To Simp A Butterfly

Lofi tweets to chill / study to

[To Simp A Butterfly @ScottMoreira]

Made it through another Halloween without doing blackface

[To Simp A Butterfly @ScottMoreira]

@USAmbCanada Fuck you, you liver-spotted bitch

[Rolling Stone @RollingStone]

In his own words, @questlove remembers his friend, collaborator and brother, D’Angelo.

“D’Angelo, to me, was one of the last pure artists in Black music.”

Read the personal tribute: https://t.co/ikLTIGYRR6

[To Simp A Butterfly @ScottMoreira]

@CrankyGuardian @TheTrueVanguard Feeding kids in school improves their learning and attendance, growing GDP in the long run; and improves health and nutrition, cutting the burden of the healthcare system.

All the research says it’s not just compassionate, but cost-effective policy

[To Simp A Butterfly @ScottMoreira]

@PaulTassi Do we know if those payouts were contingent on milestones Bungie has presumably missed? I’m also surprised to see Parsons out this early, so maybe those payouts are no longer going to come through in full or in part?

[To Simp A Butterfly @ScottMoreira]

@gloop_the2nd Yeah who would ever think to photograph poor, rural America

[To Simp A Butterfly @ScottMoreira]

@levelsio Why do you feel compelled to make something that can only possibly make the world worse?

[Elika Sadeghi @elikasadeghi]

There is a really weird “save women from biological men” corner of the internet that never seems to appear when women really need saving from biological men.

[State of Palestine @Palestine_UN]

The ICJ assessed the facts and the law and ruled in favor of humanity, morality, and legality. Watch the historic moment when the ICJ declared Israel’s presence in Palestine as unlawful.

[To Simp A Butterfly @ScottMoreira]

@StatisticUrban In the 1950s fewer than 10% of men had a college degree, the average income was $22,000, and the average home price was $12,179. Don Draper didn’t imagine that

[To Simp A Butterfly @ScottMoreira]

@CWingUexkull LeMay’s firebombing campaigns were not ordered by high command and their effect was so surprising many didn’t understand their scale. There is plenty of evidence of America resisting area bombing civilian targets, and Truman himself grappled a great deal with dropping the nukes

[To Simp A Butterfly @ScottMoreira]

@CharlieBaranski Diversity is probably the most ambiguous metric I could imagine but if you go by the accepted definition America isn’t even in the top 20. And any argument made about New York City could just as easily be said about Toronto

[Rami Jarrah @RamiJarrah]

The moment Aljazeera Journalist Momen Al-Sharafi breaks the news that his entire family of 21 members were just killed in an Israeli Airstrike in #Gaza.

The look he gives as he is no longer able to talk, is heartbreaking.

[ayan. @artan_ayan]

The Director of the UN's New York office just resigned after thirty years at the organisation over the UN's handling of the ongoing genocide of Palestinians.

The entirety of his resignation letter is a necessary read but this first page blew me away.

[To Simp A Butterfly @ScottMoreira]

@JackKaplanNY Cool how you’ve left your original tweet up even though you’ve admitted it was wrong. By all means don’t let any morals about slandering these kids interfere with your clout chasing

[Caitlin Johnstone @caitoz]

Israeli Intelligence Suddenly Knows Exactly Where Hamas Is

It’s interesting how last week Israel had no idea what Hamas was up to, and yet this week they know every mosque, school and hospital that Hamas is hiding in.

When you live under an empire of lies you’ll be asked to believe a lot of very stupid things. The dumbest thing we’re being asked to believe this week is that Israel’s intelligence services are simultaneously so incompetent that Saturday’s Hamas attack took them completely by surprise, but also so competent that all the buildings they’re destroying with their relentless bombing campaign on Gaza are directed solely at Hamas.

The phrase “Hamas targets” has been all over the news media the last few days in reference to the ongoing attacks on Gaza, which have as of this writing killed over 1,500 Palestinians, a third of them children.

“Israel conducts large-scale strikes on Hamas targets,” reads a CNN headline.

“Israel conducts ‘large-scale strike’ on Hamas targets,” reads the title of a segment for ABC News.

“Israel says it dropped 6,000 bombs so far against Hamas targets,” reads a report by The Washington Post.

Gosh, Israel must have really great visibility into Gaza to know that each of those 6,000 bombs was aimed “Hamas targets” and not just civilian buildings.

Where was this 20/20 vision when Hamas was preparing for an attack using motorized paragliders, drones and motorboats in an enclosed strip of land the size of Philadelphia? How did Israeli intelligence fail to detect preparations for this attack even after Egyptian intelligence warned them that it was coming? How did they fail so spectacularly that even Hamas was reportedly surprised by the scale of their operation’s success? Is it really reasonable to believe they were blind as moles to Hamas activity last week but have the eye of the eagle this week?

President Biden made some noises on Wednesday about how important it is that Israel “operate by the rules of war”, which sounded like empty cover-your-ass narrative fluff even before we heard US National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan dismiss any notion of “red lines” that Israel must not cross in Gaza.

Not even mainstream empire apologists are buying it. Politico’s Andrew Ward, in an article sponsored by Lockheed Martin in which he writes that “Israel’s ferocious counterattack is easy to understand” given the severity of the Hamas attack, writes that “The Biden administration wants Israel to abide by the laws of war as it responds to Hamas’ barbaric attack, but Jerusalem doesn’t appear to be listening.”

“A flood of reports challenges Israel’s claims that it’s exercising caution,” Ward writes. “Mosques, hospitals and schools have been hit with airstrikes, as have healthcare facilities and ambulances.”

“Gazans, many of whom don’t support Hamas or its tactics, have nowhere to flee as the strip is under siege,” ads Ward. “Shrapnel has flown into seven hospitals and 10 U.N. emergency shelters. The situation has gotten so bad that the Red Cross said hospitals, already low on electricity, water and supplies, risk turning into morgues.”

Of course Israel isn’t abiding by the rules of war. They’re not even pretending to. Human Rights Watch has just issued a statement decrying Israel’s “unlawfully indiscriminate” use of white phosphorus in Gaza and in Lebanon, and an Israeli security official told the Israeli press that the IDF’s plan is to turn Gaza into “a city of tents” with “no buildings”.

This is all publicly available information, yet the western press has the gall to use the phrase “Hamas targets” when describing Israel’s bombing campaign in Gaza? I’m sorry, but that’s demented. The only reason to do something like that would be to administer propaganda.

The claim that Israel is targeting Hamas when it destroys buildings in Gaza is further undermined by the fact that Hamas would be taking shelter underground during this bombing campaign. As journalist Sharmine Narwani explained on Twitter, “Hamas cadres live underground in Gaza, which they have learned to do after countless Israeli bombing campaigns. The ONLY people being massacred in Gaza by Israeli terror planes right now are Palestinian civilians and Israeli POWs.”

In reality, both the claims that Israeli intelligence was taken by surprise by the Hamas attack and that Israel is solely targeting Hamas with its Gaza strikes are highly suspect and worthy of intense scrutiny. Israel has never been averse to killing Palestinian civilians, and there’s no reason to feel confident Israeli intelligence didn’t let the attack through in order to justify longstanding agendas like the elimination of Gaza as a Palestinian territory. Both claims can be false, but from where I’m sitting it looks highly unlikely that they’re both true.

If you want to support Israel’s bombing campaign in Gaza then go ahead, and if you want to uncritically accept the official narrative about Saturday’s attack then you do you. But don’t piss on my leg and tell me it’s raining.

[To Simp A Butterfly @ScottMoreira]

@IanKarmel Gusto 101 or Sugo for italian, Pho Hung for vietnamese, Serano for baklava and baked goods, Lao Lao Bar for thai/laos food, Bar Koukla for greek, Sunny’s for modern chinese Swatow for late-night chinese

[To Simp A Butterfly @ScottMoreira]

@BradRice25 @ChrisKlemens @GregAbbott_TX Your last sentence is soooooo close to a breakthrough and I hope you get there one day pal

[Ida Bae Wells @nhannahjones]

I was invited to give an MLK speech today and a small number of members of the group hosting me wrote and then leaked emails opposing my giving this speech, as it dishonored Dr. King for me to do so. They called me a "discredited activist" "unworthy of such association with King"

[Adrian Morrow @AdrianMorrow]

I spoke with Jake Angeli, the QAnon guy who got inside the Senate chamber. He said police eventually gave up trying to stop him and other Trump supporters, and let them in. After a while, he said police politely asked him to leave and let him go without arrest