#Global Wellness Institute

[goingplacesfarandnear]

Global Wellness Summit to Focus on ‘A Watershed Moment for Wellness’

Susie Ellis, GWS chair and CEO, highlights research into trends in the $5.6 trillion global wellness industry. The upcoming 2024 Global Wellness Summit in St. Andrews, Scotland from Nov. 4-7 is themed, “A Watershed Moment for Wellness.” © Karen Rubin/goingplacesfarandnear.com Miami, FL –The theme for the 2024 Global Wellness Summit (GWS), a foremost gathering of international leaders in the…

[wormchaser]

they did not diagnose me with autism but if im being really real i think there were a lot of flaws in their reasoning.. i think that there are several good reasons for me to still think i have autism

[sayruq]

Police in the Turkish city of Adana detained 11 suspects, five Israeli and two Syrian, on allegations of organ trafficking, the Daily Sabah reported on 5 May. The Provincial Directorate of Security's Anti-Smuggling and Border Gates Branch began investigating after examining the passports of seven individuals who arrived in Adana from Israel about a month ago by plane for the purpose of health tourism. The two Syrian nationals, ages 20 and 21, were found to have fake passports. Further investigation revealed that Syrian nationals had each agreed to sell one of their own kidneys to two of the Israeli nationals, ages 68 and 28, for kidney transplants in Adana. During searches at the suspects' residences, $65,000 and numerous fake passports were seized. Israel has long been at the center of what Bloomberg described in 2011 as a “sprawling global black market in organs where brokers use deception, violence, and coercion to buy kidneys from impoverished people, mainly in underdeveloped countries, and then sell them to critically ill patients in more-affluent nations.” The financial newspaper added, “Many of the black-market kidneys harvested by these gangs are destined for people who live in Israel.” The organ-trafficking network extends from former Soviet Republics such as Azerbaijan, Belarus, Ukraine, and Moldova to Brazil, the Philippines, South Africa, and beyond, the Bloomberg investigation showed. Accusations of Israeli involvement in organ trafficking also apply to the occupied Palestinian territories. In 2009, Sweden's largest daily newspaper, Aftonbladet, reported testimony that the Israeli army was kidnapping and murdering Palestinians to harvest their organs. The report quotes Palestinian claims that young men from the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip had been seized by the Israeli army, and their bodies returned to the families with missing organs. "'Our sons are used as involuntary organ donors,' relatives of Khaled from Nablus said to me, as did the mother of Raed from Jenin as well as the uncles of Machmod and Nafes from Gaza, who all had disappeared for a few days and returned by night, dead and autopsied," wrote Donald Bostrom, the author of the report.Bostrom also cites an incident of alleged organ theft during the the first Palestinian intifada in 1992. He says that the Israeli army abducted a young man known for throwing stones at Israeli troops in the Nablus area. The young man was shot in the chest, both legs, and the stomach before being taken to a military helicopter, which transported him to an unknown location. Five nights later, Bostrom said, the young man's body was returned, wrapped in green hospital sheets. Israel’s Channel 2 TV reported that in the 1990s, specialists at Abu Kabir Forensic Medicine Institute harvested skin, corneas, heart valves, and bones from the bodies of Israeli soldiers, Israeli citizens, Palestinians, and foreign workers without permission from relatives. The Israeli military confirmed that the practice took place, but claimed, "This activity ended a decade ago and does not happen any longer." Israel’s assault on Gaza since 7 October has provided further opportunities for the theft and harvesting of Palestinians’ organs. On 30 January, WAFA news agency reported that the Israeli army returned the bodies of 100 Palestinian civilians it had stolen from hospitals and cemeteries in various areas in Gaza. According to medical sources, inspection of some of the bodies showed that organs were missing from some of them. On 18 January, the Times of Israel reported that the Israeli army confirmed reports that its soldiers dug up graves in a Gaza cemetery, claiming its soldiers were trying to “confirm that the bodies of hostages were not buried there.”

[mcmansionhell]

2007-core nostalgia extravaganza

Quick PSA: someone on Facebook is apparently impersonating me using an account called "McMansion Hell 2.0" -- If you see it, please report! Thanks!

Howdy folks! I hope if you were born between 1995 and 2001 you're ready for some indelible pre-recession vibes because I think this entire house, including the photos have not been touched since that time.

This Wake County, NC house, built in 2007, currently boasts a price tag of 1.7 million smackaroos. Its buxom 4 bedrooms and 4.5 baths brings the total size to a completely reasonable and not at all housing-bubble-spurred 5,000 square feet.

I know everyone (at least on TikTok) thinks 2007 and goes immediately to the Tuscan theming trend that was super popular at the time (along with lots of other pseudo-euro looks, e.g. "french country" "tudor" etc). In reality, a lot of decor wasn't particularly themed at all but more "transitional" which is to say, neither contemporary nor super traditional. This can be pulled off (in fact, it's where the old-school Joanna Gaines excelled) but it's usually, well, bland. Overwhelmingly neutral. Still, these interiors stir up fond memories of the last few months before mommy was on the phone with the bank crying.

I think I've seen these red/navy/beige rugs in literally every mid-2000s time capsule house. I want to know where they came from first and how they came to be everywhere. My mom got one from Kirkland's Home back in the day. I guess the 2010s equivalent would be those fake distressed overdyed rugs.

I hate the kitchen bench trend. Literally the most uncomfortable seating imaginable for the house's most sociable room. You are not at a 19th century soda fountain!!! You are a salesforce employee in Ohio!!!

You could take every window treatment in this house and create a sampler. A field guide to dust traps.

Before I demanded privacy, my parents had a completely beige spare bedroom. Truly random stuff on the walls. An oversized Monet poster they should have kept tbh. Also putting the rug on the beige carpet here is diabolical.

FYI the term "Global Village Coffeehouse" originates with the design historian Evan Collins whose work with the Consumer Aesthetics Research Institute!!!!

This photo smells like a Yankee Candle.

Ok, now onto the last usable photo in the set:

No but WHY is the house a different COLOR??????? WHAT?????

Alright, I hope you enjoyed this special trip down memory lane! Happy (American) Labor Day Weekend! (Don't forget that labor is entitled to all it creates!)

If you like this post and want more like it, support McMansion Hell on Patreon for as little as $1/month for access to great bonus content including a discord server, extra posts, and livestreams.

Not into recurring payments? Try the tip jar! Student loans just started back up!

[wilwheaton]

What we’re witnessing online during and in the aftermath of these hurricanes is a group of people desperate to protect the dark, fictitious world they’ve built. Rather than deal with the realities of a warming planet hurling once-in-a-generation storms at them every few weeks, they’d rather malign and threaten meteorologists, who, in their minds, are “nothing but a trained subversive liar programmed to spew stupid shit to support the global warming bullshit,” as one X user put it. It is a strategy designed to silence voices of reason, because those voices threaten to expose the cracks in their current worldview. But their efforts are doomed, futile. As one dispirited meteorologist wrote on X this week, “Murdering meteorologists won’t stop hurricanes.” She followed with: “I can’t believe I just had to type that.” What is clear is that a new framework is needed to describe this fracturing. Misinformation is too technical, too freighted, and, after almost a decade of Trump, too political. Nor does it explain what is really happening, which is nothing less than a cultural assault on any person or institution that operates in reality. If you are a weatherperson, you’re a target. The same goes for journalists, election workers, scientists, doctors, and first responders. These jobs are different, but the thing they share is that they all must attend to and describe the world as it is. This makes them dangerous to people who cannot abide by the agonizing constraints of reality, as well as those who have financial and political interests in keeping up the charade.

I’m Running Out of Ways to Explain How Bad This Is - The Atlantic

[reasonsforhope]

Story from the Washington Post here, non-paywall version here.

Washington Post stop blocking linksharing and shit challenge.

"The young woman was catatonic, stuck at the nurses’ station — unmoving, unblinking and unknowing of where or who she was.

Her name was April Burrell.

Before she became a patient, April had been an outgoing, straight-A student majoring in accounting at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore. But after a traumatic event when she was 21, April suddenly developed psychosis and became lost in a constant state of visual and auditory hallucinations. The former high school valedictorian could no longer communicate, bathe or take care of herself.

April was diagnosed with a severe form of schizophrenia, an often devastating mental illness that affects approximately 1 percent of the global population and can drastically impair how patients behave and perceive reality.

“She was the first person I ever saw as a patient,” said Sander Markx, director of precision psychiatry at Columbia University, who was still a medical student in 2000 when he first encountered April. “She is, to this day, the sickest patient I’ve ever seen.” ...

It would be nearly two decades before their paths crossed again. But in 2018, another chance encounter led to several medical discoveries...

Markx and his colleagues discovered that although April’s illness was clinically indistinguishable from schizophrenia, she also had lupus, an underlying and treatable autoimmune condition that was attacking her brain.

After months of targeted treatments [for lupus] — and more than two decades trapped in her mind — April woke up.

The awakening of April — and the successful treatment of other people with similar conditions — now stand to transform care for some of psychiatry’s sickest patients, many of whom are languishing in mental institutions.

Researchers working with the New York state mental health-care system have identified about 200 patients with autoimmune diseases, some institutionalized for years, who may be helped by the discovery.

And scientists around the world, including Germany and Britain, are conducting similar research, finding that underlying autoimmune and inflammatory processes may be more common in patients with a variety of psychiatric syndromes than previously believed.

Although the current research probably will help only a small subset of patients, the impact of the work is already beginning to reshape the practice of psychiatry and the way many cases of mental illness are diagnosed and treated.

“These are the forgotten souls,” said Markx. “We’re not just improving the lives of these people, but we’re bringing them back from a place that I didn’t think they could come back from.” ...

Waking up after two decades

The medical team set to work counteracting April’s rampaging immune system and started April on an intensive immunotherapy treatment for neuropsychiatric lupus...

The regimen is grueling, requiring a month-long break between each of the six rounds to allow the immune system to recover. But April started showing signs of improvement almost immediately...

A joyful reunion

“I’ve always wanted my sister to get back to who she was,” Guy Burrell said.

In 2020, April was deemed mentally competent to discharge herself from the psychiatric hospital where she had lived for nearly two decades, and she moved to a rehabilitation center...

Because of visiting restrictions related to covid, the family’s face-to-face reunion with April was delayed until last year. April’s brother, sister-in-law and their kids were finally able to visit her at a rehabilitation center, and the occasion was tearful and joyous.

“When she came in there, you would’ve thought she was a brand-new person,” Guy Burrell said. “She knew all of us, remembered different stuff from back when she was a child.” ...

The family felt as if they’d witnessed a miracle.

“She was hugging me, she was holding my hand,” Guy Burrell said. “You might as well have thrown a parade because we were so happy, because we hadn’t seen her like that in, like, forever.”

“It was like she came home,” Markx said. “We never thought that was possible.”

...After April’s unexpected recovery, the medical team put out an alert to the hospital system to identify any patients with antibody markers for autoimmune disease. A few months later, Anca Askanase, a rheumatologist and director of the Columbia Lupus Center,who had been on April’s treatment team, approached Markx. “I think we found our girl,” she said.

Bringing back Devine

When Devine Cruz was 9, she began to hear voices. At first, the voices fought with one another. But as she grew older, the voices would talk about her, [and over the years, things got worse].

For more than a decade, the young woman moved in and out of hospitals for treatment. Her symptoms included visual and auditory hallucinations, as well as delusions that prevented her from living a normal life.

Devine was eventually diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder, which can result in symptoms of both schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. She also was diagnosed with intellectual disability.

She was on a laundry list of drugs — two antipsychotic medications, lithium, clonazepam, Ativan and benztropine — that came with a litany of side effects but didn’t resolve all her symptoms...

She also had lupus, which she had been diagnosed with when she was about 14, although doctors had never made a connection between the disease and her mental health...

Last August, the medical team prescribed monthly immunosuppressive infusions of corticosteroids and chemotherapy drugs, a regime similar to what April had been given a few years prior. By October, there were already dramatic signs of improvement.

“She was like ‘Yeah, I gotta go,’” Markx said. “‘Like, I’ve been missing out.’”

After several treatments, Devine began developing awareness that the voices in her head were different from real voices, a sign that she was reconnecting with reality. She finished her sixth and final round of infusions in January.

In March, she was well enough to meet with a reporter. “I feel like I’m already better,” Devine said during a conversation in Markx’s office at the New York State Psychiatric Institute, where she was treated. “I feel myself being a person that I was supposed to be my whole entire life.” ...

Her recovery is remarkable for several reasons, her doctors said. The voices and visions have stopped. And she no longer meets the diagnostic criteria for either schizoaffective disorder or intellectual disability, Markx said...

Today, Devine lives with her mother and is leading a more active and engaged life. She helps her mother cook, goes to the grocery store and navigates public transportation to keep her appointments. She is even babysitting her siblings’ young children — listening to music, taking them to the park or watching “Frozen 2” — responsibilities her family never would have entrusted her with before her recovery.

Expanding the search for more patients

While it is likely that only a subset of people diagnosed with schizophrenia and psychotic disorders have an underlying autoimmune condition, Markx and other doctors believe there are probably many more patients whose psychiatric conditions are caused or exacerbated by autoimmune issues...

The cases of April and Devine also helped inspire the development of the SNF Center for Precision Psychiatry and Mental Health at Columbia, which was named for the Stavros Niarchos Foundation, which awarded it a $75 million grant in April. The goal of the center is to develop new treatments based on specific genetic and autoimmune causes of psychiatric illness, said Joseph Gogos, co-director of the SNF Center.

Markx said he has begun care and treatment on about 40 patients since the SNF Center opened. The SNF Center is working with the New York State Office of Mental Health, which oversees one of the largest public mental health systems in America, to conduct whole genome sequencing and autoimmunity screening on inpatients at long-term facilities.

For “the most disabled, the sickest of the sick, even if we can help just a small fraction of them, by doing these detailed analyses, that’s worth something,” said Thomas Smith, chief medical officer for the New York State Office of Mental Health. “You’re helping save someone’s life, get them out of the hospital, have them live in the community, go home.”

Discussions are underway to extend the search to the 20,000 outpatients in the New York state system as well. Serious psychiatric disorders, like schizophrenia, are more likely to be undertreated in underprivileged groups. And autoimmune disorders like lupus disproportionately affect women and people of color with more severity.

Changing psychiatric care

How many people ultimately will be helped by the research remains a subject of debate in the scientific community. But the research has spurred excitement about the potential to better understand what is going on in the brain during serious mental illness...

Emerging research has implicated inflammation and immunological dysfunction as potential players in a variety of neuropsychiatric conditions, including schizophrenia, depression and autism.

“It opens new treatment possibilities to patients that used to be treated very differently,” said Ludger Tebartz van Elst, a professor of psychiatry and psychotherapy at University Medical Clinic Freiburg in Germany.

In one study, published last year in Molecular Psychiatry, Tebartz van Elst and his colleagues identified 91 psychiatric patients with suspected autoimmune diseases, and reported that immunotherapies benefited the majority of them.

Belinda Lennox, head of the psychiatry department at the University of Oxford, is enrolling patients in clinical trials to test the effectiveness of immunotherapy for autoimmune psychosis patients.

As a result of the research, screenings for immunological markers in psychotic patients are already routine in Germany, where psychiatrists regularly collect samples from cerebrospinal fluid.

Markx is also doing similar screening with his patients. He believes highly sensitive and inexpensive blood tests to detect different antibodies should become part of the standard screening protocol for psychosis.

Also on the horizon: more targeted immunotherapy rather than current “sledgehammer approaches” that suppress the immune system on a broad level, said George Yancopoulos, the co-founder and president of the pharmaceutical company Regeneron.

“I think we’re at the dawn of a new era. This is just the beginning,” said Yancopoulos."

-via The Washington Post, June 1, 2023

[mist-the-wannabe-linguist]

The "Americanization of the global internet" post and slow deterioration of local native culture gave me an idea: many users don't even know there is native language communities on this website, so if you know of a regional group/"subculture" on Tumblr, reblog/comment with the tags they use so people can find them and connect with other folks from their countries or speakers of a language they'd like to learn

I will try to update this post with every new addition to hopefully make a comprehensive list of Tumblr regional communities

Edit July 29th: the post has reached a point where Tumblr won't let me add any more links, so from now on all tags are plain text to make it fair

The list so far:

Europe

• Czech

#česky, #hezky česky - general Czech language posts, frequently featuring user-written poetry, art, sometimes politics and current events, warning: often contains vent posts

#čumblr - Czech but frequently used by Slovaks as well, primarily memes and fandom things, shipping, art, cultural things, frequently overlaps with #česky

#obrození, #obrozujeme - memes and fandoms as well but with more emphasis of maintaining and developing Czech culture, is a mostly humorous parody/self-proclaimed continuation of the Czech National Revival of the 1800s, overlaps with #čumblr and #česky

• Slovak

#slovensky - general Slovak language posts

#slumblr, #sumblr, NEW - #ťumbľr - Slovak, general posts, memes, fandom and culture things, sometimes overlaps with #čumblr

• Polish

#polska, #polish - Polish, general posts, art, politics and current events

#polblr, #polishposting, #polskie rzeczy - Polish, more humorous general posts and memes, often overlap with the above

• Ukrainian

#ukraine - general Ukrainian posts, often in English

#укртум��очка - mostly used by artists

• General Slavic

#slav, #slavic, #slavposting, #slavic stuff - mixed Slavic, usually cultural things, memes, art and photography, sometimes politics, sometimes visited by other East Europeans

• Irish

#gaeilge - Irish, general posting but especially cultural things and memes, often features posts for language learning

• Welsh

#cymraeg, #tymblr - general Welsh posting, memes

• Romanian

#romanian - general Romanian tag

#romanisme, #vlandom - Romanian, mostly memes and humor

• Hungarian

#magyar, #hungarian, #tumbli - Hungarian language, mostly quotes

• Finnish

#suomitumblr, #suomitumppu, #suomipaskaa, #suomeksi, other variations beginning with suomi - general (shit)posting

any and all swear words such as #perkele, #vittu, #saatana, #helvetti and #paska - shitposts, overlap with above

• Dutch

#dutch, #the netherlands, #netherlands, #holland, #nederland, #nederlands - general Dutch posts

#nedermemes, #dutchcore - memes, shitposting

• German

#deutsch, #german stuff - general German posting

#BundesTag - memes and humor

blogs like @official-deutschebahn, @official-german-medienlandschaft and other official-deutsche- blogs, "because THE joke of German tumblr is to act like an overly bureucratic public institution"

• Swedish

#sweblr, #swedenposting, #svea rike - memes, shitposts, fandom stuff, sometimes political

#svenskt, #sverige - general Swedish stuff

#all makt åt tengil vår befriare, #sa du sten - used mostly by @svenskjavel

#borås - posts and memes about the city, "kinda like Swedish Ohio"

#lesbisk, #bög, #bisexuell, #pansexuell, #hbtq+, #hbtq, #homosexuell, #asexuell - Swedish queer tags

• French

#upthebaguette, #french side of tumblr, #whatthefrance - general French posting but especially memes, comics, art

#bagaitte - French queer posting

• Greek

#greek tumblr, #ελληνικα, #ελλαδα, #γρεεκ, #ελληνικο ταμπλρ - general stuff

#greek memes - memes

Catalan

#coses de la terra - general stuff

Belarusian

#беларускі тамблер - general stuff, fandoms

#артшляхта - art

Italian

#itablr - general stuff, not very populated yet

#welcome to italy, #italian things, #italian stuff, #italy tag, #roba italiana

#sanremo - for the Sanremo Music Festival, also #domenica in but only after the end of the festival

Italians also frequently gather under #leonardo rai, #medici, #i medici, #montalbano and #il giovane montalbano

Estonian

#eestiblr, #eesti - general stuff

@unofficial-estonia - blog

Danish

@useless-denmarkfacts - blog

Spanish

#español - general Spanish (* I noticed some Mexicans using these too so there may be overlap with American Spanish-speaking countries as well)

#citas, #frases - quotes

#humor grafico - memes

Scottish Gaelic

#gaidhlig, #gaelposting - general, art, language

Africa

Moroccan

#المغرب, #Maroc -general, often photos

Asia

• South Asian

#desiblr, #desi, #desi tag - general South Asia posting, memes, humor, sometimes also used by Arab people

• Indian

#dabara tumblr, #தம்பிளர் - suggested tags for South India

Russian

#русский тамблер, #русский tumblr - general stuff, memes

Sri Lankan

#අරගලයට ජය, suggested tags LKA or #Lankablr if anyone's interested

Indonesian

@useless-indonesiafacts - blog

Israeli

# עברית# ,ישראבלר - general stuff (sorry if these are broken, tumblr keeps fucking with right-to-left scripts)

Arabic

#عربي - general

#كتب, #كتاب, #كتابات - books and writing

Oceania

Australian

#auscore, #straya - general stuff, culture, memes and shitposts

#auspol - politics

Aotearoa (New Zealand)

#māori, #te reo māori - Māori tags

Americas

Brazilian

#brazil, #brasil, #Come to brazil, #br posting, #meu brasil brasileiro, #tumblr br - general and memes

Turtle Island (North American) Indigenous

#ndn, #ndn tumblr - usually about culture, memes etc

"If you're looking for something specific to your tribe, try the non-English spelling of your tribe's name (Tsalagi for Cherokee, for example)"

Not location-specific

Jewish

#jumblr, #frumblr - general stuff, history, discussions, posts mostly in English

Romani

#romani, #rroma, #rrumblr - romani sides of tumblr, general stuff, history, discussions, mostly in English

Please share around wherever you're from, US American local cultures are welcome as well, especially indigenous (though that should go without saying)

Reminder that this is a post made to allow people to find others of the same culture/language, be respectful and do not use these tags to target groups and spread hate

[slyandthefamilybook]

since we now know that all those "my blog is safe for Jewish people" posts are bullshit, here are some Jewish organizations you can donate to if you actually want to prove you support Jews. put up or shut up

FIGHTING HUNGER

Masbia - Kosher soup kitchens in New York

MAZON - Practices and promotes a multifaceted approach to hunger relief, recognizing the importance of responding to hungry peoples' immediate need for nutrition and sustenance while also working to advance long-term solutions

Tomchei Shabbos - Provides food and other supplies so that poor Jews can celebrate the Sabbath and the Jewish holidays

FINANCIAL AID

Ahavas Yisrael - Providing aid for low-income Jews in Baltimore

Hebrew Free Loan Society - Provides interest-free loans to low-income Jews in New York and more

GLOBAL AID

American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee - Offers aid to Jewish populations in Central and Eastern Europe as well as in the Middle East through a network of social and community assistance programs. In addition, the JDC contributes millions of dollars in disaster relief and development assistance to non-Jewish communities

American Jewish World Service - Fighting poverty and advancing human rights around the world

Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society - Providing aid to immigrants and refugees around the world

Jewish World Watch - Dedicated to fighting genocides around the world

MEDICAL AID

Sharsheret - Support for cancer patients, especially breast cancer

SOCIAL SERVICES

The Aleph Institute - Provides support and supplies for Jews in prison and their families, and helps Jewish convicts reintegrate into society

Bet Tzedek - Free legal services in LA

Bikur Cholim - Providing support including kosher food for Jews who have been hospitalized in the US, Australia, Canada, Brazil, and Israel

Blue Card Fund - Critical aid for holocaust survivors

Chai Lifeline - An org that's very close to my heart. They help families with members with disabilities in Baltimore

Chana - Support network for Jews in Baltimore facing domestic violence, sexual abuse, and elder abuse

Community Alliance for Jewish-Affiliated Cemetaries - Care of abandoned and at-risk Jewish cemetaries

Crown Heights Central Jewish Community Council - Provides services to community residents including assistance to the elderly, housing, employment and job training, youth services, and a food bank

Hands On Tzedakah - Supports essential safety-net programs addressing hunger, poverty, health care and disaster relief, as well as scholarship support to students in need

Hebrew Free Burial Association

Jewish Board of Family and Children's Services - Programs include early childhood and learning, children and adolescent services, mental health outpatient clinics for teenagers, people living with developmental disabilities, adults living with mental illness, domestic violence and preventive services, housing, Jewish community services, counseling, volunteering, and professional and leadership development

Jewish Caring Network - Providing aid for families facing serious illnesses

Jewish Family Service - Food security, housing stability, mental health counseling, aging care, employment support, refugee resettlement, chaplaincy, and disability services

Jewish Relief Agency - Serving low-income families in Philadelphia

Jewish Social Services Agency - Supporting people’s mental health, helping people with disabilities find meaningful jobs, caring for older adults so they can safely age at home, and offering dignity and comfort to hospice patients

Jewish Women's Foundation Metropolitan Chicago - Aiding Jewish women in Chicago

Metropolitan Council on Jewish Poverty - Crisis intervention and family violence services, housing development funds, food programs, career services, and home services

Misaskim - Jewish death and burial services

Our Place - Mentoring troubled Jewish adolescents and to bring awareness of substance abuse to teens and children

Tiferes Golda - Special education for Jewish girls in Baltimore

Yachad - Support for Jews with disabilities

[rosecarat]

im so fucking annoyed at how absolutely STUPID the american LGTBQ+ “community” and their “allies” have been in regards to pinkwashing from “israel.” like zionists in general are ridiculous but the pinkwashed homophobia crowd has the least amount of brain cells in the entire conversation.

“omg palestine is homophobic you cant support them!”

1) palestine is not a person. a nation yes but not a fucking person. yall love to come on here and say “well not ALL zionists are shitty colonial murderers! they arent the same as their government!” so by that logic why are the palestinian people an extension of theirs? and at what point in 75 years have palestinians had enough time to worry about their LGTBQ+ laws when EVERYONE, including QUEER PALESTINIANS, is being targeted, arrested, abused, and murdered? please fucking explain.

2) by this same fucking logic half the states in america alone should be bombed. florida should be taken off the map bc of the amount of anti-LGTBQ+ laws that have been passed in the past how many years. oh but that suddenly doesnt fucking matter right? bc we’re in the West™️ we’re not “dirty savages” like the global south?

3) AT WHAT POINT DO ANY OF YOU DUMB ASSES ACKNOWLEDGE PALESTINIAN QUEERS. LITERALLY. THERE ARE ENTIRE COALITIONS OF QUEER PALESTINIANS ACTUALLY DOING THE WORK TO SAVE THEIR PEOPLE AND DISMANTLE HARMFUL INSTITUTIONS WHILE YOU ARE ONLINE TALKING ABOUT KILLING A WHOLE NATION BC THEY HAVE GAY MARRIAGE OUTLAWED. fucking insane.

anyways free palestine, fuck all zionists and your clown ass supporters, and to all the queers in the West who support genocide bc you don’t have the critical thinking to look past your comfy home in LA, choke.

[probablyasocialecologist]

Palestinian trade unions issue an urgent global call to action, calling on workers everywhere to halt the sale and funding of arms to Israel — and related military research. As Israel escalates its military campaign, Palestinian trade unions call on our counterparts internationally and all people of conscience to end all forms of complicity with Israel’s crimes - most urgently halting the arms trade with Israel, as well as all funding and military research. The time for action is now - Palestinian lives hang in the balance.  This urgent, genocidal situation can only be prevented by a mass increase of global solidarity with the people of Palestine and that can restrain the Israeli war machine. We need you to take immediate action - wherever you are in the world - to prevent the arming of the Israeli state and the companies involved in the infrastructure of the blockade. We take inspiration from previous mobilisations by trade unions in Italy, South Africa and the United States, and similar international mobilisations against the Italian invasion of Ethiopia in the 1930s, the fascist dictatorship in Chile in the 1970s and elsewhere where global solidarity limited the extent of colonial brutality.  We are calling on trade unions in relevant industries: 1. To refuse to build weapons destined for Israel. 2. To refuse to transport weapons to Israel. 3. To pass motions in their trade union to this effect. 4. To take action against complicit companies involved in implementing Israel’s brutal and illegal siege, especially if they have contracts with your institution.  5. Pressure governments to stop all military trade with Israel, and in the case of the US, funding to it. We make this call as we see attempts to ban and silence all forms of solidarity with the Palestinian people. We ask you to speak out and take action in the face of injustice as trade unions have done historically. We make this call in the belief that the struggle for Palestinian justice and liberation is not only a regionally and globally determined struggle. It is a lever for the liberation of all dispossessed and exploited people of the world.

[mariacallous]

Neo-Nazis and white supremacists are sharing Hitler-related propaganda and trying to recruit new members on TikTok, according to a new report from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD) shared exclusively with WIRED. The TikTok algorithm is also promoting this content to new users, researchers found, as extremist communities are leveraging the huge popularity of TikTok among younger audiences to spread their message.

The report from ISD details how hundreds of extremist TikTok accounts are openly posting videos promoting Holocaust denial and the glorification of Hitler and Nazi-era Germany, and suggesting that Nazi ideology is a solution to modern-day issues such as the alleged migrant invasion of Western countries. The accounts also show support for white supremacist mass shooters and livestream-related footage or recreations of these massacres. Many of the accounts use Nazi symbols in their profile pictures or include white supremacist codes in their usernames.

Nathan Doctor, an ISD researcher who authored the report, says he began his investigation earlier this year when he came across one neo-Nazi account on TikTok while conducting research for another project.

He was quickly able to unmask a much broader network of accounts that appeared to be actively helping each other through liking, sharing, and commenting on each other’s accounts in order to increase their viewership and reach.

The groups promoting neo-Nazi narratives are typically siloed in more fringe platforms, like Telegram, the encrypted messaging app. But Telegram has become a place to discuss recruitment techniques for TikTok specifically: White supremacist groups there share videos, images, and audio tracks that members can use, explicitly telling other members to cross-post the content on TikTok.

“We posted stuff on our brand new tiktok account with 0 followers but had more views than you could ever have on bitchute or twitter,” one account in a Neo-Nazi group posted on Telegram about their outreach on TikTok. “It just reaches much more people.”

Others have followed suit. One prominent neo-Nazi has often asked his thousands of Telegram followers to “juice,” or algorithmically boost, his TikTok videos to increase their viral potential.

An extremist Telegram channel with 12,000 followers urged members to promote the neo-Nazi documentary Europa: The Last Battle by blanketing TikTok with reaction videos in an effort to make the film go viral. Researchers from ISD found dozens of videos on TikTok featuring clips from the film, some with over 100,000 views. “One account posting such snippets has received nearly 900k views on their videos, which include claims that the Rothschild family control the media and handpick presidents, as well as other false or antisemitic claims,” the researchers wrote.

This is far from the first time the role that TikTok’s algorithm plays in promoting extremist content has been exposed. Earlier this month, the Global Network on Extremism and Technology reported that TikTok’s algorithm was promoting the “adoration of minor fascist ideologues.” The same researchers found last year that it was boosting Eurocentric supremacist narratives in Southeast Asia. Earlier this month, WIRED reported how TikTok’s search suggestions were pushing young voters in Germany towards the far-right Alternative for Germany party ahead of last month’s EU elections.

“Hateful behavior, organizations and their ideologies have no place on TikTok, and we remove more than 98 percent of this content before it is reported to us,” Jamie Favazza, a TikTok spokesperson tells WIRED. “We work with experts to keep ahead of evolving trends and continually strengthen our safeguards against hateful ideologies and groups.”

Part of the reason platforms like TikTok have in the past been unable to effectively clamp down on extremist content is due to the use of code language, emojis, acronyms, and numbers by these groups. For example, many of the neo-Nazi accounts used a juice box emoji to refer to Jewish people.

“At present, self-identified Nazis are discussing TikTok as an amenable platform to spread their ideology, especially when employing a series of countermeasures to evade moderation and amplify content as a network,” the researchers write in the report.

But Doctor points out that even when viewing non-English-language content, spotting these patterns should be possible. “Despite seeing content in other languages, you can still pretty quickly recognize what it means,” says Doctor. “The coded nature of it isn't an excuse, because if it's pretty easily recognizable to someone in another language, it should be recognizable to TikTok as well.”

TikTok says it has more than “40,000 trust and safety professionals” working on moderation around the globe, and the company says its Trust and Safety Team has specialists in violent extremism who constantly monitor developments in these communities, including the use of new coded language.

While many of the identified accounts are based in the US, Doctor found that the network was also international.

“It's definitely global, it's not even just the English language,” Doctor tells WIRED. “We found stuff in French, Hungarian, German. Some of these are in countries where Naziism is illegal. Russian is a big one. But we even found things that were a bit surprising, like groups of Mexican Nazis, or across Latin America. So, yeah, definitely a global phenomenon.”

Doctor did not find any evidence that the international groups were actively coordinating with each other, but they were certainly aware of each others’ presence on TikTok: “These accounts are definitely engaging with each others' content. You can see, based on comment sections, European English-speaking pro-Nazi accounts reacting with praise toward Russian-language pro-Nazi content.”

The researchers also found that beyond individual accounts and groups promoting extremist content, some real-world fascist or far-right organizations were openly recruiting on the platform.

Accounts from these groups posted links in their TikTok videos to a website featuring antisemitic flyers and instructions on how to print and distribute them. They also boosted Telegram channels featuring more violent and explicitly extremist discourse.

In one example cited by ISD, an account whose username contains an antisemitic slur and whose bio calls for an armed revolution and the complete annihilation of Jewish people, has shared incomplete instructions to build improvised explosive devices, 3D-printed guns, and “napalm on a budget.”

To receive the complete instructions, the account holder urged followers to join a “secure groupchat” on encrypted messaging platforms Element and Tox. Doctor says that comments under the account holder’s videos indicate that a number of his followers had joined these chat groups.

ISD reported this account, along with 49 other accounts, in June for breaching TikTok’s policies on hate speech, encouragement of violence against protected groups, promoting hateful ideologies, celebrating violent extremists, and Holocaust denial. In all cases, TikTok found no violations, and all accounts were initially allowed to remain active.

A month later, 23 of the accounts had been banned by TikTok, indicating that the platform is at least removing some violative content and channels over time. Prior to being taken down, the 23 banned accounts had racked up at least 2 million views.

The researchers also created new TikTok accounts to understand how Nazi content is promoted to new users by TikTok’s powerful algorithm.

Using an account created at the end of May, researchers watched 10 videos from the network of pro-Nazi users, occasionally clicking on comment sections but stopping short of any form of real engagement such as liking, commenting, or bookmarking. The researchers also viewed 10 pro-Nazi accounts. When the researchers then flipped to the For You feed within the app, it took just three videos for the algorithm to suggest a video featuring a World War II-era Nazi soldier overlayed with a chart of US murder rates, with perpetrators broken down by race. Later, a video appeared of an AI-translated speech from Hitler overlaid with a recruitment poster for a white nationalist group.

Another account created by ISD researchers saw even more extremist content promoted in its main feed, with 70 percent of videos coming from self-identified Nazis or featuring Nazi propaganda. After the account followed a number of pro-Nazi accounts in order to access content on channels set to private, the TikTok algorithm also promoted other Nazi accounts to follow. All 10 of the first accounts recommended by TikTok to this account used Nazi symbology or keywords in their usernames or profile photos, or featured Nazi propaganda in their videos.

“In no way is this particularly surprising,” says Abbie Richards, a disinformation researcher specializing in TikTok. "These are things that we found time and time again. I have certainly found them in my research."

Richards wrote about white supremacist and militant accelerationist content on the platform in 2022, including the case of neo-Nazi Paul Miller, who, while serving a 41-month sentence for firearm charges, featured in a TikTok video that racked up more than 5 million views and 700,000 likes during the three months it was on the platform before being removed.

Marcus Bösch, a researcher based in Hamburg University who monitors TikTok, tells WIRED that the report’s findings “do not come as a big surprise,” and he’s not hopeful there is anything TikTok can do to fix the problem.

“I’m not sure exactly where the problem is,” Bösch says. “TikTok says it has around 40,000 content moderators, and it should be easy to understand such obvious policy violations. Yet due to the sheer volume [of content], and the ability by bad actors to quickly adapt, I am convinced that the entire disinformation problem cannot be finally solved, neither with AI nor with more moderators.”

TikTok says it has completed a mentorship program with Tech Against Terrorism, a group that seeks to disrupt terrorists’ online activity and helps TikTok identify online threats.

“Despite proactive steps taken, TikTok remains a target for exploitation by extremist groups as its popularity grows,” Adam Hadley, executive director of Tech Against Terrorism, tells WIRED. “The ISD study shows that a small number of violent extremists can wreak havoc on large platforms due to adversarial asymmetry. This report therefore underscores the need for cross-platform threat intelligence supported by improved AI-powered content moderation. The report also reminds us that Telegram should also be held accountable for its role in the online extremist ecosystem.”

As Hadley outlines, the report’s findings show that there are significant loopholes in the company’s current policies.

“I've always described TikTok, when it comes to far-right usage, as a messaging platform,” Richards said. “More than anything, it's just about repetition. It's about being exposed to the same hateful narrative over and over and over again, because at a certain point you start to believe things after you just see them enough, and they start to really influence your worldview.”

[montereybayaquarium]

Let’s chat about the facts ✅

Plastic pollution is a global issue affecting the health of humans as well as the ocean. Plastic and plastic additives contain many harmful chemicals that can have negative effects on human health.

We believe this complex issue needs to be addressed from the local to the global scale. In just the past two years, our Conservation & Science team has worked with multiple organizations, including the Environmental Law Institute, the Minderoo-Monaco Commission on Plastics and Human Health, and the State of California, to bring awareness to the intersection of plastic pollution, human health, and ocean conservation.

Check out this link for more info on the impact of plastic pollution on human and ocean health–as well as ways that you can limit your exposure to plastic pollution.

Together, we can ensure a healthier future for all, one action at a time! 🌊

[fairuzfan]

Joint statement by Wikimedia organizations and individuals regarding the ongoing situation in Palestine, 7 April 2024

We, the undersigned Wikimedia groups and individuals, express deep concern over the ongoing Israel-created humanitarian crisis facing the Palestinian population, particularly the widespread loss of life, infrastructure devastation, and severe food shortages in the Gaza Strip. We express profound concern for the safety and well-being of Wikimedia and allied movement activists within the besieged Palestinian territory. Ensuring the safety and well-being of individuals behind the realm of free knowledge is paramount; knowledge cannot truly be free if it comes at the expense of human safety and security.

In the words of the late Reverend Desmond Tutu, "If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor." In alignment with our commitment to uphold human dignity and justice, we firmly advocate for peace and equitable resolution.

In a demonstration of solidarity, some of the undersigned groups have adopted the colors of the Palestinian flag within the respective logos, following the initiative of the Arabic Wikipedia community to symbolize support following the December 2023 day of action.

We urge all Wikimedia groups, affiliates, allies, and volunteers to unite in solidarity with humanity and demand an immediate and lasting ceasefire to halt the tragic loss of life and destruction of Palestinian cultural heritage. Furthermore, we call upon the Wikimedia Foundation to take proactive measures to ensure the safety of volunteers, communities, partners and knowledge and memory institutions from Palestine contributing to the dissemination of knowledge.

We urgently request the Wikimedia Foundation to prioritize the unbiased dissemination of information and the accurate and timely documentation of the ongoing human-made humanitarian disaster and the erasure of cultural heritage. Additionally, we take this opportunity to underscore the importance of global support for enhancing Palestinian content across all Wikipedia projects.

[mostlysignssomeportents]

Academic economists get big payouts when they help monopolists beat antitrust

After 40 years of rampant corporate crime, there's a new sheriff in town: Jonathan Kanter was appointed by Biden to run the DOJ Antitrust Divisoon, and he's overseen 170 "significant antitrust actions" in the past 2.5 years, culminating in a court case where Google was ruled to be an illegal monopolist:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/08/07/revealed-preferences/#extinguish-v-improve

Kanter's work is both extraordinary and par for the course. As Kanter said in a recent keynote for the Fordham Law Competition Law Institute’s 51st Annual Conference on International Antitrust Law and Policy, we're witnessing an epochal, global resurgence of antitrust:

https://www.justice.gov/opa/speech/assistant-attorney-general-jonathan-kanter-delivers-remarks-fordham-competition-law-0

Kanter's incredible enforcement track record isn't just part of a national trend – his colleagues in the FTC, CFPB and other agencies have also been pursuing an antitrust agenda not seen in generations – but also a worldwide trend. Antitrust enforcers in Canada, the UK, the EU, South Korea, Australia, Japan and even China are all taking aim at smashing corporate monopolies. Not only are they racking up impressive victories against these giant corporations, they're stealing the companies' swagger. After all, the point of enforcement isn't just to punish wrongdoing, but also to deter wrongdoing by others.

Until recently, companies hurled themselves into illegal schemes (mergers, predatory pricing, tying, refusals to deal, etc) without fear or hesitation. Now, many of these habitual offenders are breaking the habit, giving up before they've even tried. Take Wiz, a startup that turned down Google's record-shattering $23b buyout offer, understanding that the attempt would draw more antitrust scrutiny than it was worth:

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/wiz-turns-down-23-billion-022926296.html

As welcome as this antitrust renaissance is, it prompts an important question: why didn't we enforce antitrust law for the 40 years between Reagan and Biden?

That's what Kanter addresses the majority of his remarks to. The short answer is: crooked academic economists took bribes from monopolists and would-be monopolists to falsify their research on the impacts of monopolists, and made millions (literally – one guy made over $100m at this) testifying that monopolies were good and efficient.

After all, governments aren't just there to enforce rules – they have to make the rules first, and do to that, they need to understand how the world works, so they can understand how to fix the places where it's broken. That's where experts come in, filling regulators' dockets and juries' ears with truthful, factual testimony about their research. Experts can still be wrong, of course, but when the system works well, they're only wrong by accident.

The system doesn't work well. Back in the 1950s, the tobacco industry was threatened by the growing scientific consensus that smoking caused cancer. Industry scientists confirmed this finding. In response, the industry paid statisticians, doctors and scientists to produce deceptive research reports and testimony about the tobacco/cancer link.

The point of this work wasn't necessarily to convince people that tobacco was safe – rather, it was to create the sense that the safety of tobacco was a fundamentally unanswerable question. "Experts disagree," and you're not qualified to figure out who's right and who's wrong, so just stop trying to figure it out and light up.

In other words, Big Tobacco's cancer denial playbook wasn't so much an attack on "the truth" as it was an attack on epistemology – the system by which we figure out what is true and what isn't. The tactic was devastatingly effective. Not only did it allow the tobacco giants to kill millions of people with impunity, it allowed them to reap billions of dollars by doing so.

Since then, epistemology has been under sustained assault. By the 1970s, Big Oil knew that its products would render the Earth unfit for human habitation, and they hired the same companies that had abetted Big Tobacco's mass murder to provide cover for their own slow-motion, planetary scale killing spree.

Time and again, big business has used assaults on epistemology to provide cover for unthinkable crimes. This has given rise to today's epistemological crisis, in which we don't merely disagree about what is true, but (far more importantly) disagree about how the truth can be known:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/25/black-boxes/#when-you-know-you-know

Ask a conspiratorialist why they believe in Qanon or Hatians in Springfield eating pets, and you'll get an extremely vibes-based answer – fundamentally, they believe it because it feels true. As the old saying goes, you can't reason someone out of a belief they didn't reason their way into.

This assault on reason itself is at the core of Kanter's critique. He starts off by listing three cases in which academic economists allowed themselves to be corrupted by the monopolies they studied:

George Mason University tricked an international antitrust enforcer into attending a training seminar that they believed to be affiliated with the US government. It was actually sponsored by the very companies that enforcer was scrutnizing, and featured a parade of "experts" who asserted that these companies were great, actually.

An academic from GMU – which receives substantial tech industry funding – signed an amicus brief opposing an enforcement action against their funders. The academic also presented a defense of these funders to the OECD, all while posing as a neutral academic and not disclosing their funding sources.

An ex-GMU economist, Joshua Wright, submitted a study defending Qualcomm against the FTC, without disclosing that he'd been paid to do so. Wright has elevated undisclosed conflicts of interest to an art form:

https://www.wsj.com/us-news/law/google-lawyer-secret-weapon-joshua-wright-c98d5a31

Kanter is at pains to point out that these three examples aren't exceptional. The economics profession – whose core tenet is "incentive matter" – has made it standard practice for individual researchers and their academic institutions to take massive sums from giant corporations. Incredibly, they insist that this has nothing to do with their support of monopolies as "efficient."

Academic centers often serve as money-laundries for monopolist funders; researchers can evade disclosure requirements when they publish in journals or testify in court, saying only that they work for some esteemed university, without noting that the university is utterly dependent on money from the companies they're defending.

Now, Kanter is a lawyer, not an academic, and that means that his job is to advocate for positions, and he's at pains to say that he's got nothing but respect for ideological advocacy. What he's objecting to is partisan advocacy dressed up as impartial expertise.

For Kanter, mixing advocacy with expertise doesn't create expert advocacy – it obliterates expertise, as least when it comes to making good policy. This mixing has created a "crisis of expertise…a pervasive breakdown in the distinction between expertise and advocacy in competition policy."

The point of an independent academia, enshrined in the American Association of University Professors' charter, is to "advance knowledge by the unrestricted research and unfettered discussion of impartial investigators." We need an independent academy, because "to be of use to the legislator or the administrator, [an academic] must enjoy their complete confidence in the disinterestedness of [his or her] conclusions."

It's hard to overstate just how much money economists can make by defending monopolies. Writing for The American Prospect, Robert Kuttner gives the rate at $1,000/hour. Monopoly's top defenders make unimaginable sums, like U Chicago's Dennis Carlton, who's brought in over $100m in consulting fees:

https://prospect.org/economy/2024-09-24-economists-as-apologists/

The hidden cost of all of this is epistemological consensus. As Tim Harford writes in his 2021 book The Data Detective, the truth can be known through research and peer-review:

https://pluralistic.net/2021/01/04/how-to-truth/#harford

But when experts deliberately seek to undermine the idea of expertise, they cast laypeople into an epistemological void. We know these questions are important, but we can't trust our corrupted expert institutions. That leaves us with urgent questions – and no answers. That's a terrifying state to be in, and it makes you easy pickings for authoritarian grifters and conspiratorial swindlers.

Seen in this light, Kanter's antitrust work is even more important. In attacking corporate power itself, he is going after the machine that funds this nihilism-inducing corruption machine.

This week, Tor Books published SPILL, a new, free LITTLE BROTHER novella about oil pipelines and indigenous landback!

If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this post to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:

https://pluralistic.net/2024/09/25/epistemological-chaos/#incentives-matter

Image: Ron Cogswell (modified) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:George.Mason.University.Arlington.Campus.jpg

CC BY 2.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

[beguines]

Today, strawberries have replaced much of the citrus and olive trees in the strip, and despite the relatively small area of farmland used for this sector, it enjoys high economic and social value. In all of the ways that citrus cultivation has been targeted, strawberries seem designed to survive Israel's eco-colonial practices. Strawberries are able to survive on partially saline water, they have faster production cycles, are easier to cultivate and replant after destruction and uprooting, are more mobile after moments of displacement, require less space and distance between each planted crop, and enable farmers in Gaza's northern peripheries and along the buffer zones to remain visible to the observing Israeli occupation forces. As a crop with limited historical roots in the country, it adapts well and is highly versatile. The use of compost for the cultivation of strawberries enables significant increase in fruit productivity, saving Gazan farmers the use of precious water supplies and decreasing its need for the use of fertilizers.

Despite this, the conditions of Gaza's ongoing colonial isolation and erasure make it increasingly impossible for farmers to sustain their livelihoods off of the land, even with strawberry production. In today's Gaza, as the agricultural export industry is fully reliant on the Israeli permit system, strawberries are slowly being replaced with other low-growing, fast-yielding, cost-effective and high-demand fruits and vegetables. Indeed, as a colleague at the Union of Agricultural Work Committees, the largest agricultural development institution in Palestine, told me during my time in Gaza, the most recent crop to slowly begin its replacement of strawberries in this line of forced colonial transition is pineapple—with the first pineapple farm planted in Khan Younes in 2017.

Examining the conditions that make strawberry production more practical and fuel the transition from citrus production requires examining the ongoing Israeli colonization of natural resources that supplant and suppress traditional modes of relating to nature. Witnesses of Israeli neo-colonial violence, the disappearing orchards in Gaza mark its new disconnected reality. The transition from the orange to the strawberry—and perhaps later to pineapple—is more than a shift in markets and produce. They affect the history and identity of Palestinians in Gaza. The links between cultivation and national or communal identity are well-known and documented in other contexts, including their intersection with colonial nation-branding. But in the context of aggressive climate change the instabilities, tensions, and erasures that come with transitions in vegetation are growing increasingly stark. For example, in the case of the Swiss canton of Valais, global heating has resulted in the growth of cacti, Opuntia, that are proliferating on the mountainsides of the canton, encroaching on natural reserves and causing a biodiversity threat. Used to "seeing their mountainsides covered with snow in winter and edelweiss flowers in summer" warmer and drier temperatures have given way to what is named in media coverage as an "invasive species colonizing the slopes." Launching an uprooting campaign in 2022, the press release stressed that "this invasive and non-native plant is not welcome in the perimeter of prairies and dry pastures of national importance." Evidently the discourse mobilized is dominated by aggressive language of aliens and invasion, which contributes to the use of violent and war-like metaphors to push for pre-emptive and combative control. In the Gazan case, the transition, as well as local responses to it, are less pronounced and weeded through long-term colonial policies imposed by the occupation. That said, the transition to strawberry cultivation nevertheless carries a similar ecological, cultural, and socio-political impact. In place of the orange, the strawberry is surfacing as the symbol of Gaza, redrawing the boundaries of the identity of its besieged inhabitants. Whereas in the past the orange was a continuous link between Gaza and the rest of historic Palestine, with deep generational roots and a symbol of steadfast and continuous presence, the abrupt transition from oranges to strawberries distances Gaza from the constructed identity and vegetal knowledge production of Palestinian farmers elsewhere. Put differently, this symbolic and political transition at the level of fruit production can be seen as another mechanism through which Israeli neo-colonial violence reifies Gaza as an enclave: divided and partitioned from the rest of Palestine.

Shourideh C. Molavi, Environmental Warfare in Gaza: Colonial Violence and New Landscapes of Resistance