Leil

PhD in @UCSBGlobal. Researcher on ME diasporas. Experienced data analyst. Former editor @EgyptMigrations. Co-founder and ex-president of @IranStudentsCA.

[Abubaker Abed @AbubakerAbedW]

This is barely a 2-year-old girl that wants to fill her two gallons of water.

On which planet are we living to allow this to happen? How cruel, monstrous this world is!

Unforgivable. Unfathomable trauma on children.

[Hamza Yusuf @Hamza_a96]

Palestinians in Gaza know that the aid stations are a sinister death trap. But the level of famine forces them to take the risk, fully aware they may be killed. And Israel banks on it.

This is extermination.

[kev joon @never_oppressed]

The emotional swings I’ve experienced the last few days are indescribable. You go from one hour being grateful your family is alive to total despondency the next hour. And it repeats again and again. Can’t imagine what Palestinian friends have been through these last 2 years.

[Caitlin Johnstone @caitoz]

It's just a fact that major world events do not occur independently of the actions of the major world powers who have a vested interest in their outcomes. Maybe it bothers you when people point out the involvement of the US power alliance in Syria, and maybe you would prefer to believe that a plucky band of heroic freedom fighters bravely overthrew an evil supervillain dictator all on their own like some Hollywood movie. But real life doesn't move in accordance with your preferences. In real life, the globe-spanning empire that is centralized around the United States will reliably be deeply involved in such events.

When I say this you may want to believe I am "denying the agency of Syrians" and that "denying agency" is the worst sin a person can possibly commit, but nothing I'm saying actually contradicts the idea that Syrians have their own agency. Obviously there were many Syrians who wanted Assad gone, and obviously there were many people who had their own reasons for fighting him which had nothing to do with the US empire. There is no contradiction between this obvious fact and the well-documented reality that the US-centralized power structure has been balls deep in Syria from the very beginning of the violence in 2011, and that its involvement led to the events we are seeing today.

The claim isn't that the US empire controlled the minds of Syrians and forced them to turn against their government with no agency of their own, the claim is that the empire put a big fat thumb on the scale to ensure that one group of Syrians got their way instead of a different group.

You can argue that western regime change interventionism will lead to positive results this time (so long as you're prepared to ignore mountains of historical evidence consistently demonstrating the opposite), but what you cannot do on any rational basis is deny that western regime change interventionism occurred here.

Western liberalism is funny in that its adherents lean heavily on their ability to psychologically compartmentalize away from the actions of the western empire, and indeed away from the very existence of that empire. The western liberal lives in an imaginary alternate universe where western powers pretty much mind their own business and western leaders passively watch violence and destruction unfold around the world whilst pleading for peace and diplomacy from their podiums. They pretend the empire does not exist, and that it is only by pure coincidence that conflicts, coups and uprisings keep occurring in ways which favor the strategic interests of Washington.

In reality it is impossible to understand what's going on in the world unless you understand that the US is the hub of an undeclared empire which has been working tirelessly to bring the global population under a single power umbrella over which it presides. The few countries who have successfully resisted being absorbed into this imperial blob are the Official Bad Guys we westerners are all trained to hate: China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, and a few socialist states in Latin America. I used to include Syria in this list, but that's over now. Syria has been absorbed into the blob of the empire.

And tomorrow the imperial blob will move its crosshairs on to the next unabsorbed nation. That's the underlying dynamic behind all the major conflicts on earth. This dynamic gets redacted from the mainstream western worldview with the assistance of the western propaganda services known as the mass media, as well as the western indoctrination system known as schooling. This dynamic is redacted from our worldview and hidden from our attention by the plutocrats and empire managers who work to manipulate our information systems, because otherwise we would realize that the US empire is the most tyrannical and abusive power structure on this planet today.

And it unquestionably is. No other power structure has spent the 21st century killing people by the millions in wars of aggression while circling the planet with hundreds of military bases and working continuously to crush any group which opposes its dictates anywhere on earth. Not China. Not Russia. Not Iran. Not Cuba. Not Bashar al-Assad. Only the US empire has been tyrannizing and abusing the world to this extent in modern times.

And now the imperial blob rolls on to absorb its next target, having grown one Syria-sized increment larger after spending years digesting that nation via proxy warfare, starvation sanctions, and a military occupation designed to steal its oil and its wheat.

Our world cannot know peace as long as we are ruled by an empire that is fueled by endless rivers of human blood.

[Falastin Flip @TOliveFern]

Propaganda Reality

[Medic Kim @medickimw]

They’re gonna spend 100x more manpower and money to find the UHC CEO shooter than they ever did investigating UHC’s unlawful practices and the deaths they caused.

[Clotilde Bigot @Clo_Bigot]

This is the effect of an airstrike in Tyre. A bunker buster bomb according to neighbors. The water is seawater, that's how deep it went.

[Mona Fawaz @mona_fawaz]

#Beirut. The smell of sulfur is still in the air but the drone is gone. Relief is mixed with a heavy weight on everyone’s chest, trying to understand what just happened, think of what is coming, and hurt for #Gaza. We need prospects for just futures, temp ceasefires aren’t enough

[Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur oPt @FranceskAlbs]

This was instantaneously my deepest fear as the news of the ICC arrest warrants came in. It is noticeable that as of January, at every move at the int'l justice level, there has been an immediate intensification of lethal violence against the Palestinians in Gaza. This also needs to be thorrougly investigated, Prosecutor @KarimKhanQC.

[Ben Reiff @bentreyf]

Two aid trucks entered the starvation zone in northern Gaza for the first time in a month and a half, reaching a school-turned-shelter. Israeli soldiers prevented Gazans from reaching the food then set the shelter on fire, burning the aid down with it.

https://t.co/Hvr4JBMHdg

[حسام شبات @HossamShabat]

Today, I met my dad’s friend on the street. I honestly didn’t recognize him; no one looks the same after a year of genocide. I asked him how he had been doing. He said he had four sons, and one after another, they were killed over the span of a year. His last son and wife were killed last month. Now, he sleeps on the streets with no family. A vibrant man who once owned a house, a car, and a business is now deprived of everything, even his family.

[James🔻 @GoodVibePolitik]

They’re going to blame third parties, “single issue” voters, Elon Musk, and whatever else they can say to avoid the fact that the Democrats ran a bad candidate who made bad decisions as a part of a bad campaign. Likely no real self reflection, same as 2016.

[Evan Hill @evanhill]

Across Lebanon's border villages, at least 5,868 buildings have been left in ruins, 80% of them since the invasion began. In some places, such as the villages of Ayta al-Shab and Kfar Kila, nearly half of all structures are gone. Many village centers have been erased.

[حسام شبات @HossamShabat]

🚨 Breaking Israeli occupation forces prepared a deep hole in one of the squares surrounding the Indonesian Hospital, and placed some males in it with their hands tied and their eyes blindfolded In north Gaza

[Mariam Barghouti مريم البرغوثي @MariamBarghouti]

🚨EMERGENCY ACTION REQUIRED

Homes in north Gaza are now being attacked with Apache war planes by Israel.

According to journalists and civilians on the ground, and footage coming out, Israel is killing people en masse, field executions, people are dying of dehydration and starvation in piles and piles.

An arms embargo is necessary, no fly zone over Gaza, humanitarian aid must enter unimpeded and emergency medical personnel, the situation is deteriorating quickly

[Mohammad Alsaafin @malsaafin]

The Jabalia refugee camp was the most densely populated place in Gaza. 100,000 people crammed into one square mile. It's been under siege for 2 weeks. No food, water, fuel or medicine. Massacres every day.

[Hind Khoudary @Hind_Gaza]

Jabalia camp is being wiped out

[♃bou ♄ijāl 🔻 @abou_rijal]

Even those who are already several generations Israeli, are caught up somewhere between Miami and Tel Aviv. There's hardly such a thing as a genuine "resident" in their entire state. They're an itinerant audience at a public execution. Israel is the last Roman colosseum