Don't see. Don't hear. Don't speak.

[drakonishe]

Situation in Russia currently

(I know the Ukrainians are having it much harder rn, but in case you want to know what it’s like in Russia, read this post.) Ok so our honest government that has absolutely nothing to hide or be ashamed of threatens people with jailtime for calling the current events anything but “military operation” or for saying/implying that Russia attacks civilians in Ukraine :)) Naturally I can only state facts here, including what the news say and what people say. I’m pretty sure they can’t legally get me in trouble for that. The facts are: there are bombings happening in Ukraine, people are either fleeing the country or hiding in basements/shelters. There are lots of accusations from both sides, difficult to prove or disprove if you’re just a person online and not in the middle of current events. It’s ironic that the point of the “operation”, according to their claims, is to help the Ukrainians and cleanse their country from neo-nazis, but Russian citizens are threatened with jail time for posting or spreading any links to funds that help the Ukrainian civilians. It’s also ironic that Putin hopes to cleanse the country from hatred towards Russians, and from what I’ve seen on social media, it’s unsurprisingly having the opposite effect.  The government forces government-owned companies to fire people who attend protests, sign pro-peace petitions and open letters. To be fair, it’s illegal to protest in a group without asking official permission from the city/town authorities, but this takes quite a long time to recieve a permit, and people want the “military operation” to end now. Fines start at 120 USD, and over 6500 people were arrested in the first 6 days (there were much more people in the streets but most got away). Btw you can donate at donate(dot)ovdinfo(dot)org (the page has an english version) to help people get legal help and pay for their fines. It’s an independent legal-aiding media project, if it didn’t exist - people would be much more scared to come out. Police brutality is thriving, but some cops side with protesters and let them go. The protests have been happening every day, and in large cities the police is getting worn out.  Senators are slowly siding with the protesters too, an impeachment proposal have been thrown around, but it hasn’t resulted into anything so far. The government bans foreign and domestic media sources whose view on the situation differs from their official version. They call videos of captured Russian soldiers staged fakes, and claim Ukrainian nationalists are the ones shooting and bombing civilian buildings. Also the state-backed channels keep talking about how this “operation” was highly necessary and that Ukraine provoked us by buying so much weaponry from the US lately.  About Russian soldiers: there are allegations from the Soldier’s Mothers Association that many drafted young men (20-22 of age) were forced to sign military contracts in spite of getting only 4 months of training. Russian government can’t legally use mandatory-drafted forces in a “military operations”, only in wars, so… yeah.  The videos posted by the Ukrainian army show soldiers saying they were captured, and that their higer ups told them they were doing training exercises as they moved them here. Some say they were told that the conflict started with Ukraine attacking a Russian city. It is a fact that smartphones are being taken from soldiers before they leave the country, however some might find a way to keep a phone anyway. Ukraine accuses Russia of war crimes, Zelenski contacted the Hague court about that. I’m not qualified to verify any videos or photos posted surrounding the accusations, but you are free to google them and form your opinions. There are also some twitter accounts dedicated to fact-checking military footage. On top of that, the ministry of defence claimed that there weren’t any losses on Russia’s side on the first two days, demanding to ignore the photos online and claiming them to also be fake. They admit to having losses now, but the numbers differ from the ones Ukraine is providing. They keep talking about Donetsk and Lugansk, the regions that are currently recognized as their own countries only by Russia. The leaders of the regions claim that the reason for separation was oppression of Russian-speaking citizens in Ukraine by the Ukrainian government (in 2012 Russian language was removed from the list of state languages, leaving only Ukrainian). The separation happened in 2014, and Ukraine considered it to be under Russian occupation, since the people who came to power there were pro-Russian and recieved a lot of help from Kremlin. After that, the region have been a war zone for 8 years. While it sucks that people have been under attack for 8 years, we’re talking about approximately 2 million people, the amount of people suffering from Russia’s current actions is around 190 million (the people of Ukraine, Russia, Donetsk and Luhansk all together, some suffer more than others, of course, but honestly, we’re all in deep shit). Sanctions are hitting hard, even though many of them are targeting the president and his oligarch buddies, some of them are aimed at suffocating our economy and isolating us. Rouble is dropping, a dollar used to cost around 80 RUB before, now it’s 110 and getting higher. Some payment systems stopped working here. Some people lost their livelihoods and businesses. The prices are going up, poor people get poorer and can’t afford food, shelter and medicine. The lack of foreign meds on the market will definitely kill some people if it hasn’t already. There are some cases of hate crimes against Russians happening abroad, but generally people seem to understand that the president is the one who started at all, and the people don’t have much choice. The democracy in Russia is a fairytale few people believe in. Putin has been in power for 20 years, including the 4 years his buddy Medvedev was the president and he was the prime minister. He rewrote the constitution in order to get another opportunity of being re-elected (also throwing in a definition of marriage that excludes the possibility of gay marriage being legalized in Russia). You can probably guess whether the elections are rigged or not. Young people argue with older generations, because the youth is less likely to believe the government’s point of view. I’ve been trying to persuade my mom that what’s happening is counterproductive and unjustified, I feel like I’m slowly getting through to her. I’ve been stressing out non-stop since the beginning of it all, I still can’t get food down my throat without struggle. My anxiety spikes if I stop scrolling news on twitter for even 5 minutes. I’m too broke to leave the country and all my friends are broke too. One is gonna try to leave and settle in Armenia, but idk if she’ll be able to. I’m already mentally prepared to face legal troubles for writing many angry pro-peace tweets. I’m prepared to starve to death or die from a nuclear explosion. However, I promise to do my best to survive. I wanna apologize to Ukrainians for not being able to prevent or stop what’s happening, and to the people of the Donbass region for not even realizing how fucked up the situation was in 2014.  I’m signing petitions, writing letters, spreading info on twitter, showing people mental support as much as I can but it doesn’t feel like enough. I also translated a thread by a Russian journalist into English, it’s a tutorial on how to fact-check info, because there’s a lot of misinformation floating around (it’s a pinned tweet on my account @/Drak0nishe). Btw it had some tweets mysteriously disappear at some point, so I had to repost them with slightly different wording. If you want to help Ukrainians, google the charity links on your own, I’m not allowed to post them, treason is a scary sentence. Thank you for reading. I wish you all a long, healthy and peaceful life.                                                                                                         - Tosha

[memewhore]

[becausegoodheroesdeservekidneys]

Ukraine, 26th Feb, 2022

A friend of mine told me yesterday that he didn’t realise how much Ukraine meant to him until now. I posted yesterday about the time we spent there, and we’re all getting super pre-occupied about the invasion. As I said in that post, I can’t get our waitress out of my head. I can sort of remember what she looked like now. She had an undercut. I think maybe her hair might have been blue? But - I will never know if she lives through this, and it’s driving me very slightly mad.

So naturally, my husband spent all day yesterday obsessively researching everything he could about it with the help of his journalist friends, as a way to help me process it.

This post is me putting it all in order, as a way to try and process my own emotional response as much as anything else (I freely admit there is an element of self-indulgence here). Please don’t take me as the spokesperson for Ukraine right now, nor as a solid reliable news source. But, I haven’t seen this stuff except in bits and pieces on Tumblr, so here we go.

(This is also not about why the invasion has happened. This post is solely about what has happened, and how the invasion is going.)

So, Putin and the rest of the world believed that this invasion would take 1-4 days. The plan was to push through fast, take Kyiv, and force Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the Ukrainian President, to surrender. Given Russia’s military might, it really looked likely.

Here is the conclusion of all that’s happened so far:

Ukraine is absolutely nailing this??? Actually???

They managed to defend every single city overnight, including Kyiv. They started rolling out and using these WW2-style anti-tank thingies that look a bit like angry gabbions, look, here’s a picture of one being delivered:

A bunch of spare iron girders turned into a hefty octopus of Russian misery, basically.

But it’s not just tanks they’re taking down, oh no. Ukraine successfully shot down a transport plane 20km from Kyiv. That is, I shit you not, the single biggest hit to the Russian military since the Second Chechen War. Volunteers from Lithuania, Poland, Latvia, Estonia, Azerbaijan and Israel are all entering Ukraine to help fight and bolster the anti-Russian forces, which is probably illustrative of how Eurovision voting is going to run for the next decade. Most countries have banned Russian planes from their air space. To help stop the Russian advance, Ukraine has made and installed new road signs, like this one:

I can only say a handful of sentences in Ukrainian, Tumblrs, but as I understand it, from top to bottom, it says:

“Fuck off”

“Fuck off again”

“Fuck off Russia”

Meanwhile, it turns out the Russian military might we feared is… possibly not quite as advertised?

They’re underfunded and badly trained. Ukraine captured 200 soldiers in one go, and most of them were confused 19 year olds with no training. The equipment is shite. The tanks keep running out of fuel. Russian soldiers keep abandoning their tanks and handing them over to the Ukrainian army. Putin’s plan was to take Kyiv fast and move on, and he didn’t have a plan B - hence these kids, playing soldier. Here is an image of a Russian tank receiving roadside assistance from Russia’s finest, an old Lada.  

No one expected Zelenskyy to survive the night; but he did. America offered him asylum in the White House.

But he said no. 

Zelenskyy remains in Kyiv, with his people.

And Putin, in his desperation to be adored, has turned Zelenskyy into a global icon and hero.

Here is something you may not know about Volodymyr Zelenskyy - he used to be a standup comedian. Was he any good? No idea - but what he IS good at is producing funny short videos he can put on Twitter and that, which are absolutely fantastic for Ukrainian morale. And morale is vital in an invasion like this, and Ukraine are smashing it out of the park there.

They are utilising the internet to its fullest extent. In addition to Zelenskyy’s videos, they’ve made sure that the final words of the Ukrainian defenders of Snake Island are known and now echoed around the world: “Russian warship, go fuck yourselves.” A video has gone viral of Ukrainians mocking a group of Russian soldiers whose tank had broken down and who didn’t know the way to Kyiv anyway, presumably because of all the new road signs. They have created a website that lists every single Russian death they can identify, partly so Russian mothers can have closure (thus also painting themselves as the defenders of decency and humanity), and partly for the enormous morale boost of the world knowing, categorically, that they’ve already killed 3700 Russian soldiers (over 100 of which were from that transport plane.)  Not one word has leaked of Ukrainian casualties. I’m sure they’re devastating, but for morale purposes, they’re being kept quiet until the dust settles. Ukrainians have started setting up fake Tindr profiles to catfish Russian soldiers for intel, and they’re all 19 and lost, so it’s working. Plus, they’re using Grindr to actually track where the soldiers are, because it turns out Putin was not entirely correct about there being no gays in Russia.

So, Russia wants to cut their internet access. Can the Ukrainian Minister for Digital Transformation, Mykhailo Fedorov, shame a billionaire into providing aid?

This is crucial, remember. Atrocities happen best in the dark, and the world is watching - because of the internet. Morale is vital to maintain. Can they convince Elon Musk to help?

Yep.

Ukraine now has the fastest internet service in the world. The fastest, most stable internet service in human history, in fact. Russia cannot now disable it. The world watches.

Which is just as well, because then Anonymous decided to get involved, and have leaked the website database of the Russian Ministry of Defence. Lol. Also this happens:

And then the Russian propaganda channels started broadcasting the truth of what is happening in Ukraine. Double lol.

So what is the political response?

Well, in addition to closing airspace to Russian planes, loads of countries are sending weapons to Ukraine. Those that can’t are offering asylum. They’re also offering asylum to any Russian soldiers who surrender or defect, which is startlingly good tactics, and there are rumours of around 5000 Russian soldiers who have done just that. Germany, of course, has long had a block on lethal weapons transfer; but Germany recognise this shit for what it is. They’ve lifted the block, thus allowing the Netherlands to send weapons. Efforts are now underway to fast-track Ukraine into the EU. I presume they will consider the lack of pint glasses with crowns on to be a worthwhile price to pay.

So what about Russia’s supporters?

Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenka helped Russia with this invasion. Now, this has happened:

Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya was actually elected president, but some wild nonsense kept her out of power. She’s now running a government in exile. I have literally no idea what this means or will mean! But my god. She has a spine of steel, and this is not a good time to be happening for Putin. 

And it’s really, really not, because then intel on a meeting of Putin and assembled Oligarchs LEAKS (hello Anonymous, probably). The highlights:

This war is costing Russia $15bn a day

He expected it to take ONE TO FOUR DAYS TO WIN

It’s been two days and he is losing very badly, currently

They will run out of rockets by day 4, maybe sooner

After that they will be down to rifles and ammo

It will take 3-4 months to make more significant weapons, except they need raw materials, and the countries that can provide them… have cut supply lines

If the war lasts 10 days, Russia will have completely run out of money and weapons

It’s only day 2, and Russian soldiers are knocking the doors of random Ukrainian homes begging for food and water because they’ve already run out

So, out of desperation, Putin turns to his greatest, closest and most trusted ally for help: Kazakhstan. 

And Kazakhstan

SAYS NO

And then Ukraine shoots down a second Russian plane.

Anyway, I’m going to finish off with a final point. Morale is vital in this situation, so here is the message from the Ukrainian government at the minute, to everyone watching around the world:

Be VERY SUSPICIOUS of any negative news about Ukraine. Russia uses misinformation and propaganda. They will want to damage Ukrainian morale.

Use your social media to spread news of Ukrainian victories. 

Don’t give oxygen to negative stories. Especially since they might not be true.

That’s genuinely something we can do to help. Every victory of Ukraine, blast it far and wide. So on that note, I’ll leave you with this:

Congrats to Natalia Antonova’s cousin’s son.

[feministism]

[noping-out-deactivated20241117]

READ. EVERY. WORD. OF. THIS. Account of a medical team out in St. Paul last night.

Link to original tweet thread.

[krxs100]

UNDERCOVER COPS ARE BEING CAUGHT PLANTING CARS/BRICKS, SETTING FIRES AND BREAKING STORE WINDOWS TO MAKE PROTESTS LOOK VIOLENT

DON’T BELIEVE THE MEDIA

#STAYWOKE 

follow for more news

[queer-leftism]

Spread this like wildfire. This shows would a doubt that cops are damaging their own vehicles in attempts to make the protesters look even worse. It should be pretty obvious that if they willing to do this, they're willing to send plain clothes cops to start the looting and fires (which is what happened and keeps happening).

(posted on 30/05/2020)

[giffinggermany]

In etwas mehr als zwei Monaten (am 13. März) werden in Deutschland drei Landtage gewählt, nämlich in Baden-Württemberg, Rheinland-Pfalz und Sachsen-Anhalt.

Gerade im Lichte dessen, was Sylvester in Köln, Stuttgart, Hamburg und anderswo passiert ist, werden Pegida, AfD und NPD mit der fremdenfeindlichen Hetze noch mal richtig loslegen. Wenn die Wahlbeteiligung wie in den letzten Jahren überall weiter sinkt, haben es die Radikalen immer einfacher in die Parlamente einzuziehen. Es ist ganz einfach: Durch eine geringe Wahlbeteiligung sinkt die Anzahl an Stimmen, die erforderlich sind, um die 5-%-Hürde zu überwinden.

Beispiel: In einem winzig kleinen Land sind genau 100 Leute wahlberechtigt. Nicht mehr und nicht weniger. Wenn die alle wählen gehen und gültige Stimmen abgeben, dann braucht eine Partei mindestens 5 Stimmen, um ins Parlament zu kommen. Wenn von den 100 Wahlberechtigten nur 80 Leute wählen gehen und gültige Stimmen abgeben, dann liegt die Wahlbeteiligung bei 80 % und die Partei braucht schon nur noch mindestens 4 Stimmen.

Bei den letzten Landtagswahlen in Baden-Württemberg (2011) lag die Wahlbeteiligung bei 66,3 %. In unserem Beispiel reichen da einer Partei schon 3,32 Stimmen. Die Wahlbeteiligung lag in Rheinland-Pfalz (2011) bei 61,8 %. Das macht 3,09 Stimmen für die 5-%-Hürde. In Sachsen-Anhalt waren es 2011 sogar nur 51,2 % Wahlbeteiligung. Da reichen dann schon 2,56 Stimmen. Natürlich gibt es bei 100 Leuten keine 2,56 Stimmen, aber das muss man jetzt ja einfach nur hochrechnen. Von 10.000 Wahlberechtigten gaben 2011 in Sachsenanhalt 5120 gültige Stimmen ab, von denen eine Partei 256 brauchte, um ins Parlament einzuziehen. (x) (x)

Man sollte auch nicht denken, dass Landtagswahlen unwichtig für die Bundespolitik sind. Gerade jetzt werden die Parteispitzen genau hinsehen, womit man Stimmen machen kann. Die CSU fischt ja jetzt schon am rechten Rand. Wenn AfD und NPD bei den Landtagswahlen kräftig Stimmen bekommen, werden sich viele denken, dass Seehofer es richtig macht, weil mit anderer Politik gerade keine Stimmen bekommt.

Ich habe schon bei drei Wahlen (Landtag, Bundestag, Europa) in meiner Stadt als Wahlhelferin Stimmen ausgezählt und habe leider immer wieder festgestellt, dass die meisten Stimmzettel mit Stimmen für NPD und AfD einwandfrei sind und gezählt werden. Diese Leute sind gegen den demokratischen Rechtsstaat, aber sie wissen wie man fehlerfrei wählt. Stimmzettel mit Stimmen für SPD, CDU, Grüne, Linke usw. werden leider manchmal ungültig, weil die Leute zu wenige oder zu viele Kreuze machen oder noch irgendwelche Anmerkungen auf die Stimmzettel schreiben. Dadurch werden Stimmzettel - auch mit der richtigen Anzahl an Kreuzen -ungültig!

Man kann jetzt darüber diskutieren, ob es Sinn macht, eigentlich gültige Stimmzettel als ungpltig zu zählen, weil der Wähler noch was drauf geschrieben oder gemalt hat. Es ist allerdings Realität und wird sich auch bis März nicht mehr ändern. Die Anmerkungen, Schmierereien oder Bildchen sieht sich sowieso niemand richtig an, erst recht kein Politiker. Ich als Wahlhelferin sehe nur, dass was anderes auf dem Zettel ist als Kreuze und muss den Stimmzettel als ungültig eintragen.

Und noch was: Bei der Wahlbeteiligung werden nur gültige Stimmzettel gezählt! Abgegebene Stimmzettel, die ungültig sind, zählen nicht!

Also bitte, geht wählen, wenn ihr wahlberechtigt seid, um es AfD und NPD so schwer wie möglich zu machen!

[nya-kin]

AFROPUNK music Festival 2015

[melaninboy]

Just — amazing.

[thegayreich]

LGBTQ History: Gay Berlin

In the 1920s, the scene flourished in Berlin and the city established itself, though with interruptions, as a gay capital. Even though the city was struggling with financial woes after the First World War, a vibrant scene developed, mainly in the district of Schöneberg and Kreuzberg. The number of bars, clubs, groups and cabarets on offer at the time remains unsurpassed. There were more than 100 venues for homosexuals at the time. These included the famous Eldorado, the ladies’ dance hall Zur Manuela and the large balls put on by the various homosexual associations. 

There were twenty-five to thirty separate homosexual German-language magazines that were appearing in Berlin, weekly or monthly. There were no other journals published anywhere else in the world until after 1945. Openly nudist and homosexual titles were displayed in the kiosks. Same-sex bars, clubs and cafes advertised as well as the professional services of doctors, dentists, lawyers, stationers…all with the implied ‘friends patronize friends’.

In those magazines, anyone facing blackmail found private detectives to track down extortion threats. Cross-dressers found dressmakers who tailored for large sizes. There were the single ads placed by individuals forever in search of love.

Dr Magnus Hirschfeld opened the Institute for Sexual Science in March 1919, the first such facility in the world to offer medical and psychological counseling on sexual issues to heterosexual men and women, homosexuals, cross-dressers and intersex individuals also known as hermaphrodites or individuals caught between male and female. The institute represented the first attempt to establish “sexology”, or sexual science, as a topic of legitimate academic study and research. Nowhere else in the world was there so much as a university department or chair devoted to the subject, much less an entire institute.

The Institute also emphasized public education and had a museum of sexuality, the Hirschfeld Museum, with not only wall charts and photographs but also cases filled with phalluses and fetishes from around the globe. Photographs of homosexuals dressed in huge hats, earrings and makeup adored the walls as well as women in men’s clothing and top hats.

It was at this institute that Hirschfeld and his colleagues pioneered some of the first sex-reassignment surgeries as well as primitive hormone treatments

Dr Hirschfeld studied cross-dressing, men and women who wore the clothing of the opposite sex. Previously interpreted as a symptom of homosexuality by psychiatrists and sexologists, and associated with prostitution and criminal activity, Hirschfeld believed cross-dressers were often heterosexual.

Male and female impersonators drew huge crowds at cabarets, circuses and variety theaters – as well as providing entertainment at the big transvestite balls and homosexual clubs, but they faced the possibility of being arrested by the police and harassed. Dr Hirschfeld helped reform the practices of the Berlin police and convinced them to issue ‘transvestite passes’ so that performers could work without fear of harassment although there was no law prohibiting public cross-dressing.

With the Great Depression of 1929, and the crash of the American stock market, the Golden Age was slipping away to a Hitler-led government by spring 1930, the Nazis were on the rise with the new Reichstag election.

In 1933 Adolf Hitler completed his march to power - and with fury the Nazis pursued Hirschfeld as a symbol of all they hated – as Jew, homosexual and sexologist.

The party in Berlin was over.

[mysharona1987]

[unfugbilder]

verschobene Wahrnehmung

[sikoot-deactivated20141212]

You have no idea what your talking about when talking about Syria, we don't need you shaming our president when you are just spreading lies, probably fed to you by western propaganda. You must not know about what the Mossad/c.i.a did, or how turkey, Saudi Arabia + USA is indirectly/directly funding Daesh, and spreading lies about the disarmament of chemical weapons as clarifyed by the iaea and the u.n. Why did we reelect Assad? By accident?

(cont)Because what you are saying about al-Assad is inaccurate. America is responsible for what is happening in Syria and supports both ISIS and all those “moderate rebel” nut jobs with deadly weapons because they want to gain access to oil as usual. Please DO NOT spread lies about other peoples countries and leaders. Al-Assad is supported by 85% of Syria and is trying to get rid of the rebels with the Syrian army. Follow news-from-Syria if you want the real truth not FOX NEWS!!

Aside from the insensitivity, arrogance, and sheer idiocy of these messages, there are a few things that have stood out to me that I want to address. In all of your messages, you imply that any disapproval of Assad is a result of the past four years alone, and you think you can refute anything negative that is said about Assad, by bringing up ISIS, a group that only gained power around two years ago. This implication, is why your entire argument is shit. Our disapproval (understatement) of Assad was not a result of the past four years, though it is a factor, but a result of 48 years under Baathist rule.  After going into power in 1970 through a military coup, Hafez AlAssad used sectarianism to maintain his own power and centralized Alawite power by killing off secular and religious opposition. The Syrian Regime continued to push for sectarian narratives so they could continue their legitimacy of blackmail by unfairly targeting peaceful activists of multiple minority backgrounds, like the Christian priest, Father Paolo who was exiled by the regime for releasing a public letter in support of a transition to democracy, and people like Samer Yazbek, who was driven out of his community for addressing and speaking out against sectarianism. Sunni Muslims in Syria were/are targeted by the regime, and massacred by the NDF (Syrian National Defense Force), and so called elite fighters that are homogenous in sect, at the state’s command. Even the regime’s terrorist SAA (Syrian Arab Army), favors Christian and Alawite soldiers and officers, giving them more benefits and opportunities. Sectarianism has always been concentrated in the hands of the regime, and any sectarianism we are seeing now during the revolution, is reactionary, it is a result of the regime’s decades of sectarian rule. (x) (x) (x) (x)

The Syrian people have been living for over 50 years stripped of their constitutional rights, under an “emergency law.” Anyone who spoke out against the regime, or practiced any of their basic human rights, was then committing a crime, and was punished by imprisonment or execution. One of the most well known massacres committed by the regime was the Hama massacre: in 1981, around 400 men were accused of having anti-regime views, and were executed. In 1982, the regime’s Syrian Arab Army committed the second Hama massacre, which left around 30,000-60,000 civilians dead. The number of dead civilians reported greatly varies because most of the bodies have never been found, since right after the massacre, the dead were buried in mass graves that were then built over with government buildings and structures, to prevent them from being discovered. Thousands of detainees held in regime prisons were commonly mass executed, and buried in mass graves as well. Detainment and mass executions were all common fear tactics used by the regime to maintain “order.” Torture was also extremely common, and the regime is known for its horrifying torture methods that include rape and violent physical and emotional assault, against both men, women, and children. (x) (x) (x) (x)

I also found it funny how you mentioned that Israel (mossad) was responsible for a lot of anti-regime sentiment, because there is a myth that seems to be very wide spread, that Hafez and Bashar are passionate enemies of Israel, and wild supporters of Palestine and Palestinians, which is exactly that, a myth.

1976: Hafez al Assad supported the Lebanese Christian fascist Phalangists against the Lebanese Communist-PLO alliance that had formed in opposition to both Phalangist and Ba’athist tyranny. The Syrian military’s invasion of Lebanon in 1976 was approved by the US. However, the Lebanese Communist-PLO alliance wiped the floor with the Syrian occupation forces in June of that year. Two months later Hafez al Assad made an example out of such resistance. The Phalangists, backed by Hafez al Assad, committed a massacre of Palestinian people at the Tal al Zaatar refugee camp. With the blessing of the Arab League the Syrian government decided to ally itself with Israel to prevent the defeat of the Phalangists. They besieged the Palestinian camps of both Karantina and Tel al Zaatar with Syrian weaponry and 2,000 Palestinian people were slaughtered

1980’s: As part of its vicious crackdown against leftist dissidents during the 1980’s, Hafez al Assad’s regime arrested hundreds of activists from both the Party for Communist Action and the Syrian Communist Party in an attempt to smother the last remaining voices of dissent after it had crushed the Muslim Brotherhood. It was the Syrian Communists who worked with a group of Palestinian dissidents called the Palestinian Popular Committee in the Yarmouk refugee camp in the Damascus governate. The Palestinian Popular Committee was founded in 1983 but was forced to dissolve two years later as a result of Hafez al Assad’s campaign of arrests. 200 members of the Party for Communist Action were arrested by the Syrian security forces in 1986.

2000: While Bashar al Assad was praising the second intifada, hundreds of Palestinians were languishing in his jails. Attiyeh Dhiab Attiyeh, a Palestinian in his early 30’s, died in Tadmur prison in early 2000 due to medical neglect. He was already very ill when he was transferred in Tadmur in 1996. Attieyeh was a member of Fatah, the faction led by Yasser Arafat, and had been arrested in 1989 in south Lebanon before being sent to Syria.

Fall 2012: The FSA set up a supply line through Yarmouk, and massive collective punishment at the hands of the regime ensued. Government security forces encircled Yarmouk. By October of 2012, the entrances to the camp were only open two or three days a week. The civilians bore the brunt of the violence; starvation, disease, and random shelling.

December 2012: Syrian regime warplanes bombed a mosque in Yarmouk that was housing internally displaced refugees. Dozens were killed. The excuse for this atrocity was that the FSA had hidden some weapons in the basement of the mosque.

After Hafez’s death in 2000 [turns face to the side and spits on the ground], his son Bashar took over. The first few months of his presidency, there was hope that Bashar’s methods would be different than those of his father, however they were not. He would not lift the emergency law that would give Syrians their rights, and he continued using fear tactics like detainment, torture, murder, and mass execution to maintain power and control. He also continued his father’s legacy of pushing for sectarian narratives, which we see even now during the revolution. The reason why ISIS was able to gain control about two years ago, is because of the chaotic sectarian environment created by the regime. The FSA (Free Syrian Army) and YPG (Kurdish armed resistance front) are united to fight against the regime and ISIS, and have done more in the war against ISIS than Assad, who chooses to drone civilian homes instead.

We didn’t start hating Assad after the revolution started, why the fuck would we need a revolution if everything was fine and dandy pre-revolution? 

For an extensive list of readings on the events and details of the revolution, check out noturhabibti ‘s great archive here.

 *note: no I will not check out a fucking regime propaganda blog that you seem to believe is actually a credible source.

[akalnakhara-deactivated20151128]

made this on my old blog, still relevant abt the topic of Baathist regime oppression in Syria pre revolution

[halalcocaine]

His name is Zouheir.

[dakrolak]

[unfugbilder]

Definitionen

http://www.volkerkoenig.de

[unfugbilder]

den Künstler kann ich derzeit leider nicht benennen