Biden is so gung-ho re Israel, that in 1982 he reportedly told Menachem Begin (not exactly a fan of Palestinians) that he would defend Israel “even if that meant killing women or children.” When you unnerve *Begin*…. theintercept.com/2021/04/27/b...
New MP Hannah Spencer was given a police escort after an anti-hate demonstration turned violent. The Green Party MP had made a speech at the Greater Together Manchester event on Sunday afternoon in Piccadilly Gardens.
I try very hard not to use the word Orwellian too much but it’s the best adjective for the mauling of language at the start of this BBC News report. “… an anti-hate demonstration that turned violent”. www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
*Counts down to Trump's more ornate and tackily gold embossed "MISSION ACCOMPLISHED" banner*
The reason the middle-class media has not reported Hannah Spencer being attacked by right-wing transphobes is that it needs to preserve the nice, coffeee-round-the-kitchen-table, middle-class view of transphobia, not the thuggish fascist reality.
It's evil under any circumstances to encourage the machinery of death and imperialism to attack any country, but there's a particular cowardice and stupidity to thinking you can wield it against people who you have that kind of connection to.
I remember when Turkey had huge anti-government protests and I'll tell you this, not a single British Turk I met through that was begging the big boys to lay waste to our parent's home country. I have nothing but contempt for the people who beg America to do the work they're too weak to see through.
I am currently watching a lot of well-intentioned but naive people in my broader social circle adjusting to the whiplash of people who had been hectoring and cajoling them about listening to Iranian voices and so on now grinning and gnashing their teeth as innocent Iranians are slaughtered.
Despite what Instagram infographics and TikTok influencers say, you remain a self-possessing individual with their own moral and intellectual agency, free to assess behaviour which appears cruel, malignant or amoral on your own terms, and conclude that it is, in fact, precisely that.
It isn't a betrayal of one's progressive values to witness members of a country's diaspora dancing in the street and rejoicing at news of their home nation being bombed or the slaughter of hundreds of their compatriots, and question the goodness of their intentions or clarity of their moral compass.
"This probably sounds like nightmare fuel to many, but to wealthy VCs and AI and crypto entrepreneurs it’s the next gold rush." is the quote of our time
Genocidal shit
To be left dead by attacks is the natural state of the Middle Easterner, while in the Western culture (also Israel somehow) being killed is a major taboo.
Someone needs to update the Death Star's Wookipedia whilst its editors are asleep.
The proton torpedoes do look a bit like glowing jizz, so
I can't recall which episode of Trashfuture it was, but when they were discussing Reform councillors being elected, that the latter kept going on re cutting DEI, the hosts said, indicated just how terminally online in US/Maga circles they were, that they had no idea how UK councils *worked*.
Hanging around my journalist uncle in Islamabad* in the mid-late 90s ensured I'd meet people along those lines, so when the Iraq Invasion happened, and then Power of Nightmares came out, I pretty much felt "Yep, that tracks 100%".
*I know which restaurants were dead drops, bugged etc
Making conversion therapy the official NHS policy for trans youth
I have family in Pakistan, and the government is already looking at shifting to some form of hybrid WFH/online classes, in preparation for that, plus they're desperately stockpiling what they can in terms of diesel, petrol etc. www.dawn.com/news/1979989...
You can almost always tell who was born in the UK before they got rid of unconditional Jus Soli citizenship (1983), and thus never had to think about any of this, and so takes what they've heard from a Mate as gospel.
The British striver vs. skiver moralism, with a soupçon of "I'm going to internalise the 'it's so *easy* to *just* get a visa and *just* settle/work easy peasey' mindset of the Sun and the Daily Mail, though I'd not be caught dead reading those, *I* read the Guardian."
oof, there's suddenly a lot of dodgy posts being made about non eu residents in the UK. people see a (perfectly fine) study comparing EU and non eu numbers post Brexit and then it's "brown people bring their full family here and stay forever!!" in every direction
Oh joy, my favourite category of unabashed migration-related racism and Othering!
BBC News front page this morning has a story about misbehaving football fans placed higher up than the coverage of the fire and its consequences
I was in Tehran this time last year. I want you to see how beautiful my city is. I want you to see the city the US/Israel is trying to wipe off the face of the earth
This repeats yet another pattern from the Iraq War. When the Iraqis did not behave as the Americans wanted — without the deference and gratitude that a foreign military occupier felt it was due — they became targets.
The children who never came home.
"Europe appears to have accepted the law of the jungle favoured by Trump and Netanyahu."
Contrast Spain’s PM Pedro Sánchez: “You can be against a heinous regime such as that in Iran while also rejecting a military intervention that is unjustified, dangerous, and outside of international law."
"But the chancellor of Germany Fredrich Merz, while admitting the Iranian operation carried “risks”, told the world on social media: “Now is not the time to lecture our partners and allies.”"
If 176 children were slaughtered in their classrooms in Dublin, Brussels, Berlin, Tel Aviv or Texas by a foreign adversary, the world would rightfully be at a standstill.
- Shona Murray
www.irishexaminer.com/opinion/colu... @shonamurray.bsky.social
