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They're in dire need for NOMAD esims in Gaza! Please refer to the website on how to buy esims

i know nothing gets people more heated or self-righteous than the idea that they might be getting scammed, and i know the gofundmes here can be overwhelming in your inboxes and i know for many people in the west who want some kind of reliable process this can seem sketchy but palestinian bloggers on here (and palestinians across platforms including on gazafunds.com) don't want you to be scammed any more than you want to be scammed, and they have put in an extraordinary effort to verify information literally in the middle of a warzone

the truth is you all have no idea how difficult this entire process is from top to bottom, tech companies and fintech companies literally hate anything that passes through this area. i'm banned from uber and doordash because i used an egyptian credit card while travelling and it flagged their automated fraud systems and they never reinstated it lol like that's how arbitrary it is. and egypt is one of the better-connected countries in the area.

the entire reason people in gaza are relying on gofundmes is because the barriers to entry and exit are not accidental—they're deliberate! this is literally what being occupied and middle-eastern means. it means you don't have easy access to bank accounts, you don't have easy access to fundraising, you don't have easy access to your own records, and you are automatically mistrusted by the world at large of how thoroughly dehumanized your language and your people have been during a genocide where you are being bombed and living in a tent. this is also part of what it means to be a refugee from the global south or to be a refugee from the global north, where these processes are expedited (as they were for ukrainian refugees, for example) precisely because they are part of the structure of a war.

like just to explain to you guys how difficult it was for me (someone with access to networks across the world) to get money to a friend in gaza, because egypt's also going through an economic crisis and transferring usd here is close to impossible: to get 15k usd (enough to get 3 people out of gaza) to the office in egypt that registers people for evacuation, that family needed

a stable internet connection to communicate with us (they were only able to get in touch briefly every other day)

first-degree relatives in egypt to register for them

people from abroad who could raise the money for them (which they did; they were family friends who knew them)

an egyptian with a usd bank account and a foreigner coming to egypt who could carry usd in cash to divide it among themselves because there is no other way to receive that amount of money here at once

we managed to get the money to their relatives here, they managed to register them, and then the rafah border was destroyed. so now the are just waiting while being bombed and displaced from one area to another. and this is a family who had every connection needed. imagine how it is for people where only one of these links are dropped?

that's why the work the palestinian bloggers do here to support palestinians in gaza is necessary, because they fill in for people who don't have good language skills, who don't have friends abroad to fundraise or vouch for them, who don't have relatives in egypt who can receive money for them, etc

does this mean every fundraiser is 100% reliable? no. this is why the verification list exists! the things i would be wary of would be if someone sends you a false or phishing link, or if someone who is running the campaign from abroad decides to scam the palestinians they're raising it for and refuse to send the money, both of which i've witnessed personally

but the likelihood of someone faking being from gaza and getting onto the verified list is much smaller because the verification process is rigorous and like i said, palestinians themselves don't want to be promoting scams. but also most of these gofundmes protect your donation, meaning if someone disputes it you get your donation back. they are paranoid to the extent that they will sometimes refuse to pay out people in gaza even after the campaign goal is reached for no reason except that anything from the middle east is generally regarded with suspicion. i've seen paypal also refuse to do the same

as a matter of fact from a tech standpoint it's so, so much easier for someone located in the west to create a fake gofundme/phishing scam than for a palestinian to do so, but by that token it's more difficult for someone in the west to convincingly fake being from gaza. which is why the verification list and other initiatives (like again, gazafunds.com) are so important

i have tried to get gofundmes on gazafunds before and i can promise you their process is rigorous. you might not see a lot of the paperwork behind a specific campaign but i know they don't add campaigns unless they verify their IDs personally or through a network of trusted references. the bloggers on here are a volunteer network working independently, of their own effort, and they are doing their best in what is a genuinely horrible situation. the border is closed now but people in gaza have worked out alternate ways to receive money raised online (again, often via relatives transferring to each other outside gaza or other means) and aid hasn't been coming in for months and those regulating the aid were killed, which means extremely limited supplies and high inflation, so money raised and received now is literally survival money that goes wherever it can, and people are very desperate to raise as much as possible as things get more dire. there is no employment in gaza right now. people have been living off their savings for ten months.

is that simple to convey to some blogger on tumblr donating 5$ to a gofundme? is it simple to understand? no. and that's part of the structure of genocide. you aren't going to be able to venmo someone and get a receipt like you do if you're donating to an org, so volunteers are doing their best to fill in the gaps for that by making sure you know how your money is helping real human beings while relieving the pressure on these humans, in a genocide with limited internet, to constantly post about themselves.

the fact of the matter is that your risk of being scammed by a gofundme from the verified list or gazafunds dot com is extremely low, but the damage of of assuming (and even worse, claiming) these campaigns are a scam is extremely high

if you don't trust a campaign, don't donate to it. if you notice a red flag you feel like the bloggers verifying might have missed, alert them to it. if you notice someone impersonating one of the verified campaigns on here (also common) alert people to it. i often have difficulty identifying which blogs are legitimate because they are deleted and remade so frequently, so i just try to reblog posts from the verified list or promoted by palestinians bloggers as i donate to them.

in his own words : “my name is Aaron Bushnell. I am an active duty member of the united states air force, and I will no longer be complicit in genocide. I’m about to engage in an extreme act of protest, but compared to what people have been experiencing in Palestine at the hands of their colonizers, it’s not extreme at all. this is what our ruling class has decided will be normal.”

the whole point of his protest is to highlight the violence and pain that the usa and more specifically the usa army is complicit in. in a way that could not be ignored.

to blur his final moments to make them more 'comfortable' to watch, to consume, is extremely disrespectful.

mind you i am not saying that you should go out of your way to expose yourself to such footage, especially if you are not in a place mentally that allows you to do so.

but his final wish was to force us into a conversation around the pain and violence we are complicit with. so much so that it has now become 'normal' rather than outraging.

it is important that we do not let the media sweep up or minimize his actions (something that the blurring facilitates). just in the last not even four months we have had 3 separate self-immolations in protest against at least two ongoing genocides. this is what the fucking wikipedia page for political self-immolation looks like as of today.

here's some links to check out:

https://www.focuscongo.com/en/

48 million people in Sudan still can not contact their families across the diaspora. They're cut off from the internet, which includes their online banking services as well. Thousands of displaced Sudanese people were also recently turned away as asylum seekers:

Her name Lama Jamous.

Lama has been reporting on tik tok what has been happening in Gaza. Her father is a journalist working for Al Jazeera and is trying to get her out of Rafah.

Link to the gofundme from the video

Please share her story.

Edited to include video description provided by @a-captions-blog

Expect Israel's bot army to be extra active in the coming days and weeks, and not just on Tiktok

Brown University is doing everything they can to make sure the press doesn’t cover the fact that 19 of their students are on hunger strike calling for Brown to divest from weapons manufacturers. Let’s make sure the story gets out:

- No live music in Campus Center (string ensembles have been performing Palestinian music every night of the strike)

- No sitting on the floor in Campus Center

- No naps at any time in Campus Center

- No offering covid masks to people, since it is deemed "accosting" (since the pandemic is definitely over now guys)

- No promoting events or striker schedule on social media (censorship)

- No banners or artwork displays in Leung Gallery (censorship)

- No microphones allowed at registered teach-ins

- No inviting guest speakers (including professors)

- Members of clubs like The Indy, Brown Student Radio, and the Brown Outing Club are NOT allowed to be in their own club spaces in campus center unless specifically doing "club-related activities"

- Gatherings of 50 or more people must be registered with SAO

- Any activities in rooms that can hold more than 50 people are considered "unregistered events"

Vietnam: less than 100 years with baguette -- INVENTED BANH MI

ANOTHER WIN FOR VIETNAM‼️‼️‼️‼️

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What's left of Gaza's historic market, once endowed with historic buildings and heritage sites, representing the origins of the city and the center of life in Gaza.

The reason I focused on electronic music specifically is because no one ever talks about it. The theft of rock n' roll is softened by celebrated legends such as Jimi Hendrix and Slash and Little Richard, and the visibility of the story in general. Hip-hop's story of capitalist exploitation of poor black men and enforcement of toxic standards of masculinity and white appropriation is softened by hip-hop made by black people being a culturally dominating force for the last 30+ years, and a concentrated effort by black artists to use the genre to platform black artists and issues first. Ska getting gentrified into ska punk is softened by ska punk sucking ass in comparison. Electronic music does not get the same redemption story.

Quick, without using Google, can you name a black electronic music artist? Do you know who Juan Atkins is? Phuture? Mr Fingers? When you think of acid, do you think of black people in the clubs of Chicago or white english people at raves in London? When you think of jungle, do you think about the African and Carribean diaspora in the United Kingdom drawing on dub and dancehall tradition to make some of the most futuristic sounding music in history, or do you think of white people recycling the same beats over and over again set to PS1-style cover art?

House music, the closest living relative to disco, which was a black genre of music MURDERED by reactionary white rock music fans, is more associated with two fucking white dudes from France than ANY black person in the minds of most people.

Do you know the name of the man who played the Amen break?

ABSOLUTELY. A lot of rabid animals look sick and injured and your natural instinct is wanting to help them. People do not know what rabies actually looks like. There is a reason you aren't supposed to interact with wild animals, ESPECIALLY ones that seem friendly.

so a huge list of artists that was used to train midjourney’s model got leaked and i’m on it

literally there is no reason to support AI generators, they can’t ethically exist. my art has been used to train every single major one without consent lmfao 🤪