As of January 6, Israel had completely destroyed at least 23 hospitals in Gaza.

It goes without saying that is a violation of the Geneva Convention.

The rules of war are clear. Hospitals are specially protected facilities under international humanitarian law. The ICRC urgently calls for the immediate protection of all civilians, including humanitarian workers and medical personnel. This protection is not only a legal obligation but a moral imperative to preserve human life in these terrible times. 

International Committee of the Red Cross. (2023, November 10). Israel and the occupied territories: ICRC demands protection of patients, health-care workers, medical facilities in Gaza amid escalating attacks. International Committee of the Red Cross. https://www.icrc.org/en/document/israel-and-occupied-territories-icrc-demands-protection-patients-healthcare-workers-medical-facilities-in-gaza

If you’re living in Michigan, you should vote “uncommitted” in today’s Democratic presidential primary.

I think some people, especially those debating these issues from outside the U.S. or people who have just now reached voting age, are a little confused as to what "the primaries" actually are. The primaries are used to determine who will go on to run for the presidency. Right now they're how the Republicans will decide whether they send Trump or Haley to the final presidential election. The democrats are so confident in Biden that barely anyone has contested him. If you vote "uncommitted" in the primaries, it simply tells them that you want to vote, but you don't like any of their candidates. It won't make conservatives more likely to win the white house; it will just at the very least let Democrats know people are angry and dissatisfied.

Just premising this with the fact that Aaron Bushnells self immolation was felt by all palestinians in Palestine and in the diaspora because the idea that someone so deeply upset by what he saw happening to Palestinians at the "hands of their colonizers" decided to self immolate in front of the israeli embassy was a shocking act of solidarity. And that being said this extraordinary act of revolutionary suicide is exactly how you should perceive palestinian resistance who go out and battle one of the most funded armies in the world just so one day palestinians can be free of this occupation and colonial oppressor. Our resistance are not "crazy fundamentalists" they are occupied people who have bore the scars the occupation gives them and woke up and said they will not take the chains binding them anymore. Right of arms is the right of any anti colonial movement and we can't imagine the level of faith they must have in a future free palestine to battle million dollar tanks and drones and soldiers equipped with the latest weaponry

Sorry to put more of this on your dashboards but i need y'all to know. Aaron Bushnell was trying to get out of the military prior to his action on february 25th. He was sick of being complicit and was trying to get out. His contract was almost over and he was trying to leave the air force.

When you join the military you sign a contract for a fixed period of service. It is likely he opted for a 4 year contract. You cannot "just quit" like a normal job. Attempts to avoid finishing your contract can result in felony charges and jail time. appealing as a conscientious objector is possible, but extremely difficult for noncombat roles.

He was trying to utilize the skill bridge program the DoD offers, to work for a civilian company for the last 180 days of his contracted service period. That would have let him cease his complicity even sooner.

This was the last act of a desperate man trying to draw attention to the horrors he felt he was complicit in, complicity he was legally barred from stopping.

He felt complicit, he was trapped in the military, he was trying to get out, and he couldn't take it any longer.

The reactions i've seen to this are a mix of vets and people close to the military who know how this works, being shocked that civilians don't know that "you just can't quit", and civilians who don't know much about the military being shocked that this is the way the military functions.

This is why i made this post. I have the "benefit" of being raised in a military family, being taught the way things work by my father, and knowing that civilians like you and me aren't typically aware of these facts. I saw the information about Aaron and i knew in a split second the situation he was in, and i knew I needed to share it.

People on the political left are quick to form snap judgements and call for death about anyone in the military without understanding the context of the situation those people are in. Do better, and strive to understand people before writing them off as "unsalvageable reactionaries". The revolution that brought the world the soviet union would not have been possible without the support of the russian military. Things are more complex than the surface level easy explanations you have probably been operating under.

I should have included this in the first version of the post but:

if you or someone you know feels trapped in the military, there are ways to get out early, with varying levels of difficulty and legal risk.

The military, broadly, tries to cover these up and make it as difficult as possible to get out.

This podcast episode by leftist anti-war veterans discusses the various ways you can make your way out prior to contract termination.

Another good resource is the G.I. rights hotline, which can be reached via their website or phone number.

1-877-447-4487

You have options. You may feel trapped and complicit, but there are ways to get out. You are not alone. Regardless of who you are, and why you joined, if you feel sickened and shocked at the war in gaza, and want to leave the military, there are options for you.

World's most moral army's most noble soldiers...

As a pervert I just need to say we don't claim them.

These people are not going through women's underwear due to a sexual fascination with women's underwear. They are doing it as a premeditated strategic move in their genocide.

The point is to humiliate Palestinians to hurt them directly, and to slutshame them as a move in the public relations fight that they're losing. Right now the morale of Palestinians and the extremely negative international opinion of Israel are two of the biggest obstacles to the continuation of their genocide, and when soldiers are trying to address these problems, it is a military operation.

What we are witnessing in these posts is not someone getting a sick sexual thrill from brutal acts. We are witnessing cold-blooded murder in an especially insidious form. This is depravity, not in the sense that it's sexually deviant, but in that it's so deeply and invasively violent.

So I am once again begging people not to focus on icky things about monsters and therefor associate good innocent perverts who do their playing with panties consensually and make the world a better place so around; and instead to focus on why they actually are monsters and properly communicate their evil, which furthermore paints them in an even worse light than just making them seem icky.

The problem with this genocide isn't that it's being done in a way that reminds me of gay people. It's the genocide.

“self immolation as a form of extreme political protest has a long history all over the world, and aaron bushnell’s death should not be discussed solely as a suicide”

and

“people who are already hurting and vulnerable can do more to help while they are still alive than they could in death, and should not repeat aaron bushnell’s actions”

are statements that can and must coexist, actually.

he felt that he was complicit in genocide as an active duty us service member, and, to an extent, he was. but also as an active duty service member, he was legally not allowed to quit his job as a member of the military.

his final act was to take drastic measures to draw attention to a genocide that many people in this country are turning a blind eye towards, and i commend him for his sacrifice. it should be honored and remembered.

that doesn’t mean i want anyone to feel that they should follow in his footsteps.

he should not have been made, by nature of his employment, to feel that he was complicit in genocide, because those in power should not be funding and supporting it in the first place. but they are doing so, and he made it clear that did feel that way. we can’t change that. that doesn’t give us the right to dismiss and ignore his actions.

“this [genocide] is what our ruling class has decided is normal.” and it shouldn’t be.

keep bushnell’s message in mind as you organize. protest, fundraise, call your representatives. these are actions that have a tangible effect. and they do far more to help than dying.

but i’m not going to condemn him, just as i’m not going to condemn the likes of thích quảng đức. i’m not going to say that his death was worthless, because it brought undeniable attention to the matter at hand, despite attempts by american media to gloss over why he did what he did.

i understand where people are coming from — self immolation is a deeply disturbing thing to witness, even blurred. i was very deeply affected by the video. but that’s exactly why he did it; to get through to people that this matters.

i don’t want anyone else to die, either. but remembering aaron bushnell and what he died for is not synonymous with encouraging suicide.

his last words were “free palestine” and, as people living in countries that are funding extermination, it is our job to carry on that cry until palestine is free.

that means living to see it through. ensure that he did not die in vain.

The last words of Aaron Bushnell before he set fire to himself outside the Israeli embassy in Washington - Free Palestine.

The original scene is true: capture photo from video shows #AaronBushnell sets fire while a policeman is pointing a gun at his burning body!! Cop went for gun instead of an extinguisher.

DrSonnet — #CNN #BBC #SKY #NYT,.... SPEAK UP. It's 2024, not... (tumblr.com)

“I will no longer be complicit in genocide. I’m about to engage in an extreme act of protest, but compared to what people have been experiencing in Palestine at the hands of their colonizers, it’s not extreme at all…Free Palestine.” -Aaron Bushnell

"This is what our ruling class has decided will be normal"

-Aaron Bushnell

Shortly before his final act in this world, Bushnell posted the following message on #Facebook: "Many of us like to ask ourselves, 'What would I do if I was alive during slavery? Or the Jim Crow South? Or apartheid? What would I do if my country was committing genocide?' "The answer is, you're doing it. Right now."

RIP Aaron Bushnell.. He decided to be a free man and not to be complicit in #GazaGenocide.. His last words were (Free #Palestine).

Photo credit: SOURCE: Krime Krime (@krime_1) / X (twitter.com)

#RIPAaronBushnell #AaronBushnell

#Gaza #freePalestine #PalestineLivesMatter

its official: tumblr is selling our data to Midjourney

we'd been hearing rumors about this for a bit but now its open and out there. some details from this article

it goes without saying, but if @staff goes through with this its going to be an utter shitshow and im all but certain the website will not survive it.

everyone go enable this immediately. it can be a bit hard to find because “visibility” is under blog settings instead of general settings or privacy. you have to do this individually for each separate side-blog

if you can’t find it on the app then the update probably hasn’t rolled out to you, and you’ll have to go through the web browser. what a truly wild way/time to implement this

Blue means it is on, right? Finally found it for my blog and it was on already. Maybe because of my privacy settings? I plan to check up on it regularly to make sure it stays that way.

Something deeply painful is the fact that seasons, especially fall, dont feel the same. Not because of individual maturity but because climate change has impacted the weather patterns so so so much that we cant even experience the same annual shifts that our ancestors have for centuries

I feel displaced, i yearn for the spring, summer, fall, and winter that i can barely remember experiencing

To make things worse, if you’re under 50-60 years old, you can’t even remember what normal seasons were like because you weren’t alive to experience them

In the graph above, you can see how there’s a clear tipping point in the late 1970′s, which is when global temperatures first began to really skyrocket.

I was born in 1997, so about 20 years after this shift occurred. There is an immense difference between the climate now and the climate I remember growing up in, but the way I experienced the seasons in my childhood was already fundamentally different from what the seasons were supposed to be like! My parents were pretty much the last generation to experience a normal climate, and that’s just... incredibly sad

I am processing this information in a normal way devoid of rabid rage and bloodlust i am processing this information in a normal wa-

I've been reading some books about the history of railroads in Colorado (rectangle state basically in the middle of the continental US, if you're unfamiliar. I live here), and the discussions of winter weather are existentially depressing.

At the beginning of the 1900s, the railroads here would routinely have to clear 35-45 foot snow drifts off the tracks up in the mountains. Three stories of snow! I have pictures of trains from the 40s nearly covered in snow. It's enough snow you could bury a house in it.

I'm a 90s kid. I can't even begin to comprehend that amount of snowfall.

This year, it's been so warm and snowed so little that the grass outside my apartment isn't dead yet. I think the last time I saw a good blizzard was 5 years ago.

(in case youve got timestamps turned off, the previous comment is from 10 january, 2024)

marcille said i know my wife is just like her brother i don't have to like it

re: that last post, ive said it before and ill say it again: no one deserves to die (deserving is fake and death is bad) but some people need to be stopped and choose to make death the only way to stop them

I disagree. Pedophiles 100% deserve death.

you are moralizing and weaponizing your disgust in order to construct and justify a category of person you're allowed to murder

what do you think you deserve for this?

Sorry, no person deserves to die, thankfully child molesters and pedophiles aren't human, so this doesnt apply to them.

denying the humanity of people who do horrible things accomplishes exactly three things:

3.a. if you've already established that only an inhuman monster could kill a child, then all you have to do to get people to burn down the jewish quarter is say that jews kidnap christian children to bathe in their blood

3.b. if you've already established that only an inhuman monster could commit rape, then all you have to do to get people to string up a black man you don't like is find a white woman who's willing to point at him while she cries and babbles

3.c. if you've already established that only an inhuman monster could molest a child, then all you have to do to get people to drag gay people behind their trucks is say that since gay people can't have babies, the only way they can make more gay people is by following a nefarious Agenda to "convert" children by molesting them

3.c.a. meanwhile if you try to address the rampant sexual assault of catholic altar boys, you're met with "don't be ridiculous, he's a priest!" (see #1) and with assertions that even if it does happen sometimes, those priests are just infiltrators who don't represent the church and there's no reason to make sure priests and altar boys are never alone together (see #2)

I realized how bad of a take this was after I added my last bit, i apologize for the idiocy i portrayed in my half thought out statements. And I appreciate the way you rebutted this with reasonable statements rather than going hog wild because I said something you didnt agree with.

hey no worries. we've all been there, and anyone who says they havent is either 11 or afraid of their social circle

unlearning our kneejerk reactions is a process, and it's not a linear one. its good to practice thinking before we post, but sometimes thinking after we post just has to be good enough

"nooo don't kill me nazi I recognize your innate humanity! if your entire ideology is predicated on my death then I will be exactly like you if I any way shape or form defend myself!"

what do you think "need to be stopped" means?

"prison is an atrocity of an institution where sexual assault is so rampant that it's regarded as a conveneint way to establish the pecking order, and ideally we should do away with it entirely, but then what would we do with rapists?"

well golly gee, jennifer, i don't really have an answer to that one, or at least not an answer you're going to like. i think maybe putting them all in the "rape is normal here" box might be a bad idea though

#i mean I think we could still put them in a box without letting them rape each other. that is very much a thing we could do.

"the problem with prison is that the prisoners have too much freedom and autonomy" isnt the slam dunk you think it is

[SOURCE]

Don't drink the koolaid. While the hundreds of thousands of reservists out of work would and has impacted the economy, it's not solely or even largely responsible for Israel's economy shrinking by 20%

Let's give credit to

The IDF is withdrawing its reserve forces because it can't defeat the Palestinian resistance just like everybody predicted before the ground invasion.