Media
On this day, 9 April 1948, the Deir Yassin massacre took place when around 120 fighters from the Zionist paramilitary groups Irgun and Lehi attacked the Palestinian village of Deir Yassin near Jerusalem, in which most of the residents were stonecutters and quarry workers (content note: sexual violence). From 100 to 150 or more Palestinians, including many women and children, were killed, among them people who had been decapitated, disembowelled, mutilated, and raped. One Zionist militiaman, Yehuda Feder, described his part in the massacre: “I killed an armed Arab man and two Arab girls of 16 or 17 who were helping the Arab who was shooting. I stood them against a wall and blasted them with two rounds from the Tommy gun”.He also recounted looting from the Palestinians' homes: "a lot of money and silver and gold jewelry fell into our hands", and described the massacre as a "tremendous operation".Other Israelis later reported witnessing other atrocities like an elderly couple shot in the back, and one man tied to a tree and set on fire. Dozens of bodies were then piled up and burned. Mordechai Gichon, a Zionist intelligence officer described the aftermath as looking "like a pogrom… When the Cossacks burst into Jewish neighborhoods, then that should have looked something like this.” The incident led to many Palestinians fleeing in terror, and was a key event in the ethnic cleansing of the area, during which over 700,000 of the 900,000 Palestinian Arab residents of what became Israel were expelled or forced to flee from their homes.The Israeli army, which incorporated Irgun, today still refuses to release its photographs and documentation of the massacre.Learn more about Palestinian stone workers in this book: https://shop.workingclasshistory.com/products/stone-men-the-palestinians-who-built-israel-andrew-ross To access this hyperlink, click our link in bio then click this photo Pictured: Orphans whose parents were massacred

TIL the sirens from Homers Odyssey were never said to be actually beautiful, or even mermaids. Instead, they were strange human-faced bird creatures who lured men to their deaths by promising them wisdom and knowledge of the future [source, comments]

Swiss Song of the Day 🇨🇭🌱: https://youtu.be/HJFd6q77G3s

This is a historic day for the Swiss “Senior Women for Climate Protection” 🌏

For the first time ever, the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) has condemned a state for failing to take action against climate change, linking the safeguarding of human rights to the individual states’ responsibilities in climate action.

In today’s ruling, the ECHR has decided that Swiss authorities are responsible for the lack of implementation towards efficient climate change policies and violating the right to life of a group of elderly women in Switzerland.

After eight years of an intense legal battle against their country, the women of the Swiss Climate Senior Association are celebrating!

What exactly is Switzerland accused of and why could this case have repercussions worldwide? Find out here 👉 http://s.swissin.fo/JzmSpXe

tenth month in a row that is the warmest on record (for the respective month of the year)

https://x.com/copernicusecmwf/status/1777647250144952594?s=46&t=Sm6xkf61gGcuIbSLVUmCKA

Die Europawahlen bleiben solange eine Farce, wie Staatschefs nach belieben die EU-Kommissionspräsidentinnen auswählen können (wie damals Merkel, die von der Leyen installieren liess).
https://www.srf.ch/news/international/europawahlen-2024-ursula-von-der-leyen-fuehrt-einen-zweifelhaften-wahlkampf

Barbara Ehrenreich zeigte 2001 mit «Nickel and Dimed» am eigenen Körper die Schattenseiten des Kapitalismus in den USA auf – und prägt Aktivist:innen bis heute. https://www.woz.ch/!M303HDWNKQ5K

TIL 85,200 Swiss women lost their citizenships between 1848-1952 when marrying foreigners due to the "marriage rule". [source, comments]

Song of the Day 🗽🐕: https://song.link/d/1120955902

Media
On this day, 10 April 1919, Emiliano Zapata, peasant leader during the Mexican revolution of Nahua Indigenous and Spanish descent, was assassinated in Chinameca, Ayala, by the "revolutionary" Carranza government. Early in life, he began to advocate for the rights of Indigenous peoples in Morelos when he saw wealthy landowners continually stealing their land, with no response from the government. So he began taking part in armed land occupations.With the outbreak of revolution in 1910, Zapata became the leader of the Liberation Army of the South. The force was a peasant militia fighting for "tierra y libertad" (land and freedom), a slogan they adopted from Mexican anarchist Ricardo Flores Magón.After Francisco Madero took power in 1911, Zapata denounced him for betraying the revolution, and drafted the Ayala Plan: a radical programme of land reform. Madero himself was then overthrown by counter-revolutionary Victoriano Huerta.Zapata's southern army allied with the revolutionary armies in the north, led by Pancho Villa and Venustiano Carranza. They soon overthrew Huerta, and called a convention to form the new government, which Zapata declined to participate in as none of the organisers had been elected.With Carranza in power, he only implemented moderate reforms, which fell well short of the Ayala Plan, so the Zapatistas fought on.Carranza put a bounty on Zapata's head, hoping that one of his own fighters would betray him, but none of them did. In the end he was lured to a meeting with one of Carranza's men who pretended to be interested in defecting.When Zapata arrived for the meeting he was riddled with bullets, and his body photographed for propaganda purposes.He remains to this day a national hero, and Indigenous rebels in Chiapas who rose up in 1994 and created an autonomous territory named themselves after him.Learn more in this biography and check out our reproduction of this photo: https://shop.workingclasshistory.com/collections/all/emiliano-zapataTo access this hyperlink, click our link bio then click this photo

Privacy is slowly becoming a privilege rather than a human right.

TIL that schizophrenic hallucinations vary across culture, western illusions usually being more violent and harmful [source, comments]

Good idea: bricks made from plastic waste

https://phys.org/news/2022-03-trash-kenyan-inventor-plastic-bricks.html

"Plastic still has value," said Nzambi Matee of the mountains of discarded oil drums, laundry buckets, yoghurt tubs and other trash being shredded into colourful flakes at her Nairobi factory.

"I believe that plastic is one of the misunderstood materials."

The 30-year-old Kenyan engineer and inventor would know: her start-up recycles tonnes of plastic destined for landfill into eco-friendly bricks that are stronger, cheaper and lighter than concrete.