"Life In Tents: Between War And Rain"

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Rashida Tlaib, the only Palestinian American in Congress, is asking for signatures on her petition requesting Biden to suspend weapons transfers and military funding to Israel in accordance with the recent ICJ ruling.

PLEASE SIGN, especially if you live in the US, but you can select other countries on the form. It takes one minute to sign, and another minute to share with your friends.

This is not some bullshit change.org petition, Rashida cares deeply about this cause.

AS OF THIS POST SHE DOES NOT EVEN HAVE 50,000 SIGNATURES.

You can help change that. Click here to sign.

The form asks only for your name, ZIP code, and email. The site is mobile friendly. You don't need to verify the email.

Don't scroll, it will take one minute, just go do it now!

actionnetwork.org

Sign to tell President Biden: End U.S. complicity in Israel’s genocide of Palestinians

With U.S. diplomatic and financial support, as well as U.S. weapons, Israel’s government has displaced 2 million Palestinians and killed a

THANK YOU!

The reason the number of women and children killed by Israel tends to be higher and remains significant is due to the fact that with the ongoing displacement, families tend to move in together, making the number of people sheltering together reach 30 or 40 people at times.

With that, the men of these families tend to let women and children take shelter during the night inside apartments and houses when available, knowing they provide more relative warmth and comfort, while men tend to seek shelter for the night elsewhere, usually in tents in open areas. This means that when Israel deliberately strikes homes during the night, the inevitable consequence is that the overwhelming majority of the people killed or injured will in fact be women and children.

Israel knows this and continues to deliberately strike homes, most of the time also knowing the exact number of people sheltering inside and even their ages. Women and children are not "collateral damage", they are specific targets that Israel had long deemed eligible, starting the day these women and children were born Palestinian.

Hey, what’s Winnie the pooh’s favorite color?

“Pride of the Rebublic, soldier of the Jedi Order”

honestly when people complain about things like boycotting the oscars, grammys, superbowl, eurovision etc. and say that it's "too much" to expect people to boycott those events, i always automatically think of the 1936 olympics happening in nazi germany. how everyone was just going about the event as usual. in hindsight every normal person can see how messed up that is, everyone would ask themselves "how could all those people possibly sit there and act as if everything is normal?". i wonder if people will one day look back on all the big american and european events happening during the gaza genocide and wonder how anyone could have just sat there and enjoyed them

I think about this all of the time. I KNOW people will look back on this genocide and be in total shock of how so many people continued on like normal, despite how much power we could have if we all stood together instead of trying to ignore Israel killing thousands of people each month.

She fell first, he fell harder. Well, more like she fell first, he plummeted to obsession city, hit the asphalt full force, and shattered into a thousand pieces. When he picked himself up, he found every shard of his being imbued with her.

A Crash Course to Kendrick's Super Bowl Performance, from a Black Woman

Note: this does NOT go in depth into all of the song's lyrics. I don't have time to recount two decades of his discography. This is just a summary of the performance itself.

Let's start with the first visual we get:

UNCLE SAM - most notably recognized from WWII American wartime propaganda, Uncle Sam is the personification of American patriotism and freedom. The term "uncle" is also evocative of Uncle Tom from Uncle Tom's Cabin, an abolitionist book that aided in inciting the Civil War. Uncle is also a very common term (both endearment and derogatory) towards Black men (eg. "unc"). Samuel L Jackson was fantastic.

Uncle Sam also resembles a circus ringleader, notable for my next point:

THE GREAT AMERICAN GAME - no, not Super Bowl. The GAG is us the people being pitted against each other: through late-stage capitalism, through the culture war, through class warfare, through being built of the backs of slaves. We are all players in the GAG because none of us on this site were the oligarchs seated at the inauguration.

This is also seen as Kendrick's stage was a Play Station controller. Not only did it remind of circus rings visually, but it was a game battle stage. The Great American Game is a battle royale of the commoners for the amusement of the rich whites.

Remember the foods / Them color was tin and brown / But now they 100 and blue - For this I'll just say, look what the last election said about lowering the price of eggs... and look at the prices now.

The revolution about to be televised / You picked the right time / But the wrong guy - Election 2024 once more.

THE FLAG DANCERS - yes, the dancers formed the US flag... off of the backs of Black people. Not a single white person in sight, and that's true of the cotton pickers in the fields. Plantations are part of how the US came to economic prominence after being a "backwater" colony. Remember tobacco? Cotton? Our bloodlines do.

The red and blue dancers are also notable for representing the Crips and Bloods, two infamous street gangs. The dance in Not Like Us is the Crip Walk. I recommend researching more on your own time about them, but just know they are a large part of the stereotype of Black people being "ghetto."

TOO LOUD, TOO RECKLESS, TOO GHETTO. Do you really know how to play the game? - This is exactly what Black people, especially Black men, get told all the time. It's why we change our names on resumes if they sound "too Black." It's why we codeswitch in non-Black company. This is especially rich considering how non-Black people love our culture and love to make money off of us, as the latter part of the quote points to. And it's even more profound during the Super Bowl-- the NFL is majority Black players.

STREET LIGHT A CAPELLA -- "thug" stereotype dancers to counteract the a capella connotations, with Uncle Sam then saying that Kendrick figured out "bringing other street guys around being a culture cheat code." Yes, this is a direct hit at Drake (listen to "Not Like Us") but also politically. Look up "model minority". Notably I would point to Candace Owens, or the Miami Venezuelan political group that's been in the news recently, especially as this directly led to Kendrick being surrounded by...

DANCERS IN WHITE -- it's white America. That's... that's the allegory.

NOT LIKE US TEASER -- Kendrick says "Not Like Us" is "their favorite song." -> he means white people specifically here. It comes after he's surrounded by all white dancers, the women around him who are his call and response are also in white (my opinion, they represent the industry). He's saying "Not Like Us" is the favorite of yts because it is about BLACK MEN FIGHTING. This again is reflected in the video game stage and ringleader Uncle Sam.

SZA -- instead of giving what they want, we see SZA. She's one of Drake's exes and Kendrick has always supported her.

ALL THE STARS -- This was in the first Black Panther movie, which I recommend you watch. Rest in Power Chadwick. Notably, this movie was incredibly mainstream as a major Marvel movie, and then we have Uncle Sam say...

"THAT'S WHAT AMERICA WANTS: NICE AND CALM. DON'T MESS THIS UP" -- translation: Marvel (the industry, America, etc.) wanted a safe, semi-pop song because white American likes safe pop songs, not Kendrick's usual heavy rap style about his life as a Black man! Don't mess up what you've got going mainstream for having this "Black rap feud" with Drake, who is an R&B model minority to white people because he's safe.

So what does Kendrick say?

IT'S A CULTURAL DIVIDE / IMMA GET IT ON THE FLOOR -- He was warned not to be political or apologetically Black for this Super Bowl performance, but he is using this big stage opportunity to speak out.

40 ACRES AND A MULE / THIS IS BIGGER THAN THE MUSIC -- 40 acres and a mule are what the freed slaves were promised. Instead, this land went to white sharecroppers. Research Jim Crow laws.

THEY TRIED TO RIG THE GAME / BUT YOU CAN'T FAKE INFLUENCE -- rig the election, rig the industry like with model minority Drake, rig the Great American Game with culture war to distract from active class warfare.

NOT LIKE US -- the only thing I'll mention because it made me holler is Serena Williams crip walking on Drake's metaphorical grave. She's another one of his exes.

TURN THE TV OFF -- exactly like he said! The TV is a distraction, the Super Bowl is a distraction, the mainstream news is often a distraction. Turn it off and get with your people!

GAME OVER — could not see this on my stream but at the end of the performance, the lights in the stadium spelled this out. The world is watching, America…

In conclusion, Kendrick Lamar is a visionary and thank you for coming to my TED Talk.

"Hey how is it going?"

Not feminist as in "women should be included in the draft" but feminist as in "being drafted is a violation of bodily autonomy for any gender".

The draft should not exist. Drafting people into the military is a violation of human rights. You should not be able to force someone to risk their life. If you can't find enough people who care about a conflict to keep it going then it simply shouldn't keep going. You can't even force someone to donate a kidney using government power, why the fuck can you force them to donate their whole body and life to a cause they don't agree with or don't care about?