#from central africa to the world

[kimludcom]

FALLY IPUPA - PARIS LA DÉFENSE ARENA CONCERT GÉNÉRIQUE SEBEN (CONCERT OFFICIEL) 🔥💪🏾

[northwest-by-a-train]

When Russia went to war with Ukraine, there were dozens of takes on here about how Europe & America had "snubbed" Russia. Despite Germany shooting themselves in the foot by hooking their economy to Russian oil & gas, despite the high prestige Russian culture still enjoys among the western bourgeoisie, despite the "appease & profit" attitudes of European political, business & education leaders. Despite all that and more, you could find people saying Russia was constantly mistreated, humiliated and belittled by the western world, and was left with nothing but bad choices. I saw people on here argue that the EU should've made Russia a member in the 90s, that western powers should've done everything to preserve its social safety net, and encouraged friendship initiatives with its neighbors. The war in Ukraine was regrettable, yes, and many were against it. But ultimately, the onus of it fell on foreign powers essentially being filthy russophobes.

Now, American libs use the same logic to promote Kamala Harris. "You have to vote for us, or we'll genocide Palestine even harder. We don't want the guy who will genocide harder than this one to be in power. We want to have the one that keeps genocide at around the same level, and who could maybe be amenable to lower that level." And if you say that's irrational or disgusting or predatory blackmail, they turn around and say "Well, if you don't appease our empire, and you don't give us the appropriate level of respect and approval, and treat us as a reliable and trustworthy partner, of course this country will turn around and char the earth. Of course we will commit genocide, and ethnic cleansing, and bomb civilian buildings 24/7. Of course if we don't win on every trade deal and don't get to live better lives than the rest of the world and we don't get to racially segregate our country and export that segregation, we will cause a series of mounting international crises drawing us ever closer to nuclear war. Of course. That's obvious. Everyone is supposed to know that. Now get to appeasing us, and making us comfortable, and making us loved and beautiful. Or else you leave us with no choice."

And now the onus of this genocide is on Palestinians not being nice enough and Lebanon and Yemen not being nice enough and on the third world not being nice enough and college kids not being nice enough and on the international community not being nice enough and on Israel not being respectful enough of its western protectors and people on here will yell at you that you're not being nice enough to Kamala and that it's making things worse for everyone everywhere on earth and that the correct way for this crisis to be solved is people being nice to Kamala, which in turn will make Israel nicer and more respectful towards Kamala, which in turn will make the middle East nicer and more respectful towards Kamala, which in turn will make us all nicer and more respectful towards Kamala and solve all problems for all time.

So the only way out of this is to play nice 🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂 and nothing bad will ever happen again 🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂 and if everyone plays nice you'll eventually stop seeing the mangled corpses of children 🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂🙂

[saltedsolenoid]

i think i'm going to make human designs for the main sonic the hedgehog characters just because. there's actually a lot of canonical information towards their ethnicities in all of the goddamn lore there is. it's almost insane

[omegaversereloaded]

Coca-Cola is now on the official BDS boycott list!

From the website:

November 2024

1) Why?

Because Coca-Cola is implicated in Israeli war crimes.

According to research by WhoProfits, the Central Beverage Company, known as Coca-Cola Israel, which is the exclusive franchisee of the Coca-Cola Company in Israel, “operates a regional distribution center and cooling houses in the [Israeli] Atarot Settlement Industrial Zone.” Furthermore, its subsidiary, Tabor Winery, “produces wines from grapes sourced from vineyards located on occupied land in settlements in the West Bank and Syrian Golan.” 

The International Court of Justice affirmed in July 2024 that Israel’s entire occupation of Gaza and the West Bank, including East Jerusalem, is illegal, as are all Israeli settlements built on occupied land. As Israeli settlements – on occupied Palestinian and Syrian land – are considered war crimes under international law, Coke is complicit in a war crime. 

Corporations that are implicated in the commission of international crimes connected to Israel’s unlawful occupation, racial segregation and apartheid regime - within or beyond the Palestinian territories occupied in 1967 - are all complicit and must be held accountable. Direct complicity includes military, logistical, intelligence, financial and infrastructure support. The corporations, as well as their boards of directors and executives, may face criminal liability for this complicity.

Local alternatives are popping up worldwide to substitute Coca-Cola, an unnecessary and replaceable beverage

Local alternatives to Coca-Cola have been gaining market share across the world, including in Palestine, China, Bangladesh, Sweden, Egypt, India, South Africa, Turkey, Lebanon and elsewhere.

2) Why NOW?

The BDS movement has always considered Coca-Cola boycottable but has not prioritized it as a target based on its careful and strategic target-selection criteria, so why endorse the Coke boycott now? 

Human rights and health activists, among many others, have been campaigning against Coca-Cola and similarly complicit corporations for decades, including grassroots drives targeting the company for its complicity in Israel’s gross violations of Palestinian human rights. 

During Israel’s ongoing, livestreamed genocide, Israeli soldiers have often been pictured with Coke cans, donated to them by various genocide-enabling groups. This has provoked even more anger against the company, particularly given that Israel is starving 2.3 million Palestinians in the occupied and besieged Gaza Strip, severely limiting their access to clean water and, as a result, inducing the mass spread of contagious diseases. 

Given this context, Palestinian activists in Gaza and many BDS activists in the Arab world, in many Muslim-majority countries, and in some European countries as well, have called on the BDS movement to add Coke to its priority targets.

The BDS movement had previously targeted General Mills for its manufacturing of Pillsbury products in the illegal Atarot Settlement Industrial Zone - the same Zone where the Coke facility operates. Thanks to effective BDS campaigning, we won the demand for General Mills to end its business in Atarot. We know a campaign against Coke is winnable too. 

Based on all the above, and given Coke’s large contribution (through business-as-usual and taxes) to Israel’s war chest during the genocide, the Palestinian BDS National Committee (BNC), the largest Palestinian coalition leading the global BDS movement, has endorsed the grassroots, organic #BoycottCoke campaigns to pressure the company to end its complicity in Israel’s illegal occupation, apartheid and genocide. 

UPDATED VERSION!!!!

[probablyasocialecologist]

In this book you focus on the idea of gender as a global ‘phantasm’ – this charged, overdetermined, anxiety- and fear-inducing cluster of fantasies that is being weaponised by the right. How did you go about starting to investigate that? Judith Butler: When I was burned in effigy in Brazil in 2017, I could see people screaming about gender, and they understood ‘gender’ to mean ‘paedophilia.’ And then I heard people in France describing gender as a Jewish intellectual movement imported from the US. This book started because I had to figure out what gender had become. I was naïve. I was stupid. I had no idea that it had become this flash point for right-wing movements throughout the world. So I started doing the work to reconstruct why I was being called a paedophile, and why that woman in the airport wanted to kill me with the trolley. I’m not offering a new theory of gender here; I’m tracking this phantasm’s formation and circulation and how it’s linked to emerging authoritarianism, how it stokes fear to expand state powers. Luckily, I was able to contact a lot of people who translated Gender Trouble in different parts of the world, who were often gender activists and scholars in their own right. They told me about what’s happening in Serbia, what’s happening in Brazil, Chile, Argentina, Russia. So I became a student of gender again. I’ve been out of the field for a while. I stay relatively literate, of course, but I’ve written on war, on ethics, on violence, on nonviolence, on the pandemic… I’m not in gender studies all the time. I had to do a lot of reading.  There’s a lot of focus in the book on how the anti-gender movement has moved across the world in the past few decades, and how it’s inextricable from Catholic doctrine. It was clarifying for me; domestic anti-trans movements in the UK mostly self-identify as secular.  Judith Butler: In the UK, and even in the US, people don’t realise that this anti-gender ideology movement has been going on for some time in the Americas, in central Europe, to a certain degree in Africa, and that it’s arrived in the US by different routes, but it’s arrived without announcing its history. It became clear to me that a lot of the trans-exclusionary feminists didn’t realise where their discourse was coming from. Some of them do; some people who call themselves feminists are aligned with right-wing positions, and it’s confusing, but there it is. There’s an uncomfortable history of fascist feminism in movements like British suffragism, for instance. Judith Butler: Yes, and of racism. But when Putin made clear that he agreed with JK Rowling, she was probably surprised, and she rightly said, ‘no, I don’t want your alliance’, but it was an occasion for her to think about who she’s allying herself with, unwittingly or not. The anti-gender movement was first and foremost a defence of Biblical scripture, and of the idea that God created man and woman, and that the human form exists only in this duality and that without it, the human is destroyed – God’s creation is destroyed. So that morphed, as the Vatican’s doctrine moved into Latin America, into the idea that people who advocate ‘gender’ are forces of destruction who seek to destroy man, woman, the human, civilisation and culture. 

[sayruq]

The skies of Gaza fill with shifting shapes on an early spring morning. At first they are barely visible, only specks soaring above central Gaza’s wetlands. Mandy Sirdah quickly raises her binoculars. “Storks!” she shouts excitedly. Close by, Lara Sirdah, her identical twin sister wearing matching clothes, grabs her long-focus camera and points it to the sky. “So many! So beautiful!” she cries out with joy as she snaps photos of hundreds of white storks flying in circles above her. Every spring, millions of birds set out from their wintering grounds in Africa and make their way north to Europe and Asia. At the intersection of three continents, the Middle East is an important stopover and one of the world’s busiest corridors for bird migration. Many of these birds fly over Gaza, an overcrowded coastal enclave often described as an “open-air prison.” The birds soar above more than two million people, most of them refugees whose families were forced to leave their villages in 1948 with the establishment of the State of Israel and have been unable to return. Concentrated in refugee camps, Palestinians in Gazahave also been confined by Israeli policies of military closure over many decades and a brutal air, sea and land blockade imposed since 2007. “Our movement is very restricted,” says Lara, who feels cut off from the rest of the world. “We wish we were birds so we could move freely.” Over the past years, birdwatching trips to the Strip’s wetlands, groves and fields have offered the twins a rare opportunity to escape the feeling of confinement. With their heads raised to the sky, they search for birds and dream of flight

[kemetic-dreams]

Repost from @moyoafrika

•

#repost• @whatsculture History Class: Tracing the roots of Capoeira. The Afro-Brazilian martial art form incorporates acrobatics, dance, folklore, and music. Two opponents play each other inside a circle (Roda) formed by the other players, who create rhythm for the game by clapping, singing, and playing traditional instruments. It’s the second most popular sport in Brazil and is practiced in different parts of the world today. To understand the significance, we look at how it is a phenomenon born out of migration.

“Capoeira was conceived in Africa and born in Brazil,’’ Mestre Jelon Vieira once said. As a colony of the Portuguese Crown, millions of Africans were shipped and sold in Brazil. There, enslaved Africans shared their cultural traditions, including dances, rituals, and fighting techniques, which eventually evolved into capoeira. Many elements and traditions that would inform capoeira are said to have originated in Angola. At that time, 80% of all enslaved Africans in Rio de Janeiro came from Central West Africa from countries that are now known as Gabon, Angola and both Congos.

People from Angola were prominent among the enslaved Africans who played the game on the streets and squares of Rio de Janeiro, Salvador and other Brazilian port cities at the beginning of the nineteenth century. With many enslaved Africans revolting against slavery, they would soon form communities in villages called quilombos in which they could sustain different expressions of African culture. They used capoeira to defend themselves and resist capture, disguising its martial intent with music, song, and dance.

Capoeira became illegal after the abolition of slavery in 1888. Practitioners were socially ostracised for more 40 years, until the legendary capoeira master, Mestre Bimba, opened the first capoeira school in Bahia in 1932. From there, the martial art would reach all parts of the world. At its core, capoeira is born out of a mix of African and Brazilian indigenous cultures and it represents resistance and resilience 🇧🇷🌍

#moyoafrika #brazil #angola🇦🇴 #africanculture #africanculture #africandiaspora #african

[tumbler-polls]

Submitted by @anon

[former-leftist-jew]

Yes, because this is so much better.

Hamas Charter 1988: "Palestine is an Islamic Waqf land... the same goes for any land the Moslems have conquered by force, because during the times of (Islamic) conquests, the Moslems consecrated these lands to Moslem generations till the Day of Judgement.

It happened like this: When the leaders of the Islamic armies conquered Syria and Iraq, they sent to the Caliph of the Moslems, Umar bin-el-Khatab, asking for his advice concerning the conquered land - whether they should divide it among the soldiers, or leave it for its owners, or what? After consultations and discussions... it was decided... the real ownership of the land and the land itself should be consecrated for Moslem generations till Judgement Day." - Article 11

[renrooked]

Just Roll With Palestine: Keep the Strike Rolling

Hello, #JustRollWithPalestine has come back to Keep the Strike Rolling from January 26th to February 10th. Participation in any capacity will be rewarded, and there are ways for you to help even if you can't donate!

Link to Google form: HERE

If you have any questions feel free to dm me here or on twitter, as well as the rest of the social media mods on twitter: @organbean @ne0neclipse @tinytiefling_ @RenRooked

Additional mods working on this project:

@grassfur @neptunelogs @reed_you_guess

All necessary links and information are in the Google form, BUT for easier access to links and/or for those who just want to donate links to resources to help out, click keep reading!

To Donate:

Feminine Hygiene Kits for Gaza With the Asad Sisters 

Care for Gaza Paypal

Just Roll With Palestine Tiltify (PCRF)

World Central Kitchen

ESIMS for Gaza- Instructions provided NOMAD (iPhone only): https://www.getnomad.app/en/middle-east-eSIM Tutorial on twitter for NOMAD: https://x.com/icarus19897/status/1741297413321637972?s=20 SIMLY (iPhone and Google Play): https://www.simly.io/regional-esim Tutorial on twitter for SIMLY: https://x.com/CharSequence/status/1719283248721702946?s=20

To personally contact your representatives:

Use this template builder to create your own message to your government representative:

To send a prewritten message:

(US):

(AU):

https://apan.org.au/support-south-africas-icj-case/

(CA):

(UK):

https://www.map.org.uk/campaigns/it-is-becoming-impossible-to-sustain-human-life-in-gaza-demand-a-ceasefirenow

[the-90s-music-colosseum]

Quarterfinals, Match 2

expand to see all propaganda received! (wall of text warning oh my god this is a severe cautionary message)

Lauryn Hill:

"she paved the way and was hot as fuck the whole time"

"Girl c'mon. Look at her. You're gonna try and tell me that isn't the most beautiful and attractive person alive? Okay. You're lying but okay."

"if u freaks don't give ms. lauryn hill the respect she deserves..."

"actually one of the prettiest women ever I'm such a lesbian for her. like irl I'm already a lesbian but she is helping"

Damon Albarn:

"Don’t think Damon should be here? Why don’t you get your head checked by a jumbo jet? Maybe you’ll feel heavy metal and calm down."

"If Damon is in the “some guy” category, he’s the heavenly and heartbreaking version. Damon is the sort of significant stranger I’d see on the train out of Colchester but could never speak to, just a face seen in passing yet too radiant to be real. I’d fall in love for an hour and carry the ache for a month."

"Damon sets the standard for me. I think he’s the most fascinating man alive. What I find attractive in Damon is not just his gorgeous bone structure and boyish charm, but how wholly he’s committed himself to music. Damon is an artist who walked the walk: in one of his roughest years with some of his rawest songwriting, he said he was no longer excited by anything except the creative process. He was disillusioned with the celebrity of it all, with his relationships suffering for it, and only wanted to make art: nothing more, nothing less. He would go on to compose film scores, write operas and stage musicals, produce other artists’ records, form collectives to fulfill his passion for world music, and create some of the most globally successful music of his career in a completely innovative format that placed him as the phantom behind the characters. Whenever one band takes a break, he makes a solo record or puts together a supergroup to stay busy. He’s uniquely collaborative and still writes personal letters inviting artists to record with him, and yet can function as a one-man show, acting as a multi-instrumentalist, a singer-songwriter and a producer. He’s been a constant voice of bringing British music to the world *and* bringing world music into Britain. Sure, he’s won Brit Awards and a Grammy among others, but he also has a Guinness World Record and was named an Officer of the British Empire for his services to music; his long work with Africa Express earned him respect even from peers who’d previously dismissed him, and his commitment to support his Malian collaborators in the face of violence earned him the title of Local King in Mali. There is so much talent in the world, but there is truly no one else with a career that looks like Damon Albarn’s. Damon is far more than just a prettyboy to look nice on a magazine cover, but looks are the ultimate point of this tournament, so make no mistake: he was terribly, terribly pretty. You watch him performing in the 90s, you sift through photoshoots and interviews and documentaries, and it feels *cruel* how beautiful he was. If his talent was god-given, so was his face. To put a bow on this thesis: I don’t know if Gorillaz and Damon’s musical universe would be the experimental, globe-trotting, boundary-pushing community affair it is if Blur hadn’t become such a central figure in Britpop and if Damon had not been made such a media spectacle, and I don’t know if Damon would have been that spectacle if he wasn’t so ungodly pretty. The domino effect is that Damon’s cherubic face launched a thousand multimedia art school projects for decades to come."

"I wish I was basically any bloke in the 90s so I could tongue Damon Albarn down. Damon will see a man and ask “is anyone gonna kiss that?” and not wait for a response."

"I have a pillow with his face on it. I sleep with it every night 😊"

"“I’m more homosexual than Brett Anderson, always have been. As far as bisexuality goes, I’ve had a taste of that particular fruit, or have been tasted you might say…” is just the rawest most Shakespearean statement ever"

"he is the ultimate Pretty Boy ™. his glorious golden locks, his electric blue eyes. he is if Princess Diana was a Britpop Dude. he is the Regina George of Britpop. he is if Aphrodite took male form. Zeus would come down to earth to fuck him if he knew. he is a caffeinated orange cat let loose. he is deranged. he is unhinged. you never know what will come out of his mouth. he had sexual tension with every single man who knew him. he pulled justine fucking frischmann. his aura knows no bounds. he is a siren. he is a weird guy. but being so gorgeous stunning ethereal didn't stop him from also being one of the most prolific songwriters of his generation"

"THE MAIN BLUR"

"literally where do i even begin. i could write entire essays on this man. a good place to start would be the beetlebum music video, i suppose. i'll never forget the first time i watched that music video. something in me changed, my brain chemistry was altered, my life was never the same, i view the world a lot differently now. and a lot of the viewing i'm doing is of pictures of damon albarn's face because of boy do i have a lot of those saved. every time i try to look for a photo of something on my phone i can't find it because there's so much damon. okay that's maybe an exaggeration but this man has the most unfathomable beauty ever. his eyes? HIS EYES. god dammit i love his eyes i want to stare at them until the end of time like nothing else exists. i'm so normal about this man (lying) and while i'm usually very shameless about my interests i'm actually incredibly glad this propaganda is anonymous because otherwise. yeah. but the world deserves to see damon albarn's beauty and also hear his fantastic voice because what the fuck. his voice is literally the most gorgeous sound ever produced like bro sounds like that and expects me not to fall in love? i want this man to sing his silly songs and talk absolute nonsense to me until the sun eventually blows out and the world ends. cmon damon girlies let's demolish this tournament i know there are a lot of you."

"He’s beautiful. He’s a little rat. He’s a sweetheart. He’s a dickhead. He’s a musical genius. He’s a dumb bitch. He’s a jock. He’s a weirdo. He’s real. He’s an illusion. He’s everything. He’s just Damon."

"DAMON DAMON DAMON where do I begin oh jeez I've hyperfixated on this man for a solid 4 years and still going strong. Damon makes me wish that British people are real. That says A LOT. This man created a whole ass ANIMATED BAND WITH A SHIT TON OF LORE as a SIDE HUSTLE??? Not to mention, what other man has collaborated with Stevie Nicks, MF DOOM, Del the Funky Homosapien, Snoop Dogg, AND Beck?! People, we're literally in the presence of a god. And he's STILL GOING. Anyways, TL;DR, damon is so so so neat and cool and he should definitely win this competition. Thank you."

"Okay 90s Damon is The Perfect Boy yes yes, but the people who parrot the Daily Mail and say "he's ugly now" will never understand. I would still suck every drop from him on his deathbed."

"Vote for whoever you want to. But Damon is so pretty."

"i did not spend hours admiring this beautiful man's face on pinterest just to see him lose."

"Damon Albarn just brings me joy. When I'm watching him perform, following along as the camera lingers on and adores his pretty face, I get butterflies like I'm 15 again. It's nice to still feel that totally unguarded giddiness sometimes."

"God let the intrusive thoughts win making Damon. What if he's a beautiful blond twink with eyes like saucers and dick to his knees, he reads Herman Hesse and plays footie and is insufferable about both, he'll be the most prolific musician of his generation and write operas and seminal albums in 5 different genres and also he's gonna be the dumbest bitch alive? He'll also be kinda bi, but only kinda. And send."

"when i found out about his existence, my life was changed forever. i wish i could use him like the hannah montana boot milk pillow and chuck him at the wall so he makes a loud thud"

"Think of the drama and anon fights it'll cause if Damon wins it all! And think of how quiet it'll get after Damon's out. You'll miss him when he's gone, like memories of a noisy house years after it's grown silent. Choose Damon, and keep the messy train chugging."

"Even the Gallagher brothers have the hots for him."

"Kiss kiss I love him also you can't vote for any of the Seattle men they're literally copy and paste it's not fair. We need Brit representation"

"I want to take care of him, I want to provide for him. I need to gauge his baby blue puppy dog orbs out to I can clean them with wood varnish, paint shades of Pantone 320 C in his eyes, spray eau de parfume by dior in them and sew it back into his eyes like that scene in Toy Story 2."

"Seeing as simply filling the page with ‘Damon’ written 10000000 times isn’t going to cut it 😅 may I admit/submit: I DO have him tattooed on my being (no descriptive, is this anon?); he’s inspired somewhat unhinged late night/early morning fandom conversations in which I’ve served as ‘parish’ priest hearing confessions from all manner of folk about what they’d like to do to him/receive from him; sadly I lost an essay where I detailed why the letters that make up his name suit him so well, and described him as the hot caramel sauce to Graham’s cool vanilla ice cream. He’s a faerie princess with a nose that makes people weep and a voice that feels like the warmest home and he gives amazing hugs. He loves trains and chickens and his tuxedo cat. He’s annoying and sweet and somewhat unhinged and his music saves people and all this is on top of that fantastic dick. He’s a dream yet very real and we’re fucking blessed to be on earth at the same time as him, amen"

"Damon Albarn was a beautiful, beautiful boy. The world saw that, regardless of if every individual reading this has the same taste in men; it felt like a truth of the universe at the time. They don't make celebrities that angelic in face and erratic in personality anymore."

"I need to touch his eyebrows, nose and prostate just one time JUST ONE TIME COME ON"

[opencommunion]

"The Congo’s strategic location in the middle of Africa and its fabulous natural endowment of minerals and other resources have since 1884 ensured that it would serve as a theatre for the playing out of the economic and strategic interests of outsiders: the colonial powers during the scramble for Africa; the superpowers during the Cold War; and neighbouring African states in the post-Cold War era. To prevent a direct confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union, the Security Council deployed from 1960 to 1964 what was then the largest and most ambitious operation ever undertaken by the UN, with nearly 20,000 troops at its peak strength plus a large contingent of civilian personnel for nation-building tasks.

This latter aspect of the Opération des Nations unies au Congo (ONUC) was a function of the fragile political revolution ... The Congo won its independence from Belgium on 30 June 1960. Patrice Lumumba’s MNC-L and its coalition of radical nationalist parties had captured a majority of seats in the lower house of parliament in the pre-independence elections in May. Lumumba became prime minister and head of government, while the Abako leader Joseph Kasa-Vubu became the ceremonial head of state. The victory of a militantly nationalist leader with a strong national constituency was viewed as a major impediment to the Belgian neocolonialist strategy and a threat to the global interests of the Western alliance.

Within two weeks of the proclamation of independence, Prime Minister Lumumba was faced with both a nationwide mutiny by the army and a secessionist movement in the province of Katanga bankrolled by Western mining interests. Both revolts were instigated by the Belgians, who also intervened militarily on 10 July, a day before the Katanga secession was announced. In the hopes of obtaining the evacuation of Belgian troops and white mercenaries, and thus ending the Katanga secession, Lumumba made a successful appeal to the UN Security Council to send a UN peacekeeping force to the Congo. However, the UN secretary-general, Dag Hammarskjöld, interpreted the UN mandate in accordance with Western neocolonialist interests and the US Cold War imperative of preventing Soviet expansion in the Third World. This led to a bitter dispute between Lumumba and Hammarskjöld, which resulted in the US- and Belgian-led initiative to assassinate the first and democratically elected prime minister of the Congo.

... Brussels’ failure to prevent a radical nationalist such as Lumumba from becoming prime minister created a crisis for the imperialist countries, which were determined to have a decolonization favourable to their economic and strategic interests with the help of more conservative African leaders. With Belgium’s failure to transfer power in an orderly fashion to a well-groomed moderate leadership group that could be expected to advance Western interests in Central and Southern Africa, the crisis of decolonization in the Congo required US and UN interventions. Working hand in hand, Washington, New York and Brussels succeeded in eliminating Lumumba and his radical followers from the political scene."

Georges Nzongola-Ntalaja, The Congo from Leopold to Kabila: A People's History, 2002

[former-leftist-jew]

Doesn't this thumbnail just say it all?

Also, Hamas itself admits that "Palestine," Syria, Iraq, and all other Muslim territories were results of violent colonial conquests. (Article 11, bolded by me.)

Hamas Charter 1988: "Palestine is an Islamic Waqf land... the same goes for any land the Moslems have conquered by force, because during the times of (Islamic) conquests, the Moslems consecrated these lands to Moslem generations till the Day of Judgement.

It happened like this: When the leaders of the Islamic armies conquered Syria and Iraq, they sent to the Caliph of the Moslems, Umar bin-el-Khatab, asking for his advice concerning the conquered land - whether they should divide it among the soldiers, or leave it for its owners, or what? After consultations and discussions... it was decided... the real ownership of the land and the land itself should be consecrated for Moslem generations till Judgement Day."

I'd argue Jews coming back is a sign of decolonization.

“Your land”

First of all, if Israel was committing genocide, this war would be over by now and the Palestinians people wiped out.

“Your people started in 1948” we were there for thousands more years than you “Palestinians”

We didn’t force them out of your house, you were to stupid to try kick us out, we were just to strong so we won. You’re ignoring that there was a genocide when all the Arab world expelled its Jews from the Islamic world.

Fuck Fuck Palestine

[matan4il]

Today is Erev Yom Ha'Shoah (Eve of Holocaust Memorial Day) in Israel. It will be observed by Jews outside of Israel, too.

The Hebrew date was chosen to honor the outbreak of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. It's also a week before Erev Yom Ha'Zikaron Le'Chalalei Ma'archot Yisrael (Eve of Israel's Memorial Day for its Fallen Soldiers and Terror Victims), which is itself observed a day before Yom Ha'Atzmaut Le'Yisrael (Israel's Independence Day). A lot of people have remarked on the connection between the three dates. On Yom Ha'Atzmaut, we celebrate our independence, which allows us to determine our own fate, and defend ourselves without being dependent on anyone else, right after we remember the price in human life that we have paid and continue to pay for this independence, and a week before we mourn the price we've had to pay for not getting to have self defence during the Holocaust. NEVER FORGET that in one Nazi shooting pit alone (out of almost two thousand) during just 2 days (Erev Yom Kippur and Yom Kippur 1941), more Jewish men, women and kids were slaughtered than in the 77 years since Israel's Independence War was started by the Arabs. This unbreakable connection between the living and the dead, between our joy and our grief, is often addressed with the Hebrew phrase, במותם ציוו לנו את החיים, "With their death, they ordered us to live."

On this Erev Yom Ha'Shoah, I'd like to share with you some data, published on Thursday by Israel's Central Bureau for Statistics (source in Hebrew).

The number of Jews worldwide is 15.7 million, still lower than it was in 1939, before the Holocaust, 85 years ago (that is what a genocide looks like demographically).

7.1 million Jews live in Israel (45% of world Jewry) 6.3 million Jews live in the US (40% of world Jewry)

Here's the data for the top 9 Jewish communities in the world:

There are about 133,000 Holocaust survivors currently living in Israel. Most (80%) live in big cities in central Israel. Around 1,500 are still evacuated from their homes in northern and southern Israel due to the war (back in January, on International Holocaust Remembrance Day, there was a report about 1,894 survivors who also became internal refugees due to the war. Source in Hebrew). One Holocaust survivor, 86 years old Shlomo Mansour, is still held hostage in Gaza. He survived the Farhud in Iraq.

I haven't seen any official number for how many survivors had been slaughtered as a part of Hamas' massacre, despite everyone here being aware that Holocaust survivors had been murdered on Oct 7, such as 91 years old Moshe Ridler. Maybe, as we're still discovering that some people thought to have been kidnapped during the massacre, were actually killed on that day, no one wants to give a "final" number while Shlomo has not yet been returned alive.

Out of all Israeli Holocaust survivors, 61.1% were born in Europe (35.8% in the countries of the former Soviet Union, 10.8% in Romania, 4.9% in Poland, 2.9% in Bulgaria, 1.5% in Germany and Austria, 1.3% in Hungary, 4.2% in the rest of Europe), 36.6% were born in Asia or Africa (16.5% in Morocco, 10.9% in Iraq, 4% in Tunisia, 2.6% in Libya, 2.1% in Algeria, 0.5% in other Asian and African countries) and 2.3% were born elsewhere.

Out of all Holocaust survivors in Israel, 6.2% managed to make it here before the establishment of the state, despite the British Mandate's immigration policy against it (up until May 13, 1948). 30.5% made it to Israel during its very first years (May 14, 1948 until 1951), another 29.8% arrived in the following decades (1952-1989), and 33.5% made Aliyah once the Soviet Union collapsed, and Jewish immigration to the west (which included Israel) was no longer prohibited by the Soviet regimes (1990 on).

The second biggest community of survivors in the world is in the US, the third biggest (but second biggest relative to the size of the population) is in Australia. I heard from many Holocaust survivors who chose to immigrate there that they wanted to get "as physically far away from Europe as possible."

For a few years now, there's been this project in Israel, called Maalim Zikaron, מעלים זיכרון (uploading memory. Here's the project's site in Hebrew. In English it's called Sharing Memories, and here's the English version of the site) where Israeli celebs are asked to meet up with a Holocaust survivor (it's done in Hebrew), and share the survivor's story and the meeting on their social media on Erev Yom Ha'Shoah (which is today). Each year, there's also one non-Israeli Jewish celeb asked to participate (in English. This time around it's Michael Rapaport, he's meeting Aliza, an 81 years old survivor from the Netherlands, who was hidden along with 9 other Jewish babies for two years. He uploaded a preview of his meeting with her here, where he asked her what it means to her to be a Jew, and from what I understand, he will upload more today to the same IG account). This year, there will be an emphasis on Holocaust survivors who also survived Oct 7 (with 6 of the 20 participating survivors having survived Hamas as well). Here's a small bit from an interview with one such survivor, 90 years old Daniel Luz from kibbutz Be'eri:

(for all of my updates and ask replies regarding Israel, click here)

[salvadorbonaparte]

Since my big Languages and Linguistics MEGA folder post is approaching 200k notes (wow) I am celebrating with some highlights from my collection:

Africa: over 90 languages so far. The Swahili and Amharic resources are pretty decent so far and I'm constantly on the lookout for more languages and more resources.

The Americas: over 100 languages of North America and over 80 languages of Central and South America and the Caribbean. Check out the different varieties for Quechua and my Navajo followers are invited to check out the selection of Navajo books, some of which are apparently rare to come by in print.

Ancient and Medieval Languages: "only" 18 languages so far but I'm pretty pleased with the selection of Latin and Old/Middle English books.

Asia: over 130 languages and I want to highlight the diversity of 16 Arabic dialects covered.

Australia: over 40 languages so far.

Constructed Languages: over a dozen languages, including Hamlet in the original Klingon.

Creoles: two dozen languages and some materials on creole linguistics.

Europe: over 60 languages. I want to highlight the generous donations I have received, including but not limited to Aragonese, Catalan, Occitan and 6 Sámi languages. I also want to highlight the Spanish literature section and a growing collection of World Englishes.

Eurasia: over 25 languages that were classified as Eurasian to avoid discussions whether they belong in Europe or Asia. If you can't find a language in either folder it might be there.

History, Culture, Science etc: Everything not language related but interesting, including a collection of "very short introductions", a growing collection of queer and gender studies books, a lot on horror and monsters, a varied history section (with a hidden compartment of the Aubreyad books ssshhhh), and small collections from everything like ethnobotany to travel guides.

Jewish Languages: 8 languages, a pretty extensive selection of Yiddish textbooks, grammars, dictionaries and literature, as well as several books on Jewish religion, culture and history.

Linguistics: 15 folders and a little bit of everything, including pop linguistics for people who want to get started. You can also find a lot of the books I used during my linguistics degree in several folders, especially the sociolinguistics one.

Literature: I have a collection of classic and modern classic literature, poetry and short stories, with a focus on the over 140 poetry collections from around the world so far.

Polynesia, Micronesia, Melanesia: over 40 languages and I want to highlight the collection for Māori, Cook Islands Māori and Moriori.

Programming Languages: Not often included in these lists but I got some for you (roughly 5)

Sign Languages: over 30 languages and books on sign language histories and Deaf cultures. I want to highlight especially the book on Martha's Vineyard Sign Language and the biography of Laura Redden Searing.

Translation Studies: Everything a translation student needs with a growing audiovisual translation collection

And the best news: the folders are still being updated regularly!

[magz]

Palestine related news summary from LetsTalkPalestine, May 1 to May 4, 2024.

[Ways to help, sources, and more: LetsTalkPalestine Linktree]

May 1.

(Instagram reel of UCLA protest. Includes footage of treating n washing a pro-palestine protestors' bloody head)

Day 208

🇨🇴 Colombia to cut diplomatic ties w/ Israel

•⁠ ⁠33 killed, 57 injured in the last 24 hours. Real number likely higher

⚖️ US lobbying ICC not to issue arrest warrants for senior Israeli officials, after Israel's threat to respond by retaliating against Palestinian Authority for sparking ICC investigation

🇫🇷 France denies selling weapons to Israel used in Gaza, claiming what's sold will be re-exported to 3rd countries via Israel, but did supply Israeli Iron Dome defense system

🇹🇷 Turkey set to follow Columbia & Nicaragua by joining South Africa's ICJ case against Israel

🎓 Zionist mob attacked Palestine protestors at UCLA w/ fireworks & pepper spray for 3 hours, police didn’t intervene (📹👆). Columbia & CUNY asked NYPD to raid & arrest 280+ student protestors. New encampments across UK, Tunisia & Canada

🚚 First aid trucks enter through Beit Hanoon crossing to north Gaza despite Israel's promise to open 1 month ago. Nearly half of aid convoys to north Gaza denied by Israel.

May 2.

(Instagram post, news update. The Israeli occupation has killed Palestinian Dr. Adnan Al-Barash.)

Day 209

• 28 Palestinians killed, 51 injured in last 24 hours. Note that the toll is underreported.

🏥 Dr. Adnan al Barash killed in captivity after IOF abducted him in Dec (📷👆)— 496 medical personnel killed in Gaza + 309 in captivity

🇸🇦 Saudi Arabia arrests many for anti-Israel online posts, incl. an executive & media figure. Timing suspicious w/ reports of renewed normalization talks

• IOF attacks aid convoy, killing 1

🇹🇷 Turkey stops all trade w/ Israel after banning 54 exports to Israel

🇺🇸 US House pass “antisemitism awareness” bill using repressive IHRA definition of antisemitism despite antisemitism covered in anti-discrimination law. Why is IHRA definition problematic? See tinyurl.com/ynsfy8sx

• IOF airstrike in central Gaza killed 5, incl. a child

🪨 37m tons of rubble in Gaza, heavy contamination w/ unexploded ammunition & 800,000 tons of asbestos

🎓 Columbia & Emory University face federal investigation for anti-Muslim discrimination, reports of doxing & harassment

May 3.

Day 210

• World Press Freedom Day: Israel killed 100+ journalists since Oct 7 + holding 53 captive

• 26 killed, 51 injured in the last 24 hours. Note the toll is underreported.

• Israel attack on Rafah killed 7, incl. a mother & her children — the children’s bodies were shredded by the airstrikes

🇹🇹 Trinidad & Tobago recognizes the State of Palestine as West Bank & Gaza

🇬🇧 UK sanctions 2 Israeli groups + 4 settlers for violence in West Bank, warns of more sanctions if no Israeli action against settler attacks

• Israeli strike on Bureij camp killed 5, incl. a child

💰 UN estimates cost to rebuild Gaza at $40bn; more than post-WWII reconstruction

🎓 Goldsmiths University students in London win & obtain demands after occupying library — @ goldsmithsforpalestine on instagram for details

🎓 University encampments for Gaza go global spreading to 🇨🇦 🇮🇳 🇳🇿 🇪🇸 🇦🇷 🇯🇵 🇰🇼 🇱🇧 🇹🇳 🇯🇴. US crackdown w/ 2,200 students arrested

• Iran-backed Bahraini militia launches attack at southern Israeli port Eilat

May 4.

Day 211

✝️ Israel blocks entry of many Palestinian Christians to Jerusalem for Holy Saturday celebrations

•⁠ 32 Palestinians killed, 41 injured in Gaza in last 24 hours. Toll underreported

•⁠ ⁠IOF killed 5+ in 15-hour siege on Tulkarem (West Bank) & clashes with Hamas resistance fighters. IOF targeted fighters’ homes w/ women & kids inside, demolished homes trapping many under rubble

•⁠ ⁠Israeli strikes on Gaza kill 11 incl. 3 in bombings of tents in Rafah

•⁠ Head of UN WFP says north Gaza experiencing “full-blown famine” and it’s only a matter of time before south Gaza faces same level of starvation

🇫🇷 British-Palestinian @ dr.ghassan.as denied entry to France for Senate address as witness of Gaza Genocide as Germany put year-long ban on his entry to Europe (Schengen)

🇺🇸 88 US lawmakers warn Biden that Israeli aid blockade violates US ‘foreign assistance’ law

•⁠ IOF abducts 5 overnight in West Bank

🎓 Uni encampments spread to Switzerland, Ireland, Germany, Cuba & Costa Rica