Controversial POV - I support everything @AntiRacismDay does, but what Saturday showed us is clear: shouting "Racists" and "Fascists!" in peoples faces will never address racism and fascism. This has to start with dialogue. 1/ 2/ You can't refute deeply-held beliefs, however delusional they might be, by simply screaming at people that they're wrong/ignorant/beyond the pale. You have to dismantle those beliefs by showing WHY they are delusional.

🧵1. I've said before: there is nothing "organic" or "spontaneous" about the anti-asylum protests. I started noticing stuff in my local FB community page around 2 years ago. Wild claims about "foreign looking men" trying to snatch their child out of a trolly in Tesco > 2. Tesco employees and police denied it had happened, but the story was out there. Chip. Chip. Chip away, as it started with jokes about asylum hotels, then the hotel occupants, then lurid stories - unverifiable of course - of people being stopped and surrounded in their cars >>

1. Hey, ECHR Haters.
Do you know what an Osman Warning is?
It is when the police are obliged by law to warn you if they believe there is a genuine, credible threat against your life.
You know where it comes from?
Article 2 ECHR. 2. None of you are too happy about the idea of digital ID's either, are you? Me neither. Do you know what protects us from that sort of interference with our private life?
Article 8 ECHR.

I haven't watched this for year, but now rewatching it, it is like the IDF used it as a training video.

https://twitter.com/0Calamity/status/1764198744340234391

Let us, please, use the second part of this documentary as our own blue-print. We cannot allow Netanyahu and his administration to escape justice in the way Rajapaksa and his government have escaped.

Was pondering earlier that, in many respects, those who suffered the ordeal by fire during the Corbyn years, being daubed as antisemites when they weren't, have actually had an enormous impact. 1/

https://twitter.com/TomLondon6/status/1718621233225355750

2/ I distinctly remember the first time I was called an antisemite. It was on here, of course, and led to fear and soul-searching and self-reflection and apology at various levels over different periods.

As someone who spent a stint studying Third World Development, before switching to Law (then, subsequently did an MA in Reconciliation and Peacebuilding [brazen appeal to authority. Shut up!] what I see happening in the UK now is a Structural Adjustment Policy 1/ 2/ SAP's were the way in which countries from the developed North intervened in the less-developed South: "We will provide funding if you roll back on public services, education, etc., focus on restructuring to the benefit of big business through transport infrastructure" etc.

Buddhist thread for the day:
When my libel case really kicked off in Nov 2019, I took myself up to my Buddhist centre and chanted for 4 hours straight to find a way through. I had spent the summer in a state of high anxiety as I knew failure would bankrupt me. 1/ 2/ While I was chanting I suddenly remembered this Gosho ("writing worthy of respect") from Nichiren Daishonin nichirenlibrary.org/en/wnd-1/Conte…

So anyway, there was this woman who came from a nice middle-class background but found herself in difficult circumstances. She still had her nice middle-class family to support her, and the - then - excellent social security safety net. 1/ 2/ She was a single mum, having separated after an apparently abusive relationship with the father of her child. Fair do's. Given the safety-net, she spent her days sat in a cafe in Scotland writing. The stuff she wrote was good, actually.

Who remembers The Man In The White Suit - Martin Bell? He stood as an anti-corruption independent and took Neil Hamilton's seat off the Tories in 1997. 🧵 2. Of course, being high-profile due to his journalist background, he was able to get a lot of media attention. But there is nothing to stop any of us standing, either as an independent or for one of the #PAL parties, on an anti-austerity, anti-corruption platform locally.

Anecdote time: I used to live in France & cut my political teeth there. Everyone and their dog is political. You'd go over the road to the little resto for your set-meal lunch for a five and the local bank manager would be sat at the same table as the local road-sweeper 1/ 2/ and the discussion would ALWAYS be politics. Loud arguments, fists on the table as people disagreed. And at the end of the meal people would shake hands (or kiss if it was women) and off they'd go til the next day. I don't have the same politics as all my French friends

1. There are moments in history when we can look back and say "why didn't people do more to stop that?"
One of those moments is happening now. I, frankly, don't give a monkeys if I am disbarred for saying this publicly, but we must, at all costs, resist the removals to Rwanda. 2. I am an immigration lawyer. I might not be one for long if I continue to say this, but the Home Office policy of removing asylum seekers to Rwanda is illegal, no matter what our High Court has said today.

Puisque j'suis en France maintenant, et les parametres habituels s'appliquent, etant donne les quelques verres de rouge, je suis oblige de partager quelques chansons francaise qui m'ont inspires
1er: William Scheller
2eme: Claude Nougarou
Nougayork

#BigPowerOff
Some of you might be wondering about the usefulness of switching off as much as you can for one day, the 1st April.
A🧵 2. Power companies work on the principle that they are able to predict in advance how much energy the nation will use on a given day - even at a given time (ad break during the World Cup, anyone?)

1/ I cannot believe it! Sir Day-Late-And-A-Dollar-Short does it again! Conspicuous by his absence throughout #COP26 , he pops up after the ball is over to say this? Just checked his timeline and not a single tweet about climate in the past 10 days! Where is the opposition?!

https://twitter.com/Keir_Starmer/status/1459625859372003329

2/ We are facing literally the biggest existential crisis humankind has ever known. The Paris Accords have gone, and we now have an even bigger mountain to climb than we did 6 years ago due to inaction and broken promises. (Don't suppose Keith can say much about those, tho)

1. The thing is, everyone falls into the same pattern time and time again:
a) Outrage on Twitter
2) Sign petitions
3) Email our MPs
4) Rinse and repeat ad nauseam. 2. (You know I'm pee'd off if my come in paragraphs with sub-paragraphs, btw)

1. The Tory govt. - ably assisted by Labour, who imo under Blair were one of the worst govt's in terms of civil liberties - are seeking to push through social media legislation in the name of "safety" that, effectively, amounts to a new sedition law:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedition 2. Free speech is not the freedom to incite hatred, criminal acts, or put people in fear of their lives. Freedom of expression is defined in Art. 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, in the following terms:

1. Raab may be right to say that it's ridiculous for someone convicted of domestic violence to claim right to family life with his victim to stop his deportation. If (unlike Theresa May's cat story) this genuinely happened, you can bet your bottom dollar the courts rejected it. 2. But what Raab is seeking to do is take that right away from everyone - however sustainable their claim may be - on the basis of a few that might push their luck.

What is #DowntonAbbeySyndrome?
A 🧵 1. This is my Scottish Papa, Joseph Nicol Bell - 2nd from the right in the back row. He lied about his age to sign up to fight in WW1. He was injured in the Somme.

Keir Starmer was DPP between 2008 and 2013.
Some of these spy cops are likely to have infiltrated protest and opposition movements during that period.
No wonder he wanted to abstain on the Spy Cops bill.
Congratulations to @fruitbatmania
Don't support her persecutors!

https://twitter.com/out_of_lives/status/1443529208790241282

158 page judgment.
I'm going to be busy reading over the next hour or so. 👓

1. At the time of the #ChickenCoup, on the anniversary of the Battle of the Boyne in an area of Liverpool known for one or two rough pubs, a window was smashed at the side of a building that just so happened to have Angela Eagle's constituency office at the back of it. 2. I'm sure you all remember the claims that a brick (it wasn't) had been thrown through her window (it wasn't) by Corbyn supporters to threaten Eagle. In fact, the police later confirmed it was a bit of masonry, but never found out who did it.

1. People often think that Buddhists should be nice. It is a myth perpetrated by a West that has no understanding of Buddhism.
Thing is, sometimes being "nice" is not compassionate.
It is not "nice" to blithely sit by and let a govt. destroy a country and its people. 2. It is not "nice" to see suffering all around you and sit in your corner, gazing at your naval and wishing for a better world.
It is not "nice" to be silent and calm when the world around you is crying out for help.