Advocating for: Humanism, universalism, liberty, free inquiry, reason, rationalism, open society, secularism, pluralism, truth-seeking and science.
Supporting: the Enlightenment, the West, Israel and Iranian freedom.
Arguing against all tyrannies of mind & state: Islamism, fanaticism, totalitarianism, pseudoscience, Marxism, intersectionalism, historicism, scientism, and all dogma that fears criticism.
๐ Dnipro.
Empty chairs with stuffed toys line the embankment in memory of children killed by russia.
They should be growing up, not being remembered.
Today is 37 years since the Tiananmen Massacre
On this day in 1989, the Chinese Communist Party ordered the People's Liberation Army to open fire on its own citizens.
Peaceful pro-democracy students and workers who gathered in Beijing's Tiananmen Square demanding freedom, anti-corruption, and basic human rights were crushed under tanks and gunfire.
The protests began in mid-April 1989, triggered by the death of reformist leader Hu Yaobang. On May 13, students began a hunger strike. Martial law was declared on May 20, but protesters remained peaceful.
In the early hours of June 4, troops advanced with tanks and live ammunition. Soldiers fired on unarmed civilians blocking their path in the streets surrounding the square.
Hundreds to thousands were killed. Thousands more were imprisoned, tortured, or disappeared.
To this day, the Chinese government censors all mention of it, erases it from history books, and threatens anyone who remembers.
Marjane Satrapi died today.
Her work incredibly matters, she showed millions of people what the regime hides.
In fact, Persepolis was so controversial that Iranโs government sent a letter to the French embassy in Tehran to protest it and pressured organizers of the 2007 Bangkok Film Festival to remove it from the lineup.
Iranโs economy is in a catastrophic state:
"The monthly welfare payment of 25 million rials ($15) allocated for hygiene supplies no longer covers rising care costs and could lead to worsening health conditions and higher treatment expenses for people with disabilities."
According to @IranIntl
Lebanon's ambassador to the United States, following the conclusion of the latest round of talks in Washington between Israel and Lebanon and the agreement on a joint memorandum of understanding:
"This is a historic moment!"
Tragic... And Ukrainians are not using children as a human shield. They're using bomb shelters and keeping civilians out of harms way as best as possible.
๐ฏ๐ Russia has killed 707 children since the start of its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, while another 2,548 have been injured, President Zelenskyy said.
The youngest child killed was just two days old - born and killed in a maternity hospital.
Ukrainian Ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets also stated that 2,318 children remain missing. According to him, the real numbers could be significantly higher, as Ukraine still does not know the full truth about what has happened in the temporarily occupied territories.
(In the photo: the parents of an 18-month-old child killed during the bombing of Mariupol on March 4, 2022. Photo: Associated Press.)
Welp, that happened faster than I predicted. Thought it would be end of 2027, then early 2027, but agentic traffic growing so fast that bots have now passed human traffic online for the first time in the Internet's history. https://t.co/2zX5bHdhsa