@mirandawmeyer
PhD candidate in Geography at CUNY Grad Center. Political geography of memory through territory & infrastructure (water, waste, heritage). Syria and Lebanon, mostly. Sometimes history/philosophy of science.
Today, Israel put French member of the EU parliament Rima Hassan in solitary confinement and bombed the Gaza office of the French NGO Médecins du Monde
France maintains normal diplomatic relations with Israel
Thank you very much!
I'm spending all my time reading (pre-Asad) back issues of Al Baath lately, and going from spending all day immersed in a loudly socialist party newspaper to contemporary current events is giving me crazy whiplash
74 Palestinians have been killed in Israeli airstrikes on the northern, central, and southern parts of the Gaza Strip since pre- dawn on Sunday , in a matter of hours
www.aljazeera.com/amp/news/liv...
That's why the operative word is building.
As a New Englander I cannot condone this
Ahli Baptist Hospital which had been providing critical care to civilians in Gaza City has been attacked, it has been completely knocked out of service.
The only operational hospital left in Northern Gaza.
👇👇👇
The lesson for universities is you may as well fight back. You'll lose the money either way. The only question is whether you keep your dignity.
Et voilà: our NEH grant with Harriet Murav for “In the Shadow of the Holocaust: Short Fiction by Jewish Writers from the Soviet Union” has been terminated. This project does not, the letter notes, support “the furtherance of the President’s agenda.” I guess work on Jews surviving genocide is out of step with the agenda of this presidential administration whose only use for Jews is the weaponization of Jewish safety to destroy higher education.
My @nehgov.bsky.social grant “In the Shadow of the Holocaust: Short Fiction by Jewish Writers from the Soviet Union” was canceled by “DOGE.” The project doesn’t support "the furtherance of the President's agenda.” Jews surviving genocide: out of step w/ the agenda of using Jews to destroy higher ed.
this is about my friend Anna, who is in it for the long haul. you can support Anna's legal fight here: www.gofundme.com/f/join-annas...
To what degree that reflects the "partial" aspect of the 90% figure, hidden divergences in what "equal rights" and "Islamic law" mean to respondents, and/or an element of telling pollsters what they think they want to hear is impossible to tease out from the article...
90% of Sunnis favor partial or full Islamic law, 86% of Druze and Christians favor secular law, 73% of Kurds favor secular law, while over 75% of everyone want equal rights for women. Clearly there has to be significant overlap between pro-Islamic law and pro-women's rights.
Needless to say, the typical problem in polling where respondents often say what they think they ought to rather than what they believe is something to think hard about in Syria, where people have long experience with doing just that (for very good reason).
...much like that 49% number in Tartus. But these findings potentially raise some interesting questions.
"Large numbers say they feel [al-Sharaa's] new order is safer, freer, and less sectarian than Mr. Assad's regime." Not clear what "large numbers" means or how that breaks down along community lines.
But sometimes in a moment like this people become eager and excited to say what they actually want to say - I experienced that in Egypt. Impossible to gauge exactly how much stock to put in any of these numbers, but worth thinking about regardless.
The limitations of this poll are obvious, but interesting numbers nonetheless. Even in Tartus, 49% said they were optimistic about the direction of the country. The massacres were only a couple of weeks ago.
www.economist.com/middle-east-...
A shop window displaying piñatas in the shape of ICE agents
Chicago is the greatest city in the world
Rafah, an hour ago. Photo: Abdallah alAttar (X).
The city's population ordered by the IDF once more to leave.
Unending ethnic cleansing
BUDGET DUE MONDAY! CALL NOW! DON'T LET THEM BAN MASKS IN NY Governor Hochul is still trying to force an anti-mask law into the New York state budget - and the deadline is Monday night. Our calls are working, but we need more calls TODAY, especially from upstate NY. Now's the time to call your state reps to say NO MASK BAN. TOOLKIT FOR CALLING YOUR STATE REPS - bit.ly/no-mask-ban Share this post with 3 friends to spread the word. Even a quick call makes a difference!
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Over 1000 Palestinians killed and many more injured since Israel violated ceasefire and resumed major airstrikes in Gaza on March 18
www.newarab.com/news/israel-...
SCOOP: The Trump admin appears to be going into a visa database to quietly change students' immigration status. It's coming entirely by surprise — setting students up to be detained without warning.
It's Mahmoud Khalil & Rumeysa Ozturk — on a wider scale.
‘Maybe we need to kill more civilians,’ speaker told gathering hosted by pro-Israel nonprofit in NY
At an Israel Heritage Foundation event in May 2024, Martin Oliner called for Israel to “take the lessons” from the atrocity of the U.S. atomic bombings in Japan.
prismreports.org/2025/03/27/i...
Obviously Syria has not been in any position to act out irredentist ambitions toward Lebanon in many years, but it's still significant for al-Sharaa to (implicitly) acknowledge that reality
this feels like a very big deal even though the day-to-day probably won't change much for a good while. Syria has always been the one to refuse Lebanon's demands; it's been an implicit continuation of the Greater Syria idea and the paternalistic attitude toward Lebanon that that entails
🧵 on the damage being visited on children’s healthcare in this country.
(h/t @gregggonsalves.bsky.social)
Extra wild because Druze in Syria are busy protesting Israel’s invasion and occupation of southern Syria, with signs saying they “will not be your poisoned dagger in Syria’s back”, so Israel is justifying its invasion with claims to be protecting a group who don’t want their protection.
