Pillar of Autumn

Writer, foodie, Halo fanatic and freelancer for hire.

[Nate Bear @NateB_Panic]

A rocket hasn't been fired from Gaza in 18 months. And Hamas has handed administrative control over to a technocratic interim committee. Yet the apartheid state continues killing children daily. Almost as if it's a holocaust and not a war

[Marwa Osman || مروة عثمان @Marwa__Osman]

The USA has 800 military bases across 80 countries.

Do you know how many the country with the next highest number has?
145 bases across 42 countries. And that would be the UK.

So, no. These military bases are not to "protect" Americans. They are there to dominate the world through military power.

If a military base on the territory of one of the 80 countries hosting U.S. forces is used to launch attacks against a sovereign state, it is entirely foreseeable that the targeted state will view that base as a legitimate military objective and respond accordingly.

The people of countries hosting such bases should be asking why their governments allowed their territory to be used to wage war on another nation, often without meaningful public consent. Accountability begins with those who initiated or facilitated the attack, not with those who retaliated.

Watching some Arab governments, and citizens (!), condemn Iran for striking military installations that were clearly used to launch attacks against it is remarkable. If those bases were indeed used in military operations against Iran, then presenting the response as an "unprovoked attack" ignores the sequence of events.

So spare everyone the selective outrage. If you're unwilling to acknowledge cause and effect, or the role your own governments may have played, your criticism rings hollow.

[Adedayo Agarau @adedayoagarau]

I'm 31. I'll be 69 by the time Nigeria finish paying the 2015-2026 debts. This year alone, BAT has added $7.77bn this year alone.

So I made a tool that tells you how old you'll be when Nigeria finish servicing some of the 2015-2026 debts. Vote wisely.

https://t.co/zUCDgYm1oe

[𝘊𝘰𝘳𝘳𝘪𝘯𝘦 @OopsGuess]

The unarmed American citizen shot by ICE was not in China.

The country where nearly half of people delay medical care because they cannot afford it is not China.

The country where 37% of adults cannot cover a $400 emergency expense is not China.

The country with a record 770,000 homeless people is not China.

The country where 45 million people are trapped under student debt is not China.

The country where 200 million people drinking PFAS-contaminated water is not China.

The country with $1.18 trillion in credit-card debt is not China.

The country where more than 40,000 people die from gun violence every year is not China.

The country where child marriage remains legal in the country is not China.

The country that spent 250 years existing and only 17 of them without war is not China.

But yes, keep telling us how “Communist China” is the danger.

At some point, anti-communism stopped being an argument.

It became a blanket America uses to cover its own corpse.

[Elvin Calcaño @elvin_calcano24]

En Brasil están atribuyendo el declive de su selección de fútbol al avance del evangelismo. Y no me parece descabellado pensarlo. Por lo siguiente:

1. El fútbol brasileño tenía una identidad enraizada en la exuberancia, fiesta y colorido propios de una cultura hija del sincretismo entre lo católico y los imaginarios religiosos de origen africano. Cuando Brasil arrasaba en los mundiales sus jugadores llegaban a los estadios cantando samba y tocando tambores afrobrasileños. El juego en la cancha no era más que la extensión del festejo. Pero así era cuando los jugadores eran católicos y practicantes del sincretismo afrobrasileño. Hoy los jugadores de Brasil son mayormente evangélicos. Y el evangelismo, dada su matriz dispensacionalista y su escatología cerrada, expulsa toda forma de sincretismo: de diversidad. Es decir, acaba con el fútbol-fiesta. Los actuales jugadores de la selección brasileña llegan rezando a los partidos...Ahora tocar los tambores e invocar los santos del sincretismo afrobrasileño es cosa del diablo. Está muy mal visto. Se volvieron tristes, marciales y predecibles. Tanto en sus vidas como en la cancha.

2. En el catolicismo cuando uno se equivoca o le va mal debe reflexionar y buscar causas para mejorar. En la escatología evangélica ya todo está escrito. Si ganan el mundial es porque Dios así lo quiso. Y si pierden estrepitosamente como ahora es porque los tiempos de Dios son perfectos...En tales condiciones el jugador nunca es responsable, en última instancia, de los malos resultados. Se busca ganar y mejorar, pero siempre pensando en que pase lo que pase todo está en manos de Dios quien de antemano determina lo que va a pasar.

3. El evangelismo que llega a Brasil (y al resto de América Latina) es individualista. Es una religiosidad que articula la noción calvinista del esfuerzo individual como devoción por Dios, con la teología de la prosperidad neopentecostal. El evangélico privilegia lo individual frente a lo colectivo. La salvación es de cada uno. El fútbol brasileño de los Pelé, Garrincha, Zico, Ronaldo, Romario, Rivaldo y Ronaldinho (cuando Brasil era insuperable en la cancha) tenía un componente profundamente colectivo tanto en su aspecto táctico como estético. Cosa muy difícil de cultivar hoy en jugadores evangélicos que se ven a sí mismos como actores individuales cada uno en búsqueda de su salvación privada.

4. El evangelismo es severo y castigador. Mientras que el catolicismo (sincrético) que imperaba en Brasil era abierto y matizado. Esto amplía la creatividad y la búsqueda de distintas opciones. El futbolista brasileño del jogo bonito era ante todo creativo. Veía los partidos cerrados como algo a superar creando e inventando jugadas. Hoy, con jugadores evangélicos, la selección brasileña luce predecible y sin imaginación.

En fin, invito a que sigan el debate que hay hoy en Brasil en relación a lo que consideran son los efectos nocivos del evangelismo en la identidad de su fútbol. Porque ese debate puede extrapolarse a muchos otros ámbitos de esa sociedad. Y, por tanto, a cualquier otro país latinoamericano donde el evangelismo haya sustituido a la matriz católica (sincrética) como religiosidad mayoritaria. Al final, estos discursos de odio, vaciamiento democrático y destrucción de lo público que vemos en nuestros países no vienen de la nada.

[Othell Yarwyck @bigbrovar]

When you DSS are busy arresting people using drone and connected to political opponents. You can understand why they is little bandwidth to go after less serious issues like bandit.

Insecurity is a matter of political will. Insecurity will end when political elite have a consensus to end it. That consensus will only happen if they see insecurity as existential to their political aspirations.

And only the people can do that..

[Rakesh Kumar @Rakeshhkumaar]

If half the population struggled to afford food and fuel in a socialist country, Western media would call it the failure of communism.

[The Cradle @TheCradleMedia]

WATCH | Israeli occupation soldiers filmed themselves destroying a Palestinian shop in Ramallah and shared the footage on their social media accounts.

[Abier @abierkhatib]

Israel is the only country that’s recently bombed both churches and a synagogue, but it keeps calling Muslims “terrorists”

[Onye Nkuzi @cchukudebelu]

It is a lot easier to punch down, than it is to punch up - and James Baldwin said, "The most dangerous creation of any society is the man who has nothing to lose,".

There are many of such young people in South Africa.

No hope, no prospects, no narrative or vision for their future, so they are ready to "burn the house down".

So, who are their "easiest targets"? Fellow Black Africans - they believe they are the easiest to target, to unleash their misplaced anger on.

There's no point spelling out the second and third order consequences of their monumental stupidity to them or carefully explaining the impact on their actions on South Africa's economic and political future.

No, give them a couple of decades to live out the consequences of their stupidity, they will learn, by force.

[Glenn Tunes @glenn_tunes]

JUST SO I UNDERSTAND THIS, BLOCKING THE STRAIT OF HORMUZ IS UNFAIR, BUT BLOCKING OIL SHIPMENTS TO CUBA IN ORDER TO COLLAPSE THEIR WHOLE COUNTRY, IS FAIR 🤔 DID I GET THAT RIGHT 🙄

[Tehran Tadhg @TadhgHickey]

I'm in Mashad and the US has just bombed railway stations and roads leading here to prevent more people from attending the final burial of Ali Khamenei. One wonders who the "scum" really are?

[George Galloway @georgegalloway]

Never forget this photograph

[Dr Rahmeh Aladwan @doctor_rahmeh]

In 1979, an 'israeli' jewish settler brutally murdered Orthodox priest Philoumenos Hasapis using an axe.

Hasapis 🇵🇸🇬🇷 (1913–1979) was a Greek Orthodox archimandrite and the guardian of Jacob's Well in Nablus, occupied West Bank.

A jewish settler entered the monastery on 29 November and attacked him after demanding the removal of Christian symbols from the church.

Father Philoumenos refused to abandon his post or desecrate the holy site, and he was killed in the assault.

He was later canonized by the Greek Orthodox Patriarchate of Jerusalem and is honoured as a martyr and saint in the Eastern Orthodox Church.

From: forgotten_christians (ig),
https://t.co/nMvWG7N1aM

[Sony Thăng @nxt888]

They don't ask for context when Americans die.

On September 11, 2001, nobody on American television said:

"Before we process this, can we discuss U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East since 1953? Can we talk about the support for the Mujahideen? Can we contextualize the sanctions on Iraq that killed 500,000 children in the 1990s? Can we ask whether American actions created the conditions?"

Nobody said that.

It would have been considered monstrous to say that.

The dead deserved mourning, immediate and unconditional.

But when you show them the dead on the other side, suddenly context is everything.

Suddenly you need to condemn the right people first.

Suddenly grief requires paperwork.

The rule is not "context matters."

The rule is "context matters for their dead."

Yours just need to have filled out the form correctly before they were allowed to bleed.

[Dr. John Njenga Karugia PhD. @johnnjenga]

The corruption you saw happen to Egypt is how things are rigged using computers and software in backrooms against the powerless across the world by global institutions comparable to FIFA. Global exchange rates, credit ratings, interest rates, travel rules, visas, courts etc. ⚖️

[Adam Johnson @adamjohnsonCHI]

Last Thurs, Abdul El-Sayed asked CNN why he was never asked if he thought Palestine has a right to exist after he was asked if Israel does for the 900th time. So I ran the numbers and he’s right: Israel’s “right to exist” is a media obsession and Palestine’s is Just Not Mentioned

[Biggest Mack @Big_Mck]

“They (FG) won't come directly, but you will see their hand in virtually everything. They are frustrating me”

Of course, he's right. That's exactly what the government of Nigeria is doing to him. But I don't know if he and those he's talking to actually understand that what he just described here is exactly how neocolonialism works.

And I ask again, how come people understand this easily, but when you tell them that foreign governments do the same thing, and that these foreign actors are the source of whatever heavy-handedness they complain about their local leader, suddenly it becomes hard for them to understand?

I just cannot reconcile this type of cognitive dissonance.

[Afshin Rattansi @afshinrattansi]

Julian Assange: "The goal is to use Afghanistan to wash money out of the tax bases of the US & Europe through Afghanistan & back into the hands of a transnational security elite.

The goal is an endless war, not a successful war.”

Now the same applies to Ukraine.

[gst @wearegst]

This is generational debt no citizen is benefitting from it.