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'Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did & it never will' - Frederick Douglass #JoinAUnion #GTTO Views are mine & NOT my employer's.
LittleGravitas 🇪🇺 🇪🇸 🇺🇦 🇮🇱 🇵🇸 #FBPE Profile picture Dame Chris🌟🇺🇦😷 #RejoinEU #FBPE #GTTO🔶️ Profile picture oatc Profile picture Roger Boaden 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿🇬🇧🇪🇺 #IAmEuropean Profile picture Charlie Helps FRSA ⚛️❣️💙🖤🤍 Profile picture 60 subscribed
Jul 23 20 tweets 6 min read
#THREAD

Almost unreported is Trump’s new pledge to repeal the historic White House executive order on the safe, secure, & trustworthy development of AI.

JD Vance is a Silicon-Valley insider, & giant campaign contributions are coming in from Tech Bros.

techpolicy.press/the-ai-dangers… Alondra Nelson and Ami Fields-Meyer both served in the White House as technology policy advisers to President Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, & now they are sounding the alarm about the AI Dangers of a Second Trump Presidency.
Jul 21 60 tweets 11 min read
#THREAD

Americans who care about democracy, justice & the planet have to come together to prevent another Trump administration, which would attempt to introduce the regressive, antidemocratic & dangerously irresponsible policies laid out in the Heritage Foundation's #Project2025 Biden has endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris to replace him as the nominee.

Before outlining some essential information about Harris, I'll quickly summarise the process be for choosing the Democratic nominee as described by Newsweek.

newsweek.com/what-happens-n…
Jul 21 70 tweets 15 min read
#THREAD

Professor of History & Public Policy at Duke University & author of the terrifying award-winning bestseller 'Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right’s Stealth Plan for America', Nancy MacLean, recently discussed #Project2025.

Maybe read this 👇 first.
Image Law professor & social critic Kimberlé Crenshaw interviewed MacLean about what the prescriptions in the Heritage Foundation’s #Project2025 mean for parents, public schools, & for multiracial democracy.

This👇article is reproduced in thread-form below.

washingtonspectator.org/heritage-found…
Jul 20 24 tweets 8 min read
#THREAD

Timothy Snyder is an American historian specializing in the history of Central & Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union, & the #Holocaust.

He knows all about what authoritarian populist demagogues are capable of.

It's paywalled, so reproduced below.

ft.com/content/a7eea0… 'The Republican blueprint for power contains the seeds of its own demise. It is not too late to stop the descent of the American political order into tyranny, oligarchy or anarchy', writes Timothy Snyder.

#Project2025 explainer:

Jul 20 48 tweets 10 min read
#THREAD

Many people in Britain may never have even heard of US Secretary of Transportation, Pete Buttigieg.

Despite the assasination attempt, opinion polls suggest it will be another close Presidential election.

Could @SecretaryPete replace Biden?

Who is Pete Buttigieg? Pete Buttigieg is an American politician and former naval officer who is serving as the 19th United States secretary of transportation. A member of the Democratic Party, he was the 32nd mayor of South Bend, Indiana, from 2012 to 2020, which earned him the nickname "Mayor Pete".
Jul 16 93 tweets 26 min read
#THREAD

Hitler survived assassination attempts. We know what that led to. Reagan & Thatcher survived assassination attempts. They gave us neoliberalism. Trump survived. He's chosen JD Vance as his running mate. If elected, America will become a dystopian free-market kleptocracy. Image The 0.01% is gearing up to all but destroy US democracy.

Leading the charge & donating tens of millions of dollars to Trump's campaign are Silicon Valley's libertarian Tech billionaire extremists, led by Peter Thiel & Elon Musk - two of the most dangerous men on earth. Image
Jul 15 53 tweets 16 min read
#THREAD

"What first made Reform UK's white, privately educated multimillionaires Farage, Tice & Rupert Lowe oppose DEI?"

'Diversity Equity Inclusion' is a framework which promotes the fair treatment & full participation of ALL people, but particularly underrepresented groups... Image Many people know that the term ‘DEI’ is being weaponized as a racist dog whistle (a coded, deniable bit of language that allows people to communicate ideas that would be too offensive if done explicitly).

Few ideas in business are as misunderstood as DEI.
global.oup.com/academic/produ…
Jul 12 57 tweets 21 min read
#THREAD

Privately educated Nigel Farage, Leader & main shareholder of ‘anti-establishment’ Reform UK Ltd, has replaced privately educated co-Leaders David Bull & Ben Habib with privately educated Richard Tice, & made privately educated Zia Yusuf Chairman.

So who is Zia Yusuf? Image Zia Yusuf is an interesting choice as Reform UK Chairman, given that numerous former BrexitParty/Reform UK candidates, at least one the their current MPs, & innumerable supporters relentlessly use divisive, misleading, & explicitly Islamophobic rhetoric.

hyphenonline.com/2024/06/20/far…
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Jul 8 132 tweets 29 min read
#THREAD

Given the election results in Britain & France, & with the US election ahead, it's timely to provide a summary of the rise of Nazism during a period of economic hardship, with a focus on the divisive rhetoric & other #propaganda techniques of its 'charismatic' leader. Image In almost every respect Nazism was an anti-intellectual & atheoretical movement, emphasizing the will of the charismatic leader as the sole source of inspiration of a people & a nation, as well as a vision of annihilation of all perceived 'enemies of the people' as the main goal.
Jul 4 15 tweets 7 min read
#THREAD

Farage’s Reform UK benefited from almost £1 MILLION from a group intended to be a cross-party effort to support Brexit.

In early 2020, Leave Means Leave — run by Richard Tice — made the donation to Reform, which was then called the Brexit party.

ft.com/content/935f98… Former Tory deputy chair Paul Scully, who is listed as a Leave Means Leave supporter, said the donations were NOT in the spirit of the organisation.

“Leave Means Leave was a cross-party thing, that was the whole point,” he told the Financial Times.


Image
Jun 30 26 tweets 6 min read
🚨#THREAD

Just two opinion polling companies have put Reform UK on 20% or more: People Polling (owned by Legatum Snr Fellow Matt Goodwin) & Whitestone Insight (CEO Andrew Hawkins).

The links to Reform UK, the Evangelical Christian Right & fossil fuel interests are concerning.
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On 18 June, a poll commissioned by GB "News" (co-owned by Legatum), conducted by Snr Fellow at Legatum Matt Goodwin, put Reform on 24%

The average of all polls since is just 16%.

Only two other outlier polls have put Reform on 20% or more - both conducted by Whitestone Insight.
Jun 27 24 tweets 6 min read
#THREAD

Nowhere in the world have private equity firms found a more welcoming playground than in the UK: the volumes of buyouts have over the past two decades weighed more in the overall economy than in any other advanced market, including the US.

ft.com/content/e74d6a…
Image Private equity firms have snapped up high street names from grocers Asda and Morrisons to sandwich chain Pret A Manger, and invested in sectors ranging from insurance to nursing homes and infrastructure.
Jun 24 6 tweets 3 min read
OK people, WTAF is 'The Christian Institute'?

Who funds it?

What do they want?

Why did they hold a joint event with barking Clare Fox's Battle of Ideas on “Indoctrination in Education” with barking Frank Furedi of Spiked Online as a speaker?

Britain is NOT America. Not yet.

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The term 'Judeo-Christian' became widely used in the US during the Cold War to suggest a unified American identity opposed to communism.

The “Judeo-Christian tradition” was a political invention: an ecumenical marketing meme for combating godless commies.
Jun 23 9 tweets 4 min read
#THREAD

Britain was once the leading economy in Europe; it is now the most unequal. 🇬🇧

In 'Shattered Nation: Inequality and the Geography of a Failing State', Danny Dorling exposes a new geography of inequality.

dannydorling.org/books/shattere… Danny, a leading expert on housing, health, employment, education & poverty, has published with colleagues more than a dozen books on issues related to UK social inequalities, & several hundred journal papers - which is probably why he's so rarely on TV.

dannydorling.org
Jun 19 31 tweets 6 min read
#THREAD

The hateful anonymous @X account @benonwine constantly tweets out divisive, inflammatory far-right pro-Farage tweets.

Because it's impossible to find out who is behind the grotesque account, we cannot know who, or what, is behind it. It's the same for @UKUpdates_co_uk.
Image Now that all the main parties have published their manifestos, rather than actually read them, the overwhelming majority of voters will rely on (almost invariably partisan) third-party accounts to summarise and/or interpret them.

But how accurate & reliable is their analysis?
Jun 13 19 tweets 7 min read
#THREAD

A research paper from the University of Greenwich, 'The case for a progressive annual #WealthTax in the UK' (updated 12th June 2024), analyses the revenue potential of a progressive annual net wealth tax on the top 1% in the UK...

#TaxTheRich

gala.gre.ac.uk/id/eprint/4732… A progressive net wealth tax is a tax on the stock of net wealth (assets minus liabilities), that is designed to raise revenues primarily from only the very wealthiest individuals, primarily to fund public & other essential services, which benefit *everyone*.

#TaxTheRich Image
Jun 10 88 tweets 19 min read
#THREAD

Today, you might get the impression from news and social media that the far-right has 'taken over' the EU, which is in its death throws: the evidence does not support this view: nationalist/populist hard/far-right parties are on course to get just a quarter of EU seats. Image Hard/far-right parties have made not insignificant gains in several countries across the EU, not least France, Italy, Germany & Austria, producing uncertainty about the EU - and Europe's - political direction & future.

However, it's certainly not the landslide you may think.
Jun 9 8 tweets 4 min read
#THREAD

Pop density(K)/square mile:

1 Macau 54
2 Monaco 47
3 Singapore 21.4
4 Hong Kong 17.4
5 Gaza 14.9
13 Bangladesh 3
17 Palestine 2.3
25 Rwanda 1.4
33 Netherlands 1.1
38 Belgium 1
44 Japan 0.8
52 UK🇬🇧0.7

We face housing & climate crises, not migrant & overcrowding crises.
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We need more affordable housing, but health is often forgotten about in housing policies. Amid the clamour for economic growth & house building targets, housing quality loses out. Decent regulations & standards are often derided as unnecessary 'red tape'.

tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.10…
Jun 8 25 tweets 9 min read
#THREAD

In 2022, 'political risk & intelligence analyst' & Egyptian immigrant to the UK, Khaled Hassan, explained in a podcast hosted by the controversial UK-based Campaign Against Antisemitism why he, now 'a proud Jew', converted from Islam to Judaism.

So who is Khaled Hassan?
Image In March 2022, The Jewish Chronicle featured Hassan, describing him as a "hero moderator" of @YouTube videos, "who dared to speak up (but) was silenced as Whistleblower".

He described what he perceived to be as YouTube's failure to remove hateful videos.

thejc.com/news/i-couldnt…
Jun 4 15 tweets 6 min read
#THREAD

Rumour has it, the character leading Nigel Farage away is George Cottrell, an interesting chap, who may give some insight into Farage's 'anti-elite' Reform UK team.

(Btw, I don't agree with chucking drinks over anyone).

So who is George Cottrell? The former head of fundraising for UKIP, Cottrell was born to an aristocratic family.

His dad, a businessman & landowner from Gloucestershire, attended Gordonstoun School with Prince Andrew.

Remember: Reform UK self-identity as an 'anti-elite' party.

Jun 3 20 tweets 7 min read
#THREAD

Given Kemi Badenoch's well-documented history of gaslighting, performative cruelty, divisive rhetoric & questionable judgement - which includes the time she told the Covid Inquiry 'there's no cure for poverty' - here's a short thread of some of her 'best bits'... 😬 Image That time an irritated & condescending Kemi Badenoch told the Covid Inquiry that "we don't have a cure for poverty".