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Aksel

@macasson

Sometimes archaeologist, anthropologist, and professor in SRU’s College of Liberal Arts. Co-director of SRU’s Center for Middle East Studies.

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06.10.2023
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Latest posts by Aksel @macasson

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At Largest ICE Detention Camp, Staff Bet on Detainee Suicides, AP Reports Camp East Montana has received several 911 calls in the span of five months about immigrants trying to harm themselves.

Staff at the nation’s largest Immigration and Customs Enforcement detention facility have placed bets on which detainee will be the next to die by suicide, according to new reporting from the Associated Press based on 911 calls and detainee accounts.

07.03.2026 21:00 👍 9293 🔁 6069 💬 609 📌 1538
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Ghana denounces 'war crime' at UN after Israeli strike injures three peacekeepers in southern Lebanon Ghana filed a protest with the United Nations on Saturday, a day after an attack in southern Lebanon that injured its peacekeepers, denouncing it as “a grave violation of international law...

Ghana has accused Israel of committing a war crime by bombing Ghanaian UN troops, injuring three of them.

today.lorientlejour.com/article/1497...

07.03.2026 13:49 👍 112 🔁 63 💬 1 📌 4
Cost to US for war on Iran is $3.7bn in first 100 hours, says think tank

Cost to US for war on Iran is $3.7bn in first 100 hours, says think tank

Cost to US for war on Iran is $3.7bn in first 100 hours, says think tank https://aje.news/bom9ai

06.03.2026 09:00 👍 189 🔁 106 💬 18 📌 19

My people are pulling their dead children from under the rubble

You are complaining about gas prices rising due to your tax dollars spent killing those children

We will never be safe in the same room with you

03.03.2026 13:34 👍 41 🔁 16 💬 0 📌 0

As a proud Iranian born, Canadian, I do not want any help from the US and Israel for a regime change!

The government will be toppled when people are ready.

The same should happen in the US, and this criminal regime needs to go to prison.

#FuckYourWar

28.02.2026 15:51 👍 2864 🔁 511 💬 132 📌 15

I'm constantly trying (/failing) to get this point across.

If you're a trained expert in a field, then it may be worthwhile to question the scientific consensus of your peers.

If you're not, the scientific consensus is absolutely the best you can do and it's arbitrary foolishness to disregard it.

24.02.2026 16:04 👍 3760 🔁 853 💬 54 📌 50
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The inhumane treatment of immigration detainees requires more coverage | Press Watch The glimpses we’ve gotten justify a lot more reporting

Why does someone who overstayed their visa need to be held in shackles? Does any child belong in a prison camp? Does anybody deserve to be underfed, or brutalized, or denied medical care? presswatchers.org/2026/02/the-...

18.02.2026 22:38 👍 762 🔁 386 💬 23 📌 25
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Talk of ICE activity around schools prompts advocacy and a walkout Early reports of an ICE arrest in Wilkinsburg alarmed residents and parents. Across town Allderdice High School students walked out to protest immigration crackdowns.
19.02.2026 00:06 👍 0 🔁 0 💬 0 📌 0
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Wow.

17.02.2026 03:59 👍 35962 🔁 16657 💬 1304 📌 2476

*pinches nose*

Time for your quarterly reminder that degenerate is a Nazi term, indicating the literal degeneration of a gene pool. Things this referred to: interracial marriage! Queerness! Disability!

It pretty much indicates they don’t think you’re human!

It’s not a cutesy way to say “leftist”

15.02.2026 00:00 👍 764 🔁 336 💬 12 📌 15

Legendary founder of NPR programming Bill Siemering is enjoying Zoom visiting with students so much that he's asked me to put a second call out. No honorarium necessary. Any takers?

14.02.2026 19:13 👍 527 🔁 236 💬 23 📌 1
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Trump calls climate change threat to public health 'a scam' but scientific findings show otherwise The decision from the administration on Thursday reverses a 2009 finding that says warming endangers Americans' lives and health.

The Trump administration on Thursday revoked a scientific finding that climate change is a danger to public health, an idea the president called "a scam."

Repeated scientific studies say it's a documented and quantifiable harm. https://to.pbs.org/4ctVHJ7

13.02.2026 21:28 👍 128 🔁 57 💬 38 📌 10
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“I Have Been Here Too Long”: Read Letters from the Children Detained at ICE’s Dilley Facility Hundreds of children are currently being held with their parents at an immigration detention center in Dilley, Texas. In letters and drawings, eight kids convey the pain of feeling trapped with no end...

Children ending up in the ICU.

Children trying to end their lives.

Children refusing to eat and drink because the food has worms and the water makes them sick.

Children held for 8 months or longer.

These are the kids ICE holds at Dilley.

They’re pleading to be let out.

10.02.2026 04:37 👍 538 🔁 315 💬 15 📌 28
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Graduate Students’ NSF Fellowship Applications Are Being “Returned Without Review” - Eos Graduate students applying for NSF funding have had their applications returned without review—even though their proposed research appears to fall squarely within the fields of study outlined in the p...

Graduate Students’ NSF Fellowship Applications Are Being “Returned Without Review” 🧪
eos.org/research-and...

07.02.2026 13:53 👍 68 🔁 59 💬 3 📌 5
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Visitors to Kalaallit Nunaat (Greenland) are behaving badly including frightening the children and raising an American flag, according to Orla Joelsen on X.

29.01.2026 22:08 👍 110 🔁 35 💬 11 📌 13

thinking about Mr. Rogers "look for the helpers" quote and I see the helpers and the helpers are being shot in the fucking head

24.01.2026 19:34 👍 1548 🔁 441 💬 0 📌 0
24.01.2026 20:25 👍 33 🔁 6 💬 0 📌 0

The system is violence. ICE, prisons, the police, the US military. They were set up to murder, torture, dominate, abuse, control, and usurp. We are told not to imagine a world without these systems of violence while the cages and dungeons and bodies pile up.

24.01.2026 18:54 👍 35 🔁 23 💬 1 📌 1

I am watching what is happening in Minneapolis on Ali Velshi and one of the ICE officers (off camera) literally says, “It’s like Call of Duty. Pretty cool huh?” as they shoot whatever it is they are shooting. Agents walking around, guns unholstered for no reason. This is insanity

24.01.2026 16:45 👍 25906 🔁 9852 💬 1043 📌 901

I know the idea of “better” policing is as old a demand as civil rights movements in this country, the impulse to call for it at this moment is so terribly cruel that it can only be understood as aligned with the terrorists.

24.01.2026 18:24 👍 636 🔁 168 💬 4 📌 4
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It’s time.

I want the see Steve Kerr’s Warriors and Minneapolis’ Timberwolves agree that they simply cannot play this game tonight.

A strike in solidarity with the besieged city and its murdered and abducted residents.

24.01.2026 18:28 👍 1890 🔁 474 💬 36 📌 74
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ICE has stopped paying for detainee medical treatment ICE halted payments in October, and the situation will persist for at least several more months

I’ve been writing Popular Information for 8 years, and this is one of the most important stories I’ve ever published. This is a humanitarian crisis that has gone unreported.

20.01.2026 13:47 👍 5188 🔁 2951 💬 148 📌 209

NEW: DHS appropriations bill funding ICE passes 220-207

7 Democrats voted YES on the bill:
- Jared Golden
- Marie Gluesenkamp Perez
- Henry Cuellar
- Tom Suozzi
- Laura Gillen
- Don Davis
- Vicente Gonzalez

One Republican voted NO: Thomas Massie

22.01.2026 21:42 👍 1347 🔁 758 💬 289 📌 984
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Signs about the history of slavery in the U.S. and the 9 people George Washington enslaved are being removed right now at the President’s House Site in Philadelphia, across from Independence Hall, months after the Trump administration threatend to do so.

How far we have not come in 250 years.

22.01.2026 21:33 👍 3315 🔁 1698 💬 124 📌 296
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Three people arrested while protesting Customs and Border Patrol recruiters at Ohio State University • Ohio Capital Journal Three people were arrested while protesting U.S. Customs and Border Patrol recruiters at an annual Ohio State University ​​career fair on Tuesday.

Three people were arrested by Ohio State Police while protesting U.S. Customs and Border Patrol recruiters at an annual Ohio State University career fair on Tuesday. ohiocapitaljournal.com/2026/01/22/t...

22.01.2026 14:30 👍 40 🔁 17 💬 2 📌 6

Every day of my mom’s life has been colored by the trauma of witnessing her mother’s torture and murder. That, in turn, colored every day of mine. Every single day ICE inflicts psychic torture on children whose souls will not heal and whose scars will bleed through onto their children. On and on.

22.01.2026 05:40 👍 721 🔁 128 💬 7 📌 0
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Heres tonight's #TimelineCleanse:
I can't imagine MAGA doing anything like this.

It is so whimsical, creative & silly — an awesome way to protest.

Doesn't that look like fun?
I would have loved to have been there!

I hope we can think of something fun like that here in sunny California. 🌞 ☀️ 😎

18.01.2026 03:33 👍 1606 🔁 698 💬 50 📌 60

I keep thinking about the toxic, pervasive mythology of "rugged individualism" as a driving force in American culture, and how the collective efforts in the Twin Cities right now are proof that the only way through hard times is together, as a community.

17.01.2026 15:00 👍 2018 🔁 481 💬 26 📌 27
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Today is the Smithsonian's deadline to give thousands of documents to the White House The White House says the Smithsonian Institution must submit materials about current and upcoming exhibitions and events for a review that will determine whether they express "improper ideology."

The White House says the Smithsonian Institution must submit materials about current and upcoming exhibitions and events for a review that will determine whether they express "improper ideology." n.pr/4583d8f

13.01.2026 11:54 👍 1878 🔁 1141 💬 390 📌 570

I've read most of the scholarship about US policing since the early 20th century. What you learn from this is that violence is inherent. You cannot "separate" out violence from policing. Police in the U.S. are violence workers.

15.01.2026 02:33 👍 1695 🔁 548 💬 13 📌 0