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birolbahadir · 1 year

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Experiencing an Immigrant’s Life with Between Two Worlds

Between Two Worlds immigrant book is a real-life story of an immigrant that takes you through the life of a man swinging between his two identities. Birol Bahadir provides a sneak peek into his life, taking a sweet and sour take on his experiences while living in Germany as a child born to Turkish parents.

Explore the German Life for Immigrants

Birol’s book provides the readers with a insights into the German life for immigrants. It’s a real-life take on how it feels like living in your true identity. The bittersweet experiences and the continuous feeling of an unknown alienation are the key points raised by the author.

Between Two Worlds is a Set of Themes

Birol's book has tons of relatable themes. It talks about relationships, discrimination, and challenges of a conservative household. The book is full of Easter-Eggs for the Turkish diaspora and a treat for the global audience. Birol's book has tons of relatable themes. It talks about relationships, discrimination, and challenges of a conservative household. The book is full of Easter-Eggs for the Turkish diaspora and a treat for the global audience.

Learn More About Bahadir’s Book

Between Two Worlds Book is an ode to the people living away from their roots. It provides a glimpse into Birol’s life as a person trying to find a middle ground for his dilemma. It provides readers with an understanding of what every immigrant goes through while trying to make peace with their reality. Birol’s book takes a global approach highlighting the struggles of an immigrant hoping to fit into and adapt to the new surroundings.

This book on immigrant families in Germany is a real-life tale of Birol Bahadir. He has used his struggles and challenges to highlight the truth behind the diverse German social values. The author talked about him facing trouble initiating conversations and other Issues That Immigrants Face while living in Germany as an immigrant.

Why Should Everyone Read Between Two Worlds?

If you like reading a Motivational Book On Amazon or a moving story, this book is for you. Between Two Worlds is the modern take on the lives of immigrants who are divided between two different realities. Although the book targets a global audience, it is the best book on Turkish Muslim immigrants in Germany. The book consists of different themes that can be relatable to international and Turkish readers. Birol has compiled his life journey in the book with the aim to inspire people, including immigrants.

Read Between Two Worlds Today

Birol’s book Between Two Worlds has a hard life motivation lesson wrapped in it. The book inspires to unleash the feelings within yourself, helping you make it through the struggles. The author has established himself as an example for people who find it difficult to find their true identity and purpose. This attempt with the pen is nothing but a thrilling experience for readers. Almost everyone can find the hidden lessons between the lines and make their lives better while eyeing a bright future.

A GLIMPSE INTO BAHADIR’S LIFE

Born to a Turkish immigrant family in Germany, birol bahadir book spent most of his life juggling between identities. Birol’s experiences growing up as a Muslim immigrant in Germany can teach struggling immigrants great life lessons. He was consciously aware that he was torn between two worlds even from an early age. The dilemma he faced as an immigrant made him question the reality of his Real Life Story Of Immigrant.

His migration to the U.S pushed him to experience things he had never seen before. With working to sustain his relationships, he faced Islamophobia while trying to fit into an alien society. The isolation and loneliness that he faced are a few of the topics that Bahadir has tried to cover in his much-awaited memoir. The author has made an attempt to connect with the global audience as well as the immigrants. He has addressed the triumphs and challenges that came his way while living his life as an immigrant.

Between Two Worlds birol takes a global approach. It is something beyond the experiences of an individual. This book provides the audience with stories that they have never heard before. Birol, with his meticulous approach, has made it simple for people to connect with the book’s plot. It’s an ode to the people living away from their roots, assuring them they are not alone.

#birol bahadir book #Between Two Worlds birol #Between Two Worlds immigrant book #Motivational Book On Amazon #Turkish Immigrant Family #Islamic History And Culture #Real Life Story Of Immigrant #Immigrant In Germany #Between Two Worlds Book #Experiencing Immigrants Life #Immigrant Family In Germany #Muslim Immigrant In Germany #Problems Immigrants Face #Living In Germany As An American #Challenges Immigrants Face #Problems That Immigrants Face #Issues That Immigrants Face #Immigration Problems

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gelistiricim · 2 months

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KİBLEBULMA - DEVASA+ (3)

Qibla direction holds a significant place in the Islamic faith, symbolizing the direction towards the Kaaba in the Sacred Mosque in Mecca, which is a focal point for Muslims around the world. The term "qibla" itself translates to 'direction' in Arabic, signifying the spiritual orientation that Muslims adopt during their prayers. To assist individuals in determining the qibla direction, various tools and methods have been developed, ranging from traditional compasses to modern technological solutions. One such method involves aligning a real compass with the direction of North to establish the correct qibla direction. Additionally, advancements in technology have led to the creation of Qibla finder apps and online platforms that offer accurate qibla direction information with just a few clicks.

The availability of tools like Qibla finder apps and online platforms has made it easier for Muslims to find the qibla direction with precision and convenience. These applications utilize GPS technology to determine the user's current location and provide the corresponding qibla direction, allowing individuals to perform their prayers with accuracy regardless of where they are in the world. Moreover, online Qibla Finders offer comprehensive databases that include the qibla angles of important cities and centers worldwide, enabling users to access this vital information swiftly and efficiently. By embracing these technological advancements, Muslims can fulfill their religious obligations with confidence and peace of mind, knowing they are facing the sacred Kaaba during their prayers.

Identifying the correct qibla direction is of utmost importance for Muslims when performing their daily prayers. The qibla finder as a focal point that unites Muslims globally in worship, emphasizing the unity and solidarity within the Islamic community. Ensuring that one faces the qibla during prayer is not only a physical alignment but also a symbolic connection to the center of the Islamic faith, fostering a sense of spiritual connection and devotion. By correctly identifying the qibla direction, individuals uphold a fundamental aspect of their faith and demonstrate reverence and obedience to Allah, enhancing the spiritual significance and efficacy of their prayers.

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odinsblog · 2 years

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Studying at Tehran University in 1977: While many women were already in higher education at the time of the revolution, the subsequent years saw a marked increase in the number attending university. This was in part because the authorities managed to convince conservative families living in rural areas to allow their daughters to study away from home.

"They tried to stop women from attending university, but there was such a backlash they had to allow them to return," says Baroness Haleh Afshar, a professor of women's studies at the University of York who grew up in Iran in the 1960s.

"Some educated people left Iran, and the authorities realised in order to run the country they needed to educate both men and women."

Window shopping in Tehran in 1976: Before the revolution, the hijab was already widely worn but many women also chose to don Western-style clothes, including tight-fitting jeans, miniskirts and short-sleeved tops. "The shoes haven't changed - and the passion for shoes is in all of us! Women in Iran are no different from women the world over, and going shopping is just a means for women to get away from every day stress," says Prof Afshar.

Friday picnic in Tehran in 1976: Families and friends tend to get together on Fridays, which are weekend days in Iran. "Picnics are an important part of Iranian culture and are very popular amongst the middle classes. This has not changed since the revolution. The difference is, nowadays, men and women sitting together are much more self-aware and show more restraint in their interactions," says Prof Afshar.

Hair salon in Tehran in 1977: "This is a scene you would no longer expect to see in Iran - but even after the Islamic Revolution, hairdressers continued to exist," says Prof Afshar. "Nowadays you wouldn't see a man inside the hairdressers - and women would know to cover up their hair as soon as they walked out the door. Some people may also operate secret salons in their own homes where men and women can mix."

Bodyguards surround the shah in 1971: A young woman approaches Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi (far right) at a huge party marking the 2,500th anniversary of the Persian monarchy - the extravagance of the event was widely condemned by his left-wing and clerical opponents. "By this time, the shah was already very much disliked and some believe this image of excess and indulgence may have contributed to events leading up to the revolution eight years later," Prof Afshar explains.

Walking down a snowy street in Tehran in 1976: "You cannot stop women walking in the streets of Iran, but you wouldn't see this today - her earrings and make up so clearly on show," Prof Afshar says. "There is this concept of 'decency' in Iran - so nowadays women walking in the streets are likely to wear a coat down to her knees and a scarf."

Women rally against the hijab in 1979: Soon after taking power, Iran's new Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini decreed that all women had to wear the veil - regardless of religion or nationality. On 8 March - International Women's Day - thousands of women from all walks of life turned out to protest against the law.

Walking in Tehran in 2005: Not all women in Iran opt to wear the black chador, a cloak that covers the body from head to toe and only leaves the face exposed. Many prefer to wear loosely fitted headscarves and coats. "The real question is how far back do you push your scarf? Women have their own small acts of resistance and often try as far as possible to push their scarves back," says Prof Afshar.

Watching football from a Tehran shopping centre in 2008: Though women were never officially banned from watching men's football matches in Iran, they are often refused entry to stadiums and some of those who have tried have been detained. Before the revolution, women were allowed to attend sporting events.

SEPTEMBER 2022: Protests, after the Morality Police beat, arrested and then murdered Mahsa Amini — for the “crime” of improperly wearing her hijab (source) (source)

#mahsa amini #jini emini #jini amini #iran #hijab #morality police #politics #islamic revolution #tehran #protests #bodily autonomy #womens rights #feminism #womanism #war on women #patriarchy #jhina emini

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notaplaceofhonour · 4 months

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One of the experiences that really highlighted to me how willing the left can be to turn a blind eye to and gaslight Jews about antisemitism was trying to talk about Michael Jackson’s antisemitism, such as in the song “They Don’t Care About Us”, which was released with the lyrics:

“Jew me, sue me, everybody do me / Kick me, kike me, don't you black or white me.”

I feel like that is shockingly straightforward with how antisemitic it is, both in its specific language (the K-slur & Jew-as-a-verb) and its conspiratorial bent in the context of the whole song. But when it came out and Jews were obviously appalled and spoke out about it, MJ made the standard “but have you considered that accusing me of bigotry offends me?” and “I was taken out of context!” statements that bigots make when they get called out on their bigotry.

As for MJ’s claim that he was taken out of context, here is some context: In 1993, MJ’s relationship with the press deteriorated when they began covering allegations of his child sex abuse. In the midst of this, tabloids ran a lot of scummy, sensationalized headlines—ruthlessly mocking his appearance and eccentricities and even running entirely false stories. This marked a drastic shift in MJ’s lyrics, which began to focus heavily on his victimhood (both real and perceived, often conflating both and tying them to broader social issues), with many of the songs on the next album HIStory (1995) being about this. “They Don’t Care About Us” is on this album. In 2003, there were revelations that Michael Jackson had grown close with members of Nation of Islam (a fringe and antisemitic hate group), and in 2005, Good Morning America aired a phone recording of Michael Jackson calling Jews “leeches”, claiming Jews had targeted him for his wealth, and saying “It’s a conspiracy. Jews do it on purpose”.

This is the context of Michael Jackson singing about being a stand-in for the victims of all kinds of real world oppression like racism and police brutality, and then saying he was being “Jewed” and “kiked”. It came out that he was molesting little kids, and rather than face the music, he tried to dodge responsibility by conflating those allegations with racism and the gross, sensationalist bullshit that tabloids were running on him; he wove all these things together in a narrative that he could use to wrap himself up in victimhood & conspiracy to position himself as not just a martyr, but the very archetype of martyrdom so that the world could, as he sang on the same album in his cover of John Lennon’s song, “Come together, over me.”

The lyrics were later changed to replace “Jew” & “kike” with abstract noise that drowned out the words or repetitions of “sue” & “strike”. But even so, this is still a song, not truly about inequality and injustice, but using inequality and injustice to shield a child molester from responsibility. And the fact that “Jew” can so easily be replaced with “sue”, not simply in sound but in meaning, without disrupting the narrative and tone of the song, belies the fact that Michael Jackson believed himself to be a victim of some sort of conspiracy between “(((The Media)))” and greedy Jewish lawyers.

And yet, trying to talk about this to this day, even with the benefit of hindsight, when it’s pretty well-accepted that MJ was in fact a child molester and knowing what he said about Jews after this song came out, it is next to impossible to get people to see the antisemitism in him tying together all oppression in the world as him being “Jewed” and “kiked” by (((The System)))—even when he literally says “Jew”, even when he says the K-slur, even when he refers to Jews as blood-suckers, even when he literally says Jews are conspiring against him. When people started using the song as part of the George Floyd protests, and I was like “hey, maybe that’s not a great idea” and gently tried to explain this context, I was ignored, told it didn’t matter because the song was about inequality, told Black people have every right to distrust Jews “because Jews are White” and stabbed Black people in the back by embracing Whiteness, etc. etc.

I think that is one of the times that really started to make it clear to me, “oh, yeah no, leftists can be staring straight at a K-slur in the mouth of a known sex offender and still say it’s fine”—something leftists generally would not do for any other vulnerable minority. It still astounds me.

#antisemitism #michael jackson #they don’t care about us #leftwing antisemitism #leftist antisemitism #k slur #jumblr #blm #mj #Leaving Neverland #blood libel

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fuckyeahisawthat · 3 months

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thank you so much for that excellent chani post. i've seen some annoying takes on twitter about how not making her totally devoted and subservient to paul makes her 'unlikeable' and i'm like. buddy. i think that speaks more to how you see women. than anything about her. this chani is very dynamic and interesting to me.

i'll be honest and say i've not read the books. this is me speaking from what i've seen of summaries, but i think giving her a real cause to fight for yet also genuinely loving paul gives her an interesting struggle, and also plays into how the portrayal of the fremen (seems to me to be) more diverse and nuanced. as in, the fremen themselves seem to have more of a push-and-pull to them. the clarification of how different fremen believe differently (the south being more fundamentalist) is a very important thing to include in a movie where you can run into the danger of saying that all adherents to a foreign, islam-adjacent (in coding) religion are all fundamentalists. that can (in less nuanced hands) be a pretty irresponsible thing. so showing that there's also more secular/pragmatic/less dogmatic sectors of the culture seems a pretty good counterweight.

so yeah. this is how i processed it as a movie-goer. and having chani represent that aspect (believing in people over prophecy, action over religion) and having stilgar as the humanized face of the southern peoples (showing that yknow, regardless of being fundamenist beliefs, theyre still PEOPLE with the capacity for love, friendship, honor) makes total logical sense. you're not just "telling" us that there's different aspects to fremen culture, you're SHOWING us by showing different characters who represent those aspects, without demonizing either or turning either into a one-note stereotype.

Thank you! I'm not someone who was a long-term fan of the books before the movie came out (I tried reading Dune as a teenager when I was reading a lot of classic sci-fi but found it too boring) but I did read Dune and Dune Messiah after the first movie came out, both because I wanted to know what happened next and because I wanted to have an opinion on how the movies worked as adaptations.

(book and movie spoilers below and also I basically ended up writing a whole essay in response to this)

My single biggest frustration with the book is that after they arrive at Sietch Tabr and Jessica drinks the Water of Life and becomes Reverend Mother...the book up and skips two years of the story and when we next see Paul he's already got Fremen followers who are ready to die for him and he's in an established relationship with Chani. Oh I was SO MAD when I got to this part. I was like FRANK. FRANK!!!! Did you seriously just skip two years of the most interesting part of your own story???

The thing is, even though I know that Frank Herbert's intention was to write a critique of the idea that oppressed people need an enlightened external (white) savior to liberate them...if you don't provide an alternate explanation for what's happening then you end up falling into some Orientalist tropes anyway. And because, in the book, we don't see the process of how your average background fedaykin comes to trust Paul as a military and political leader, there is nothing in the text to counter the idea that the Fremen are a bunch of unquestioning religious fanatics easily swayed to do violence by belief in a prophecy.

My second biggest frustration with the book is that we're given no reason at all why Chani would fall in love with Paul. While she has some memorable scenes, she doesn't have a lot to do as a character in the book, and she's missing from a whole chunk of the end...because she's in the south...because she and Paul have a baby, Leto II, who's then killed off-page when the sardaukar attack the south. (I'm honestly really glad they cut this from the film, because it never seemed to be given the narrative weight it deserved in the book.)

So you can imagine how happy I was when the Villeneuve movies figured out how to address both these frustrations by tying them together. The fedaykin don't just blindly accept Paul because of some prophecy. They come to trust him because he proves himself as a fighter, and because he starts out from a place of genuine solidarity and humility--which it is possible for him to do because he has no structural power over them at that point. And Chani falls in love with him for the same reason, in that heady environment of fighting side by side for a political cause, and maybe for the first time in a while starting to believe that you can win.

I think the Villeneuve movies improve a lot on what's in the book in terms of how the Fremen are portrayed...when we're with the fedaykin and/or Chani and Stilgar. There we see political debates and discussion and the fact that not all the Fremen think the same way. And we also see little humanizing moments of folks just hanging out, celebrating after a victory in battle and just shooting the shit and being friends.

I do wish the movie had extended this to more parts of Fremen society. If there's one thing I could have added, it would be seeing more of daily life in Sietch Tabr. It makes sense that when we're seeing things from Jessica's POV, she is more distant from and suspicious of the Fremen, seeing them as a force to be manipulated, but I wish we had even one or two scenes of people just being people in the sietch. It felt kind of weirdly empty and not particularly lived-in as a place, and I think they could've easily countered this, with scenes from Chani, Stilgar or Paul's POV, and that would have made it hit even harder when the sietch is attacked.

If there were two things I could have added, I wanted more exploration of the people of the south. Why are they more fundamentalist than the Fremen who live in the north? (We get one line about how "nothing can survive [in the south] without faith" but I wanted more than that.) While I think the movie did a fantastic job of humanizing and differentiating the Fremen we see around Paul, when we get to the south it does backslide a little into "undifferentiated mass of fanatics." Surely the people of the south also have some diversity of political views.

I think there are some interesting threads they could have pulled on in terms of how proximity to direct colonial violence shapes people's ideology. Sietch Tabr is one of the closest Fremen communities to Arrakeen, the seat of colonial control. They have probably had to mount some kind of armed resistance for generations just to keep from being wiped out. I can see that producing skepticism of the prophecy ("well I can't sit around waiting for a messiah but I do have this rocket launcher") as well as resentment at the idea of someone swooping in and taking credit for a struggle that you've put your life on the line for, and probably a lot of people you know have died for. There seem to be some generational differences, too, where young people of Chani's generation put less stock in the prophecy, while the true believers are mostly older. I can see faith in the prophecy coming out of despair--when you've been fighting for decades with no change, maybe you draw the conclusion that only an outside power coming to your aid will make a difference. While the people of the south are still under colonial rule, maybe being generally outside the reach of direct Harkonnen violence (the Harkonnens don't even know they're there) makes the concepts of both oppression and liberation feel more abstract and more receptive to being filled in with Bene Gesserit mysticism. It seems absurd to want more from a movie that's nearly three hours long already...but I wanted more of this.

Still, I do think they managed to improve on a lot of things that frustrated me or are simply dated about the book, while keeping the political thriller/war drama/epic tragedy elements that I think are the heart of the story, and in some cases drawing them out more clearly and effectively than the book did. The best kind of book-to-film adaptation imo is one that has a strong point of view in terms of what the story is About, on a large-scale thematic level, and is not afraid to change individual elements of canon in service of telling that story the most effective way possible in a cinematic medium. While there are always things I want more of, I feel like Denis Villeneuve really, really understood the assignment in terms of the overarching themes of the the story and he delivered so fucking well.

#dune #dune spoilers #dune part two #dune part 2 #dune 2021 #dune books #chani kynes #asks answered

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phoenixyfriend · 2 months

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Can you explain the Iran-Israel situation please?

Alright, let's get to it. Please note that I'm writing this on mobile during my lunch break, so I can't include reference/source links as much as I'd like. Thankfully, most of what I'm going to be telling you should be easily located by searching for an article on one of the following: APNews, Reuters, BBC Global News Podcast, Democracy Now!, NPR, or The New York Times. Long-term background is probably best found in videos by the YouTube channels Real Life Lore or tldr global news, or on Wikipedia if you prefer text.

The short version: Israel attacked Iran's consulate in Syria to get at some of the military commanders that were there, which is legally equivalent to attacking Iran itself. Iran responded by sending about 300 bombs at Israel, most of which were shot down in transit. Given that they still called it a success, even though it seems only one person was even hurt, my understanding is that it's very likely that they only intended the rockets to be a show of force, rather than an actual escalation, because Iran can't afford a war right now.

To support my blogging so I can move out of my parents’ house, I do have a ko-fi. Alternately, you can donate to one of the charities I list in this post OR this post.

The long version:

Okay, let's start with some background on Israel, then Iran. This is... a lot, so if you already know the broad strokes skip down to 2023.

Israel was established following WWII by the English and French, following borders the two countries had secretly drawn up decades earlier in the Sykes-Picot agreement. The intent was to give the Jewish people a place to go... or, depending on who you ask, a place to send them. Their ancestral homeland was viewed as the best choice, sort of like a deportation millennia after a diaspora. Given that WWII had just ended by the time Sykes-Picot was actually put into effect, 'getting out of Europe' was something a lot of Jews were given to agree with.

The Arab world was not happy, as that land had belonged to the Ottomans for centuries, and had long since 'naturalized' to being Arab. I'm not going to pretend to know the nuances to when people do or do not consider Palestine to have been its own nation; it was an Ottoman state until WWI, at which point it came under British control for just under three decades, and that period is known as the British Mandate of Palestine; it ended after WWII, with the creation of Israel. Palestine's land and people have sort of just been punted around from one colonizer to another for centuries.

Iran is the current form of what was once Persia. They were an empire for a very long time, and were a unitary monarchy up until the early 20th century; in 1925, Iran elected a Prime Minister who was then declared the monarch. The following several decades had Iran's monarchy slowly weakened, and occasionally beset by foreign interventions, including a covert coup by the US and UK in 1953. The country also became more corrupt throughout the 1970s due to economic policy failing to control inflation in the face of rising oil prices.

In 1979, there was a revolution that overthrew the monarchy and the elected government, replacing the system with a theocracy and declaring Iran to be an Islamic Republic, with the head of state being a religious authority, rather than an elected one. This was not popular with... most countries. 1980 saw the closure of all universities (reopened in 1983 with government-approved curriculums), as well as the taking of over fifty American hostages from the US Embassy in Iran. You may have heard about that in the context of Ronald Reagan encouraging Iran to keep the hostages until the end of Carter's term in order to force the election.

So, the West didn't like having an Islamic state because it claims to like democracy, and also because the Islamic state was explicitly anti-American and this has some Bad Effects on oil prices. The Soviets didn't like having an Islamic State because a theocracy goes directly against a lot of communist values (or at least the values they claim to have), and weakened any influence their supposedly secular union could have on Iran and the wider middle east. The other countries in the Arab world, many of them still monarchies, didn't like the Islamic republic because if the revolution spread, then it was possible their monarchies would be overthrown as well.

(Except Oman, which is not worried, but that's the exception, not the rule.)

This is not a baseless worry, because Iran has stated that this is its goal for the Arab world. Overthrow the monarchies, overthrow the elected governments, Islamic Rule for everyone. That is the purpose of its proxies, like Hezbollah (Lebanon), the Houthis (Yemen), and Hamas (Palestine), along with less well-known groups like the Salafi Jihadists in Mali, who are formally under the umbrella of al-Quaeda, which Iran denies having any relation to but is suspected of funding. In areas where these proxy groups have gained power, they are liable to enact hard Shari'a law such as has happened in Northern Mali and other parts of the Sahel region.

While other conflicts have occurred in these countries, I think the above is most relevant.

Israel has repeatedly attacked, or been attacked by, other nations in the middle east, as they are viewed as having taken over land that is not theirs, and as being a puppet of the US government. The biggest conflicts have been 1947-1948, 1968/1973, and 2014.

And then, of course, 2023.

Now, Iran, more than any other nation in the Middle East, hates Israel. They have for a very long time, viewing them as an affront to the goal of spreading Islam across the whole of the middle east, and as being a front and a staging ground for the United States and other Western powers. Two common refrains in the slogans of Iran and its proxies are "Death to America" and "Death to Israel."

Due to Iran's military power and virulence towards Israel, the United States has been funneling money to Israel for decades. It has more generally been to defend itself against the Arab world at large, but it has narrowed over the decades to being about Iran and its proxies as relations have normalized with other nations like Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

Cue October 7th, 2023. Hamas invades Israeli towns, kills some people, and takes others as hostage. Israel retaliates, and the conflict ramps up into what is by now tens of thousands of dead, some half of which are children.

In this time, Hamas's allies are, by definition, Iran and the other proxy forces. Hezbollah, being in Lebanon, share a border with Israel's north. They have been trading rocket fire across the border in waves for most of the past six months. The Houthis, down in Yemen, claim to be attacking the passing cargo ships in order to support Palestine. Given that the attacks often seem indiscriminate, and that the Houthi's control over their portion of Yemen is waning in the face of their poor governance, this is... debatable. It's their official reason, but given that "let's attack passing ships, claiming that we only attack Israeli or American ships and that it is to support Palestine" is rallying support domestically for their regime, it does seem to be more of a political move to garner support at home than about supporting Palestine.

Iran, however, has not attacked Israel. They've spoken out about it, yes, but they haven't done anything because nobody wants a regional war. Nobody can afford it right now. Iran is dealing with a domestic crisis due to oil subsidies bleeding the states' coffers dry, and the aging Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the leader of Iran, refusing to pick a successor. They are looking at both an economic crisis and succession crisis, and a regional war would fuck up both situations further. Iran funds most of its proxies, and they can't do that, and fight a war on top of it, while their economy is in its current state. Pure self preservation says they don't want a war, especially with the ongoing unrest that's been going on for... well, basically since the revolution, but especially since the death of Mahsa Amini.

Meanwhile, in Israel, Netanyahu has been looking at corruption charges and legal issues since before the Hamas attack. It's generally agreed that if Israel were to hold new elections right now, he would lose and be replaced, and also immediately taken to court. Netanyahu wants to stay in power, and as long as the war on Hamas lasts, he is unlikely to get voted out. A change in leadership in the middle of a war is rarely a good idea for any country, and he's banking on that.

However, the war on Hamas rests on the shoulders of American money and supplies. Without that military support, Israel cannot fight this war, and America... is losing patience.

Officially, America and most of the western world have been telling Israel to not fucking escalate for the majority of the war.

There have been implied threats, more or less since Schumer's big speech about how Israel needs a new election, of American legislators putting conditions on any future aid. There have even been rumblings of aid being retracted entirely if Israel follows through on invading Raffah.

So...

American aid to Israel has, for a very long time, been given in the name of defending Israel against Iran and its proxies.

Israel has been fighting this war against Hamas for six months, killing what is by now innumerable civilians, on the power of US military aid.

Netanyahu benefits from the continued war due to domestic troubles.

Iran does not want a regional war, or really any big war, due to its own domestic troubles.

The US is, in theory, losing patience with Israel and threatening to pull the plug on unconditional support. It's very "we gave you this to fight Iran. Stop attacking civilians. If you keep attacking civilians, then you're going to have to rely on what we already gave you to fight off Iran so that you won't keep wasting it on civilians."

Israel... attacks Iran, prompting a response, and is now talking about escalating with Iran.

I am not explicitly saying that it looks to me like Israel, which is already fighting a war on two physical fronts and even more political/economic ones, has picked a fight with Iran so that America feels less like it is able to withdraw support.

I just... am finding it hard to understand why Israel, which is in fact fighting both Hamas and Hezbollah, would attack the Iranian consulate in Syria otherwise. They can't actually afford to fight this war, escalating to a full regional conflict, on a third front.

Not without pressuring American into keeping the faucet of military funding open at full blast.

To support my blogging so I can move out of my parents’ house, I do have a ko-fi. Alternately, you can donate to one of the charities I list in this post OR this post.

#phoenix politics #current events #iran #israel #hamas #houthis #hezbollah #syria #politics #united states #military funding #military aid

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beardedmrbean · 15 days

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The women of Iran are dancing. Women blinded, with one eye, or one arm, are dancing. Iranian Kurds are dancing. Across Europe, Iranian dissidents are dancing. Iranians – often, relatives of the regime’s victims – are drinking to show their joy. The daughters of Minoo Majidi, a mother shot dead by security services during the 2022 protests, shared a video of them raising a glass to President Raisi’s death.

Dark humour – the jokes of an oppressed people – are circulating. “Mr Raisi, you surprised us. We have no tapas for our drinks,” chuckles one Iranian in a celebratory video on social media. There was the gag about how a Mossad agent called “Eli Copter” had caused the crash. People have handed out cakes and sweets in public squares – an act of symbolic importance in Persian culture, often associated with joyous events. Celebratory fireworks filled the skies in Iranian cities.

Such courage is all the more impressive given how little Raisi’s death is likely to change anything in this closed prison of a society. It may somewhat alter the succession, since he had been one of the men tipped to succeed Khamenei, but the Ayatollahs retain their stranglehold. The bravery of anyone involved in any celebration or act of civil disobedience such as removing a headscarf, is astounding. Those letting off fireworks or handing out sweets are risking their lives.

History will remember Raisi as a squalid tyrant who took a twisted pride in human suffering. He was involved in the torture and extrajudicial murder of thousands of political prisoners held in Iranian jails and the mass killings of opponents in 1988, when as many as 30,000 are believed to have lost their lives. As Mariam Memarsadeghi wrote in a chilling article for Tablet magazine, “virgins were systematically raped before their execution, to circumvent the Islamic prohibition on killing virgins and to prevent women and girls from reaching heaven”.

And yet, the BBC posted about “President Ebrahim Raisi’s mixed legacy in Iran”. You can imagine the 1945 headlines about the mixed legacy of “motorway-builder, vegetarian rights enthusiast and dog-lover” Adolf Hitler, or that of “inspirational plus-size influencer” Hermann Goering. Reuters described how Raisi “rose through Iran’s theocracy from hardline prosecutor to uncompromising president, as he burnished his credentials to position himself to become the next supreme leader”.

Reading such things you would think Raisi was, at worst, a slight renegade. A cheeky chappie in a kaftan whose loss will be felt by light entertainment for generations. They tweeted like he was Rod Hull – rather than, you know, someone nicknamed “the Butcher of Tehran”. But in the real world, faced with the real consequences of the regime he ran, people are dancing.

It wasn’t just the BBC in its classic “tightrope walk” mode, either. Things were getting a bit Candle in the Wind at the UN, as the entire Security Council (including both the UK and US representatives) stood to observe a minute of silence for President Raisi. Goodbye Tehran’s rose.

European Council president Charles Michel tweeted out his sincere condolences, while the “European Commissioner for Crisis Management” committed the EU’s Copernicus satellite system to help locate Raisi’s helicopter, in the name of “#EUSolidarity”.

Lest we forget, Johan Floderus, a young EU official from Sweden, has been incarcerated at Iran’s notorious Evin prison for more than two years. We don’t see much “#EUSolidarity” coming from the other direction. Not to be undone, President Higgins of Ireland channelled the spirit of Eamon de Valera c.1945, by offering his “deepest sympathies” upon the death of a tyrant.

Such statements go well beyond basic diplomacy. Nobody asked anyone to gush; they chose to. The message it sends is a slap in the face to those bravely putting their lives on the line for freedom. But it’s par for the course in what is (sometimes optimistically) termed the “international community”.

Speaking of which, on Monday, the International Criminal Court put out joint bids for arrest warrants for the leaders of Hamas and the prime minister and defence minister of Israel. Given that the ICC has no jurisdiction, nor power of its own to arrest anyone, there was something bleakly comic about the manner of the announcement. Chief prosecutor Karim Khan delivered his statement flanked by a couple of glaring bureaucrats. The ICC appeared to be putting on its best “don’t mess with us” face. It looked like a geriatric version of Bugsy Malone.

The ICC application refers, pointedly, to the “territory of Israel” and the “state of Palestine”, which makes it clear which side its bread is buttered. It notably ignores Hamas’s use of human shields, surely a factor when assessing the civilian death toll. It even holds Israel entirely responsible for “closing the three border crossing points” after October 7.

Yet Hamas destroyed the Erez crossing, murdering its operators and blowing up the barriers separating it from the Gaza strip. Small wonder border checkpoints weren’t up and running immediately. Condemning Israel for this is grotesque; gaslighting on an international scale.

The timing is also telling. We have known about the crimes of October 7 from day one, thanks to the body-cams Hamas terrorists so proudly wore to document their butchery. Yet the ICC waited until May 2024 to condemn both Israel and Hamas on the same day. The effect is to suggest a moral equivalence between a democratic state and a genocidal terrorist group that says it wants to repeat the atrocities of October 7 indefinitely. You don’t have to believe Israel is above criticism – and nor should we – to recognise this.

Multinational organisations like the ICC are often held up as moral arbiters in themselves, when they will only be as virtuous or corrupt as their component member states, and reflecting the same biases. The World Health Organisation has long excluded Taiwan from its membership due to Chinese pressure. A ruinous decision, when Taiwan’s early warnings about the risks of human-to-human transmission of Covid in late 2019 were ignored. Something is rotten in the state of many international bodies and moral courage is in short supply.

Given such a clear-cut case of evil as Raisi, the mealy-mouthed global response does not bode well. For genuine bravery, we can look to the people at the sharp end of such regimes. Because still, in the midst of it all, the women of Iran dance.

#nunyas news #gotta send condolences #don't gotta fawn over the guy though

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am-i-the-asshole-official · 5 months

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AITA for pretending my original fictional characters are my "friends" for the purpose of asking questions online?

Alright, so hear me out: I'm a writing hobbyist, I run a long-term D&D campaign, I like writing characters a lot and sometimes do it even outside of any stories, you could even say that it's my passion. Whenever I create a character that would have experience with something that I don't, I try to experience that thing myself, or if I can't, I ask others online about their experiences to make sure I can write my character accurately.

Here's the problem: back when I used to ask questions online from a writing/creative perspective, I felt like a lot of them concerning more controversial topics were getting dismissed and I got a lot of unsolicited writing advice unrelated to the original question. The most infuriating were always "You shouldn't write a character like that." or "You should change this integral part of the character to remove the issue that you're having."

Now, you can have whatever opinions you want about writing certain aspects of characters, but I would kindly ask you to shove them up your ass. I firmly believe that you can't judge a character accurately merely by their character traits written down in a vacuum, the execution is what really matters. One trait that could be seen as problematic when written badly can really enhance the character, story and it's themes if incorporated correctly. I'm not going to remove integral story-relevant characteristics of my OCs, and I sure as hell am not gonna delete them entirely just because an internet rando didn't believe that I could do them justice. Literally the entire reason why I'm asking these questions in the first place is because I'm trying to be as respectful/accurate to your culture/ethnicity/sexuality/gender/religion/disability/anything else. I GENUINELY want to learn and understand, so why don't you at least try to give me the benefit of the doubt instead of assuming it'll be done terribly?

Anyway, to give some examples of the questions that I've asked that were met with this kind of response:

"How would you write an autistic character who uses ASL but doesn't like to emote with their face?" (Was told to simply "make" the character like using their face even though it would go against how their other symptoms interact with each other, plus it would change how other characters view them and thus the story itself)

"What kind of slang would a black character raised in Brooklyn use?" (Was told to not write a black character using slang as a white person.)

"How would a Muslim character go about leaving their religion after losing their faith?" (Was told that the mere idea of an ex-muslim person was offensive)

I don't know if other writers also struggle with this, or if I'm just the unluckiest and always attract those kinds of people somehow, but after having to deal with it way too much I simply started lying and pretending that my characters are real so people would stop questioning my writing choices and just focus on answering my actual questions. For example, instead of the three questions above nowadays I would ask:

"Me and my Autistic friend are learning ASL together, but she doesn't like making expressions for sensory reasons. Is there anything else she can do?"

"What are some examples of actual slang used by black people in Brooklyn? My friend is from there but he likes to mess with me by coming up with fake words and pretending like they're slang, at this point idk what to believe."

"My friend lost their faith and is planning on leaving Islam. They don't have access to internet due to their parents so they wanted me to ask about what could be the possible consequences and how go about the process, or even where to start."

Also, obviously, I do way more research than just these questions, but I also really want to know the opinion of people in these communities about these topics and the discussion that develops from it. That's not something that simply reading a book or an article on a topic can give you and I believe that interacting with the community itself is an important part of properly portraying characters that belong to them as well. Still, a few of my friends told me that it's kinda shitty of me to lie in this way, especially when the end goal is to be respectful about certain traits yet me lying to these people is a sign of disrespect in their opinion. Personally I don't see it that way, I simply want people answering my questions to treat them seriously and if presenting them as real scenarios is what gets them to do it I feel like I have no choice, it has nothing to do with the respect I have for the communities in question.

Also, if this matters at all: 90% of my writing is entirely personal and will never be published in any way at all, the other 10% being the writing that I do for my D&D campaign which only my players get to witness.

So, with all of that out of the way, AITA?

What are these acronyms?

#aita #am i the asshole

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idohistorysometimes · 2 years

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So what is going on in Iran right now?

I am pretty sure most of you who are either on TikTok or keep up with international news have heard about the massive protests happening in Iran right now. Its a pretty big deal. But what exactly are these protests for and why are they so important?

Hopefully, for those who dont know whats going on I can explain it all here.

Who is Mahsa Amini and what happened to her

Mahsa Amini was a 22-year-old woman traveling from Kurdistan to Tehran (the capital of Iran) to visit family and was stopped once she entered the city by something called “the morality police” (yes this is a real thing). They claimed Mahsa Amini was wearing her Hijab incorrectly and that she would be arrested to undergo “reeducation” at the police station (which would result in her being released after an hour or so). Mahsa’s brother was with her when she was arrested and waited at the station for her to be released.

It is unclear what exactly happened between when Mahsa was arrested and the events of her death (mostly because we do not have any video of these events), but the women detained along with Mahsa reported for similar offenses reported Mahsa was violently beaten by said “morality officers”. This was supposedly for resisting their insults directed toward her. This story is corroborated by her brother’s report of Mahsa having bruises all over her body and the hospital where Mahsa was staying reporting she was brain dead upon arrival along with reporting signs of skull fracture and bleeding in her brain both on social media and in leaked medical reports.

Mahsa died of her injuries 2 days after she was admitted to the hospital on September 16th of 2022.

The official cause of death as reported by both the morality police and Iranian government has been extremely suspicious since the ‘official’ story claims she died as a result of a random heart attack/seizure combo. However, as stated before, there is plenty of evidence that Mahsa was violently attacked which includes (but is not limited to): the skull fractures found, the bruising around her body and face, the bleeding found in her brain and ears, and the fact several other witnesses have either said they witnessed the assault or have seen the previous things. Mahsa’s father also reported she was in perfect health and did not have a history of heart or seizure issues.

Why are people protesting?

For the people of Iran, instances of violence like this are not an unheard-of occurrence. Since the revolution of 1979 and the creation of this “morality police force” women were forced to wear the Hijab regardless of personal choice and had to adhere to a strict modest dress code lest they face similar treatment to Mahsa. To quote an actual penal code enacted in Iran post-revolution:

"women who appear in public without religious hijab will be sentenced to whipping up to 74 lashes"

Violence against women for this reason was now, in a way, much more normalized. Some of these dresscodes did apply to men, sure, but they were primiarly created expressly to control women with the use of fear and force by way of the Hijab. To also directly quote Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei (who has been in power since 1989):

"improperly veiled women should be made to feel unsafe"

Is this an anti-Islam protest?

The protests surrounding the death of Mahsa Amini have definitely gained international attention by what many people are doing in them. Many women are burning their hijabs in the streets, cutting off/shaving their hair, and otherwise just doing a lot of things that, traditionally, would be considered taboo under this system that's currently in place. However, this does not seem to be a direct rejection of Islam and rather a direct rejection of control over women by the use of the Hijab as an avenue for that control.

As stated before, this is not a new issue. There have been anti-hijab protests going on since the revolution in Iran back in the 70s. There were even protests pre-revolution FOR veiling since the leader at the time wanted to strictly stick to western norms. Iran shifted from one major extreme to the other. And in both these extremes choice on the part of the woman in question is completely taken out of the equation. It has been men making these choices for women in a broad universal way without giving women the ability to decide what they want for themselves. There is more than 1 way to veil in Islam. There are also many women who do not veil at all but are still active participants in their faith. There is not one specific way to do this correctly within Islam because modesty as a whole is a subjective topic. So the fact this police force exists in the first place is less about keeping morals ‘secure’ and more about exerting control through these rules via more extreme interpretations.

It would however be unfair to say that these protests and the cultural revolution happening because of these protests do not diametrically oppose some parts of Islam and the culture surrounding it. These beliefs are incompatible by virtue of them being polar opposites of each other. These protests, like it or not, have western influence on them and this influence threatens certain parts of Islam because over time certain aspects of culture have become rooted in these controlling methods. Its pretty unclear how this will all play out. However, it is safe to say this will be shaking up things both within Iran and in the world of Islam as a whole.

Why are Non-Iranian women also cutting their hair?

Ever since the protests have gained international attention many women outside of Iran (both ethnically Iranian and not) have also been cutting their hair to various degrees to stand in solidarity with protestors.

This is significant symbolically for a few reasons. In many cultures, long hair is directly tied to one's femininity, attractiveness, and even in some cases where one comes from. Like it or not hair is culturally and socially important and the loss off it can be a very big deal for those living under these cultural expectations. In Iran doing something like this subjects you to harassment from the morality police. It breaks the morality code and challenges the idea of what a woman should be and look like. Outside of this context, the removal of hair can be a sign of mourning, fear, anger, and a rejection of femininity (or in this case, the control brought on by strict gendered dress codes).

There has been a lot of controversy around this act since many people currently participating in these protests feel this act is performative activism on the part of western allies. Cutting one's hair is not really on the same level as donating money to a cause or protesting yourself. But others believe this is an important act of international solidarity. If you reading this decide to do this: do it at your own discretion and be sure your act of solidarity does not outshine the actual protests going on.

Why are people asking to blur/delete protest footage posted online?

It should go without saying that the people protesting right now are putting themselves in very real danger. What happened to Mahsa Amini is now happening to protesters who are speaking out about Iran’s harsh morality laws. Many people have died already as a result of participating in these protests and many more have gone missing. When you are dealing with an oppressive system like this they are not going to take too kindly to opposition. And if they are not afraid to beat women simply for wearing their Hijab ‘incorrectly’, they are not afraid to do much worse to political rivals.

Out of respect for the protesters and their safety: please blur out any faces, names, and remove all metadata from any protest photos/footage you decide to share online. Because if I can find one of the protestors on Instagram simply by looking at their face and general location so can the morality police. For those around during the Black Lives Matter protests, the Russian anti-war protests, or any other media-sensitive protest use those same rules when posting footage/reporting on them

#iran #mahsa amini #world events #whats going on #psa

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yourtongzhihazel · 2 months

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The source that you yourself provided for the Uyghur post says "mass imprisonment and forced labor of ethnic Uighurs in Xinjiang amounts to crimes against humanity" AND there have been multiple allegations of rape/SA from the inmates themselves. Even if it's not a genocide, it's weird that you're bootlicking for the Chinese government. https://www.aljazeera.com/opinions/2021/5/14/the-faux-anti-imperialism-of-denying-anti-uighur?traffic_source=KeepReading

Which source? The foreign policy one? Of course they would say that they're a bourgeois news source. Your article, written by journalists from two western DOTBs and two strongly bourgeois institutions must have a real well rounded view when it comes to foreign countries. Just because they throw in some lines about "disavowing the american imperialist machine" while consistently citing western backed NGOS like human rights watch, who takes sponsorships from military contractors, doesn't mean they aren't engaging in blatant propaganda manufacturing. And then they go on to try and discredit sources and positions which go against them. Is this not taking the american side by default? The article tries to take a third position on the issue but what does it materially accomplish? The separatists are backed by the united states and serves usa interests in the region. The people in Xinjiang and vocational schools are backed by the PRC. You will fall into either camp one way or another.

99% of all the claims about XInjiang come from or are in some way involved with the usa state department, the NED, ETIM, or the world uyghur congress, all institutions or NGOs deeply involved with washington. The unites states and its running dogs have accused and lied about countries across the world in order to maintain their geopolitical positions. They will lie about babies being left in incubators. About WMDs. About rogue attacks. And they will lie about genocide. Take a look at the west's track history on genocide. Every single time they have done nothing to ever actually stop one and not only do they not stop genocide, they are the ones actively participating or supplies them. Look at the blatant lying about Palestine and tell me with a straight face what they actually care about genocide and Muslims. The real question is not why im "bootlicking for the Chinese government" but why you are doing the propaganda legwork for the imperialists.

As I have already said, multiple times, many international organizations, especially Islamic and Muslim ones have come to Xinjiang, investigated, and found no wrongdoing. Here's a look inside the vocational centers. Locals and attendees disavow the claims of forced labor. And there are serious issues with mass detainment claims. And people do actually graduate from the vocational schools. Contrary to popular belief, just like the province of Yunnan, Xinjiang is a province of many minorities; 19 out of the 52 nationally recognized groups. The largest are the Uyghurs, but mongols, Tajiks, and many more also live there. This is what Xinjiang is actually like. The PRC's primary de-radicalizing policy is the anti-poverty campaign. The past few years have seen tremendous material and money investment in China's poorest provinces, most notably, Xinjiang. Numerous programs like from animal husbandry, e-commerce, healthcare, clean water initiatives, childhood education, and more. The reason you don't see more new claims coming out from Xinjiang these days is that these policies have worked to reduce radicalization and poverty! The vocational schools are slowly emptying!

The american propagandists and you lot continue to come with more and more allegations and it is always the job of the communists to find evidence of the non-existence of a genocide? To prove a negative? ridiculous. You are letting the united states and its running dogs manufacture a false narrative on every country under the sun. Stop letting them take advantage of your humanity. They won't lift a finger to help the Palestinians, why would they be so fervently supportive of the Uyghurs? Where's the mass fleeing of people from Xinjiang into neighboring regions? What do you want me to show, live footage of the millions of kilometers of border? Where's the distinct targeting of intellectuals, journalists, professionals, and leaders like you see in Palestine? In occupied territories like Palestine and Kashmir, you will see consistent news about attacks and resistance movements. There are none in Xinjiang; since 2017 and the start of the de-radicalization and anti-poverty campaign. Is China so competent that they have eliminated all the resistance groups and weapons and etc. but simultaneously incompetent enough to not dismantle ETIM and other groups? You have examples of SEVERAL genocides live streamed in front of your fucking face and you still want to believe the lie about a fake one being generated entirely by foreign forces.

#Im fucking sick of this shit #mmp

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i-am-dulaman · 4 months

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petition for that long rant on revolutions here, i really enjoyed the way you laid out your facts and explained the first rant and am not too good at reading theory myself (i am still trying tho) thanks!!

Okay okay so the problem with revolutions is they get messy. Real messy. You get counter-revolutionaries, moderates, extremists, loyalists, and everything in between. One revolution turns into 5, and even if your side wins, its almost guaranteed to have been tainted some way or another along the way.

Take the first french revolution. It started as civil unrest, the estates general initially called for reform of the french state into a constitutional monarchy similar to Britain. Even king louis XVI was in support of this. But extremists wanting a republic and counter-revolutionaries wanting absolute monarchy clashed and things became more and more chaotic and violent. Eventually the extremists won, the jacobin reign of terror ensued, and 10s of thousands of people were executed. Now don't get me wrong, i am all for executing monarchs and feudal lords, but look what happened a few years later; Napoleon used the political instability to declare himself emperor, a few more years later his empire had crumbled, and the monarchy was back with Louis XVIII.

Or take the 1979 iranian revolution. It started as protests against pahlavi, who was an authoritarian head of state and an American pawn. As the protests turned into civil resistance and guerilla warfare it took on many different forms. There were secularists vs islamic extremists. There were democrats vs theocrats vs monarchists. Etc. Through all the chaos, Khomeini seized power, held a fake referendum, and declared himself supreme leader and enforced many strict laws, particularly on women who previously had close to equal rights. Many of the millions of women involved in the revolution later said they felt bettayed by the end result.

Or the Russian Revolution. It started as protests, military strikes, and civil unrest during WW1 directed at the tsar. He stepped down in 1917 and handed power over to the Duma, the russian parliament. This new provisionary government initially had the support of soviet councils, including socialist groups like the menshiviks. But they made the major mistake of deciding to continue the war. Lenins bolsheviks were originally a very tiny group on the fringes of russian politics, but they were the loudest supporters of peace, so they gained support and organised militias into an army and thus began the russian civil war. Lenin won and followed through on his promise to end the war against germany, but its a bit ironic that they fought a civil war, that killed about 10 million people, just to end another war.

Im not saying any of these results were either bad or good. They all have nuance and its all subjective. But the point i am trying to make is that they get messy. The initial goals will always be twisted.

France wanted a constitutional monarchy, they got an autocratic emporer.

Iran wanted democracy and an end to American influence, and well they ended american influence alright but also got a totalitarian theocrat.

Russia wanted an end to world war 1 and got one of the bloodiest civil wars in history.

I cant think of a single revolution in history that achieved the goals it set out to achieve.

But again, im not saying this is necessarily a bad thing, just a warning against revolutionary rhetoric and criticisms of reformism. Sometimes revolution is the only option, when you're faced with an authoritarian government diametrically opposed to change, then a revolution may be worth the risk. But it is a risk.

But if you live in a democracy, claiming revolution is the only way is actively choosing both bloodshed and the risk of things going horribly wrong over the choice of peaceful reform.

So when i go online in some leftist spaces and see people claiming revolution in America or UK or wherever is the only way out of capitalism I cant help but feel angry.

I know our democracy is flawed, and reform is slow and can even go backwards, but we owe it to all the people who would die in a revolution to try reform first.

I know socialist reform is especially hard in our flawed democracy where capitalists own the media, but if we can't convince enough people to vote for socialist reform what hope do we have of convincing enough people to join a socialist revolution. Socialism is supposed to be for the people, but how can you claim your revolution is for the people if you can't even get the support of the people?

So what I'm trying to say is; if youre one of those leftists that are sitting around waiting for the glorious revolution, doing nothing but posting rhetoric online - at least try doing something else while you wait. Join your labour union, recruit your coworkers, get involved in your local socialist parties, call your local representatives (city council, senator, governor, member of parliament, whatever) and make your opinions known, push them further left, and keep pushing.

#thank you anon this waa fun #also when i say i cant think of any revolution in history that achieved its goals #im not counting wars of independence #i know americans call the american war of independence the revolutionary war but its not a revolution l #(for reference - the first rant that anon mentions is a reblog a couple days ago about the communist manifesto)

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mchiti · 5 months

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It's past 1 am and I can't sleep so I want to share on here something that is really bugging me lately and it's happening in Italy. There's this really fascist mayor of a city in northern Italy who has basically shut down all Mosques in the city because she says they are unauthorized.

The "Mosques" we're talking about are Islamic centers organised as best as Muslims can, under the worst situations given we never manage to have proper Mosques (I live in Milan, which is a big city, and we don't even have a proper Mosque either. There was a project to build one but was shut down by the government so...)

The 23rd of December, the Muslim community of this city decided to take the streets and protest, and the mayor went crying on television on how this was a provocation because it was done right before Christmas. And one thing that really makes me cry, like real tears down my face I'm not even joking, is seeing the images of people protesting weaving little italian flags as to say "we're here, we're also italians, we just want a place to pray" how is that enough to ask...really...how. Italians don't even deserve those flags wallahi.

If you see the Mosque I attend with my family...that's nothing for it to be called a Mosque. It's a converted little villa our Islamic center bought with everyone's efforts around 20 years ago. And that's the nicest you can get, otherwise it's garages, basements...I'm soooo tired. Like we're here and we pay your taxes, the least you can give us is the dignity to have a place to come together. All this bitch of a mayor can say is "this is a victory for legality...no to places were hate is preached" soooo that's your islamophobia showing lmao. That's your problem. You can give your muslim citizens "legal" places to pray if you really wanted, but you don't want to because it feeds your propaganda. I'm so fucking sick of this country you have no idea

#can italy burn im not joking #italy #islamophobia #maybe we're gonna get one this year....maybe....after like 30 years of asking for it....Idk I'm not positive about this anymore #and we all did pay it's not like it comes for free lol and they still cry about it

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eretzyisrael · 2 months

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by Seth Mandel

The second is that Al Jazeera has been found giving press credentials to multiple people who turned out to be soldiers in Hamas’s war on Israel. That would be indisputable grounds for suspending an agency’s credentials.

In the course of its Gaza operations, the IDF has found troves of documents that identify a great many of the Strip-based terrorists, some of whom work for Al Jazeera. Ismail Abu Omar was wounded in an IDF strike in Rafah. Al Jazeera claimed him as their own, flew him back to Qatar for treatment, and expressed deep outrage. Israel responded that Abu Omar was indeed an employee of Al Jazeera—while spending much of his time as a deputy company commander in Hamas’s East Khan Younis Battalion. Abu Omar appears to have participated in Hamas’s Oct. 7 invasion. As Jonathan Schanzer wrote here in March, “In a bizarre twist, Abu Omar actually signed his name to a Telegram photo of a murdered IDF soldier whose body was taken by Hamas into Gaza.”

There’s Mohamed Washah, whom one could find on Al Jazeera video reports and who also, according to numerous documents and photographs, serves as a prominent Hamas tank commander. Two Al Jazeera “journalists” were killed in a strike in January; one of them turned out to have been a rocket-specialist for Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the other a drone operator with Hamas.

How “journalisty” this all sounds to you probably depends heavily on whether you think a reporter’s first obligation is to kill Jews. I received my journalism degree without taking a single class on joining a foreign terrorist army, so it is not recognizable as the journalism I personally was trained to do—but your mileage may vary.

Now, a good-faith critique of Israel’s proposed ban might engage with this fact—that the Qatari-funded Al Jazeera appears to have been an organizational arm of the Qatari-funded Hamas terrorists who butchered 1,200 innocent Israelis on Oct. 7. Perhaps the law is still too vague, or you worry it gives Israel too much leeway to ban actual journalistic outfits under the same rules. Or you fret that the 45-day suspension is too easily extended. Even a passing familiarity with Israel’s Supreme Court would cure you of such worries, but not everyone possesses that passing familiarity. At the same time, an argument made out of ignorance can still be one of good faith.

What isn’t good faith, however, is any one of the above-mentioned arguments made by prominent political figures and supposed experts in the field of foreign affairs.

#al-jazeera #israel #journalism #support for terrorism #terrorism

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homunculus-argument · 2 years

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Time to explain a random finnish meme: Nää tyypit elää tällä tavalla joka päivä

The original sentence came from a reality TV show Kill Arman, by the iranian-finnish tailor/show host/tv personality Arman Alizad. The idea of the show was that he travelled around the world to see different cultures and get the shit beaten out of him. To be more specific, each episode introduced a different traditional form of matrial arts, and having Alizad train in it. At the end of the episode, he would face a master of that fighting style, predictably getting his ass handed to him. It aired in 2009 and while I don't recall ever seeing a full episode, Alizad's humour and personality was absolutely the backbone of the show.

There was one episode - I think the location was somewhere in India - where the local peoples' poverty was simply so baffling and awful that Alizad took a moment to get serious, looked at the camera, pointing to the muddy slum street behind himself, saying "think about it, these people actually live here, like this, every day", with the air of being astonished and disgusted that there really are people who have no other choice, and to remind the finnish audience back at home just how good they have it. Alizad himself had fled from Tehran with his family during the Islamic revolution when he was only eight years old.

Explaining why this is funny is kind of difficult, since while there's nothing laughable about what he said, the way he worded it was unusual. Speaking fluent finnish with only a faint accent, he also picked up the distinct dialect of the southern area of Finland where his family settled (finnish dialects are so regional that you can sometimes tell what city someone is from, with 10 km accuracy, just by what word they use when they say "you"), and the contrast between saying something that serious and heavy in the extremely informal way he said it was funny.

It became a meme, where people would photoshop the image of Alizad pointing at something on behind himself and put it on front of something else, captioned with the citation (either as it was, or altered in some way to fit the image). The new background - a school, a bar, an unemployment office, a psychiatric ward, or the city of Kouvola - and the people in it were therefore implied to be living in such astonishing and sickening squalor that Alizad would need to remind you, the viewer of the meme, that these are real people who actually live like this every day. That there are actual human beings unironically living in Kouvola.

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