Chris Osieck

One day, I’ll retreat to the middle of nowhere, spend my days chopping wood, and stack the logs like a giant game of Tetris until the end of time.

The Israeli Raid on Bayt Jann: Interview with a Local Recently, the town of Bayt Jann, which is located in the Jabal al-Shaykh (Mount Hermon) region of Damascus countryside near the borders with Lebanon and the Israeli-controlled Golan Heights, came to t...

“My response to Israel’s claims is that any attack on us again and none of them will get out alive.” Interview by @ajaltamimi.bsky.social with a person from Beit Jinn which had recently faced an Israeli incursion in southern Syria.

Gaza’s Civil Defense Forces Keep Digging for 10,000 Missing Bodies Gazan civil workers describe pulling decomposing bodies from collapsed buildings, and digging in hopes that someone remains alive.

Members of Gaza’s Civil Defense force describe pulling decomposing bodies from collapsed buildings, and digging in hopes that someone remains alive.

It's not just Gaza. From the West Bank to Syria and Lebanon, Israel's onslaught continues | Nesrine Malik Broken ceasefires, bombing, ground incursions and mounting deaths: Israeli imperialism is now expanding across the region, says Guardian columnist Nesrine Malik

"And still, the parameters of Israel’s mandate to assault, kill and land grab continue to widen." To put it more bluntly, Lebensraum and Großraum.

And is a crowning to the system that upholds that a minority gets to enjoy wealth at the expense of others, therefore maintains inequality instead of granting more people more equal chances by raising taxes on what I just mentioned while making labor more rewarding.

..largely bring this over to their offspring while, in reality, they didn't put any labor for it. I don't know what it's like in the US but here in a western European country, the tax on inheritance is extremely low in comparison to the tax on labor/income which is high. This is unfair.

I think it is a good video. Some of what you shared, was already familiar to me, for example, how the concept of enclosure was and still is applied in settler colonialism. An aspect that I would add is taxation on inheritance, owners of properties who profit of the rent that others pay them..

It is this coverage of Gaza that led to my parting ways with the paper. I hadn’t heard from them since things in Lebanon had died down, its miseries reduced from the spectacular to the routine. But when, on 17 and 18 September 2024, pagers exploded across the country, killing dozens and maiming thousands, I received an email from a new editor wondering if I was willing to write “an honest and real account of what it feels like to be in Beirut just now”. Never mind that I wasn’t in Beirut just then; the issue was more that I had grown disgusted by the fact that I had ever written for the Times at all, that I had ever lent them my Arab name so they could use it, as they did other Arab names, to buy themselves some measure of plausible deniability with regards to the fundamental racism of their editorial line. The editor was sympathetic to the screed I sent back in response, but pushed back, telling me I would be given a platform to write “what you think is missing”, though of course she couldn’t promise ahead of time that the piece would actually be published, given that she needed a greenlight from her own boss. What I thought was missing, before anything else, was an entire accounting that would place the region and its people in a context articulated through our own self-understanding, and which would no longer present the Lebanese or Palestinians or Syrians or Iraqis or Sudanese or Iranians as people entirely unmoored from history, as irrational actors motivated by nothing except grievance and hatred, without a coherent past and thus entirely without lucid, self-determined visions for our own futures. There was no nut graf in the world long enough to contain all that they refused to learn about this part of the world. Nor would the piece have any closure – punchy, optimistic or otherwise – so long as the entire system of Western political, economic and military dominance remained – remains – as is.

Why @warghetti.bsky.social stopped explaining the Middle East to Americans.

www.equator.org/articles/the...

in appreciation of Syrian sense of humour. It appears a high-schooler likely added a school name as it's written below which transliterates to "school of the fucked"

In the past two years, and also recently in relation to the US strikes in the Caribbean, it’s interesting to me how there’s a group of people who take what state power says without a second thought.

Geld voor longcovidonderzoek raakt op, wanhoop bij patiënten groeit Er dreigt een flink verlies aan deskundigheid en kennis, waarschuwt een hoogleraar.

Mensen met een ziekte moeten nooit in de steek worden gelaten.

Global ‘Free Marwan’ campaign calls for Palestinian political leader’s release Locked away in prison for decades, Marwan Barghouti is a longstanding advocate for a two-state solution

Marwan Barghouti should be released now. As his relatives say, he “represents hope to Palestinians at a time when there are efforts to silence him and make him forgotten.”

😆

a cartoon of a man with red hair and a mustache wearing suspenders ALT: a cartoon of a man with red hair and a mustache wearing suspenders

Man, just laughed my ass off because Pete Hegseth got pummeled by this guy:

Au Sud-Liban, une étude révèle le "danger persistant" des frappes israéliennes au phosphore blanc En cartographiant 248 frappes, une enquête menée par un chercheur en sources ouvertes, Ahmad Baydoun, met en lumière l’utilisation par Israël du phosphore blanc lors du dernier conflit au Sud-Liban,…

"91% of white phosphorus strikes happened before Israeli forces entered southern Lebanon in Oct 2024, contradicting Israel’s official version. Of all strikes we documented, 39% hit civilian areas, 16% agricultural land, and only 44% uninhabited zones." @baydoun.nl in @france24.com.

Trump’s campaign of retribution: At least 470 targets and counting A Reuters investigation documents at least 470 acts of retribution under Trump’s leadership.

“The list illuminates the sweeping effort by the president and his administration to punish dissent and reshape the government.”

www.reuters.com/investigates...

Is customer service still meant to help you? Because these days it feels like you fight a chatbot, meditate in a waiting line for 40 minutes, and then finally reach a human who sounds one email away from handing in their resignation.

Israeli drone strike geolocated in Beit Jinn, southern Syria, 33.314153, 35.879369.

Syrians from Beit Jinn used their right to resist the Israeli occupying forces effectively. That’s why the latter, who shouldn’t even be there in the first place and should simply go away from these lands, called in airstrikes.

A cat who sees a lion in the reflection of the mirror.

During the day, you flip hamburgers at McDonalds.

In the night, you become the investigator that follows a warlord’s movements.

Israeli forces standing by and doing nothing during settler violence, where did I hear that before? Oh yeah. In the investigation that I did with @gaborfriesen.bsky.social, in collaboration with CNN, on the Huwara pogrom in early 2023.

I am thankful the Palestinian American child Mohamed Ibrahim- who was tortured for 9 months in Israeli prison- is finally free.

Street-level imagery from 13 November 2023 by 360ms in Mapillary.

Street-level imagery via Mapillary: www.mapillary.com/app/?lat=32....

Summary execution of two Palestinians by the Israeli military geolocated in Jabal Abu Dhahir, Jenin city ~ 32.454360, 35.297587.

So the country with a homicide rate multiple that of Europe and which sends armed thugs into cities to commit state-sanctioned crimes against visible minorities is lecturing us on… crime, social cohesion and public safety.

Live: Hundreds in shelters as Hong Kong fire death toll rises to 55 Flames in four of the seven affected towers have been extinguished, authorities said.

Very sad to learn about the fire in Hong Kong. There were 2 Indonesian domestic workers among 55 people died: www.channelnewsasia.com/east-asia/ho...

Nee, liever van Ricky Risolles.

Pope Leo takes message of peace to Middle East on first foreign visit. Here’s what to know | CNN Pope Leo XIV begins a six-day visit to Turkey and Lebanon on Thursday, his first foreign trip since his election and one on which he’s expected to emphasize key themes of his fledgling pontificate – a...

I’m sure that if somehow the pope is forced to use a parachute, the international community will say that it would’ve been an act of self-defense.

Palestinians report that a young man called Youssef Abdullah Dawas was killed (t.me/hamza20300/3...) while the IDF claims that they targeted a Hamas fighter who was planning an attack against them.

Satellite imagery by Airbus via Google Earth Pro.

Aerial footage published by the IDF: https://t.me/idf_telegram/20331

Israeli drone strike on Al-Mansheya Street nearby the Beit Lahiya roundabout, 31.547912, 34.501321.