP THEY NEED/ASKED FOR, it is their responsibility to become involved! The same goes for any other profession, I may not be “one of you”, but I know what the fuck I’m talking about so listen the fuck up and be grateful I give a shit (unlike many of you). [wow, that came across conceited... lmao]

REVERSE PAGE ORDER - you lazy, half-assed mother fucking programmers! Shame on you. It might seem like a good idea at the time, but this is one of the biggest blunders you can expound on the web. YOUR FUCKING PAGES MOVE, ¡CAVRONE! Do you understand this??? If a user BOOKMARKS A PAGE, they WON’T GET THE SAME PAGE when they reopen it a year later!!! What does it matter? Go back up and reread the bit about the web being TIMELESS... [take a Physics Lesson while you are at it, this is like asking what was before the Universe... there was no time (as we know it) before the universe, therefor there was nothing before it.] So, when I find your forum in a Floogol search and it links me to page 6 when the actual content it matched is now on page 147, I am understandably PISSED THE FUCK OFF... and the first thing I do is curse Larry and Serge, then I realize this one isn’t even their fault.

I’m sure there are a bunch more rules that are written by simpletons for assholes, but that’s enough for now.

TROLLS FUCKING SUCK - even when they not trying to be assholes, they fail miserably at common decency. I swear I am going to kill the next motherfucker who posts “why would you want to ____” as a reply, especially on a Tech Support Forum. It doesn’t even matter whether its my post, or something I stumbled across after 6 hours of screaming at Serge and Larry’s even less than unhelpful online information location apparatus.

MVPs are Worse than Trolls - how the fuck did these dickshits get the job of officially representing the company? They know less than shit about the product they are supporting, and most of the time they suggest installing questionable third party crapware to solve the problem. (Please don’t confuse “the Microsoft MVPs”, who are actually pretty cool and helpful, with the dumbasses that Microsoft calls MVPs on their fucking support forums... these guys barely speak English and haven’t written a line of code in their life!)

And despite an extra row of Microsoft bashing, this wasn’t targeted at their forums any more than Blizzards or any others... ALL FORUMS ARE SHIT!!!! 

But, hey, you knew all this already... so who the fuck am I even talking to here?