I think Tim has missed the significance of the new Pope's choice of name. Let me explain.

https://twitter.com/timothy_stanley/status/1920935924533178867

First, let's backtrack to Pope Francis's election. He chose his papal name in honour of St. Francis of Assissi. St. Francis is my patron saint, so I know a bit about him. 1/

I wrote a post documenting the deaths by fire in Gaza, and observed that this meets the dictionary definition of "holocaust". Predictably, someone on Substack notes accused me of antisemitism. *sigh* /1 True, I didn't mention Oct 7th. I've covered it in previous pieces, so didn't think I needed to discuss it again. But he insisted that Oct 7th must feature in every piece about the Gaza conflagration. He accused me of "bad editorial practice" for omitting it. 2/

MP: "Do you believe that the Palestinians are entitled to a state?"
Hausdorff: "Self-determination does not give one a right to a state in international law."
MP: "I'd like to know whether Natasha Hausdorff believes that Palestinians have the right to a state?"
Hausdorff: "Palestinians have self-determination in autonomy. So according to international law, no".

Hausdorff shot herself in the foot. If "autonomy" is sufficient for Palestinians and they have no right to a Palestinian state, then autonomy must also be sufficient for Jews and they have no right to a Jewish state.

After all, as Hausdorff herself says, "the same rules have to apply". I think Hausdorff's application of uti possidetis juris also undermines the legitimacy of a Jewish state. She said uti possidetis juris "sets the start point" for the new state. When the British mandate ended and Israel declared independence, Israel was a majority Arab state.

The present State of Israel is a racist apartheid state and has been for its entire existence.

Truth is not antisemitism. The State of Israel has been starving people in Gaza to a greater or lesser extent for 25 years. themintmagazine.com/malnutrition-i…

In my latest piece at @themintmag, I've outlined what I think the real purpose of Trump's tariffs is. Or rather, purposes. 1/ There are three different tariffs:
- the 10% universal tariff
- the "trade deficit" tariff, determined by country
- the product tariff, e.g. 25% on all car imports
As I explain in my article, each has a different purpose. /2 themintmagazine.com/trumps-card-wh…

Actually, you've set up a new company called Reform 2025, of which you and Zia Yusuf are sole directors. It's a company limited by guarantee and has no shareholders. But it's not "owned" by its members. 1/ …te.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/162607… x.com/Nigel_Farage/s… Your old company, Reform UK Party Ltd, still exists. It is a private limited company. You have sold your shareholding in this company to your new company, Reform 2025 Ltd. …te.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/116948…

This is like a case study in extreme apartheid. They built a cage around a Palestinian family's home to separate it from the Jewish settlement surrounding it. The only gate to the cage is controlled by the Israeli army.

https://twitter.com/MiddleEastMnt/status/1888178675683619211

The Jewish settlement is completely illegal. And so is the cage. And the presence of the IDF. And the IDF's refusal to open the gate to allow a sick elderly woman to be taken to hospital. They'd have let her die.

For 16 months there has been a culture of silence about the true nature of the "peaceful Israeli communities" attacked on 7/10. Time that silence was broken. Those communities were established by Israel to secure the lands stolen from the Palestinians expelled to the Gaza Strip. In other words, to prevent the Palestinians returning.

This is the source of the Treasury's claim that in 2006, 90% of Waspi women (women born 6/4/1950 to 5/4/1960) knew women's state pension age was rising. At the time of the survey, these women were aged 45-56.
1/ webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/ukgwa/20100208… The survey was carried out by the National Centre for Social Research and Professor Stephen McKay. It used a nationally representative sample of 1,950 adults aged 18-69. The sample was fairly evenly spread across age groups but there were more women than men.

He was repeatedly warned that his algorithmic stablecoin could go into a death spiral. Instead of listening, he insulted those who warned him.

https://twitter.com/MarioNawfal/status/1875085372406854105

But being a blithering idiot and too arrogant to listen to expert advice doesn't make him a fraudster. The question the court will have to answer is whether he intended to defraud people of their money. I'm not sure he did.

I did a detailed analysis of the reasons for Silvergate's collapse, including the FHLB's decision to pull its funding, in March 2023. Nic Carter has of course gone for a conspiracy theory. But there are simpler explanations. coppolacomment.com/2023/03/lesson… x.com/Bitfinexed/sta… One possibility is that the rapid fall in the fair value of Silvergate's assets meant it failed to meet the FHLB's tangible capital rule, which is more stringent for smaller banks than the Fed's capital requirements.

Still reading Meir Kahane. Blimey he's racist. And hopelessly illogical. After saying "Arabs can find a home in any of their 22 states", he then writes an entire chapter explaining why they can't. But at least he repudiates the sickening liberal Zionist gaslighting of Palestinians, which has gone on for decades and continues to this day in "peace proposals" that envisage Palestinians happily living in segregated bantustans with fewer rights than Jews.

On Saturday, I received a letter from the DWP telling my partner about changes to Winter Fuel Payment.

My partner died on Thursday 19th September. I informed the DWP of his death on Friday 27th September using the online "Tell Us Once" service. 1/ My partner's state pension has already been stopped. I did not understand why they were writing to him about WFP, since clearly they knew he was dead. 2/

This is idiotic. The hostages are in Gaza. Israel controls all movement of goods and people in and out of Gaza, and its military campaign creates serious risks for NGO staff. Clearly Israel must consent to allow Red Cross staff into Gaza and make it safe for them to do so. This is idiotic too. The reason the BBC (and other news organisations) preface "Gaza health ministry" with "Hamas-run" is to issue a content warning on the information provided by the health ministry, not to validate Hamas.

I am reminded of them every time I enter @RochesterCathed and see the shadows of the paintings that were hacked off the walls, plastered over or whitewashed, and the banner in the Quire listing the Bishops of Rochester that starts with John Fisher and ends with Nicholas Ridley.

https://twitter.com/EFernie/status/1831234779464818897

John Fisher was executed by Henry VIII for refusing to recognise him as head of the Church in England and opposing his marriage to Anne Boleyn. He is a Saint in the Roman Catholic Church.

There can be no private sector solution to the crisis engulfing water companies that does not involve very large increases in customer bills. Nationalise them. These companies provide a finite resource to a restricted population. Their revenue comes almost entirely from customer payments. The idea that shareholders can have high returns AND customers low bills necessarily means inadequate investment and/or unsustainable debt.

Blimey. And you thought Thames Water was complicated. This is Southern Water. Topco (Greensands Holdings Ltd) is registered in Jersey. That strange arrangement at the bottom of the chart is a Whole Business Securitisation similar to that in Thames Water. And as with Thames Water, there is external debt in the parasitical extractive structure built on top of the regulated utility.

I watched the BBC Storyville documentary about Yosef Weitz again last night. Interesting detail I missed the first time: clip of an Israeli academic saying that Ben-Gurion commissioned an academic research paper to "prove" that Palestinians chose to leave in 1948... 1/ ... he emphasised that Ben-Gurion didn't want genuine academic research to find out the reasons why Palestinians left, he wanted an academic paper to support his story that Palestinians freely chose to leave and were not driven out by the IDF. Astonishing. /2

I read their amicus brief and can summarise it thus:

"We talked to our friends in the IDF and they told us the charges were unfounded".

https://twitter.com/kevinjonheller/status/1820776047169704234

The same group produced a report on the 2014 Gaza war. embassies.gov.il/MFA/FOREIGNPOL…

Distressing to see a leading legal commentator make statements about the ICJ's advisory opinion that are simply untrue. The ICJ did not ignore Israel's security needs, as @JoshuaRozenberg claims. It said they did not override the Palestinian's right to self-determination. 1/ In paragraph 233, the Court said:

"The Court considers that, in cases of foreign occupation such as the present case, the right of self-determination constitutes a peremptory norm of international law." 2/

Israel has been told many times by legal authorities that it doesn't have a right of self-defence in the occupied Palestinian territories, and yet it still persists in claiming this right, and Western leaders - some of whom should know better - tamely agree. Israel's belligerent actions in the West Bank and East Jerusalem are not self-defence, they are violations of its legal obligations as an occupying power. The solution to its perceived need for security is to end the occupation, not to brutalise the occupied population.