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This is reprehensible. Women refuse to live like this. Men will not control our bodies. Democrats we have to stop Trump.

#state monitoring of pregnancy #christian nationalism police state #pregnancy #reproduction #pro choice #abortion

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Make it make sense

#the moral and intellectual collapse of conservatism #republicans in the news #election fraud #christina bobb #the maga stain

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Naudline Pierre, Prophecy of Desire, 2022

#naudline pierre #desire #2022 #art

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#christianity #organized religion #new orleans

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#capitalism #ecological crisis #environment #forests

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Dogs are our best friends. We love them, not shoot them.❤️❤️

#dogs #tim walz #kristi noem #animal cruelty

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Leonora Carrington

The Tower

(Tarot Card) ca. 1955

#leonara carrington #surrealism #art #1955

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Cemetery Stahnsdorf near Berlin

Totenstill Photography

#cemetery stahnsdorf

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Vote Blue for Women's rights. Voting for Biden is the only way women will be able to their human rights back.

#conservatives vs. human rights #gender equality #gender justice

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J. Kirk Richards - Goddess Dreaming of Her Temple In the Woods

#j. kirk richards #painting #forest #woods

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Poe walking on the High Bridge, 1930. Bernard Jacob Rosenmeyer.

#edgar allen poe #1930 #bernard jacob rosenmeyer #art

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Romaine Brooks, Femme avec des fleurs (1912)

#romaine brooks #1912 #art

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"The settlers’ mantra—“Get out or we will kill you”—has been repeated in nearly all the villages in the Jordan Valley and the South Hebron Hills. Most of our friends in the villages have heard it. Usually it is uttered in the course of attacks on Palestinian homes, sheep pens, food supplies, water tanks and wells, wind turbines, and anything else the invaders can wreck. Sometimes these settlers shoot at the villagers and kill sheep and goats. We know of at least sixteen Palestinian villages that have been evacuated over the last few months because of ceaseless settler violence backed by the army; many more are barely hanging on. International pressure has had some meaningful impact on the situation, but for the most part the settlers are winning this miniwar. They tend to be fanatical men or adolescent boys, brainwashed, apocalyptic, and messianic, who have emerged from the dark and brutal undercurrents of religious Zionism. They want to rid the West Bank of all non-Jews (and maybe some secular Jews as well) in order to hasten the arrival of the Messiah, who is scheduled to turn up as soon as this campaign of ethnic cleansing is completed. But the ideological motivation is only part of the story; we who have seen these people in action, who have met them in the field, can confirm that many of them are driven by sheer sadistic pleasure."

...

"[Netanyahu] is now pursuing a deadly war that probably cannot be won, and there is good reason to think that every decision he makes—including in the negotiations for an agreement to release the Israeli hostages in Gaza—is tainted by his personal interests, namely his survival in power and his ability to evade the criminal charges he is facing. According to recent polls, roughly half the Israeli population thinks he is prolonging the war because of those interests. To make matters worse, he has bonded with Ben-Gvir, whose very presence in the government is the most shameful appointment in the entire history of the state. It is as if the Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan had been appointed head of the FBI. But although deposing Netanyahu is a matter of utmost urgency, he is not the only problem we have. We need to look deeper.

If Israel is to survive, physically and spiritually, it needs to undergo, collectively, a sea change in its vision of reality—a change on the order of what the South African apartheid regime experienced, with much bloodshed, as it began to collapse. Israelis will have to face unpleasant though rather obvious facts:

Palestinians are human beings, no different from the Jews or anyone else. (They have a rotten political system, but so do we.)

They are not going anywhere.

There are two national movements in the territory west of the Jordan River, with their own legitimate claims and bloody record of atrocities; the two populations are now equal in size, some seven million each.

Israel cannot suppress Palestinian and other Arab resistance by force alone. (The foundational axiom of the Israeli polity has always been that only brute force works.)

Survival depends on sharing the land between these two peoples.

The settlement project in the West Bank has to end.

The barbarian extremists on both sides, as if colluding together, will, given half a chance, kill us all.

God, if there is a god, is unlikely to save us from ourselves.

None of these points is going to be easy for Israelis to swallow. I can attest that most people find it easier to sacrifice the lives of their spouses, siblings, and children in a futile cause than to change how they feel and how they understand the world."

...

More at the link but behind a paywall.

#david shulman #israel #israeli settlers #palestine #ethnic cleansing #genocide

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Mary Louise Kelly: Tell me when you started thinking about resigning?

Hala Rharrit: Well, honestly, it was quite a long process. I've been a diplomat for 18 years, really my entire adult life. But the policy really became unacceptable. I was holding out, hoping to try to change things from the inside until I realized at one point that this policy was undermining U.S. interests, it was destabilizing the Middle East, and it was indeed a failed policy. And with that, I decided that I could no longer be part of the department and decided to submit my resignation.

Kelly: Was there a specific moment? I mean, what was your breaking point?

Rharrit: There was no real specific moment, it was just a build-up. We were undermining our entire credibility with this policy. The double standards that we were having, we could no longer talk about human rights when we were in allowing and enabling the mass killing of civilians. We could no longer talk about press freedom when we remain silent on the killing of over 100 journalists in Gaza. Everything that we had stood for was no longer relevant. I did experience a lot of silencing. I was ostracized. And it came to a point where I decided it was not possible anymore.

…

Kelly: I mentioned you are the third public resignation from the State Department. You're the first diplomat, the first foreign service officer serving overseas, to resign. Out of the department of thousands, how widespread do you believe anger to be within the State Department?

Rharrit: I can only tell you about what I've experienced, right? But it's a very strange time in the State Department, I would say. Something that I've never experienced before in my 18 years of service, where people are just extremely uneasy about our policy and also extremely uneasy about the ability to speak about our policy internally. And I've never faced that before. We've always been able to talk about what's working, what's not working. We've been able to have very open and frank conversations. This has felt very, very different.

...

More at the link.

To the "anarchist" blogs suddenly following me. You might want to following Rharrit on social media. She's obviously a threat to national security and the global order.

#us state department #u.s. foreign policy #hala rharrit

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"Black Freethinkers argues that, contrary to historical and popular depictions of African Americans as naturally religious, freethought has been central to black political and intellectual life from the nineteenth century to the present. Freethought encompasses many different schools of thought, including atheism, agnosticism, and nontraditional orientations such as deism and paganism.

Christopher Cameron suggests an alternative origin of nonbelief and religious skepticism in America, namely the brutality of the institution of slavery. He also traces the growth of atheism and agnosticism among African Americans in two major political and intellectual movements of the 1920s: the New Negro Renaissance and the growth of black socialism and communism. In a final chapter, he explores the critical importance of freethought among participants in the civil rights and Black Power movements of the 1960s and 1970s.

Examining a wealth of sources, including slave narratives, travel accounts, novels, poetry, memoirs, newspapers, and archival sources such as church records, sermons, and letters, the study follows the lives and contributions of well-known figures, including Frederick Douglass, Zora Neale Hurston, James Baldwin, and Alice Walker, as well as lesser-known thinkers such as Louise Thompson Patterson, Sarah Webster Fabio, and David Cincore."

nupress.northwestern.edu/9780810140783/black-freethinkers/

Listening to an interview with the author, I'm now really interested in reading this.

#christopher cameron #black history #u.s. history #intellectual history #atheism #agnosticism #freethought #secularism

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#may it be so #netanyahu #israel

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"There have been mass anti-government protests since mid-April, when the ruling Georgian Dream party reintroduced plans to pass a law critics say resembles Russian legislation used to silence dissent.

Waves of similar street protests -- during which police used tear gas and water cannon against demonstrators -- forced the party to drop a similar measure in 2023.

Police have again clashed with protesters during the latest rallies.

On Sunday evening -- before staging what organisers called a "March for Europe" -- at least 20,000 people turned out at Tbilisi's central Republic Square, according to an AFP estimate.

The kilometre-long procession, which featured a huge EU flag at its head, stretched out along Tbilisi's main thoroughfare towards parliament.

"I am here to protect Georgia's European future," said 19-year-old Lasha Chkheidze. "No to Russia, no to the Russian law, yes to Europe."

The rally was organised by around 100 Georgian rights groups and opposition parties, which have until now kept a low profile at the youth-dominated daily protests."

...

...

Meanwhile the world's bastion of true spiritual values, Russia, continues its savage assault on Ukraine.

Russian dead and wounded will no doubt hit 500,000 by this summer. One lowball estimate for Russian military deaths is 70,000.

I've seen a number of videos in which Russian troops discuss how army leadership refers to them as "meat" and treats them as such, sending forces in suicide waves where they encounter horrific numbers of corpses. Many Russian soldiers arrive at the front with almost no training and insufficient equipment and become quick targets. If Russian troops attempt to retreat, Russian snipers, artillery and other forces won't hesitate to kill them also.

Russia continues to attack Ukrainian utilities and power stations, and hasn't ceased targeting civilian population areas, randomly killing people on a regular basis. Ukrainians from all walks of life continue to lose their lives in combat.

It's seems apparent from the video below that the little girl doesn't realize her dad isn't coming back.

#russia #georgia #ukraine