Maryam Iqbal

Trying to communicate with rest of the world in 140 characters.

[The Long Investor @TheLongInvest]

As a pilot for 20 years I have questions:

- where are the cabin crew here?
- where are the oxygen masks that automatically drop during a rapid emergency descent?
- how did the Capt manage to open the door while being stabbed?
- Omani pilots were not allowed to fly to Israel, why was he allowed?
- how did the offending pilot get a weapon onboard?
- why has this happened so close to elections?
- how are passengers walking around while apparently in a nosedive?
- who else was injured? Nose dives cause significant g force incidents
- why is there two perfectly positioned people recording the incident and not helping?
- why did a plumber take control and not the 2 pilots onboard who would certainly know when an aircraft was in a nosedive?
- why was the plumber speaking in English to Bibi after the flight
- why was he still in his blood soaked clothes 8 hours after the incident

False Flags have been a very effective mechanism to influence public opinion

Hitler burnt down the Reichstag just before his parliament elections and he won the election…changing the course of history.

A full and independent investigation should be carried out here.

Hopefully independent journalist will be allowed to view this too.

[liam cunningham @liamcunningham1]

If any fool attempts to tell you it isn’t a genocide, show them this quote and who said it.

[Macklemore @macklemore]

Wanting all humans to be treated equal should never be controversial.

[susan abulhawa | سوزان ابو الهوى @susanabulhawa]

Below is the statement by @macklemore in response to being removed from Ed Sheeran's Loop Tour. Read it in its entirety, because it's a masterclass in class, the primacy of integrity, and having the courage of one's convictions. [also, @edsheeran being "apolitical" in a moment of genocide is disgusting. Throwing his friend under the bus to appease zionists is gross too.]:

I’m not sure how to start this. So I’m going to speak from the heart and share the truth. Ed Sheeran and his team have made the decision to remove me from the Loop Tour.

But before I get into it, I want to say something that should be obvious. In this moment I think it matters. I am not a victim. Ed Sheeran is not a victim. Pink is not a victim. We have careers, money, opportunities, safety and audiences around the world. Whatever consequences any of us face for what we say, we get to go home to our families.

The victims are the Palestinian people. The men, women and children who have been killed, starved, displaced, and forced to live through unimaginable violence. More than 20,000 children have been killed in Gaza alone. People are being killed today and people will be killed tomorrow. I want to make sure that as I tell this story, we don’t lose sight of that.

Ed is my friend. I’ve known him for 13 years. We’ve shared late nights, studio sessions and stages. He has this infectious magic about him that I’ve grown to love. I consider him a brother. And because of that, we’ve had some difficult conversations this past week. The type of talks rooted in love and respect for one another that still end in a place of fundamental disagreement. Nothing I’m writing here is out of spite or because I want to tear down his character. But as I told Ed multiple times on the phone, our friendship can’t change my responsibility to tell the truth about what happened.

Last Monday, in the middle of all the media attention surrounding Pink and what I said at MetLife, Ed told me that Robert Kraft called him. We were scheduled to play Gillette Stadium later this month, which is owned by the Kraft Group. Ed told me that Kraft said I would not be allowed to perform in his stadium. Ed also told me that Kraft had rallied some of the other stadium owners and collectively they gave him an ultimatum: if Macklemore stays on the tour, you will not be allowed to play in our venues.

Ed was in a fucked up position. He knew it. His typical apolitical stance was being challenged in a way it never had been before. He told me that the words “Free Palestine” and the image of the Palestinian flag were hurtful to al to of people he spoke with. I told him that if those words were more offensive than tens of thousands of Palestinian children being killed by Israel, then there was a fundamental disconnect between where those people stood and where I stood. But he couldn’t get past his public facing, “I don’t take sides.”

And I get why people don’t. Taking a side can cost you. Money, brand deals, sponsorships, festivals, private shows, relationships and access. I’ve lost all of those things. But there is no neutral position between the oppressor and the oppressed. When one side has the bombs and bottomless financial and military support from America, refusing to take a side doesn’t leave you in the middle.

What I said at MetLife I have been saying on stages around the world for almost three years. So why is it an issue now? Because now I’m sharing a stage with one of the biggest artists in the world, in some of the biggest stadiums in America. At a certain level of exposure, “Free Palestine” becomes too much of a risk. If I kept doing the shows, saying Free Palestine, which Ed implicitly supporting it, the crowd getting loud and showing undeniable support for Palestinian liberation, what artist might speak out next? The stage becomes resistance. Maybe that’s why this time it became so important to silence me.

One of the most effective ways to enforce that silence has been to weaponize the accusation of antisemitism. Antisemitism is real. And that's exactly why the word matters too much to be used as a shield against criticism of the Israeli state. When criticizing Israel, opposing Zionism or saying "Free Palestine" gets conflated with hatred of Jewish people, it doesn't protect Jewish people. It protects Israel from accountability.

I hope this isn't the end of my relationship with Ed. Thirteen years of friendship doesn't disappear because of one painful disagreement. I hope we both continue listening, studying what is happening in Palestine and wrestling with what neutrality means in a moment like this. My door is always open to continuing that conversation.

When my brother Omar was doing the subtitles for the video I posted from MetLife, I thanked him. He told me there's a phrase in Arabic: لا شكر على واجب.

"La shura ala wajeb." There's no thanks [needed] for a duty.

That stayed with me. Because that's what this has become for me and millions of others around the world. A duty. Not something deserving of praise or gratitude. Not brave. Human.

Who is winning the internet, who is getting canceled, who gets to play the stadium and who doesn't, all of it becomes so small when held against what we are actually witnessing in Gaza and the West Bank. An entire people being displaced, starved and killed while the world debates which words we are allowed to use to describe it, how those words make us feel, and whether our discomfort matters more than the people living through a genocide.

I didn't need 10 shows from Ed. I needed 2. Two chances to stand up in front of 90,000 people and say the words that somehow became too dangerous to say.

Free Palestine.

But if those words cost me the rage, while turning the conversation back to Palestine, then it was the most successful tour I've ever been on.

[MC Card @fhlp_mc]

Ed Sheeran can think he didn't take a side BUT he did. Ed Sheeran sides with Zionists and he obliged a Zionist Jew for money. It is as simple as that. You either are against the Palestinian genocide being committed by Israel and funded by the West or you are not.

Those who take a stand against the genocide and colonization by Israel are those people who have integrity and should be in positions of leadership.
Thank you @macklemore for your public stance. The world people know a genocide when they see one - and Israel is committing the most horrific atrocities against humanity.

History will record those who stood by the Palestinians and cried out against their genocide by Israel and those who were publicly or silently for the genocide.

Genocide is a WAR CRIME. Israel is filled with war criminals. Israel never was a democracy and Israel always the money - the oil - the resources of the mid-east. Not hard to see at all.

[erkan ☪️🇹🇷🇮🇪🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🇪🇸🇿🇦🇵🇸🍉 @ErkanYalnErkan2]

🔴Husam Abu Safia is one of 95 doctors sentenced to death by Israel.

His only “crime” was treating and caring for the wounded people of Gaza—people Israel wants dead.

If you don’t want to watch him face execution, share this.

[susan abulhawa | سوزان ابو الهوى @susanabulhawa]

from @CraigMurrayOrg

[Afshin Rattansi @afshinrattansi]

Today is war criminal Barack Obama’s birthday.

In 2009, Haiti’s🇭🇹 parliament passed a significant minimum wage increase to around $5 per day improve conditions for its working class.

Obama intervened to force Haiti to keep the minimum wage at $0.31 per hour. His administration was concerned that the minimum wage increase to the poverty wage of $5 a day would raise costs for US companies sourcing garments from Haiti.

[Mehdi Hasan @mehdirhasan]

Disgusting. If you defend this, you're a sociopath.

[Physicians for Human Rights Israel (PHRI) @PHRIsrael]

UPDATE - Israel’s Supreme Court Rejects Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya’s Appeal

The rejection of Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya’s appeal and his continued detention without charge represent a profound moral and legal failure. Rather than upholding the fundamental principles of the rule of law and due process, the court has endorsed the indefinite detention of a hospital director who remains in solitary confinement while suffering from medical conditions that are not receiving appropriate treatment. The message sent by this decision is unmistakable: a medical professional can be deprived of his liberty indefinitely without being charged and without the authorities presenting evidence against him in open court.

Dr. Abu Safiya’s case is not an isolated one. It illustrates how judicial review proceedings for Palestinian detainees from Gaza have, in practice, become little more than a procedural formality. Every month, hundreds of detention review hearings take place, yet to the best of our knowledge they have not resulted in the meaningful reconsideration or revocation of detention orders—even in cases involving doctors and other medical personnel.

We call for the immediate release of Dr. Abu Safiya and all other doctors who continue to be held without charge or trial.

[Ina Lepel @GermanyinPAK]

No one should be left alone on Eid.

I shared the spirit of Eid ul Adha by purchasing sacrificial animals for the guards outside our embassy, many of whom are living far from their families, so they too could celebrate and share the joy of Eid.
#EidMubarak to all💐

[Alex Veremeyenko @alex_verem]

Let me trace the timeline here because nobody's connecting it.

Step 1: Scrape the entire internet. Every book, every article, every conversation, every piece of art, every forum post. Do it without asking. Do it without paying.

Step 2: Train a model on all of it. Call it "artificial intelligence."

Step 3: Go to BlackRock's Infrastructure Summit and announce: "We see a future where intelligence is a utility, like electricity or water, and people buy it from us on a meter."

Step 3 is where you sell people's own knowledge back to them. On a meter.

They took the collective output of human thought, compressed it into a model, and now they want to charge you by the token to access a version of what you and everyone you know already created.

One Reddit user put it perfectly: "They stole all this data from us, the people, our life's work, creativity, art, by devouring the internet and blowing through all copyright laws. Now they want to sell it back to us in the form of a utility."

Imagine if someone photocopied every book in the public library, burned the library down, and then opened a subscription service for the copies.

That's the metered intelligence business model.

And they're pitching it to infrastructure investors as though they invented water.

[Leonardo Boff @LeonardoBoff]

Se há alguém que merece o prêmio Nobel da Paz é Francesca Albanese. Chefiou o organismo da ONU que cuida dos direitos humanos.Disse a pura verdade: em Gaza ocorre um genocídio a céu aberto.Sofreu todo tipo de sanções por denunciar e ameaças de morte. Ela honra a humanidade e sua sagrada dignidade.

[Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur oPt @FranceskAlbs]

🧵on 'NYT rift'
1/22
A NYT article on sexual abuse against Palestinians -accurate but barely scratching the surface- is triggering hysteria in the Israeli govt not bcs of the facts, but bcs of the audience.
Apartheid Israel fears NYT readers will finally see and no longer ignore.

[Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur oPt @FranceskAlbs]

When the US sanctioned me for exposing corporate complicity, I trusted people would act. If after nearly a year @bookingcom & @Airbnb still profit from stolen Palestinian property, it’s because too many still use them.

Stop using them now & tell them why.
https://t.co/VAgI9fYzTn

[𝐒𝐨𝐮𝐦𝐚𝐢𝐥𝐚 𝐃𝐢𝐚𝐰𝐚𝐫𝐚 @soumi_ds]

Dal carcere, Thiago ha dettato questa lettera al suo avvocato:

“Cara Teresa,

mi dispiace non essere a casa con te in questo momento.
Purtroppo tuo padre, tua madre e tante persone in tutto il mondo hanno compreso il compito storico che abbiamo la responsabilità di portare a termine.

Oggi più di un milione di bambini stanno subendo un genocidio: vengono lasciati morire di fame, subiscono amputazioni senza anestesia e soffrono a causa di idee orribili e cariche di odio, pur non sapendo cosa siano il sionismo e l’imperialismo.
Sono certo che ti manco moltissimo; anche tutte le madri e i padri dei bambini palestinesi sentono terribilmente la loro mancanza e darebbero qualsiasi cosa per poter vivere una vita fatta di amore, felicità e gioia, quella che ogni essere umano merita, indipendentemente da razza, religione, etnia o qualsiasi altra caratteristica.

Il tuo mondo sarà più sicuro perché molti genitori hanno deciso di dare tutto per costruire un futuro migliore per te.
Spero che un giorno tu possa capire che, proprio perché ti amo così tanto, non c’era nulla di più pericoloso per te e per gli altri bambini che vivere in un mondo che accetta il genocidio.

Ti prego di ricordare tuo padre come la persona che ti cantava e suonava la chitarra per farti addormentare. E quando crescerai, la tua mamma ti dirà anche che tuo padre era un rivoluzionario e che, anche di fronte alle persone più terribili del mondo, Donald Trump, Benjamin Netanyahu e Itamar Ben-Gvir, è rimasto saldo nella convinzione di costruire un mondo migliore.

Per favore, non dimenticare la Palestina.

Con tutto il mio amore,
Thiago Ávila”

[Clare Hinchcliffe @Subversivite]

I'm reluctantly posting on X again because the world needs to read this.

My daughter Zoe Rogers gave her own closing speech at the Filton trial, as did 4 other defendants, while their barristers looked on.

This is what she said 🧵 1/

[tim anderson @timand2037]

Marjan Yeshayayi, a member of the Tehran Jewish community, asked rescue workers not to use machinery [to clear the rubble] in order to preserve the scriptures.
“When I made the request, I did not believe they would accept it, but instead they said, ‘OK, we will remove it manually,’ and they really did. Each brick was removed by hand, and the scrolls came out safely and were handed over to the Jewish community.
https://t.co/FXoP1NZaxi

[Ghali ⵣ 𓂆🍉🗝️🇵🇸 @GhaliZayane]

Remember Rachel Corrie.
She wrote emails home about olive trees, children’s laughter, and a land that deserved to live, and then she stood in front of a bulldozer with nothing but her body and her belief in humanity.
They crushed her, but they could not bury what she saw, or what she chose to defend.
23 years old.
Not a weapon, just a witness.
Not a threat, just a conscience.
Her last act was to stand between violence and a home.
Ours is to remember… and refuse to look away.