#iraq war was still going on

[alphacrone]

love seeing high school kids organize real protests for actual world issues bc when i was in high school the only time my peers and i managed to actually pull a protest together was when we organized a sit-in to protest the new rule that we weren’t allowed to sit in the hallways during lunch

[redvelvetwishtree]

What I've been asking for a while now!! You all love watching animes and reading and watching stuff with such themes but can't seem to understand it now that it's really happening.

Given how obsessed western media and Israel were with the "bUt h@m@s" narrative this time, it makes it plenty obvious that ham@s is no longer the t€rr0r1st body that Israel once empowered and enabled it to be. It's just people/freedom fighters wanting their land back after they've experienced decades of similar barbarity it appears.

And how anyone thinks Palestinian people will come out of the current massacre, mass murder and cruelty all chill and cool is beyond me. Do you seriously expect they won't want to avenge their loved ones after the stuff Israel did to their families??? The school year in Gaza had to be ended because all kids were DEAD. Entireeee family lines have been wiped out. Their hospitals, refugee camps, bakeries, schools everything has been turned to dust. Their internet and phones were cut off while aid was refused entry and all of this is stuff you can read without crying, and feeling sick I haven't listed the stomach turning shit yet.

Oh btw are you all still seriously believing that Israel is out there doing you a favour by t@rgEt1ng h@m@s? They're just killing and slaughtering and destroying so they can expand their colonized land later (this has been said by Israeli politicians and people). Also, they don't care about hostages from their country so before demanding their release from h@mas, talk to Israel.

And what happens when they're done getting rid of h@m@s which I know they're not doing that but still? Palestinians will thank them and carry on with their lives? What have you all been encouraging and celebrating Ukrainians for? Why doesn't that same logic apply here? You don't expect one ounce self-defence from Palestine later??? After alllll that was done?? Get your brain checked.

[peanutseagle]

just finished reading the hunger games trilogy and when i tell you it changed me

[mostlykind]

how do you stay hopeful when every powerful force is against you, and mainstream media yields to their wants and needs, when every step forward is met with brutalisation forcing you 10 steps back, and sympathy is only extended to the oppressor

[probablyasocialecologist]

THE REGIONAL WAR in the Middle East now involves at least 16 different countries and includes the first strikes from Iranian territory on Israel, but the United States continues to insist that there is no broader war, hiding the extent of American military involvement. And yet in response to Iran’s drone and missile attacks Saturday, the U.S. flew aircraft and launched air defense missiles from at least eight countries, while Iran and its proxies fired weapons from Iraq, Syria, and Yemen.

[...]

While the world has been focused on — and the Pentagon has been stressing — the comings and goings of aircraft carriers and fighter jets to serve as a “deterrent” against Iran, the U.S. has quietly built a network of air defenses to fight its regional war. “At my direction, to support the defense of Israel, the U.S. military moved aircraft and ballistic missile defense destroyers to the region over the course of the past week,” President Joe Biden said in a statement Saturday. “Thanks to these deployments and the extraordinary skill of our servicemembers, we helped Israel take down nearly all of the incoming drones and missiles.” As part of that network, Army long-range Patriot and Terminal High Altitude Area Defense surface-to-air missile batteries have been deployed in Iraq, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and at the secretive Site 512 base in Israel. These assets — plus American aircraft based in Kuwait, Jordan, the UAE, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia — are knitted together in order to communicate and cooperate with each other to provide a dome over Israel (and its own regional bases). The United Kingdom is also intimately tied into the regional war network, while additional countries such as Bahrain have purchased Patriot missiles to be part of the network. Despite this unambiguous regional network, and even after Israel’s attack on Iran’s embassy in Syria earlier this month, the Biden administration has consistently denied that the Hamas war has spread beyond Gaza. It is a policy stance — and a deception — that has held since Hamas’s October 7 attack. “The Middle East region is quieter than it has been in two decades,” Biden’s national security adviser Jake Sullivan said in an ill-timed remark eight days before October 7. “We don’t see this conflict widening as it still remains contained to Gaza,” deputy Pentagon press secretary Sabrina Singh said the day after three U.S. troops were killed by a kamikaze drone launched by an Iran-backed militia at a U.S. base in Jordan. Since then (and even before this weekend), the fighting has spread to Iraq, Syria, Jordan, and Yemen.

[qqueenofhades]

I would like to... gently shake the people going 'Dick Cheney/Alberto Gonzalez/[insert neoconservative architect here] endorsing Harris is entirely and only a bad look for Harris' because that's not the point. And like, I get feeling weird about it (I've been unimpressed with Dick's backpedaling since Liz Cheney got primaried), but: Trump is proving too extreme for THE PEOPLE WHO MADE HIM POSSIBLE. This is their consequences. THAT'S the point.

Look, this is what I think about it: I fucking hate Dick Cheney and all the architects of the Bush Junior neoconservatism-early-aughts-War-on-Terror-Patriot-Act-No-Child-Left-Behinding Republican Party that laid the groundwork for the Tea Party and then for Trump. If there was any justice in the world, Dubya would be at the Hague for a war crimes tribunal and not allowed to sit in Texas painting dogs and enjoying a quiet retirement. But he was fortunate to be the president of the most powerful country in the world, and America doesn't obey international law unless it feels like it, so that's what we get. (And yes, someone asked Dubya if he was going to endorse in 2024, following Cheney, and was told, no doubt with much pious handwringing, that "President Bush retired from presidential politics many years ago." But he's still raising money for MAGA Senate candidates in Pennsylvania, evidently. Fuck you, George W. Bush. Kids these days don't say it enough.)

However, since literally the entire pre-Trump establishment Republican party is now deciding that Trump is too insane, fascist, and dangerous even for them, I'm not surprised but still annoyed that Online Leftist Logic (TM) has translated that to "Harris must secretly be an early-noughties hard-right neocon Republican and that's why they want to vote for her!!!" Most if not all of them have said that they openly disagree with her policies but are voting for her anyway because she is the only way to maintain American constitutional democracy. And yes, we're all shocked that DICK FUCKING CHENEY, architect of the Iraq War and the Patriot Act, felt that there was in fact a line of fascist government overreach that he wasn't willing to cross, but if that's the case -- if even these completely terrible warmongering corporate assholes are like "uh Trump is too bad even for us to support," then you should, I don't know, maybe listen to that. But as ever, I search for logic in vain.

Likewise: Harris has made zero policy concessions to these Republicans and she never went fishing for Cheney's endorsement specifically. She didn't suddenly declare Iraq a totally okay and normal thing in order to get Cheney and his warhawks on board, and yes, Old Dickhead probably has no small amount of personal motive to get back at Trump considering what he did to Liz. But that's the thing where apparently political motives should only ever be pure, moral, and Perfect, and taking the right action for the "wrong" reasons is still disqualifying because you weren't thinking enough pure moral thoughts while you did it, or something. I don't give a fuck why Cheney decided to vote for Harris, because I don't respect his opinion and can't foresee myself ever doing so. But because we are in an unprecedented historical moment where even DICK GODDAMN CHENEY thinks that Donald Trump is too dangerous to ever have power again, I will thank him for doing that and that alone and then tell him to hit the f'n road if he thinks he deserves a scrap of credit or Democratic policy concessions for it. He doesn't. He sucks. But he's still making a choice that we need to see made at this moment, and people who don't get that, as usual, can STFU.

Basically: Cheney's endorsement is not directed at you, and it's not intended to move voters who already fit your profile and therefore think, like I do, that Cheney can eat shit. It's directed to all the career-Republican-politician types who can see him doing that and decide that they can do the same thing. Hell, we just had 17 former staffers of Ronald Reagan announcing their Harris endorsement (in addition to the 200+ Bush, McCain, Romney alumni who already signed on and all the ex-Trump officials at the DNC) and going so far as to insist that Ol' Ronnie Raygun himself would have supported Harris. Now look. I hate Ronald Reagan more than any other twentieth-century president. The degree to which he ALSO laid the groundwork for incredible damage to America cannot be overstated. But because I am not an idiot, I can see that this does not mean Harris has suddenly turned into Reagan in her policies. So. Yeah.

The other thing to note here is that Harris has seen the advantage in cultivating a bipartisan coalition and making a cross-party case for voting her to preserve American democracy. Now, a lot of the Republicans have said that they are going to stay Republicans and they want to purge their party of Trump and MAGAism, they are trying to buy time for that transition to happen by voting for Harris, and while I have never voted for or agreed with a Republican in my whole life, I actually think that's a good thing! I don't WANT to fear the end of American democracy every four years because the Republican Party has become a screaming shitgibboning insane vehicle of American Gilead while inciting stochastic terrorism against Springfield, Ohio and everyone else who doesn't bow down to Trumpist Dear Leader and his KKK alt-right Elon Muskified supporters! I don't WANT this howling fascist conspiracy-theory-puppet-of-Vladimir-Putin black hole of violence to be just what we have to accept as the center-right (except you know, now far-far-far-far-can't-see-it-with-a-telescope-right) party in America! I would prefer it if we had a functioning democracy again where both parties were engaging in fair competitiveness and good faith and had the basic premise of making people's lives better, even if they disagreed about how to do it! I would REALLY like it if we could go back to the days of disagreeing about taxes and foreign policy and social welfare -- you know, NORMAL THINGS -- instead of Commander Vance and the Project 2025 foot soldiers trying to install a theocratic fascist dictatorship! I WOULD LIKE THAT A WHOLE LOT!

That said: I have pretty much reached my limit with asking people to vote. I have done it for 8+ years (since before Trump was elected the first time) and I'm done. Either you know the stakes of this election at this point, or you're so blindly and stupidly committed to misunderstanding them that there's nothing I or anyone else can possibly do to convince you. I still see people posting a lot of stuff from the bad-faith anti-democratic leftist cranks and arguing with them endlessly and... why? Why? Why are you giving them the oxygen and exposure that they crave, and which is giving them more attention than anyone else is giving them? Block them. Mute them. STOP ENGAGING WITH EVERYTHING THEY SAY EVEN IF YOU'RE TRYING TO REFUTE IT. It's not going to work, and at this point, it's not remotely conducive to winning this election. The Great Myth of the Undecided Voter (TM) is another one that, I hope, can finally bite the dust, and the actual undecided voters who are out there are not the ones posting dirtbag leftist bullshit about Harris on The Website Formerly Known as Twitter. This election is now completely down to a numbers game: who can make their identified voters turn out to vote. So please. Spend your time and energy on reaching those folks, who might want to or have said they will vote but need a push or extra help to make sure they do.

That being the case, if lifelong Republicans want to vote for Harris and help defeat a Trump dictatorship, they're actually being more helpful for the cause of American democracy than every single shrieking Online Leftist out there, and maybe they should think about that. I'm amused at how they still think they can make demands of the Democrats, because -- when your entire plan from the word go has been "I'm not voting for the Democrats and there's nothing you can do to make me!!!" -- why are you surprised that they don't take your thoughts and opinions into account? That's the basic simplest Democracy 101 version of how electoral politics works. If you have removed yourself from their voter pool and laugh and scoff at any suggestion that you should enter it, then they're not gonna listen to you or think that they should make policy to appease you (which is good, because most of these people are fucking nuts). That's why they're blowing a gasket disowning AOC, still one of the most left-wing members in the House, because she wants to actually win and make real changes in society and has reached a happy-ish marriage with the Democratic party, instead of virtuously losing her seat and becoming irrelevant like some other members of the Squad who got primaried out this year. And the Democrats have accepted many of AOC's views as mainstream policy! She didn't change, but she stayed in the party and worked with it, and the party as a whole is moving to where she was all along. But because any hint of compromise or working to get results, rather than just posting self-righteous screeds on the internet, is Bad, she had to go, I guess. Or something.

Anyway. That's the that on that. If you want to win this election, target and talk to the people who have already identified themselves as likely or possible voters, they just need that extra push to become definite voters. I'm over the anti-democratic hypocritical leftist cranks as much as I am the screaming shitgibboning racist-mob-inciting fascists. If it takes some Republicans gritting their teeth and getting on board the "let's save American democracy" boat with me, then fine. They're actually willing to do the smallest tiny thing to make that outcome come about, and that means, for right now, they are the enemy of my enemy and I'll accept their help. After that, I would in fact like it if we had a sane center-right party again, once Trump is in jail and we can fumigate the MAGA rot. It's up to them.

[margaretthatchersdead]

Reasons to end the monarchy: Charles Edition

Well it's the coronation so you know what it's time for.

The entire concept of a monarchy is actively undemocratic. The head of state should not be someone who is only in that position because they were born into a certain family.

Having a monarchy upholds classism as a specific family of great wealth and power are viewed as superior to others.

They stand for a history of racism and imperialism. This country has done some truly terrible things in its history and the monarchy are a symbol of that. In order to attempt to begin to undo the harm that we have done, we need to remove this symbol of oppression.

The royal family have previously lobbied the government to hide their own personal wealth. Despite this, we are obviously aware that they have a large amount of wealth.

Prince Charles has himself lobbied the government on a number of occasions. His 'black spider memos' show that he has repeatedly pressured ministers on a wide range of topics from the Iraq war to badger culling to alternative therapies. He has used his power to lobby the government on subjects that would affect him.

The monarch does not occupy a ceremonial role as is frequently claimed. Ministers and civil servants have to consult the monarch. Civil servants have to get the consent of the royals on pieces of legislation, which can cause delays on implementation.

Even if the monarch did occupy a purely ceremonial role, as a literal billionaire he wields a ridiculously high amount of power over people.

Windsor Castle brings in less money than Windsor Legoland does. The many castles that are owned by the royal family could be used to create spaces for the public to enjoy or to be used as a shelter for the homeless. The Louvre in Paris used to be house of the French monarchy and gets over twenty times the tourists. Edinburgh castle hasn't had the monarchy live in it for centuries and yet still brings in tourism.

Prince Andrew is widely known to be connected to Jeffrey Epstein; yet he has not had to face any repercussions for his actions despite blatantly lying when being asked about his actions. The royal family have defended him and prevented him from facing the consequences of his actions.

They cost around £334 million per year. This money could be used to help the poor, given to the NHS, to repair and build infrastructure, to support small businesses that are struggling, pretty much anything.

The royal household publishes a much lower figure about the cost of the royal family, so they are actively trying to cover up their cost.

Charles has had access to confidential Cabinet papers, undermining our democracy.

He has publicly championed alternative medicine and has repeatedly promoted it. He sent at least seven letters to the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, that then shortly relaxed the rules governing the labeling of herbal products, ones he as part of Charles's Duchy Originals produces.

He lobbied the health secretary regarding greater provision of alternative treatments on the NHS.

In 2018, 46% of Britons wanted him to abdicate immediately after Elizabeth died. He’s barely wanted by the country even with the sheer amount of pro-monarchy propaganda going around. Charles specifically is very unpopular.

In order to speak to him, broadcasters had to sign a 15-page contract, which includes Clarence house attending the rough and fine cut edits of films and if unhappy can remove that contribution, as well as stipulating that all questions directed at him must be pre-approved and vetted by his representative.

His personal wealth is £1.8 billion. He inherited a large amount of this from Elizabeth, with it being exempt from inheritance tax. Having an immunity from this tax when others don’t is ridiculous.

The Duchy of Cornwall was named in the Paradise papers.

The coronation is going to cost £100 million during a cost of living crisis.

People have been banned from protesting Charles with official warning letters were sent to anti-monarchists.

Protestors who block roads, airports and railways could face an entire year behind bars. Locking yourself to others, objects or buildings could go to prison for six months and face an unlimited fine. Police are allowed to head off disruption by stopping and searching protestors that they suspect.

The public were encouraged to swear allegiance to the new King when he gets sworn in, this is a deeply disturbing suggestion.

He's a billionaire who's going to use the public's money to celebrate himself.

The monarch has sweeping immunity from many laws

He owns business parks and small rented cottages, six of the ten top residential homes, 285,000 acres of mineral rich land. He’s ridiculously rich in a country where so many people are facing extreme poverty.

[ceilidho]

prompt: you keep seeing apparitions of a dead special forces operative who's been haunting the barracks. (light angst; nsfw) (actual ghost simon riley)

-

War dogs chewed up and spat out by the machinery of war.

It is an incalculable blow to learn of his death. Worse still that you learn of it by happenstance, one officer talking to another, only listening in because it’s been weeks since you’ve seen him and their voices go hushed in that way that makes your ears prick up. You’re sitting at a nearby table in the canteen when someone says the single most devastating words that have ever been spoken near you.

“They weren’t able to recover the whole body, just some of it. Pretty gruesome. Don’t know if you ever met him, but he was an alright guy—pretty quiet. Scary, yeah, but—I don’t know. He was fair. Got the job done though. Soap’s taking it pretty hard.”

You barely breathe at the news. Something is squeezing your heart until it overfills on the other side. 

You walk around base in a daze after that. It’s not anyone’s fault that you aren’t notified—no one was supposed to know. Your whole arrangement with Simon was predicated on the knowledge that it would never be revealed to your commanding officers or the rest of the infantry. Made sense at the time. Makes less sense now when your world is falling apart and you have no way of even requesting Ghost’s dog tags. 

Pain holds you upright like a splint while it also tries to smother you. You crawl back to your barracks after training the recruits, voice a hoarse whisper in your throat. Showers are an optimal place to cry, when maybe you won’t be heard. Grief is not grief when there’s nowhere for it to go. 

Maybe Soap was privy enough to Ghost’s life to know. He doesn’t spend time with you, but you see him once from across the tarmac on a flight out and his gaze lingers on you. There are deep troughs under his eyes, dark even with the distance between you. His posture is still, rigid; despite his uniform being pressed and his hair being cut and gelled into place, there is something singularly heavy weighing him down.

He nods from across the way to you. You grit your jaw and nod back. 

It’s the only time you’ll ever acknowledge it. Soap never seeks you out after that—maybe it’s too painful. Maybe shared pain isn’t always enough. 

The worst is only finding out weeks later that Ghost has been buried. That’s your closure. An offhand comment from an operations officer on a smoke break. Your numb hand flicking a lighter. Rain breaking in the early twilight hours and you stand in it so long that you shiver and shake on your way back to your room. 

Lightning that crackles in the storm clouds, illuminating the place where you just stood outside while you stare from your window. Illuminating someone standing where you just were. You squint, but they round the bend to one of the other buildings before you can make them out. 

Every soldier has a story. Conducting barracks checks on staff duty only to find a soldier with half their jaw missing asking for a cigarette. A marine approaching a soldier asking for his rifle, garbed in a ripped vest from early Iraq. Squad bays known for apparitions, known for hauntings. Figures seen from the trees, the half-shadowed remains of old tanks, burned and hollowed out, suddenly upright and mobile. 

In certain barracks, soldiers won’t even leave their rooms at night to use the washroom. They’d rather piss in old bottles or hold off until morning light altogether. It’s common enough to be joked about, for soldiers to trade stories in the mess over supper, trying to spook each other with the things they’ve seen or claimed to see. 

You can tell the ones who’ve actually seen things from those who haven’t though. The ones who have are often quieter, often only laugh a little. The truth is buried in their inability to fully commit to the bit. It’s the knowing that does that.

Knowing that there are things that death cannot hide. 

The first time you see Simon again, it’s not a homecoming. You know there’s something very wrong. 

It’s 3am and someone’s standing in front of your door. You feel it before you see them, feel something like every single hair on your body standing on end and the sudden lucid thought in the middle of a dream that you need to wake up. That you need to wake up right now. 

Heart racing when your eyes snap open. Sweat already slicking the backs of your knees. You’re lying on your side, hands curled close to your face, and you feel its gaze on you like the heaviest dread you’ve ever felt in your life. You stare at the wall that your bed is pushed up against until you find the courage to roll over.

Just a shape in the dark. A dark shape. Distinct from the rest of the darkness in your room. Tall as it is wide. The slightest motion to it, like breathing or the gentle swaying of the human body when it’s allowed to be loose. 

There’s a lamp on your end table. You flick it on without tearing your eyes away from the dark shape looming by the door, but when light unveils your room, it flickers away like a bad illusion. Just a jacket hung up on the back of the door. Your heart races still. 

When the light goes off, the shadow doesn’t reappear.

It might not be him, but something’s haunting you. You spoon cereal into your mouth in the morning with a shaking hand. It’s the massive shape of a body behind the shower curtain in your private bathroom that has you certain—certain—that someone’s there until you whip it to the side and see only tile wall. You know what you saw though, and you know from the way the top of it peeked over the curtain that it was blond. 

Weeks go by. You’re in a bivy sack and a voice you recognize wakes you up for watch. It’s the same voice that used to rumble low in your ear when you let him into your bed on leave (you always used to take them at the same time, no one the wiser). You’re back on base in your room and something leans its full weight onto your bed. You wake up to him sitting on the edge of your bed, blood dripping from an old wound. Him though, skull mask and all. Eyes shadowed always, black staring at you seeing and unseeing. 

You don’t need to ask what he wants from you. He lumbers around the barracks like a wraith that only you can see. Never truer to his old moniker than he is in death. A civilian worker flirts with you one day and he winds up in the infirmary. Fell down the stairs, another sergeant tells you when you ask. You smile tight, brittle. If only. 

He slips into your bed at night when the lights are shut and you’ve turned over onto your side. You can’t see him, but the bed compresses under his weight like it did when he was alive. He’s still for a minute, stare heavy on you while you lie there motionless, waiting him out. When he finally lays a hand on your hip, you flinch at how normal it feels. Like he didn’t go out and die one day. Like it’s really him at your back dragging a hand down the curve of your hip and over your thigh.

He divests you of your pyjamas the same way he used to in motel rooms, your apartment off-base, his cabin up north that you still have the key to but can’t bring yourself to visit. You let him. Shorts pulled down and kicked to the bottom of the bed, then your underwear. Shirt rucked up so he can fit a big, rough hand over your tit. His hands are solid where they touch you, nothing ghostly about them. He squeezes like the memory of your flesh is half-gone, like he needs to sink himself into you again. 

“Missed…you…” His voice comes like a deep rumble, tectonic plates shifting over the asthenosphere. 

The hand on your breast slides up, over the delicate skin of your throat, over where your pulse goes mad and you dry swallow because there’s nothing in your mouth. Over and up the curve of your cheek, thumb pressing against your lips, curling your top lip up until you’re almost kissing it. Then he lets go, hand coming back down to your hip. 

“Simon, are you—” you start, cut off on a gasp when he lifts your leg over his hip and something presses against your opening. Notches there, sinks in hot inch after hot inch. Head spinning and breath wild when he spears you on his thick length, half-tumbling over you until you’re lying prone on your bed. Simon’s as heavy as you remember, the full weight of him keeping you trapped there. You can only take. You can only draw in a deep breath and let out the softest sounds while he presses in, 

“Had to…come back,” the ghost of your old lover says, growling into your ear. “Couldn’t…leave you here…alone.”

You wonder what’s really behind the mask this time. His hands and dick feel flesh enough, but fear still quivers in your belly because you know that whatever it is pressing you down with a firm hand on your shoulder blade, it’s not fully him. 

You’ve heard of ghosts haunting places but never people. There’s something achingly loyal about the way he fucks you though. It’s dark and hot under him, and he mouths where he can, mask pulled up finally. Not that you can see. Better that you can’t, maybe. Pulsing in and out of your cunt, silent but for his shallow intakes of breath. He feels enormous and terrifying at your back. 

A big arm still clad in his old uniform jacket is braced beside your head. Simon whispers apologies into your hair; that he pulled himself out of a grave for a second time because he couldn’t untangle his soul from yours, but he got it wrong this time around. He didn’t make it in time. 

“I won’t leave you though, love,” he says around kisses laid tender on the nape of your neck. He bites the meat of your shoulder hard enough to leave an imprint of his teeth. “Never gonna leave you.” His words make you slicker, hotter; tightening around him until he snarls and fucks more viciously. A promise you thought he couldn’t keep. 

In the morning, you stare at yourself in the bathroom mirror. You take off your shirt and turn around. There’s a red bite mark on your upper left shoulder and it aches when you touch it.

[laineystein]

How do you make peace with the IDF storming into hospitals and UN schools? How do you make peace with the news that the IDF opened fire on Israeli citizens on October 7th? Why do the Palestinians deserve to be chased out of their homes since 1948? Do you know about Rachel Corrie? Do you know that the IDF has killed a record breaking amount of journalists? I don't understand how you can be so close to this tragedy and act like it is anything other than genocide.

You make peace when you understand international law and learn that the only war crimes being committed are being committed by Hamas. We’re not storming hospitals or schools. International law also states that as soon as a faction begins using an area for military purposes, it is no longer protected. It is no longer a “civilian” area, even if civilians still reside there. So many sources (that notably hate Israel and Jews) have come out confirming that Al Shifa is Hamas HQ. Many sources have come out confirming that Hamas is using schools to store weapons and indoctrinate children *and* that NGOs like the UN have turned a blind eye.

You make peace when you learn to educate yourself instead of falling victim to jihadist propaganda. The “Israelis killed their own people on October 7th” lie has been debunked. No sources could be found confirming that and the IDF and the Israel Police both came out saying that was factually inaccurate. If you know reporting out of those groups you know that when we’ve fucked up, we admit it. This was all a fabrication to excuse terrorism and continue to wrongfully demonize Israel.

You make peace when you deal with actual facts. There was a two-state solution planned before 1948 and then four countries attacked Israel and we defeated them all which lead to what y’all refer to as the Nakba. BUT!!! The Jewish population did not want their Arab neighbors to leave. Arab nations encouraged the Nakba. Arab nations have always used the plight of the Palestinian people to further their agenda of demonizing Israel in an attempt to eradicate it and kill Jews. But if we’re going to talk to about being expelled from your homes - Jewish families were expelled from Gaza in 2005 when we gave the land to the Palestinians. Do you care about that? Where are the Jews in Iraq? Yemen? Afghanistan? Syria? Sudan? Morocco? Feel free to talk about how those people were ethnically cleansed from those countries - but if that doesn’t interest you then your activism might be performative and you might just hate Jews.

I know it is not genocide because I’m so close to it. I spent all of last week ensuring the safe passage of Palestinians out of Gaza, into the South. I had Palestinians thank me. I administered aid to Palestinian children and the elderly. I watched them pray to Allah that Hamas would go away. What happened to my people on October 7th was an attempted genocide - something that Hamas has admitted to. What we are doing in Gaza is working to prevent a genocide, one of Hamas’ own doing.

Please read a book. Please get off social media. Please stop regurgitating lies fed to you by influencers and antisemites that did not care about this conflict before October 7th. You clearly need to be educated and messaging an IDF soldier on anon isn’t the way to do it. I have better shit to do. Yalla bye✌🏼

[sayruq]

Biden's visit has concluded. Israel has spent his entire visit trying to muddy the waters of what happened to Al Ahli Hospital and despite their cartoonish efforts, it hasn't worked

The Global South and especially West Asia know who is responsible for the bombing and no amount of AI voice recordings of 'Hamas operatives' can change that.

Israel war crimes continues to backfire on them even in America

Biden backing Israel has had an impact on America's image. Here's a Wall Street Journal article warning that America's continued support is turning countries towards Russia and China which is code for turning countries against America

An EU official said that the EU will pay a heavy price in the Global South for its continued, unabashed support for Israel

There's also speculation that the Biden administration knew about the bombing before it happened.

Countries that were/are allied with Israel continue to distance themselves from Israel like Russia. The reason I keep highlighting Russia is because the West has been running out of ammunition due to the Russia-Ukraine war and that includes Israel which is rumoured to have sent 80-90% of its ammunition to Ukraine. If this conflict lasts a long time, Israel will need to buy weapons and ammunition and Russia would be one of the countries they would turn to (same with China)

So, where are we in terms of the conflict? After days of waffling over a ground operation in Gaza, Israel postponed it until some time after Biden's visit and now we're back here again

Now I'm no military expert but constantly going back and forth on whether or not you'll invade Gaza is bound to do damage to your troops' morale. No wonder they're dealing with mass desertions while their citizens demonstrate on the streets. The Israeli leadership has no plan besides bombing Gaza.

I've seen people on twitter say that the hospital bombing was done deliberately to normalise IDF soldiers to mass civilian deaths in places like hospitals, schools, places of worship, etc. I don't know if I believe that - I think they wanted to push Iran and Hezbollah's buttons before hiding behind Biden. I don't think these people are thinking strategically.

As far as the possibility of regional war is concerned, all indicators show that the West preparing for the war to escalate

Seems to me the Israel has seen what Ukraine has received in just a year and a half of war. They're done receiving a paltry 3.8 billion every year and now prepared to drag out the conflict and I can't say I blame with Biden proposing a 100 billion package for both Ukraine and Israel. This will stretch America too thin as far as funding in concerned. Cracks are already showing

There are parts of the US government that is unhappy that the Ukraine war is losing attention. During the Ukraine war, you had parts of the government that wanted focus to shift from Russia to China. Because of that, the US government has spent the past year alternating between hostility to Russia and threatening to go to war with China over Taiwan. When Niger expelled France from within its borders, America was preparing to join that conflict until Mali and Burkina Faso declared they would fight with Niger. Now they're entering a third front in West Asia. In short, the mighty empire is expending a lot of resources right now and it is not the threat it was when it invaded Iraq and Afghanistan in the early 2000s.

At any rate, the ground invasion of Gaza won't go the way Israel and America hopes it will

The coalition of Palestinian resistance fighters are still patiently waiting for the IDF to come meet them. Their allies aren't backing down either

The reason I keep making these posts is to remind people that, while the genocide of the people of Gaza is horrifying, the war for the liberation of Palestine has not yet been lost.

Do not lose hope. From the river to sea, Palestine WILL be free

[thats-very-like-a-whale]

Being a Jew or a Muslim in the world has gotten much scarier in the past month, and the number of takes being normalized on the Internet that are actually just blatant hatred of Jewish and/or Muslim people is deeply worrying, so here's a list of clarifications about the Israel–Palestine conflict:

The Jewish people have a right to exist in the land of Israel. The Jewish people trace our history in the region back thousands of years, and there has been a continuous Jewish presence in Israel since the Bronze Age.

The Palestinian people have a right to exist in the land of Israel. They have existed in this region, on his land, for hundreds of years.

Claiming one people has the right to exist here but the other people does not means you hate that group of people. If you believe Palestinians have the right to an autonomous state in the land of Israel but the Jews do not, you are a Jew-hating antisemite. If you believe the Jews have a right to an autonomous state in the land of Israel but the Palestinians do not, you hate Palestinians.

Zionism is the ideology that the Jewish people have the right to build a national homeland in the land of Israel. Since the foundation of Israel, being a zionist purely means you believe that Israel has the right to exist. As such, being “anti-zionist” makes you antisemitic.

The Jewish people did not colonize the land of Israel, like, ever. There has been a continuous Jewish presence in the land of Israel for thousands of years, and the major waves of immigration to Israel - called the Aliyot - were during the Ottoman and British occupation of the Levant.

Saying “the Jews are all white European colonizers” is deeply misinformed, antisemitic, and racist. There are Jews - many of whom live in Israel - from Egypt, Iraq, Morocco, Sudan, Iran, Turkey, Afghanistan, Ethiopia, Algeria, Tunisia, Iraq, Georgia, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and most of the rest of the Middle East & north Africa.

Wait but why are there so many "white" (Ashkenazi) Jews in Israel and around the world? Well in 1933 there were 9.5 million Jews living in Europe. In the years 1933–1945, the Nazis genocided 6 million of them. Currently the Jewish population of Europe is around 1.3 million, and today there are still half a million fewer Jews than there were before the Holocaust. Most of the Ashkenazi survivors of the Holocaust immigrated to Israel, and many others immigrated to countries like the US.

Following the 1948 Israel–Palestine war, roughly 700,000 Palestinians were displaced from their homes. In the years before and after the war, 900,000 Jews were expelled from various Muslim countries.

I'm going to continue to reblog this post with more clarifications about the I/P conflict. Feel free to reblog w/ stuff you wanted to add, and feel free to send me questions/comments in my asks. Stay safe everyone ❤️

[dev-solovey]

Reading up on the history of American Idiot (album) and realizing exactly how revolutionary it was and I just have to yell about it for a hot second

So, before they started working on American Idiot, the band was having problems and they were thinking they were going to break up. But for a couple of reasons, they switched directions, most notably because they all felt strongly about the Iraq War and how it was manufactured by greed and warmongering from the Bush administration, which was amplified by the news media. I read a quote from Billie Joe Armstrong where he talked about how the news media was becoming "more of a reality show" than it was news, and he couldn't have been more right. In fact, that problem got worse, and now we're living in an era of rampant misinformation where everything is politicized to a point where just supporting human rights for marginalized people is considered controversial. The song American Idiot came out in 2004, and when Donald Trump first visited the UK at the beginning of his presidency, it was the top played song on every UK radio station, 12 years after it was released. Most things would be culturally irrelevant at that point.

When creating the album American Idiot, a lot of thought went into it - they had a very specific message in mind, and their goal was to send that message to youth. This is because they realized at some point that their fanbase was a bunch of teenagers, and even though they hadn't necessarily intended it that way, they suddenly had a platform with the youth of America and they decided they ought to do something good with it. The drummer, Tré Cool, said something along the lines of "I've never really liked the idea of preaching to kids, but I realized we don't really have a choice at this point." And I love that so much because like, so many people who get rich and famous just become completely out of touch, and when they get a platform, it's very easy to exploit that platform, influence them with terrible ideas, or encourage them to act in terrible ways for self-serving reasons (ex: JK Rowling, Andrew Tate, Dream, Logan Paul, Onision, etc etc). Green Day refused to allow themselves to get to that point. They know the platform they had gave them power and they made an active choice early on to be responsible with it. And a lot of that moral code comes from the fact that they came up in the DIY punk scene in Oakland, which held its members to a very high standard of ethics, a code that they still follow even after they were disowned by that scene when they signed on with a major record label in 1994.

The song American Idiot has a message of "this mass media hysteria is manufactured bullshit, don't fall for it," and it is not subtle about that message. It punches you right in the face. I remember being 12 years old and listening to it and thinking, "yeah, I don't want to be an American idiot." And now, at the age of 28, I am a staunch leftist who is firmly against the atrocities the US government commits, and I feel strongly about stopping misinformation. So I can say with absolute certainty that they succeeded.

I also get like, really upset when people say that American Idiot is the album where they sold out, because that's objectively not true, both for the reasons I've provided above, and also because of the song Wake Me Up When September Ends. Not a lot of people know the story behind this song, but it's actually a song that Billie Joe wrote about the experience of his dad dying of cancer when he was 10 years old. The story, as he tells it, is that when he came home from school, his mom gave him the news, and being (understandably!) upset, started crying, ran to his room and slammed the door. When she knocked on the door to try and talk to him, he shouted "wake me up when September ends!!" in response. It took him decades to be able to write this song, and it shows because it's the perfect grief song, having been played at benefits for 9/11, hurricane Katrina, and so on. The first time I heard that song it reduced me to tears, because you can hear the intense sadness in it. A "sellout" would never write a song like that!! (Side note: maybe stop tweeting at Green Day to wake up every October 1st, it's super tone deaf given the subject matter,,,)

Anyway, I think I'm done being autistic about Green Day (that's a lie, they'll forever be my special interest), so TL;DR:

Thank you, Green Day, for creating a generation of leftists who aren't about the bullshit

[leandra-winchester]

The Tommy timeline is making me insane

We know the 911 writers are REALLY crap about timelines. I mean, just within the Eddie Begins episode there are several dates that just don't add up. I love those writers, but they can't even count to 10, lol.

Tommy was never supposed to come back, so him being in his late 20s-ish in 2005 when Chim joins the 118 was of no consequence, but now that Tommy is back, that makes it really difficult to say how old he really is.

Some people have speculated that he's 45, but I find that too old. Lou was born in Nov 1984, which makes him 39 currently. I could see Tommy being 1-2 years older than that AT MOST.

So let's say Tommy was born in early 1983 and go from there.

He would have started school at 6.5 and finished HS at 18 years old in 2001. Which means he could have joined the army that year and started training to be a helicopter pilot.

There's a program called "From Street to Seat", also sometimes called "High school to Flight School", so that is a possibility. Training would have been around 2 - 2.5 years until he'd achieved the rank of Warranty Officer and be a fully trained helicopter pilot in late 2003. After that, you have to enlist for TEN years at minimum to repay them getting you through flight school.

At that point, the US had entered the war in Afghanistan and just started the one in Iraq.

Tommy could have been stationed anywhere in the US, or been deployed to one of those countries, or at first, as a still very young officer, been deployed to an allied country like Germany. In the early 2000s, there were many bases in Germany where US soldiers were stationed, only serving short missions in Afghanistan or Iraq. So that's an option if we don't want him to be permanently stationed inside a war zone.

Now, how did young Tommy leave the army early so he ended up being a firefighter just two years later?

Well, there's always medical discharge, but if it was for any injury, him already being a member of the team (and by the looks of it no longer a probie) in 2005 is a bit tight. He'd have to recover from his injury, then apply, then be accepted, do the basic training at the academy (18 weeks) and his probie year... so yeah, that's really a very tight timeline.

Another option would have been Don't Ask, Don't Tell. Back then, army members could not be actively asked if they're gay and therefore fired for it, but if they voluntarily disclosed/confirmed it, they would be kicked out.

If he was lucky (and probably the version I'm going for in my fic), and had a very lenient superior officer, he might be offered medical discharge for depression. Usually, that can get you out of the army pretty quickly.

So, to recap:

Born between Jan/June 1983

Finished high school summer 2001, joined the army

Finished flight school in fall 2003, was deployed somewhere or in service in the US

Found out/discharged in early 2004

Started LAFD academy in summer/fall 2004

Started his probie year end of 2004

Just finished it when Chimney joined in (should be late) 2005, at now 22 years old.

Still an incredibly tight timeline, and I wish Chim joining had been more like 2007 or so, but alas. It works.

You are welcome.

And I need to lie down. God I hate inconsistent timelines, lol.

Oh and I just looked it up, and apparently you're only a probie for 6 months at the LAFD, so I guess that makes it a little easier.

I mean, if you shift things around a little, you could even make him only 40 now, born in summer 1983 instead of early. Maybe he was initially gifted and able to enroll in school at just barely 6 years old.

[words-on-a-tightrope]

Hunger Games Relevance

(Please read/boost if you’ve ever read/watched the hunger games or you care about what’s going on)

I don’t know if other people feel the same way but especially with the new hunger games film coming out I’ve been absolutely floored by some of the parallels between the world in the series and the current conflict in Palestine.

Firstly, Suzanne Collins did say that she partially got the idea from flicking between channels showing reality TV interspersed with footage from the Iraq war so I guess there’s a good reason for me to be seeing similarities now.

But the fact it’s being live-streamed - the carnage - the propaganda - the fact that lots of us have been following the same few (often very young) journalists who have become the ‘face’ of Palestinian resistance (because right now journalism IS resistance being actively targeted by Israel) - it’s all crazy familiar.

I saw a clip of Israeli’s sitting on a hill watching and laughing at the bombs dropping on Gaza today as though they were fireworks just minutes before Israel bombed the 3rd floor of a paediatric hospital. The same ‘Sderot Cinema’ where Israeli’s bought deck chairs and snacks to ‘watch the spectacle’ of the 2014 bombing campaign on Gaza.

The way not everyone in the capitol was evil or bad and some people actively supported the districts but realistically they were still complicit in the exploitation - even if just through ignorance.

The incredible amount of children dying - the bombing of hospitals and withholding of resources (like in District 8 in Mockingjay), the taking of people not involved in Hamas into administrative detention (hundreds arrested in the West Bank - like how the victors were taken in Catching Fire even the ones who weren’t involved in the rebellion), the collective punishment of Gaza (the firebombing of District 12).

The way Israel dropped pamphlets from the sky to tell Gazans to evacuate south and then bombed the route (literally straight out of the games I swear - the video of the pamphlets falling was like the scene with the parachutes in Mockingjay which represent hope and then detonate).

It’s so eerily similar and I just wonder how so many watched those films and read those books and are silent now - why could they identify resistance and oppression and desperation and exploitation in fiction and not reality?

And I wonder if maybe it’s because we have to remind ourselves that we aren’t Katniss in this situation - we aren’t the heroes - we are the Capitol and District citizens watching it all happen on our screens - and that’s an unfortunate and uncomfortable concept to grapple with.

[qqueenofhades]

I don't know why I thought it was a good idea to argue with people about the worthlessness of voting third party. They just keep insisting that the influence is worth it, and that I was a coward for daring to suggest that we don't HAVE any other options than Democratic. I even cited how voting third party likely played a part in Al Gore losing ffs.

There's no "likely" about it, Ralph Nader DID directly cost Gore the election. He ran explicitly on the same "both parties are the same, so leftists/liberals should vote for me instead" rhetoric that we are still seeing among the Online Left, and it was successful: he got, for example, over 97,000 votes in Florida. Bush won Florida (and thus the presidency) by a miniscule 537 votes, after the fuckery of Bush v. Gore and SCOTUS ordering the recount stopped in Bush's favor. If the tiniest percentage of those Nader voters had gone for Gore, we would have had a president who was arguing in favor of tackling climate change in the year 2000. We would have been incredibly ahead of the curve. We would, in all likelihood, have a president who took the CIA's warnings of an impending al-Qaeda attack in the US seriously. We would not have had the disastrous Afghanistan and Iraq invasions and the "War on Terror," the rampant Islamophobia, "No Child Left Behind," the 2008 economic crash, and everything else that Dubya and his band of bloodthirsty neocons inflicted on us in the early aughties. Look, I try not to look back too much, but having Gore instead of Bush as president would have reshaped the entire timeline we're living in to such an unfathomably better degree that every moron thinking of voting third party For The Protest should be sat down and forced to learn this history intimately. Of course, they already saw it happen in real time in 2016, but they didn't care about that either.

The good news is: there are plenty of persuadable voters out there, and you can do work to reach them and convince them to vote for Democrats! They're just not online, because all the Online Leftists are terminally brain-poisoned against voting anyway and trying to argue with them is generally a waste of time. Instead, what you should do is take a gander at the following links:

This is the one-stop shop page for volunteering to get Democrats elected. You can do in-person and remote work, there are tons of different ways to get involved (i.e. you don't have to go directly out and knock doors if that's not something you're comfortable with), and your local Democratic party will welcome the volunteer help. There is also a page for finding your state party website:

I went there, clicked on my state, opened the webpage, and there was a "Volunteer" link right in the header, with an easy and quick form to fill out to register your interest and explain the kinds of work you would be interested in doing. You can canvass directly, you can manage data on the back end, you can phone bank, you can send texts and postcards to voters who may need an extra nudge, you can otherwise work with your state party in lots of ways, and it will be so much more productive and make you feel so much better than arguing with online idiots who will never, ever change their minds. What you can do is reach out to voters in your own community, in your own state, and have conversations with people who actually ARE willing to listen, but might need a little more educating on the facts, what's at stake, the truth about this election, and the danger that Trump poses. All of this will convert into critically important Democratic votes, and you can actually put your desire to make a difference into action. So yeah. I would 100% suggest you do it this way instead. Good luck.

[germiyahu]

Not too thrilled that my other post is getting so many notes when I'm not satisfied with it for a multitude of reasons. Let's have a do-over, hopefully much more succinct and to the original point.

When Palestinians, actually basically all Arabs, or all Muslims, say "Jerusalem is holy to us it is the 3rd holiest city in our religion." The White Western Leftist (WWL) will say "That's so valid your religion is so interesting and beautiful Hamas did nothing wrong I love the Houthis!"

But if a Jew ever rebuts "Jerusalem is holy to us as well, it's our holiest city, basically the only one we have," the WWL will probably roll their eyes, scoff, probably say something like "Okay but like why are you still using your outdated Zionist death cult to justify colonialism? You really think the Bible justifies killing millions of Palestinians?" and start going on and on about how Judaism invented everything bad about Christianity.

My hypothesis: These people are not allies to Muslims (Palestinians). They are condescending to them. They are throwing them a bone because they feel bad about how the Muslim world has been treated, well ever since Sykes-Picot, but especially post 9/11, the Patriot Act, The War on Terror, Iraq, Afghanistan, the Drone War, Libya, Nato, The Arab Spring, the list goes on. They don't think Muslims are capable of building the kind of societies they want, not without their gracious help. They don't think Muslims should have the same ideals of democracy and human rights, because they don't expect that from the Brown People. They won't ever hold them to such a standard because "Ugh where do we get off lecturing them?" even though they would never think this of Jews.

These people are not equals to Jews, something something Sartre they think they are both superior and inferior (which makes them superior). They are not just trying to hold their fellow citizens of the world to account. They are trying to put Jews in their place. They are projecting their religious trauma onto Jews because they do not understand Judaism. They see Judaism as Power. They are trying to delegitimize Judaism as a religion (and it is a religion, including the parts of religions that give atheists the "ick," including a lot of mysticism). They are trying to caterwaul about Jews being responsible for the world's ills and that they expect Jewish People to be better than this. To evolve beyond religion and community and affiliation and identity. They want Jewish to be nothing more than a box ticked off on a census. A neat little factoid about yourself, like how your neighbor Cheryl has Norwegian ancestry.

My only conclusion is that these people find Jews and Judaism repulsive, and they find Muslims and Islam primitive. Unlike their parents' generation, they appreciate the primitive. It is noble savagery to them. Unlike their parents' generation, the comparatively cosmopolitan modern secular Western sheen of Jewry (applied to Jews against their will) is not something that we almost lost from the world, but an annoying holdover of what we almost successfully purged from the world.

Because remember, while they hate their parents and everything they stand for, they still deep down want Daddy's approval. So it makes perfect sense why the psyche would displace anger and trauma and all that caused by Christianity, and look elsewhere to place blame. It falls at the feet of Jews and Judaism. Because my culture could never, there has to be a missing puzzle piece that could explain- oh there it is. The Jews did it. And wow look how easily this can slot in with every other antisemitism conspiracy theory.

The audacity to think I could make a shorter version of that post 😂 But basically it's this: The WWL, the Zoomer Left, the Tankies, whatever name you call them... they think that they can "save" Muslims by offering up Jews, and the terrorist fascist fundamentalists like Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis, they're on board. They're all in. Normal ass every day Muslims/Palestinians? They just want peace, they just want rights, they just want sovereignty. The WWL is not interested in that perspective.

They have not once in their lives thought of what they could possibly do in terms of reparations. No no, tweeting and marching for a weekend are quite enough. They have not once in their lives turned inward and self reflected on the ways they benefit from and their own role in these systems of supremacy, that have harmed Muslims around the world. Jewish blood is more than enough to pay for operation Iraqi Freedom. Jewish lives are a fetching price to assuage the Westerner's guilt. You know since they have so much trouble turning inward and reflecting on their own contribution to Islamophobia, it might do them good to practice a little תשובה... but I don't know 😌