#at first they draw genocide makers then they support genocide makers.

[unhonestlymirror]

Me: - I wonder why there are like 2 Ukrainian artists in hetalia

Me: *sees the main fanbase content*

Me: - Ah. That's why.

[palestineoddiwrth]

Today's Hero is Ezzeddin Lulu, the Smile Maker.

"As a student studying to become a doctor, I made a decision based on the way my father had raised me to always give back to my religion and homeland. I chose to volunteer at Al Shifa Hospital during the war, recognizing that the level of catastrophe exceeded the capacity of the medical staff and hospital alone, leaving my own family behind."

Before the read-more I'd like to show his most recent post as of writing this (29.03.23.) Unfortunately his mother has also been murdered. Ezz was incredibly proud of his mother and so was she in him. She memorised the entirety of the Qur'an and knew it to her dying breath. Despite the horror of losing her family she remained strong both in love and in faith.

Here is a go-fund-me created by Ezzeddin. Even if you can't donate please share it and read his story in his words.

During the genocide, artist and medical student Ezzeddin Lulu (nicknamed the smile maker) has been trapped in al-Shifa hospital in the North of Gaza more than once. He has worked with minimal and no food for days on end in a hospital surrounded by tanks and snipers. He's worked with patients not knowing if he or they will even survive the coming days. He's worked knowing his family could be dead. He's worked knowing the only family he has left is his injured mother. He's worked after standing on the rubble of his home knowing his family is trapped under and there's nothing he can do. He's even worked after the murder of his mother.

He's worked on patients without anaesthetic. He's described to us the harrowing screams of children. He's shown injuries that nobody has really seen until now because the weapons used by the IOF and their allies are horrific and are designed to cause as much pain, death and destruction as possible.

All this as a medical student. Ezzeddin has yet to graduate.

Ezz is also an artist who has been dubbed the "smile-maker". He draws people he sees when he's out and about and whenever he shows them the result they smile. He has also recreated horrifying images and changed them into something good. For example there's a famous picture of a father being dragged away from his daughter by soldiers. Ezzeddin has redrawn this in a scene where the father is hugging his daughter.

Ezzeddin Lulu is a hero. He demonstrates the good in humanity. Despite everything he still works for his patients and he still posts to show the world how the IOF and their supporters target civilians and medical staff. He also posts about his family and colleagues, telling us they've passed away or what injuries they've sustained. Because of Ezz's posts I'm aware that Israeli snipers target the healing hands of doctors.

How is his heroism rewarded?

Trapped in al-Shifa not knowing who (patients, coworkers, family, himself) will live or die and if he'll have to watch. This happened twice because despite everything he is still determined to help people and so he went back to work.

Finally I would like to close this first post by sharing pictures of his martyred family and a little bit about them because they also deserve to be remembered.

Everyone who's been murdered was something to somebody. A mother, a grandpa, a niece, a son, a cousin, an aunt, a friend, a lover. Sometimes people themselves become homes so what happens when that home is ripped from you? Unfortunately there is a 10 picture limit on mobile and I felt it was important to share multiple images of the same people to make sure they're more than just numbers to us. I intend make another post about him in the future so if I do I'll include more of his martyred loved ones to honour them.

Note: Forgive me if there are any errors. I don't speak Arabic so I'm relying on translation apps which means when it comes to peoples names I might make a mistake. If corrected I will fix it ASAP. These people deserved to be remembered with their real names.

Below is Ezzeddin's father: Mister Samir Fahmi Lulu (Abu Hazifa). While Ezz was trapped in al-Shifa he heard news of his fathers martyrdom but there was nothing he could do because the occupation was surrounding the hospital so Ezzeddin continued to work.

Samir Fahim Lulu cared deeply about his son and what his son was going to do. His father always wanted to see his son on his graduation day in his robes and watch him swear his oath as a doctor but the IOF robbed them both of that. Ezzeddin has described his father as his backbone and is the reason he chose to volunteer at al-Shifa during the genocide.

Below is a family within a family. We have Hazifa Samir Lulu who was the oldest son and brother, a father himself, an engineer.

In the middle is their daughter: Reem Hazifa Lulu. Reem was also a niece, granddaughter and a great granddaughter.

Finally there's Rana Maher Al-Ghassin. She was an engineer, a wife, a daughter, a mother. She was pregnant with a baby that would have been so incredibly loved had Rana not been murdered. They were overjoyed when they announced the pregnancy a week before the war.

I wonder if Reem would have become an engineer or if she would have chosen something else. I wonder if Ezzeddin and Hazifa's mother was right about her dream of Rana having twins. I wonder if Reem would have had another Frozen themed birthday or if she would have picked something else. How cruel of a world is it that they'll never know the happiness they deserved?

[catdotjpeg]

Genocide is occurring before our eyes, and there is no time to look away. There is no time for hesitation on whether to act or not. There is no time for the “nuance” of the liberal bourgeoisie. The just struggle of the Palestinian people for land and liberation requires our unwavering solidarity, now and for the turbulent days to come, all the way until victory. BAYAN USA calls on all Filipinos, and all people who profess to be against exploitation and oppression, to join the mass resistance in support of Palestine in your households, in your work places, on your campuses, in your organizations, and in the streets.

The fascist state of Israel has made its genocidal intentions clear in both word and action. It has indiscriminately dropped more than 6,000 bombs in one week, killing over 2,000 Palestinians and injuring almost 10,000 more. It told Palestinians to seek refuge in Egypt, and then bombed the only way there. It promised a “safe road” for Palestinians to evacuate, and then bombed that too. Electricity and water supplies have been cut off, endangering the lives of over 2 million people, especially the tens of thousands of injured who now crowd Palestine’s hospitals.

The US-imperialist state and the monopoly capitalist class of war manufacturers, oil magnates, and mainstream media have thrown in their shameless support to the genocide. They know all too well that a free Palestine is a threat to the imperialist world order, that the victory in Palestine will inspire victories in countless other nations and countries the world over. But the Filipino people’s movement for national liberation and genuine democracy knows this too. And it is in our joint struggle with the Palestinian people for total victory over imperialism and its reactionary ideology of Zionism that we draw boundless inspiration, perseverance, and revolutionary optimism.

The masses and the masses alone are the makers of history, and that history has always been one of revolution. This is a fact that our own history teaches us in the over 300 years of armed resistance leading up to the victorious 1896 revolution against Spanish colonization, in the fierce battles against fascist Japanese occupation during World War II, and in the revolutionary groundswell against the US-backed Marcos regime, which continues to the present.

This is a fact that the Palestinian masses have been showing us since the Balfour Declaration in 1917, since the Nakba 75 years ago, in the First and Second Intifada, and in every single year between. The Palestinian masses are making history today with their blood, defiance, and unyielding desire to be free.

We must struggle alongside them to write the history that must be written: an immediate end to the siege, an end to the brazen political repression of Palestinian and pro-Palestine activists currently happening across the world, an end to all support — whether political, material, financial, or cultural — for the Israeli state, and ultimately, the defeat of imperialism and its tentacles of Zionism and all reaction. 

End the siege on Gaza now! From Palestine to the Philippines, stop the US war machine! Free Palestine!

-- "End the Siege on Gaza! Filipinos Call for All-Out Support for Palestine Now!" from BAYAN USA, 15 Oct 2023

[howieabel]

It is not that the historian can avoid emphasis of some facts and not of others. This is as natural to him as to the mapmaker, who, in order to produce a usable drawing for practical purposes, must first flatten and distort the shape of the earth, then choose out of the bewildering mass of geographic information those things needed for the purpose of this or that particular map. My argument cannot be against selection, simplification, emphasis, which are inevitable for both cartographers and historians. But the map-maker's distortion is a technical necessity for a common purpose shared by all people who need maps. The historian's distortion is more than technical, it is ideological; it is released into a world of contending interests, where any chosen emphasis supports (whether the historian means to or not) some kind of interest, whether economic or political or racial or national or sexual. Furthermore, this ideological interest is not openly expressed in the way a mapmaker's technical interest is obvious ("This is a Mercator projection for long-range navigation-for short-range, you'd better use a different projection"). No, it is presented as if all readers of history had a common interest which historians serve to the best of their ability. This is not intentional deception; the historian has been trained in a society in which education and knowledge are put forward as technical problems of excellence and not as tools for contending social classes, races, nations. To emphasize the heroism of Columbus and his successors as navigators and discoverers, and to de-emphasize their genocide, is not a technical necessity but an ideological choice. It serves- unwittingly-to justify what was done. My point is not that we must, in telling history, accuse, judge, condemn Columbus in absentia. It is too late for that; it would be a useless scholarly exercise in morality. But the easy acceptance of atrocities as a deplorable but necessary price to pay for progress (Hiroshima and Vietnam, to save Western civilization; Kronstadt and Hungary, to save socialism; nuclear proliferation, to save us all)-that is still with us. One reason these atrocities are still with us is that we have learned to bury them in a mass of other facts, as radioactive wastes are buried in containers in the earth. We have learned to give them exactly the same proportion of attention that teachers and writers often give them in the most respectable of classrooms and textbooks. This learned sense of moral proportion, coming from the apparent objectivity of the scholar, is accepted more easily than when it comes from politicians at press conferences. It is therefore more deadly. The treatment of heroes (Columbus) and their victims (the Arawaks)-the quiet acceptance of conquest and murder in the name of progress-is only one aspect of a certain approach to history, in which the past is told from the point of view of governments, conquerors, diplomats, leaders. It is as if they, like Columbus, deserve universal acceptance, as if they-the Founding Fathers, Jackson, Lincoln, Wilson, Roosevelt, Kennedy, the leading members of Congress, the famous Justices of the Supreme Court-represent the nation as a whole. The pretense is that there really is such a thing as "the United States," subject to occasional conflicts and quarrels, but fundamentally a community of people with common interests. It is as if there really is a "national interest" represented in the Constitution, in territorial expansion, in the laws passed by Congress, the decisions of the courts, the development of capitalism, the culture of education and the mass media.

Howard Zinn, A People's History of the United States

[shropsnews4u]

Shrewsbury + Cherry tree to be planted with local primary school to mark Holocaust Memorial Day 2019

Shropshire Council has organised a special week of activities to commemorate annual Holocaust Memorial Day (HMD), Sunday 27 January 2018, for which this year’s national theme is “Torn from Home”. The council is continuing efforts to grow a cherry tree orchard of remembrance with schools across Shropshire, which began with the planting of a tree at Mereside C of E Primary School in the east of Shrewsbury in 2015.

The main focus for 2019 is the involvement of local Jewish author Mrs Natalie Cumming, in the planting of the 2019 tree in an interfaith ceremony with pupils at St Peter’s C of E Primary School in Wem, and in the measuring of the 2015 tree in a ceremony at Mereside. The ceremonies are being held at 9.45am and 11.30am respectively on Friday 25 January 2019.  Mrs Cumming has written a book called ”The Fiddle”, about the family violin, and how her Aunt Rosa survived the Holocaust, along with the violin, playing in the Women’s Orchestra in three concentration camps during the Second World War.

Councillors are supporting the events, and making the links for the children with support that the council gives to Syrian refugee families, and to children who are looked after by the local authority or adopted from care, for whom the theme of special personal possessions or family objects has particular significance. Mr Mark Michaels of the Jewish community and Imam Sohayb Peerbhai of the Muslim community, from the South Shropshire Interfaith Forum, will talk to the children on both occasions, and find out what their schools have been doing on the theme. Special prayers will be read by Carole Marsden, URC Minister and representative of the Shrewsbury Interfaith Forum, at the Mereside ceremony, and by the local vicar at St. Peter’s.

The ceremonies complement a display that is running from Wednesday 23 January in the foyer at Shirehall about the HMD trees that have been planted to date across the county, of which there are now ten, including five planted by secondary schools in 2016. The display is set to feature a slide presentation about the Holocaust and other genocides, accompanied by a piece of music played on Rosa’s violin. This was composed to mark its restoration, which was the subject of a BBC2 Repair Shop programme. The display carries through into Wednesday 30 January, and is open to the public.

Joyce Barrow, Shropshire Council’s Cabinet member for communities, waste and regulatory services, said:

“This year’s theme of “Torn from Home” is one that fits particularly well with the work that we do as a council to support children and families who are in need, including the Syrian refugee families that we have welcomed to this county, and the children that we look after as a council or for whom we find adoptive families. I am delighted that the council is working with local children in such a moving and fitting way to commemorate the Holocaust and other genocides, and I hope that the planting and measuring of the trees across the county helps them to really think about the positive ways in which they can show care for each other and for the environment in everything that they do.

“I am particularly pleased that Mrs Cumming is helping us to mark the theme this year of “Torn from Home”. I know that the children who hear the story of her family violin are looking forward to sharing with her what they have been doing in their classes about special family objects or personal objects and memories. I am sure that we will all recognise the power of music to help people to survive through terrible circumstances like the Holocaust, and through difficult times that may be faced by any of us.“

The music of the violin will also be played at the ceremonies with the schoolchildren on Friday 25 January. A further ceremony is also due to be arranged with Woodside Academy in Oswestry, where the 2016 tree was planted, after the original date of today (Wed 23 Jan) was postponed due to the icy conditions.  Joyce Barrow, Cabinet member, and Vince Hunt, local Shropshire Councillor for Oswestry West, will support the Woodside event, whilst Pauline Dee and Chris Mellings, local Shropshire Councillors for Wem, will be supporting the event at St. Peter’s.

Further information

The background here is that Shropshire Council is continuing efforts to grow a cherry tree orchard of remembrance across Shropshire, working with primary and secondary schools and inter faith forums and local Shropshire Councillors. We identify a primary school each year, and are seeking to spread the orchard across the county. The orchard had a growth spurt in 2016, when we were also able to provide for five secondary schools to have trees as well, through the Incredible Edible project running that year. Having begun in the centre in 2015, with Mereside C of E School, we have planted in the north at Woodside Academy in Oswestry, in the south at Bishop Hooper School in Ashford Carbonell, and in the centre and west of the county at Trinity CofE in Ford in 2018.  We have turned to the north and east for 2019.

This year, we are linking the HMD theme and the support given in Shropshire to Syrian refugee families making their homes here.

We are fortunate to be aided in this by the inter faith forums and by Mereside as our first school, as well as by a local Jewish author, Natalie Cumming, who has written a book called “The Fiddle”, about her family violin. Her aunt Rosa played the violin in three concentration camps (Mauthausen, Auschwitz and Belsen) and was part of the women’s orchestra in each camp.  The violin was returned to her after being taken away on arriving in Auschwitz.

Violin maker/restorer John Dilworth restored the violin for a BBC programme The Repair Shop.  It has now been donated in perpetuity in memory of her aunt and her father to the Yehudi Menuhin school.  The well-known violinist Chris Garrick composed a piece especially for the programme called Rosa’s Wishing Waltz.

The council works closely with the South Shropshire Inter Faith Forum and the Shrewsbury Inter Faith Forum on this project, having been delighted to benefit from the input of members of both Forums in previous years. Local Shropshire Councillors are involved in the ceremonies, as is Joyce Barrow as Cabinet member.

The display in the foyer at Shirehall runs until Wednesday 30 January 2018. The foyer is passed through by staff, councillors, people from partner organisations and the public, so there is good potential for wide sharing of the 2019 Theme of “Torn from Home”, not least through people talking to each other about it.

Schools who are planning activity have been asked to contact the council, in order that local councillors may lend their support on the day, and in order that a full round up may then be possible to share at national level after the week draws to a close.

For more information about the 2019 theme, please see resources on the HMD Trust website at www.hmd.org.uk

A round up of previous HMD cherry tree planting activity by Shropshire Council is available on the council website at shropshire.gov.uk.

The post Cherry tree to be planted with local primary school to mark Holocaust Memorial Day 2019 appeared first on Shropshire Council Newsroom.

http://bit.ly/2U5alv4

[clubofinfo]

Expert: So I wish you well, Sarge, give ’em Hell! Kill me a thousand or so And if you ever get a war without blood and gore I’ll be the first to go — Phil Ochs, The Draft Dodger’s Rag Guess that makes me a proud bitch. — Teresa Kaepernick, Colin Kaepernick’s mother’s in response to Trump’s comment about her son In the true spirit of patriotic opposition, Colin Kaepernick took a courageous knee when he protested the current and historical treatment of black Americans and people of color during the playing of the National Anthem.  For his patriotism, the NFL has made sure he remains unemployed, and now, when our reality-television president urges NFL teams to fire any “son-of-a-bitch” who dares follow Kaepernick’s example, the NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell releases a sanctimonious statement calling Trump’s demented words “divisive comments,” revealing an “unfortunate lack of respect” for NFL players.  NFL owners and others chimed in with the word of the day – “divisive.”  Exactly who is being divided from whom is left to speculation? The hypocrisies of this lurid spectacle continue to mount daily. Kaepernick knelt on principle during the Obama presidency. His was a lonely act.  Now that the buffoonish Trump tweets and speaks his grotesqueries, it has become easy to emerge from the woodwork and join the crowd in supporting the man who made his solitary witness.  Cheap grace, the German theologian and pastor Dietrich Bonhoeffer termed the desire for “salvation” without paying a price.  He said this before being executed by Hitler for his opposition to Nazism. Who among those kneeling today in solidarity with Kaepernick are willing to pay a price? What’s the NFL’s price?  The Tycoons who own the teams?  Who among them agrees with a man who gave his life for black liberation, Dr. Martin Luther King, who made it emphatically clear that the fight against racism involved opposing a trinity of devils when he said: We must recognize that we can’t solve our problem now until there is a radical redistribution of economic and political power… this means a revolution of values and other things. We must see now that the evils of racism, economic exploitation and militarism are all tied together… you can’t really get rid of one without getting rid of the others… the whole structure of American life must be changed. America is a hypocritical nation and [we] must put [our] own house in order. Colonialism, imperialism, capitalism, racism – this is U.S. history, not the myths proffered by myth-makers, politicians, and schools.  The system of exploitation is old and enduring, and the point of its spear is war.  It is great that many players join in solidarity with Kaepernick. Racism must be opposed and freedom of speech exercised and defended. But it would be better indeed if more of those who rightly oppose Trump’s disgusting comments and support Kaepernick speak out about the triple devils King warned about.  The system of racial exploitation does not stand alone; never has. Nor will it fall alone. The Star Spangled Banner is a celebration of war, meant to stir martial emotions. It also contains racist lyrics.  And football is the war sport par excellence, extremely violent, and deeply tied to the spectacle of cruelty that dominates American society today and that has caused so much suffering for black people and other people of color for centuries. In the 1960s, Brazilian television, in an effort to distinguish football (soccer) from American football, aptly termed it “military football.”  And while it, like other sports, has been an avenue to wealth and “success” for some black Americans (a tiny minority), its war-like structure and violent nature is noted with a nod and a wink.  Heck, it’s fun to play and exciting to watch, and is just a colorful spectacle that we can’t do without, despite all the concussions, pain killers, and crippling life-long injuries.  Lasting effects similar to those suffered by veterans returned from war zones.  The gridiron is a war zone. That the NFL is a conditioning agent for the love of war and violent aggression is usually passed over.  Its language, like all good linguistic mind control, becomes powerfully invisible. Colin Kaepernick, like all quarterbacks, is the field general who throws bombs to flankers as he tries to avoid the blitz.  Each team defends and conquers the enemy’s territory, pushing its opponent back through frontal assaults and pounding the enemy’s line.  This is mixed with deceptive formations and aerial assaults behind the opponent’s line.  When none of this works and the enemy goes on the offensive, a different platoon is brought in to defend one’s territory. One’s front line must then defend against a frontal assault and hit back hard. The analogies are everywhere, and as with many aspects of “everywhere,” what’s everywhere is nowhere – its familiarity making it invisible and therefore all the more powerful. In a society of the spectacle, NFL football is the most spectacular and entertaining mass hypnotic induction into the love of war and violence that we have.  Goodell says that “the NFL and our players are at our best when we help create a sense of unity in our country and our culture.”  These are swell sounding words that were essentially forced out of his mouth by Trump’s mad rantings.  Words involving a double-entendre as well: The good of being united against racism on one hand, if that is what Goodell meant; the bad of being united to promote patriotic militarism, violence, and war on the other.  Hypocritical contradictions, at best. And where in all this is Colin Kaepernick, the forgotten man?  Has he decided to study war no more, but to study Dr. King’s true legacy and his naming of the three demons that must be confronted and exorcised if MLK’s “Beloved Community” is to be established? Great ironies abound here.  Who among Kaepernick’s current supporters said one word when the mixed-race, neo-liberal Democrat, Barack Obama, suavely mass murdered his way around the world with seven wars, while showing his “cool” skills on the basketball court?  Coolness works. Obama was given a free ride.  More than that; he was treated like a rock star by the entertainment/sports complex.  And now that he is cashing in with speeches to Wall Street, who calls him out on that?  Obama, while always standing front stage, was all about operating back stage, very CIA-like.  “One may smile, and smile, and be a villain,” wrote Shakespeare, who was quite an expert on acting. Trump is the obverse.  His back stage is his front stage.  He is an easy target.  He makes himself one; thinks coolness is to generate heat and draw audience attention to it.  It is an aspect of his celebrity reality-TV mindset: create buzz around your “brand,” make it hot, whether good or bad, it doesn’t matter. Titillate, provoke, tweet garbage sure to arouse passions. Agitate the audience. He is an expert at feeding the beast that is America’s entertainment circus, the spectacle of con-men and prestidigitators extraordinaire.  Flip Trump and you have Obama.  Flip Obama and you have George W. Bush.  Flip George and you have Bill Clinton.  Flip Bill and you have the tail that wags the dog – Hillary.  Or the reverse.  Rotating little people going round and round, in and out, disappearing and appearing on a cuckoo clock with terrible music and mockingbird sounds. There’s only one coin in these United States, and it’s counterfeit. Trump goes to the United Nations and says he is “ready, willing, and able to totally destroy North Korea” and its 25 million people.  Who will take a knee for the North Korean people threatened by the public ranting of a man willing to commit genocide? Who took a knee for the world when Obama announced a 1 trillion dollar nuclear weapons upgrade?  When he savagely attacked Libya, Somalia, Afghanistan, Yemen, Iraq, Syria, and Pakistan; sent drones worldwide in search of victims?  Did the NFL issue a statement of condemnation on the deaths of innocent children at the receiving end of American bombs? Who is linking arms for all the innocent victims killed by Trump in eight months?  What communities are the NFL Commissioner and team owners referring to when they say the league and the players are forces for good in our communities?  Does “ours” mean a small circle of friends, outside of which the enemies lurk who should be annihilated?  Over there, over there, send the bombs, send the bombs, over there.  Far from our “communities.”  Is that the theme song?  Is that the distinction? What about Dr. King’s “Beloved Community”? Our goal is to create a beloved community and this will require a qualitative change in our souls as well as a quantitative change in our lives. Who will take a knee for a radical redistribution of economic and political power?  Who will link arms for the end to capitalist exploitation and the amassing of obscene wealth by a few at the expense of the many?  Who will refuse to support war and war-making?  Who will tell it like it is and say that the demon of racism can only be eliminated if the others are?  Liberals won’t.  Conservatives won’t. Who will?  Who will pay a price? MLK paid the ultimate price for confronting these demons.  When U.S. government forces killed him in Memphis, he had taken a knee for all the exploited and oppressed people of the world community, the beloved community. “America is a hypocritical nation and [we] must put [our] own house in order,” he told us. Hypocritical comes from the Greek hypokrites, a stage actor; pretender, dissembler.  There are too many actors on this stage of moral outrage – far too many hypocrites.  For years many NFL teams accepted Pentagon money to pimp for the war makers, but their pimping days started long before and continue to the present day, even if they say they no longer accept their client’s payoff. What do the owners stand for?  Capital accumulation? Exploitation?  War?  And all the liberals jumping on the moral outrage train of racism?  Obama was okay as he killed, maimed, and exploited – wasn’t that their silent mantra?  So Trump is a conservative?  What kind of true conservative would threaten foreign wars and tweet absurdities? Welcome to the phony circus, where the man on the hire wire, the daring one, Colin Kaepernick, is home studying American history and learning about all the confidence men. So I hope and pray. http://clubof.info/