Hanine Hassan حنين @Hanine09

I'm struggling with this open letter, signed by people I admire deeply—individuals who've dedicated their lives to Black liberation and anti-colonial struggles. But I just can't reconcile my instinctive reaction to the letter with the respect I hold for the signatories. Prominent intellectuals in the imperial core are using their voice at this hour primarily to criticize a government under active bombardment. While I believe that no government is beyond reproach or criticism, I have a lot of questions and cautions about this open letter. The overall framing of is of two equally opposing sides—two blades of the same scissors. This is a wholly unfair representation of what is in reality a profound asymmetry of power. On one hand, a country that has been subjected to crippling, decades-long economic sanctions, now fighting kinetically an existential anti-imperial struggle; on the other hand is nuclear, AI-powered empire, with its inexhaustible money, munitions, supply lines, coalitions, surveillance, and near total grip on international political, legal, information, and economic infrastructure. The severity of the imperial onslaught seems to be minimized in the letter. This is perhaps for the sake of brevity, but it should not stand without critique. What the letter describes as "current, indiscriminate waves of US-Israeli military assaults" undersells what's actually happening in the "six months into a war". Unprovoked Tomahawk missiles and B-2 bombers that targeting a an elementary school that killed 180 children and teachers, the country's spiritual leader and his family, more than a third of the country's political, military, and scientific leadership, civilian infrastructure, including water, farmlands, electric grids and power plants, an unarmed navy ship at sea full of young cadets returning from a peacetime maritime exercise in international waters. This after decades of attacks that went unanswered by Iran, including Israel's repeated assassinations of Iranian scientists, assassination of Qasem Soleimani, strikes on Iranians generals in Syria, strike on Iranian consulate in Damascus, assassination of Ismail Haniyeh on Iranian soil; the US shot down civilian aircraft of Iran Air flight 655, killing 290 passengers and crew, including 66 children. There were endless cyber attacks, covert and overt naval sabotage and so much more—all of it without response from Tehran. The letter does not identify who the prisoners are or why they were arrested. In neglecting to do so, there is no engagement with the very real security threats, proven foreign interference, terrorism, and espionage, which Iranian authorities cite as reasons for some arrests and prosecutions. I have no doubt there are some who've been wrongly imprisoned, but we also know that many of those who were rounded up confessed to working with the Mossad, and recently a group who gruesomely disembowled a young reciter of the Quran are among those who are imprisoned. There are currently 2 million incarcerated people in the United States, the largest prison population anywhere on earth. It is estimated that 4-6% of them are innocent—that's 80,000-120,000, about two NFL stadiums full of innocent lives behind bars. Setting that percentage against Iran's estimated 15,000 political prisoners, that's roughly 600-900 individuals. They deserve fairness, but to center them in what is perhaps the most existential anti-colonial struggle of our lives feels misguided. I would also argue that comparing Iran's prisons with Israel's decades-long, systematic, colonial detention of indigenous Palestinians is another form of false equivalence. So is the comparison with America's ICE detentions, separation of families and loss of children in the process (who are most likely trafficked). It is not remotely fair to put a revolutionary government, barely a few decades out from under colonial boots and still under sanctions, in the same "carceral" category as two settler colonial states. One cannot ignore the enormous disparity of political, military, and historical circumstances. The people held in Iranian jails are overwhelmingly Iranian citizens, prosecuted under the state's own criminal and national security laws, regardless of whether one thinks the laws are unfair. Palestinians held in Israeli administrative detention are non-citizen subjects of a military occupation, detained and re-detained indefinitely under military decrees without charge or trial. People in US detentions are another category—non citizens held under civil immigration laws pending removal proceedings with access to immigration courts, however corrupt they may be. These are three distinct legal relationships—1) a state and it's own citizens; 2) a state and migrants crossing its borders, and; 3) an occupying power and a stateless occupied indigenous population. The letter collapses them all into a single architecture of "carceral states everywhere," creating an analysis that is not supported by the underlying facts. It creates rhetorical equivalence that treats "administrative detention," "political imprisonment," and "immigration detention" as though the political stakes of each were the same, when the questions of sovereignty, citizenship, and self-determination underneath them are not. The phrase that knocked me off balance was this: "...we reject the false binary of imperialism and hollow anti-imperialism." I note that @agent_of_change addressed this in a recent post, which he identified as the "load-bearing phrase" of the letter. Indeed, it does so much heavy lifting and I'm at a loss why the word "hollow" would have been inserted. It's so clearly deliberate, but why? How can Iran's insistence on sovereignty and dignity be called "hollow," despite the grave and terrible cost to themselves? They could have taken the easy path a long time ago and bowed to empire, like some of their Arab neighbors have done. They've chosen self-possession and loyalty to their ancestors and children instead. That can be called many things, but hollow is not it. theguardian.com/commentisfree/…

📕Newly released: one of the first books to document, in exceptional detail, the atrocities committed in Israeli prisons during the ongoing genocide. Written by Palestinian journalist and writer Wesam Afifa @wesamaf, the book tells the story of a fellow journalist, during the Israeli genocide of Palestine (including in the Auschwitz of Palestine, Sde Teiman). An essential read for anyone seeking to understand this dark chapter. @LeftWordBooks leftword.com/product/surviv…

Primitives encountering civilization

Zhao DaShuai 东北进修🇨🇳 @zhao_dashuai

4 months ago

Marco Rubio was very impressed with the ceiling and light fixatures inside the Great Hall of the People.

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NEW: After years operating in almost complete anonymity, the top content producers of Canary Mission have been identified. The doxxing site targeting academics and activists who expressed pro-Palestine views over the last year has been used by the Trump administration to select international students for arrest, detention, and deportation--even as those using it at DHS said they didn't know who was behind the site. The five new highest-paid writers and social media employees associated with the site that we identified are all Americans who moved to Israel years ago, and have a range of ties to American nonprofits and groups. Link below:

If Evil could tweet, this is what it would!

Palantir @PalantirTech

4 months ago

Because we get asked a lot. The Technological Republic, in brief. 1. Silicon Valley owes a moral debt to the country that made its rise possible. The engineering elite of Silicon Valley has an affirmative obligation to participate in the defense of the nation. 2. We must rebel

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Upset from a picture? Well, here’s the full video -sound on 🔉 of your colonial army, fully armed, making sheep sounds toward Palestinians while chasing them off their lands. These are not stereotypes, but the barbarism of monsters.

Ambassador Jonathan Peled @JonathanPeled

5 months ago

Condanniamo fermamente l’uso manipolatorio della recente copertina de L’Espresso. L'immagine distorce la complessa realtà con cui Israele deve convivere, promuovendo stereotipi e odio. Un giornalismo responsabile deve essere equilibrato e corretto. #MediaResponsibility

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Recently, Israeli forces subjected a one-year-old child to abuse to pressure his father into giving confessions east of Al-Maghazi refugee camp in central Gaza, according to local and family sources. The child's father, Osama Abu Nassar, suffered psychological trauma after the death of a horse he used for income. While taking his child to buy supplies a few days ago, he was caught in gunfire near his home and forced by soldiers to leave his 18-month-old son on the ground and approach the Israeli checkpoint, where he was stripped of his clothes. According to witnesses, the army then took the child and interrogated the father at the checkpoint. The forces tortured the child in front of his father, including burning with cigarettes on his leg, pricking, and inserting a metal nail into his leg, as confirmed by a medical report. The child, Karim, was released after 10 hours and handed over to his family through the International Red Cross, while the father remains in detention. 📷 Osama Al-Kahlout

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Big boost for the BDS moment.

Al Jazeera English @AJEnglish

6 months ago

IRGC-linked Tasnim news agency says offices and infrastructure run by US tech firms with Israeli links including Google, Microsoft, Palantir, IBM, Nvidia and Oracle are “Iran’s new targets”. They are located in Israeli cities, as well as in some Gulf countries. 🔴 LIVE updates:

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I wished he would have lived longer to witness his beloved Palestine liberated. Rest in Power.

asad abukhalil أسعد أبو خليل @asadabukhalil

6 months ago

It pains me to share the news of the passing of Professor Walid Khalidi. Professor Khalidi is the best teacher one could have; in his class at AUB, “the Arab World and the West” he taught us about the Nakbah and warned us about the pitfalls of emotional polemics in arguing for

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Why are you letting this happen to Iranian children?

Gaza Notifications @gazanotice

a year ago

#GazaGenocide‌ 21.07.2025

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العدو يرانا إسلام واحد ونحن نرى انفسنا إسلامات متعددة عجبي

Just shut the F up. Dismantle Israel. Stop financing it. Put French- Israeli war criminals on trial.

Emmanuel Macron @EmmanuelMacron

6 months ago

For Lebanon we must act. Everything must be done to prevent this country, so close to France, from once again being drawn into war. The Lebanese have a right to peace and security—like everyone in the Middle East.

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“Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly are 𝐫𝐚𝐯𝐞𝐧𝐨𝐮𝐬 𝐰𝐨𝐥𝐯𝐞𝐬” The Bible : Matthew 7:15

Israel will fight this war until its last American soldier

Idrees Ali @idreesali114

6 months ago

A graphic the U.S. military is sharing on the operation.

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Poles already have a nuclear bomb. They're the only people in the Middle East that have one.

Faytuks Network @FaytuksNetwork

6 months ago

BREAKING: Poland will eventually seek to obtain its own nuclear weapons - Bloomberg

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Fuck American soldiers . Today and always

عُمانيون ضد التطبيع @OmaPalestine

6 months ago

فيديو من العراق لايمكن أن ينساه أحد لعن الله الغزاة

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TRILLIONs spent in fighting orchestrated war no money to evacuate Americans from the failed settlement colony.

Heartbreaking: Hundreds of civilian casualties have been reported following joint U.S.-Israeli strikes targeting residential neighborhoods in the Iranian capital, Tehran.

Monsters they are

K.Diallo ☭ @nyeusi_waasi

6 months ago

"The civilized have created the wretched, quite coldly and deliberately, and do not intend to change the status quo; are responsible for their slaughter and enslavement; rain down bombs on defenseless children whenever and wherever they decide that their "vital interests" are

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