pocketsizedquasar - Tumblr blog

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When the rest of the world looks at the united states right now, we see a government who sends billions to support genocide but cannot help their own people starving on the streets.

We see a police force who won't go in to save children from school shootings, but deploy at a rapid rate to arrest peaceful protestors using their right to free speech to protest a genocide

America, you are a war mongering snake eating your own tail. You will protect and support war criminals in another country but let your own people starve and die

To the students bravely protesting now, we see your strength. We see what we saw when students protested the Vietnam War. We have faith you will prevail

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This child, Salah, survived an air strike on his home and was badly burned. This video of him being fed by his mother is from a while back, taken by Hatem Rawagh. Hatem recently found out that this boy survived another air strike on his home, but this time his mother didn't. Remember why we're fighting. Remember who we're fighting for.

April 2024.

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i just saw a wolf carrying in its mouth and eating a dead gazan baby. don't ever fucking talk to me about the "lesser evil" ever again. i hope all of you who are complicit die in the most horrible ways and suffer an eternity in hell.

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if you're wondering why THIS tiktok ban bill made it through the senate unlike last time...

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When Joe Biden, inevitably signs this bill that, coupled with more funds for a genocide, will ban TikTok in the US, I can almost assure you that he is likely signing away his chances of winning the election. Because no matter how politically illiterate Americans tend to be, the one thing that Americans care more about than anything is their convenience and their circuses.

You can’t take away the people’s bread And their circuses. 

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i hate being on my corny shit but sometimes mass movements and protest movements can be very beautiful. they bring out the worst and best in humanity. during the arab spring, when people were camped out in tents in tahrir square, there were so many beautiful moments that it convinced a whole nation to believe in a better future. i find it difficult to talk about now but it was the collective sense of community—the feeling of being responsible for everyone, for living on principle instead of self-preservation for once in your life. many people risked their lives for other people during the protests. people died for strangers who were no longer strangers. sometimes it was also small things: funny signs, doctors volunteering medical aid, people giving out food and water, muslims protecting churches, christians protecting muslims while they're praying. things like that. and i've seen a lot of people and countries have protest movements since then and i think everyone feels the same way, when you're within a mass movement, there is a sense of hope and determination that is so much stronger than fear. everyone falls in love with their country, everyone falls in love with their people, suddenly a country you hate is a country you're willing to die for

these kind of protest movements were easy to call beautiful and easy to call powerful bc they were so obviously against a tyrannical force. and yes while the regimes did call the protestors everything from spoiled kids to infiltrators to traitors, the world usually saw it for what it was. and the protestors had a sense of pride about it. the eyes of the world are on us, we matter, we're making a difference

truthfully i think the campus protest movement has escalated so suddenly and is so maligned that nobody is taking a moment to call it what it is. it is very brave and it is very beautiful. in some ways i find it more touching than protest movements for your own country and your own future, because while the protests for palestine are also about what it means to be a citizen of a nation complicit in genocide, many of these protestors are just there because they care about palestinians. some of them are there against their better interests; risking their academic careers, their personal safety, their future. in the case of anti-zionist jews many are risking their communities and their familial relationships. i just saw a video of a USC student in the middle of a literal police riot where her classmates are being brutalized by cops being asked if she's scared and she said "no, i think the children in gaza are more scared than i am." on a human level, this is so moving. it's truly the best and bravest of america there, and it's so sad to me that some people can't see that.

last week speaking out for palestine was risky, but this week it has taken personal and physical bravery to show up, and people (mainly young people of color) have absolutely shown up. this is no small thing. it really isn't. its a historic thing. and i promise you if you think i'm exaggerating by comparing US campus protests to arab spring protests—a lot of arab spring students are on US campuses right now and they see the parallels too. the response to the protests has been american in the way america was in the 60s and 70s, but it is starting to take the shape of a broader and much more global crackdown, where militarized police brutality is the norm. this is familiar to everyone in sudan, in egypt, in palestine. university campuses and students go from safe havens to targets for punishment overnight. things are changing very rapidly right now; a lot of the things said about college campuses last week don't apply as of today.

there is a sense that these protests are full of spoiled and innocent kids and that is transparently not true. these are people (including grad students, faculty, etc) who have also experienced upheaval across the world and in their own communities. the fact that they're receiving the same treatment on university campuses now as protestors did in ferguson, as people have on their streets, means that while US colleges are profit-oriented neoliberal institutions and their administrators are fascists, their student bodies are on the forefront of history once again.

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Palestine Commissions Association Spreadsheet and Discord now open!

If you're an artist/creative of any sort that is interested in doing commissions to raise money for Palestinian charities/GoFundMe's/etc or a person interested in commissioning something and want your money to go to a good cause at the same time, we're trying to set up some resources to help make this easier for everyone!

First, we're trying to create a unified, easy-to-reference database where artists can share their commission info and commissioners can find artists who make the kinds of art they're interested in more easily!

The database is located here:

Commissions for Palestine Database

And if you'd like to add your own information to the database, you can submit them here:

Commissions for Palestine Submission Form

Second, we've created a Discord to help connect artists with commissioners that is intended to work in conjunction with the database! You don't have to join in order to submit your information, but we hope you will! We're trying to create a community where artists can connect with donators and talk with other artists. Our goal is long term financial and community support for Palestine.

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Link to the PDF document

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Hundreds of Jewish anti-war demonstrators have been arrested during a Passover seder that doubled as a protest in New York, as they shut down a major thoroughfare to pray for a ceasefire and urge the Senate majority leader, Chuck Schumer, to end US military aid to Israel.

The 300 or so arrests took place on Tuesday night at Grand Army Plaza, on the doorstep of Schumer’s Brooklyn residence, where thousands of mostly Jewish New Yorkers gathered for the seder, a ritual that marked the second night of the holiday celebrated as a festival of freedom by Jews worldwide.

The seder came just before the US Senate resoundingly passed a military package that includes $26bn for Israel.

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I think it has just always been easier for people to look at things that do not scare them, i.e. university students protesting in tents, rather than see the real, unsettling, horrific, true images coming out of Gaza and internalise them as a REAL event that is happening to REAL people.

A genocide is never going to be easy to stomach, but you have to bear witness anyway

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If you're having trouble keeping up with what's going on in Palestine because of US news coverage of university protests, here are some articles you can read and a video you can watch:

While CNN & all the other mainstream media try to paint the university protests as "pro terrorism" (which they're not, they're literally anti-war protests.) Palestinians are being slaughtered by the minute.

Please don't stop speaking about Palestine.

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When I made this post just ten days ago, it was about mass graves discovered at Al Shifa hospital and now we have learned that the same had happened at Nasser hospital in Gaza. The same genocidal pattern: a hospital is put under siege, patients and medical staff are abducted, tortured and buried in mass graves.

But to build on the last point I wanted to bring attention to in the previous post, it is very crucial to also keep in mind is that the Palestinian Civil Defence have reported that Israel had deliberately concealed the identities of those it killed and buried in these mass graves. Close to 400 bodies have been buried in these mass graves, 58% of the recovered bodies have not been identified.

In a press conference, a spokesperson of the civil defence in Gaza said that Israel had intentionally disfigured the bodies postmortem in order to remove any identifying markers such as birthmarks. He also mentioned that they suspect that the bodies have been placed in body bags that expedited the decomposition process, destroying any possibility of them being identified.

One of the main and only ways families have been able to identify the bodies of their loved ones is through the clothes they remember them wearing the last time they saw them. I saw a video of a mother identifying her son by his striped jacket. You can see the grief mixed with relief that she will be able to give her son proper burial.

Remember when months ago I said that to be identified and buried in Gaza has become a luxury? This is very much still the case.

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Fuck Israel and fuck everyone who still wants to pretend this is confusing or complicated. Is it really that hard to point out the "bad people" in a scenario where a multi-billion military apparatus is handcuffing and killing children and medical staff inside a fucking hospital?

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[ID: A digital drawing of Ishmael sitting on the beach and writing/drawing in a notebook. The top left of the image has handwritten text that reads “Moby Dick: or, the Webcomic // 4 years.” More detailed ID in alt text.]

It’s Moby Dick: or, the Webcomic’s 4th birthday today! So so delighted and excited to have made it this far, and for everything still to come.

Just about a week ago, (about when I thought I would), I finally finished the thumbnails for ch3! It’s gonna be a long one, but I’m so so excited for it. Can’t wait for y’all to meet one of my favorite characters. Can’t wait for the juicy drama. Can’t wait for y’all to see an actual proper whale hunt! And more shenanigans, nautical nonsense, queer delight, and other such miscellaneous happenings.

We’re still shooting for / on track for an initial start date of sometime this summer, and I will absolutely update with a more specific start date as soon as I have a better idea of that, but yeah! Chapter 3 pages are properly underway!

extremely excited for chapter 3, and the rest of this story. thanks so much to everyone for reading 💖💖🐋🐋

[pocketsizedquasar]

[ID: A digital drawing of Ishmael sitting on the beach and writing/drawing in a notebook. The top left of the image has handwritten text that reads “Moby Dick: or, the Webcomic // 4 years.” More detailed ID in alt text.]

It’s Moby Dick: or, the Webcomic’s 4th birthday today! So so delighted and excited to have made it this far, and for everything still to come.

Just about a week ago, (about when I thought I would), I finally finished the thumbnails for ch3! It’s gonna be a long one, but I’m so so excited for it. Can’t wait for y’all to meet one of my favorite characters. Can’t wait for the juicy drama. Can’t wait for y’all to see an actual proper whale hunt! And more shenanigans, nautical nonsense, queer delight, and other such miscellaneous happenings.

We’re still shooting for / on track for an initial start date of sometime this summer, and I will absolutely update with a more specific start date as soon as I have a better idea of that, but yeah! Chapter 3 pages are properly underway!

extremely excited for chapter 3, and the rest of this story. thanks so much to everyone for reading 💖💖🐋🐋