@djr@union.place
@djr@union.place avatar

djr

@djr@union.place

Resident Putney - economist, trade unionist, internationalist/traveller. former activist

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TCatInReality, to random
@TCatInReality@mastodon.social avatar

Someone needed to say it:

The vast majority of Muslims are NOT extremists.

Shame on and radical right talking heads for demonising Muslims and those who support their causes.

BBC News - Attack victims hit out at extremism in open letter
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-68526577

djr,
@djr@union.place avatar

@TCatInReality

This is all about the in on 2nd May 2024. It is about the targeting now hat previous claims about have been disproved. A bit more subtle than and but still singing from the same hymn book !

fkamiah17, to UKpolitics
@fkamiah17@toot.wales avatar

Probably the strongest words I've heard from a mainstream UK politician (I don't mean the ones who attend the protests or were suspended)

Guardian: "Former UK foreign secretary William Hague called for the removal of Benjamin Netanyahu. He said: 'The long shot of building trust and a two state solution has little chance without the removal of Netanyah'."

#UKPolitics #SaveGaza #IsraeliWarCrimes

djr,
@djr@union.place avatar

@fkamiah17

Worth remembering that the #UKGovernment imposed a ban on the export of weapons to #israel in 1982 which lasted until 1994. Whatever else #MargaretThatcher may have been she was no #antisemite !

Latter day admirers please note!

HelenG, to random

deleted_by_author

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    djr,
    @djr@union.place avatar

    @HelenG The best reply to this has to be the announcement by #KwasiKwarteng that he will not be standing at the forthcoming General Election. Sane enough to know that the game is up!

    djr,
    @djr@union.place avatar

    @HelenG

    And knowing when to quit may count as a marketable skill - of sorts!

    ChrisMayLA6, to DadBin
    @ChrisMayLA6@zirk.us avatar

    #Children's #health under the #Tories:

    • over 20% of five year olds are obese or overweight.

    • around 25% have problems with tooth decay

    • Children's #vaccination levels are falling.

    Prof.Helen Minnis (GlasgowU) & co-chair of a new Academy of Medical Sciences report, says:

    'The science is clear — we are betraying our children. Unless the health of babies & young children is urgently prioritised, we condemn many to a life of poorer health & lost potential. The time to act is now'!

    h/t FT

    djr,
    @djr@union.place avatar

    @ChrisMayLA6

    Meanwhile #BirminghamCityCouncil has been told to cut the budget for #chldren's services by £ 25 million p.a. Cognitive dissonance rules OK!

    simon_brooke, to Israel
    @simon_brooke@mastodon.scot avatar

    So let me see if I've got this right. There is an "International Rules-Based Order". The key institution which underpins this order is the . The ICJ has ruled that must take action to prevent in . The main agency succouring those at risk of genocide in Gaza is . In an apparently-coordinated demonstration of contempt for the ICJ ruling, a number of key nations have withdrawn financial support for UNWRA, citing unproven allegations against some staff. >>>

    djr,
    @djr@union.place avatar

    @simon_brooke

    It does begin to look rather like conscious complicity in a potential genocide through famine. What price a "humanitarian pause" now!

    ChrisMayLA6, to technology
    @ChrisMayLA6@zirk.us avatar

    thinks (by which he seems to mean digital technologies) will make the more efficient & means we can stop pouring money into a 'leaky bucket'.

    Quite apart the vacuity of such techno-boosterism, you would have thought in the wake of the disaster, anyone thinking deploying technology is the answer, might want to be more careful.

    Many people are watching Mr Streeting & are getting worried about how he thinks about NHS reform!

    I'm one of them!

    djr,
    @djr@union.place avatar

    @ChrisMayLA6

    Some of us can remember the disaster of the IT system that formed part of the "NHS Plan" announced with a fanfare in 2000.

    djr,
    @djr@union.place avatar

    @etchedpixels @simon_brooke @ChrisMayLA6

    A very fair and helpful point. The proposed system was centralised to a remarkable extent. Sadly only too typical of

    ChrisMayLA6, to random
    @ChrisMayLA6@zirk.us avatar

    John Pullinger (of Electoral Commission) has told FT that he thinks that the have 'opened themselves' up to the charge that a new voter identification scheme is designed to benefit the Tory party, having examined the results of the 'pilot' use in local elections.

    has resisted a widening of the forms of identification that can be used (proposed by David Willets), and so the 'very, very strict' rules are likely to disenfranchise many potentially Labour .

    No surprise!

    djr,
    @djr@union.place avatar

    @ChrisMayLA6

    That fits. It could be worth thirty seats to them in a general election. It also - together with the ending of the supplementary vote for mayoral elections - gives the a sporting chance of defeating in in May this year.

    djr,
    @djr@union.place avatar

    @ChrisMayLA6

    There has been a further change - made by means of secondary legislation - which in theory at any rate could add up to two million voters by allowing UK citizens who have been non-resident for more than fifteen years to vote by proxy where they were last resident in the #uk . It has been billed as giving a further advantage to the #conservatives . I shall consider how much effect this would have and how far its introduction may affect the timing of the #UKGeneralElection2024 .

    Sherifazuhur, to random
    @Sherifazuhur@sfba.social avatar

    Arnaud Bertrand: This is undoubtedly one of the most extraordinary interviews of a former senior US government official on Gaza.

    This is Chas Freeman, former Assistant Secretary of Defense and former US Ambassador to Saudi Arabia.

    Key points in the video:

    • He agrees that many of the victims of Oct 7th were killed by the Israeli army in the form of "undisciplined fire by helicopters with hellfire missiles or by tanks with incendiary rounds directed at buildings". In the case of the victims of the music festival he even says they "were largely killed, it appears, by hellfire missiles and by other undisciplined fire by Israeli forces". To him this "disgrace in military terms" stems from a "lack of discipline and training necessary to respond" but also from the IDF's "Hannibal directive", which "says that rather than get into bargaining over hostage exchange you should just kill the Israeli hostages along with their captors."

    https://x.com/rnaudbertrand/status/1743865744218358216?s=12&t=uM8me4uwdP7D0z4nanVVuw

    https://nitter.net/rnaudbertrand/status/1743865744218358216?s=12&t=uM8me4uwdP7D0z4nanVVuw

    djr,
    @djr@union.place avatar

    @Sherifazuhur

    Very interesting points but I am not sure that the 'hannibal directive' is official policy currently

    • although it may be being followed informally.

    If there was a response that was so undisciplined as to kill many of their own civilians it would help to explain why the #israelicabinet is reported to be unhappy at the thought of an inquiry into events on that day.

    inquiline, to random
    @inquiline@union.place avatar

    "#Gaza Is Starving: The chief economist of the World Food Program explains how the scarcity of food may tip the territory into famine"

    https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/gaza-is-starving

    djr,
    @djr@union.place avatar

    @inquiline This looks disproportionate to me. Presumably it will taken into account when the International Court of Justice meets late next week - hearings set for 11th and 12th January.

    simon_brooke, to random
    @simon_brooke@mastodon.scot avatar

    "unless something changes, the world faces the prospect of almost a quarter of #Gaza’s 2 million population - close to half- a million human beings - dying within a year. These would be largely deaths from preventable health causes" – Professor @devisridhar

    https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/dec/29/health-organisations-disease-gaza-population-outbreaks-conflict

    djr,
    @djr@union.place avatar

    @simon_brooke @devisridhar
    This is based on a credible projection. The outcome is avoidable but only if the population in question is fed and housed as a matter of urgency. There were populations in occupied #europe during the second world war which were not so lucky - the #Netherlands in the winter of 1944-5 is a classic example. Technically the loss of a quarter of a population through disease coupled with starvation is worse than #decimation but may not quite constitute #genocide as such.

    djr,
    @djr@union.place avatar

    @simon_brooke

    It must depend in practice how big a 'part' would be affected but in any case there would be those who would deny that any such calculations had been made by the power responsible and that thus any effects were entirely inadvertent and unintended.

    djr,
    @djr@union.place avatar

    @simon_brooke

    I would not disagree although one would have to expect and be prepared for a barrage of propaganda to the effect that it was!

    appassionato, to Israel
    @appassionato@mastodon.social avatar

    According to a recent poll, majority of Israeli Jews support the removal of Palestinians from Gaza.

    70-80 percent of Israeli Jews support the idea of finding somewhere else for Palestinians in Gaza to be removed.

    Antony Loewenstein

    @palestine
    #Gaza
    #Israel

    djr,
    @djr@union.place avatar

    @appassionato @palestine

    That is #ethniccleansing . It is not quite #genocide but comes close. A lot of it happened in #europe in the 1940s when millions were displaced - including #jews who had survived the #holocaust . During world war two #germany did quite a lot of #ethniccleansing of #poles and #slovenes in particular.

    djr,
    @djr@union.place avatar

    @appassionato @palestine

    The allies meeting at #potsdam in 1945 licensed #ethniccleansing of #sudetengermans - the 'Benes decrees' - and of #germans living east of the Oder/Neisse line. However #saxons in #romania do not seem to have been affected.

    djr,
    @djr@union.place avatar

    @appassionato @palestine

    More recently #ethniccleansing seems to have been regarded as less acceptable - advocates and practitioners in the former #yugoslavia in the 1990swtended to end up in the dock at #thehague !

    djr,
    @djr@union.place avatar

    @appassionato @palestine

    However a seemingly voluntary movement of roughly a hundred thousand people did take place earlier this year - 2023 - from / westwards. So it is not impossible under some circumstances. Not at all sure how wise it will turn out to be for and its supporters to put it back on the agenda. Moving up to two hundred thousand settlers out of the West Bank in order to render a two state solution viable is worth talking about. in this context.

    inquiline, to random
    @inquiline@union.place avatar

    "there is a rule - and it is certainly not unique to Germany - that you don’t compare things to the Holocaust. There is a paradox: we imagine the Holocaust in great detail, but we conceive of it as fundamentally unimaginable. It is the kind of evil that we cannot comprehend. But anything that happens in the present is, by definition, imaginable."

    Gessen on the Arendt Prize

    https://www.zeit.de/kultur/2023-12/masha-gessen-rede-hannah-arendt-preis-english

    djr,
    @djr@union.place avatar

    @inquiline Casual comparisons should be eschewed and it would be both tactful wise to set a rather high bar to avoid giving gratuitous offence. However a comparison with what happened to the #herero people forty years before - in some cases at the hands of the same individuals as participated in the #holocaust subsequently - would seem entirely appropriate.

    HelenG, to random

    deleted_by_author

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    djr,
    @djr@union.place avatar

    @HelenG

    They are beginning to learn how to retreat. Worrying?

    inquiline, (edited ) to random
    @inquiline@union.place avatar

    Story about the Houthis' Red Sea blockades/piracy and its effects on with a short 🧵

    https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/dec/19/red-sea-shipping-crisis-bp-oil-explained-what-is-happening-and-what-does-it-mean-for-global-trade

    djr,
    @djr@union.place avatar

    @inquiline It was known previously as "The Cape of Storms". A few hundred miles further north lies the Skeleton Coast - not renamed so far by anyone!

    jdmccafferty, to ireland
    @jdmccafferty@mastodon.online avatar

    16 Dec 1687: d. William Petty, a founder of The Royal Society and a Cromwellian surveyor of the land of #Ireland & #economist #otd

    djr,
    @djr@union.place avatar

    @jdmccafferty

    He (Petty) called #Economics "political arithmetic". Some might regard that as a better designation,

    HelenG, to random

    deleted_by_author

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    djr,
    @djr@union.place avatar

    @HelenG @fkamiah17

    In which case there would be the exceptional circumstances where the putting up of a "white suit" independent candidate supported by opposition parties might make sense - as with #martinbell against #NeilHamilton in #tatton in 1997.

    mattcaff, to Ohio
    @mattcaff@union.place avatar

    OMG, OMG, OMG

    https://www.brown.senate.gov/newsroom/press/release/sherrod-brown-announces-first-step-expanding-amtrak-ohio

    djr,
    @djr@union.place avatar

    @mattcaff

    Well done!

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