Abby Straessle

DC, Sewanee, Little Rock

[Anne Applebaum @anneapplebaum]

🇪🇸🇪🇸🇪🇸🇪🇸🇪🇸🇪🇸🇪🇸🇪🇸🇪🇸🇪🇸🇪🇸!

[ABC News @ABC]

Pope Leo XIV personally carried the wooden cross through all 14 stations of the Way of the Cross at the Colosseum on his first Good Friday as pontiff, marking the first time in decades that a pope carried the cross to every station.

Read more: https://t.co/w8A7hq8pNT

[Matteo Bassetti @ProfMBassetti]

Desidero formulare i migliori auguri di pronta guarigione a #LindseyVonn che ora tornerà a casa sua negli Stati Uniti.
La Vonn ha potuto apprezzare lo straordinario sistema sanitario pubblico italiano che si è presa cura di lei con tre interventi chirurgici. In Italia, a differenza che nel suo paese, ci prendiamo cura di tutti: ricchi o poveri, vip o anonimi, Americani o italiani.
Se ne avrà occasione, spieghi a Trump e a Kennedy Jr cosa vuol dire prendersi cura di chi sta male.

[Pope Leo XIV @Pontifex]

In the current context, we are seeing an actual “short circuit” of #HumanRights. The right to freedom of expression, freedom of conscience, religious freedom, and even the right to life are being restricted in the name of other so-called new rights, with the result that the very framework of human rights is losing its vitality and creating space for force and oppression. This occurs when each right becomes self-referential, and especially when it becomes disconnected from reality, nature, and truth.

[Pete Buttigieg @PeteButtigieg]

It's an old and obvious pattern. An unpopular president - failing on the economy and losing his grip on power at home - decides to launch a war for regime change abroad.

The American people don’t want to “run” a foreign country while our leaders fail to improve life in this one.

[Democratic Party of Arkansas @ArkDems]

Thousands of people in the street for the #NoKings Little Rock 🚫👑

THIS is what Democracy looks like.

[Chef José Andrés 🕊️🥘🍳 @chefjoseandres]

My friend Jane Goodall was the wisest and most compassionate person I've ever met. She could make anybody feel hopeful about the future…no matter the hardships of the present. Just this weekend, she wrote to let me know she was thinking about what she could do to alleviate all of the suffering in Gaza, in Ukraine, in Sudan, and beyond. She was my hero, my inspiration. I will miss her every single day.

[The Lincoln Project @ProjectLincoln]

3 days apart.

[The Washington Post @washingtonpost]

The United States sanctioned Francesca Albanese, the United Nation’s special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, alleging that Albanese is targeting U.S. and Israeli nationals for prosecution in the International Criminal Court. https://t.co/0t51uwW1Ip

[Ramez Naam @ramez]

It's unacceptable for policing to look like this in America. This should both frighten and outrage anyone who wants the US to remain a free society.

[US Open Tennis @usopen]

🫶🫶🫶🫶

[The Economist @TheEconomist]

Israel’s scheme for supplying aid offers scant relief. It makes no provision for people who are sick or unable to trek to a distribution centre. Food should not be used as a weapon. Israel must allow aid into Gaza and let charities distribute it https://t.co/FHYymdD8z5

[🍂 @Lovandfear]

— Virginia Woolf

[Anne Applebaum @anneapplebaum]

The world's richest man takes food and medicine from the world's poorest children

[Farnaz Fassihi @farnazfassihi]

Trump's order to freeze foreign aid has real & widespread impact on people's lives, it has intensified humanitarian crises and raised questions about the United States’ reliability as a global leader. Gift link:
w/ @suilee @declanwalsh

https://t.co/NiGvF2zEmj

[Ali Haj Suleiman @AliHajSuleiman]

Christmas in Damascus is different this year, after al-Assad’s fall
My latest for @AJEnglish

https://t.co/UwbQCBWjLZ

[Taha Bali @tahabito]

Damascus, today. This is what Assad never allowed. This is how much we loathed him. Here’s to a better, free Syria.

[Yusuf / Cat Stevens @YusufCatStevens]

‘We are no longer refugees, we are free Syrians’
#Peace #Syria #Refugees #Hope

[Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський @ZelenskyyUa]

The “brave” Assad ran away to Putin. Where will Putin run away?

This year's Human Rights Day is marked by heartbreaking images of Syrian prisons and torture chambers, which were opened after Assad ran away. People have been humiliated there for many years. Men and women. They were beaten, tortured, raped. Thousands upon thousands of people have passed through this violence factory.

For decades, the Assad regime has relied solely on violence. And this is what all Putin-backed regimes look like. We have seen these types of prisons, torture chambers, unspeakable violence, humiliation, beating, torture, rape, and other crimes on our territory in every location occupied by Russian invaders.

Russia is a prison state and it can only keep hold of someone else’s stolen land by putting its prisons and torture chambers there.

Since the beginning of the Russian occupation, tanks have been followed by repression and torture. We first saw it on our land in Crimea in 2014, when Russian occupation resulted in repression of the indigenous people, Ukraine's largest Muslim community, the Crimean Tatars, as well as journalists and political figures. Then Russia continued its horrific human rights violations in the occupied Donbas, including the notorious Izolyatsia prison.

Since February 2022, Russia has expanded these practices to the rest of the occupied territories. Atrocities have increased in scope and brutality.

This is why we, as Ukrainians, feel so moved when we see Syrians walking out of Assad's prisons and torture chambers.

Assad and Putin are more than just vassal and lord. They are accomplices in violence. Dictators like Assad cannot survive without dictators like Putin. And Putin will try to get a revenge for Assad’s fall.

This is why we need unity and strength to confront regimes that only sow humiliation and leave nothing but suffering, pain, and ruins in their wake. By assisting Ukraine in its fight against Putin's dictatorship, the international community is assisting many other regions in restoring security and protection from violence.

There must be justice for the horrific atrocities and human rights violations. In fact, Putin and Assad are the ones who deserve to be imprisoned, not the innocent people they have been imprisoning for years.