Palestine on David Marsden

Tue, 05 May 2026 07:57:05 +0100

My @SouthallStories piece has been picked up by @thecanaryuk.

Cactuses Never Die : southallstories.uk

David Marsden https://southallstories.uk/2026/05/03/cactuses-never-die/

Tue, 04 Nov 2025 18:02:00 +0100

This is not a ceasefire.

Here’s Israel's strategy to continue the war on Gaza: find a pretext, no matter how baseless, use it to kill dozens of civilians and fighters, stop fire and claim you’re honoring the ceasefire. Then do it again. https://mondoweiss.net/2025/10/israels-repeated-ceasefire-violations-are-part-of-its-strategy-to-keep-waging-war-on-gaza/

Mondoweiss 🇵🇸 https://social.mondoweiss.net/@mondoweiss/115492026772850700

Fri, 17 Oct 2025 11:41:53 +0100

Reminds me of when Ofcom censured the BBC for not declaring the status of the interviewees on the “Is Labour Anti-Semitic?” Panorama programme, oh wait…

BREAKING: The BBC has been sanctioned by the broadcasting regulator over a documentary about Gaza
www.thenational.scot/news/2555...
The National (@scotnational.bsky.social) https://bsky.app/profile/scotnational.bsky.social/post/3m3ezb4steb2h

From Antisemite to Anti-American

Sat, 30 Aug 2025 21:21:30 +0100

When confronted with documented evidence of war crimes, defenders of atrocities cycle through predictable stages before settling on a final (final?) position: reframing opposition to genocide as “anti-Americanism.”

This evolution is telling. First came the antisemitism accusation - the nuclear option deployed when hospital bombings and destroyed aid trucks became indefensible. But when that weaponisation of historical trauma failed to silence criticism, the charge quietly disappeared, replaced by a more sophisticated imperial framework.

Now the same critic who was supposedly driven by “rabid anti-Semitism” gets recast as an anti-American contrarian. The accusations shift, but the goal remains constant: delegitimise opposition to documented atrocities through character assassination rather than evidence.

The “anti-American” framing is particularly absurd given the intertwined nature of Anglo-American imperialism. British special forces operate in Ukraine alongside extensive arms sales and military coordination with Israel. When Boris Johnson can veto Ukrainian peace negotiations and the UK maintains outsized influence in international organisations despite its declining economic power, we’re seeing coordinated imperial projects rather than American unilateralism.

The “special relationship” allows Britain to punch above its weight strategically while America provides the military muscle. Royal Marines in “high-risk operations” in Ukraine, deep military oversight of Gaza operations, and the historical legacy of the Balfour Declaration all point to British imperial continuity operating through American power.

Critics who oppose both British and American imperial interventions get labeled “anti-American” because the imperial mindset cannot process consistent opposition to coordinated oppression. It must choose sides in great power competition rather than opposing the system of domination itself.

The accusations will keep shifting - antisemitic, anti-American, whatever works - because the goal was never sincere concern about prejudice, but silencing criticism of documented atrocities.

Why complain?

Sat, 30 Aug 2025 08:11:58 +0100

Two years into Gaza’s destruction, you can trace the evolution of genocide denial in real time:

Phase 1: “It’s not happening” - Israel is only targeting Hamas, civilian casualties are minimal, reports are exaggerated.

Phase 2: “It’s justified” - Palestinians brought this on themselves, Hamas (“ISIS” - seriously?!) uses human shields, Israel has the right to defend itself.

Phase 3: “It’s normal” - War is ugly, these things happen, other conflicts are worse, why complain about hospital bombings when other wars exist?

Phase 4: “Why do you care?” - The mask fully drops. Not defending the actions anymore, just questioning why anyone should object to war crimes at all.

Each phase abandons the previous justification while moving the moral goalposts further into the abyss. By the end, you’re not debating policy or tactics - you’re facing someone who has reasoned themselves out of basic human empathy.

The weaponised whataboutism reveals the imperial logic - both Ukraine and Israel are Western client states whose “sovereignty” depends on US backing. When a UK prime minister can fly to Kyiv in order to veto peace negotiations, and US aid determines Israeli military capacity, these aren’t independent nations making sovereign choices.

Some of this stems from historical guilt transformed into moral blindness - where “never again” becomes “never again to Jews” rather than “never again to anyone,” providing cover for Western imperial projects wrapped in humanitarian language.

The most chilling part isn’t the denial itself. It’s watching someone systematically dismantle their own moral framework, piece by piece, to avoid confronting what they’re supporting.

Fri, 29 Aug 2025 09:51:29 +0100

Two years into the genocide and this is now all perfectly normal and acceptable.

Israel struck Gaza's Nasser Hospital four times, analysis finds: bbc.com

Home - BBC News https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cly6lxn1l4po?at_medium=RSS&at_campaign=rss

Wed, 30 Jul 2025 08:17:12 +0100

Last week Starmer proscribed Palestine Action. Yesterday he advocated the ultimate Palestine action - recognising it as a state - while simultaneously making that recognition dependent on Israel continuing its genocide of the Palestinian people.

Starmer’s actions on Palestine were unforgivable https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2025/07/30/starmers-actions-on-palestine-were-unforgivable/ I am stunned, shocked and appalled by the continuing support Starmer is offering Israel, because that is what he really did yesterday.

Richard Murphy https://mas.to/@RichardJMurphy/114940857687371217

Sun, 27 Jul 2025 11:05:20 +0100

Look away if you’re not interested in reality, right and wrong, or changing it. And yes, that’s politics.

Israel admits no proof of Hamas systematically stealing UN aid. [original NYT article with its misleading url.]

Israel destroyed over 1,000 aid trucks, leaving supplies to rot.

Documentation of American and Israeli forces murdering Palestinians seeking aid.

The pattern is clear: Israel used false claims about Hamas aid theft to justify a blockade that has created mass starvation, while simultaneously destroying aid shipments and shooting people trying to get food. This is the very definition of collective punishment and using starvation as a weapon of war. It’s a war crime.

Fri, 25 Jul 2025 09:24:34 +0100

This is so messed up!

‘Yves Bonnet, the intelligence chief who tried to negotiate Abdallah’s exchange in 1985 and is now a member of the far-right National Rally, said he was “treated worse than a serial killer” and that “the United States was obsessed with keeping him in jail”.

‘According to a report in Le Monde newspaper, no Palestinian prisoner – even those condemned to life imprisonment in Israel – has served more than 40 years in jail. Abdallah served 41.’

Pro-Palestinian convict freed by France after 41 years: bbc.com

Home - BBC News https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvg8gmly8gno

Thu, 24 Jul 2025 16:42:36 +0100

Leeds former head teacher faces no charges following terrorism arrest for holding up a graphic from a satirical magazine.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cz9kdq84j3lo

Mark Burton https://mstdn.social/@markhburton/114908145880340507

Sun, 20 Jul 2025 15:54:37 +0100

“Self-defence.”

Israeli forces kill 67 Palestinians seeking aid in northern Gaza, Hamas-run ministry says: bbc.com

Home - BBC News https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c8rp62480r3o

Fri, 18 Jul 2025 07:53:55 +0100

Sick and evil.

BBC radio 4 now.
Prof Maynard, British surgeon describing injuries of teenage boys collecting food on Gaza.
Israeli army playing a game.
Today they shoot heads, yesterday testicles, another day abdomens....
It's a game.
Shots from soldiers, shots from drones.
This in addition to previous pattern of blast injuries.
All that in addition to malnutrition and starvation of babies.
International doctors have baby formula feed stolen by Israeli border control on entry.
#murder #genocide #Gaza

Mark Burton https://mstdn.social/@markhburton/114872883539102792

Mon, 14 Jul 2025 09:53:03 +0100

“Do you condemn the IDF?”

Genocide expert:
“The argument that the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] is conducting a war in Gaza is simply cynical, there is no war in Gaza. What the IDF is doing in Gaza is demolishing it. Hundreds of buildings are being bulldozed every week. This is not a secret, but mainstream media coverage has been insufficient.”

Seeking bulldozer drivers to demolish Gaza: how a genocide is being outsourced | Arwa Mahdawi | The Guardian
https://archive.ph/https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/jul/09/bulldzoer-gaza-genocide-idf-meta

Mark Burton https://mstdn.social/@markhburton/114850678720778898

Wed, 09 Jul 2025 13:43:55 +0100

Fixed the headline.

Gaza truce talks reportedly stall ~~despite second Netanyahu-Trump meeting~~ after Netanyahu demands the elimination of the people he's negotiating with: bbc.com

Home - BBC News https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/ce3newwl1zeo

Sun, 08 Jun 2025 18:07:26 +0100

Incredible piece from Auntie’s most experienced war correspondent and Middle East journalist. Good explainer here, too.

Bowen: Israel is accused of the gravest war crimes - how governments respond could haunt them for years: bbc.com

Home - BBC News https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0r1xl5wgnko

Sat, 31 May 2025 12:19:03 +0100

A must read.

Israel so-called 'aid' programme for Gaza isn't about feeding the survivors.
It's just another phase in its genocide.

New post 👇

www.owenjones.news/p/israels...

Owen Jones (@owenjones.bsky.social) https://bsky.app/profile/owenjones.bsky.social/post/3lqhecnnfvk27

Tue, 13 May 2025 21:40:45 +0100

A little tune I created, related.

The sports presenter said: “I know where I stand on this… What’s going on there [Gaza], the mass murder of thousands of children is probably something we should have a little opinion on.”

Gary Lineker deletes 'Zionism' post amid criticism: bbc.com

Home - BBC News https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c39x0133e2wo

Wed, 07 May 2025 18:49:04 +0100

True then, and true now.

Sat, 26 Apr 2025 16:51:00 +0100

It’s come to something when we’re praising the Pope for cheering for peace not war, and welcoming refugees and the homeless.

Today, we pay tribute to Pope Francis.
He welcomed refugees & the homeless where others turned their backs.

He called for peace — in Gaza, Ukraine, Sudan, the DRC & beyond — where others cheered for war.

His humanity is an inspiration to us all, and he will be greatly missed.

Jeremy Corbyn (@jeremycorbyn.bsky.social) https://bsky.app/profile/jeremycorbyn.bsky.social/post/3lnpgnze35c2e

Sat, 05 Apr 2025 21:33:03 +0100

Israel appears to commit war crimes with impunity.

Video footage appears to contradict Israeli account of Gaza medic killings: bbc.com

Home - BBC News https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4g2z103nqxo

Thu, 27 Mar 2025 20:05:00 +0100

Interesting the way this story is framed as if award-winning BBC journalist Jeremy Bowen has committed a heinous crime, associating what he has consistently reported with the ludicrously banned documentary Gaza: How To Survive A Warzone.

Tue, 18 Mar 2025 09:26:00 +0100

Israel broke the terms of the ceasefire agreement and have now resumed their genocide of Palestinians in Gaza.

Pure fucking evil, which the US is paying for and arming, and for which the UK is providing intelligence.

Sun, 16 Mar 2025 02:07:00 +0100

You’d never know from this headline, of course, that it’s Israel who broke the ceasefire agreement.

US rejects 'impractical' Hamas demands as Gaza truce hangs in balance: bbc.com

Home - BBC News https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cr7230vrkmko

Wed, 12 Mar 2025 11:03:00 +0100

American values.

Democratic Senator Chris Murphy on the forced disappearance of Mahmoud Khalil

#Israel #Palestine #Gaza #MahmoudKhalil

Raphael Mimoun רפאל מימון https://social.coop/@raph/114147680572533972

Sun, 09 Mar 2025 12:57:00 +0100

“This is what happens when someone appeases barbarians. More bombs, more aggression, more victims. Another tragic night in ~~Palestine~~Ukraine.”

Mon, 03 Mar 2025 23:25:00 +0100

If only there was a human rights lawyer / political leader of sound moral principles who could form a coalition of the willing to secure a peace plan.

Israel has resumed its genocide in Gaza.
But the Western media has overwhelmingly suppressed the truth.

New post
👇
www.owenjones.news/p/israel-...

Owen Jones (@owenjones.bsky.social) https://bsky.app/profile/owenjones.bsky.social/post/3ljipaydpuk2t

Sun, 02 Mar 2025 17:51:00 +0100

Trump is an evil narcissist for publicly humiliating Zelensky because Zelensky refuses to negotiate a peace deal with Putin because Putin is “the aggressor”, illegally occupies Ukrainian land, and “wants to kill them all”.

Netanyahu illegally occupies Palestinian land and reneges on a peace deal he negotiated with “the aggressor” Hamas who “want to kill them all”.

Israel blocks entry of all humanitarian aid into Gaza: bbc.com

Home - BBC News https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c9q4w99je78o

Sat, 15 Feb 2025 12:38:00 +0100

‘The UK currently has schemes for some Afghans, Ukrainians and people from Hong Kong to come to the UK but no route for Palestinians.’

Keir Starmer pledges to close loophole that let Gazan family settle in UK bbc.co.uk

BBC - Home https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cpdx0yn6v7lo

Wed, 05 Feb 2025 12:47:00 +0100

Of course, it’s the anti-genocidal voters who didn’t buy the genocidal Biden/Harris presidential ticket who are to blame for the genocidal Trump presidency.

Seriously?!

Does anyone seriously believe she wouldn’t have continued to arm and fund Israel to “finish the job” with or without this temporary ceasefire and hostage exchange?

Sun, 29 Dec 2024 00:15:00 +0100

Reminds me of Tiananmen Square.

This is the last photo of Dr. Hussam Abu Safiya, the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital, walking toward Israeli tanks before being detained by Israeli forces after they destroyed the last hospital in northern Gaza. His current condition is unknown.

Mondoweiss 🇵🇸 https://social.mondoweiss.net/@mondoweiss/113732519918558155

What's going on in Syria?

Wed, 11 Dec 2024 23:43:00 +0100

If I understand this correctly: it’s illegal in the UK to say or do anything that could be construed as support for the democratically elected government of Gaza and likewise for a party of the democratically elected government of Lebanon because we designate them as proscribed terrorist organisations.

The outgoing US president brokered a one-sided ceasefire between Lebanon and Israel, which allows Israel to continue bombing Lebanon and illegally invading and occupying its sovereign territory.

As soon as this ceasefire was in place, the Israeli prime minister threatened the president of Syria, and the armed militia formerly known as al-Qaeda/ISIS/Daesh/al-Nusra (who we designate as proscribed terrorist organisations) proceeded to violently overthrow the government of Syria (who we did not designate as a terrorist organisation despite all the bad press).

Incidentally, the leader of this armed militia formerly known as al-Qaeda/ISIS/Daesh/al-Nusra was previously held in US detention facilities in Iraq for several years and was coincidentally released just in time to form Al-Nusra at the start of Syrian Civil War in 2011.

The leader of this armed militia formerly known as al-Qaeda/ISIS/Daesh/al-Nusra has now formed the new government in Syria.

They are the good guys and are really very moderate compared to the former government of Syria - the bad guys (which is presumably why we didn’t proscribe them as a terrorist organisation).

While all this is happening, Israel is bombing Syria and illegally invading and occupying its sovereign territory. And Israel continues to obliterate Gaza. All paid for by the good ol' US of A.

Bye Bye Biden

Thu, 28 Nov 2024 19:16:00 +0100

Some highlights and thoughts from Yesterday’s Man: The Case Against Joe Biden by Branko Marcetic 📚

Against Biden’s best efforts, disaster had been averted. (p. 127)

This seems to sum up his career neatly. Far from the popular public image that he has cultivated and that the media have happily gone along with for the most part.

Foreign policy

“I’m not going to start World War Three for you!”

Not Biden, but British army General Mike Jackson refusing to follow Biden’s friend General Wesley Clark’s orders to confront Russia in Kosovo. (p. 172)

The book was written before Russia invaded Ukraine. It seems that Biden wants to go out with a bang, despite his previous utterances.

”There is no such thing as a winnable nuclear war.” (p. 152)

Biden saying one thing and doing another is characteristic of his entire political career. He’s not unique in that respect, of course, and perhaps he’s actually better at it than most. He did get elected president after all.

Israel

Biden was the ultimate Friend of Israel. He helped provide Israel with huge amounts of US aid money, and Israel lobbyists on his campaign staff returned the favour helping Biden raise huge amounts of money to run his various election campaigns.

Biden spent his entire career giving unqualified support to Israel, and claimed that Americans “couldn’t afford” to criticise Israel in public.

Yugoslavia

Toward the end of Bush’s term, the ex-communist Eastern European country of Yugoslavia began disintegrating in a miasma of nationalism and ethnic and religious sectarianism, forces unleashed by a Western-imposed program of economic “shock therapy” that in essence exported Western neoliberal policies to the once prosperous country, running its living standards into the ground. War soon broke out. (p. 156)

Later, Biden agitated for Clinton’s military intervention in Serbia, which lay the foundations for future “humanitarian” bombing campaigns elsewhere.

If you cared about political survival, it was safer to err on the side of war. (p. 158)

Iraq

Despite [or because of?] his role in starting the war, Biden was still considered one of the party’s wisest heads on foreign policy. (p. 173)

George W. Bush apparently followed Biden’s instructions on selling the war on Iraq to the American people and the United Nations.

Biden proposed an ethno-nationalist “three state solution” for Iraq similar to Israel’s proposals to came up Arab states into weaker sectarian units.

He proposed to Balkanise Iraq into smaller ethnic and religious sectarian states with limited freedom of movement and borders controlled by foreign troops.

A bit like Gaza and the rest of the illegally Occupied Palestinian Territories now.

Flawed as it was, the plan burnished Biden’s credentials as a foreign policy expert. (p. 179)

Iraq duped Biden forcing withdrawal of US troops. In response, ISIS ‘emerged' from an oppressed religious minority.

War on Terror

Biden’s ‘counter-terrorism plus’ policy saw the US bomb seven Muslim countries without declaring war, much like Israel is now doing with more American bombs.

That helped to fuel anti-Americanism and an immigration and prisons crisis.

Instead of providing homes for the poor, he would spend the following decades housing them in jails. (p. 85)

Domestic policy

Race relations

Racist Clinton doubled the American prison population and achieved the world’s highest rate of incarceration. Mostly with black people.

This policy usefully helped to reduce official unemployment figures and paint Clinton’s neoliberalism as an economic miracle.

Another lesson Biden had first wrongly internalised from American apartheid: that people of different backgrounds simply couldn’t live together in harmony. (p. 177)

Instead Biden backed segregation (busing) and individual states' rights over a united federal states of America.

Women’s rights

”I don’t think that a woman has the sole right to say what should happen to her body.” (p. 184)

Biden on the Roe v. Wade decision in 1974

Biden’s neoliberalism

Biden presented as a progressive liberal on the side of the working class. But he spent his career siding with Republicans and moving the Democrats ever further to the right.

At one time even a former Klan recruiter thought Biden had gone too far. Another Klan leader praised Biden’s election platform claiming it was as if it had been written by a Klansman.

Supporting spending cuts

Biden said Jimmy Carter was nothing special, and welcomed Reaganomics as a step in the right direction. Although in typical Biden fashion he also claimed Reagan’s first budget would be an economic disaster before voting for it (along with 29 other Democrats).

Reagan’s cuts cost 270,000 jobs and reduced access to financial support for millions of Americans. Rather than reducing the deficit, it increased it, and made the rich richer, and the poor poorer.

Like Thatcher in Britain, Reagan’s greatest achievement was in transforming his opposition into his mirror image. You still get a choice at the polls, but there’s very little, if any, substantive policy difference between the two.

”Biden isn’t a liberal anymore.”

Ayn Rand acolyte Paul Ryan, who lost to Biden in the 2012 vice-presidential election, but declared a more important victory.

Biden’s support for tax cuts for the rich wasn’t a one-off. This was a repeated pattern of voting indicating where his true loyalties lay. Indeed, later he proposed his own tax cuts that were more severe than Reagan’s, and “right out of the Tea Party playbook”.

Where once the tyranny of “special interests” meant the control of government by big business and the super-rich, it now referred to the ordinary Americans the New Deal had sought to protect from those same powerful entities. (p. 68)

No longer aligned with the working class, Biden now focused on the middle class, solidly Conservative, tax-and-government fearing supporters of the super-rich.

”It’s the middle class, stupid.” (p.147)

Much like the South where Biden always pivoted for support of anti-union, pro-slavery and white supremacist votes. Biden could have tried to bring Southern voters to the Democrats, but instead chose to lead the Democrats to align with the politics of the South.

Biden had successfully facilitated the decades-long wholesale robbery of working- class Americans by law enforcement. (p. 91)

Enter Bill Clinton, who with Biden’s full support, carried on Reagan’s economic policies leading to ever more cuts in government spending and hardship for millions more Americans.

Biden again offered trillions of dollars of cuts to retirement funds, Medicare, Medicaid and food stamps, giving Mitch McConnell everything he asked for.

As president, much of Obama’s job involved cleaning up messes that Biden had helped create. (p. 191)

The major legislative accomplishments that Biden had racked up in prior decades had succeeded because they had been in pursuit of Republican goals. (p. 199)

Biden did what he always did: plead fealty to working class voters in public speeches filled with references to his Scranton roots while privately appealing for the support of big-money interests. (p. 214)

By 2020, Biden had shifted (and shifted the Democrats) so far to the right, he was finally electable and the safest establishment option to defeat Trump as president.

Fri, 04 Oct 2024 07:38:55 +0100

Dear President Biden…

Fear and Loathing

Thu, 09 May 2024 18:01:41 +0100

I spent the best part of nine months in America in 1989-90 on an international student exchange programme. It was an experience I’ll never forget, mostly good, and certainly an eye opener.

There was a bit of a last minute faff getting my visa (I had misunderstood the requirements) and by the time I got to Gatwick Airport I was shitting bricks, having never flown or been abroad before. Lockerbie was also still fresh in the memory.

The plane I was on just happened to be Virgin Atlantic’s inaugural flight from Gatwick to JFK, and so we had the unpleasure of Richard Branson sexually assaulting us in stockings and suspenders to celebrate.

On arrival in the US, I had no clue what to do other than to get a “limousine” to Farmington, CT, and then a taxi from there. I had my dime for the phone call ready.

The limousine was a coach, and we arrived in a deserted Farlington coach terminal at 2 am. I found a phone booth, put in my dime and called a taxi. The operator couldn’t help me and hung up. There goes my dime! Why didn’t I have a Plan B dime? Fuck! Somehow, I managed to call another taxi and got to my student digs on campus at CCSU in New Britain.

It all felt utterly surreal to me then, like being stranded on another planet, adrift in my bunk bed, alone in the halls of a spacecraft, listening to the crickets and the ghostly sounds of train horns. From the initial induction for international students - “Americans can be outwardly incredibly friendly to strangers, and will almost certainly invite you to come to their house anytime for dinner. Whatever you do, don’t go! They won’t be expecting you!” - to the imposing vastness of the country and people, I was warned to expect culture shock.

Everything was big to me then, which meant that I felt small and insignificant. I found it hard to adapt and got so homesick that I booked a flight home for Xmas and New Year just to see my family and friends again. I didn’t really want to go back afterwards.

But I had already had some amazing experiences. My roommate, Mark, was totally into active outdoor life and we went climbing locally at Ragged Mountain, which was an exhilarating first for me climbing to the top of a cliff. Then we set up a ridiculously ambitious plan to climb Long’s Peak in the Colorado Rockies during the Thanksgiving holiday. We failed because we got hit by what was thankfully just a two day a blizzard as we set up our tents at basecamp. Once safely back down and showered, we had a massive breakfast at Ed’s Cantina in Estes Park the next morning before going skiing (another death-defying first for me).

Mark is still cycling, skiing, hiking and living off his memories of later climbing Mount Everest while selling toilets to pay for it all (which is funny in itself as I have never met anyone who can fart and burp constantly like he did back then). Mark’s wilderness pal Mike is still in the wilderness, and is now also a published author on the significance and synchronicity of owls as messengers from other worlds or dimensions in time and space.

We regularly ate at Pizza World in Farmington, where they made the biggest and best spinach and ricotta calzones. We drank pitchers of beer at Elmer’s, and got free slices of fresh pizza every evening at 10:30.

I trained with the Blue Devils' soccer team (with one eye on getting fit for our Colorado expedition), and made number 26 (out of 11) on the team, which featured multiple Geordie, Irish, and European failed pros on soccer scholarships, and coached by a Geordie and an ex-Bristol City player.

A group of us Internationals set up a satirical student magazine (A Connecticut Wanker) produced on a very early Apple Macintosh computer.

I even got to have a go on the student radio one morning and played Fools Gold by Stone Roses to our mystery audience.

That reminds me, Steve Albini’s untimely death yesterday - when I got back to the UK, I tried to get involved in the student union magazine and wrote a condemnatory piece about the naming of Albini’s new band Rapeman. I got slaughtered by the hipster editorial team for being unhip and not being into Marmalade, and I held a grudge against Albini ever since (despite grudgingly enjoying his work as a producer). So it was with mixed feelings that I read yesterday that he had recently noted the error of his ways as a young man and sought to hold his hands up and acknowledge his white male privilege.

When I somewhat reluctantly returned to the states in January, I ended up having such a blast I didn’t want to leave when my visa expired and tried (and failed) to get a new one so I could stay and work. We did more skiing (in Killington, Vermont), and watched Nelson Mandela walk free on the hotel TV. (Almost exactly thirteen years later, I watched in shock and awe as the US bombed Baghdad back to the Stone Age on the hotel TV while on a skiing trip in France).

We did Spring Break in Miami, and the Florida Keys, but especially Key West.

We took a road trip to New Orleans via the Appalachian Trail, Memphis and the Mississippi. And we finished off with a road trip delivering a car from Boston to LA, taking in the Mesa Verde, and the Grand Canyon, along the way.

We did day trips to New York and Washington, DC.

When I say “we” in all of the above, we were a group of international students, quite a few of us English, but with some French, German, Italian, Cypriot, Bangladeshi and Canadian people in the group, too. Not everyone went on every trip, but I did.

We split up in Santa Monica as my two travelling companions wanted to go to San Diego, while I wanted to go to San Francisco (and I had run out of money, so my plan was to get a flight back to New Britain from there, and then on to my flight home to the UK). I ended up literally walking around San Francisco for a week with no money and staying in the cheapest hostel I could find. I spent quite a bit of time sitting on the dock of the bay looking at Alcatraz and the Golden Gate Bridge.

One memory that always stuck in my mind was talking to a business professor at CCSU. I think I had signed up for his class before quickly dropping it because he insisted on too many formalities in his classroom that I felt had nothing to do with learning or even business (although what do I know about the latter?). Anyway, for some reason I can’t remember, this professor ended up explaining to me just how fearful, and loathing, and downright paranoid he was about unAmericans who - in his words - were “all out to get us”.

I didn’t really understand it then, I was just left gobsmacked that anyone could really feel like that in the richest and most powerful country in the world. But on the other hand, I knew that most of the Americans I had met had never travelled beyond their state borders, and never learned anything of the world outside of the US, and mostly were solely concerned with getting their degrees while having one massive keg party. A surprising (to me) number of female students were already married (or engaged to be married), and all wore so much make-up on a daily basis it’s like they were auditioning for Real Housewives sixteen years before it aired on TV.

The Israeli genocide of Palestinians in Gaza and a recent quote from a Jewish man born and raised into Zionist culture made me think about my paranoid professor and his culturally repressed students and the American people more generally, as it is the United States of America that is paying for and arming Israel. The US is, of course, founded by religious extremists fleeing persecution in their homelands, and who then inflicted genocide on the native American peoples as they colonised and settled on their lands. It’s a white European, male supremacist culture, very similar to Zionism, so it’s really no wonder the two are inextricably allied.

Fri, 12 Apr 2024 09:54:38 +0100

Zack, 35, says: “I got pretty disillusioned after I found myself consistently matching with anti-Zionists, even when I set it to ‘Jewish only’.”

Zack put an Israeli flag emoji on his profile to rectify the situation. “It’s annoying because the more creative personalities I normally go for tend to be more anti-Israel.” Now he’s having fewer awkward conversations about the conflict, but the people he’s matching with are “less interesting”.

Source: Hinge and Tinder are swamped with anti-Zionism, say Jewish singles - The Jewish Chronicle

Mon, 08 Apr 2024 10:04:06 +0100

The agenda now is all-Israeli: There is no one else but us. Only our disasters, our suffering, our sacrifices – and everything else can burn for all we care.

We have become as monsters. Not only in our actions, but above all in our apathy.

Gideon Levy via Hippy Steve

Fri, 05 Apr 2024 20:01:46 +0100

Front page of today’s Independent newspaper, headlines:

Biden calls for immediate ceasefire in Gaza.

UK legal experts, lawmakers and military leaders call for a ban on arms sales to Israel.

Sat, 16 Mar 2024 10:37:00 +0100

Hamas wants a permanent end to the war and full Israeli withdrawal from Gaza.

Mr Netanyahu’s office said the proposals were “unrealistic”.

Thu, 07 Mar 2024 23:35:00 +0100

Currently reading: Yesterday’s Man by Branko Marcetic 📚

He would indeed spend his Senate career showering Israel with unquestioning support, even when its behavior elicited bipartisan outrage. He helped to secure an unparalleled amount of US aid for Israel early on and to scuttle a 1998 peace proposal with Palestine, and he told an assembly of lobbyists that Americans “cannot afford to publicly criticize Israel.”

Thu, 15 Feb 2024 20:07:00 +0100

The Crisis in Gaza:

Navigating Difficult Conversations

A Q&A with Dr. Gabor Maté & Daniel Maté

February 16, 2024 • 9:00 – 10:30am PST

Mon, 12 Feb 2024 21:38:00 +0100

the Biden administration does in fact have tons of leverage it can use to stop the genocidal massacre in Gaza, it just doesn’t want to because it would be “politically unpopular” and because “Biden himself has a personal attachment to Israel.”

How has Israel managed to kill some ten thousand Palestinians in Gaza without managing to do any real damage to Hamas if Hamas fighters are hiding amongst all those civilians?

Caitlin Johnstone at Twitter

Wed, 01 Nov 2023 17:26:00 +0100

After more than three weeks of Israel’s “targeted” bombing of Hamas in Gaza, Starmer claims that a ceasefire now “would leave Hamas with the infrastructure and the capabilities to carry out the sort of attack we saw on October 7.”

Propaganda

Tue, 24 Oct 2023 15:10:41 +0100

Last night, I was away in the middle of nowhere with no wifi and very poor data connection, so put on the TV to watch the BBC/ITV news at ten.

Haven’t watched it for fifteen years or more.

It was pure propaganda for Israel.

Jeremy Bowen even said as much: “This is what they want you to see” (as opposed the genocide in Gaza).

Free Palestine

Wed, 11 Oct 2023 14:05:41 +0100

There seems to be a co-ordinated drive to obliterate Palestine, and Palestinians, from the map.

I find it very upsetting that my government, and many other “Western” governments are wholeheartedly supporting Israel’s genocidal “self-defence” narrative.

Nothing justifies carpet-bombing innocent people - mostly women and children.

Nothing justifies cutting off their supplies of electricity, water, food, fuel.

The sadistic Netanyahu told Palestinians in Gaza to leave, then bombed the crossing into Egypt while they tried to do so.

These are war crimes.

Now, our fascist government is attempting to outlaw any expression of support for the people of Gaza and Palestine.

Fully supported and enabled by our fascist “opposition” party.

The Labour Mayor of London helped to spread what turned out to be fake news about an alleged anti-Semitic attack on a Jewish-owned shop. Known liar Luciana Berger, MP, did the same. As did countless other “sensible, adult centrists”.

It’s not anti-Semitic to support the people of Palestine in their long struggle for freedom from Israel’s oppression.