"Being removed as a candidate has been cruel and devastating, especially after local voters and party members have placed so much faith in me....I cannot, in all conscience, continue to contribute to a party that seems to think so little of people like me and has moved so far away from my values.”
Article on BDS founder Omar Barghouti in today's Guardian.
"This student uprising has been a crash course on Palestine for millions in the west in particular, undoing many years of silencing and erasing Palestinian voices, Palestinian history, Palestinian culture [and] aspirations … it gives us hope and inspiration in these dark times of Israel’s ongoing genocide against 2.3 million Palestinians in the occupied and besieged Gaza Strip"
"Even the sand beneath our feet is scorched; it's unbearable to walk on. The streets are strewn with rubble and demolished buildings. Words fail to describe the devastation"
"Keir Starmer said the net migration figure of 685,000 has ‘got to come down’"
FFS
It makes no sense, especially using those figures, which include foreign students, a huge source of national income. And we need more migrants, not fewer, to do the work that the very people who vote for fewer immigrants won't or can't do.
If he thinks he's going to attract right wing anti-immigration headbangers, they're already voting Reform.
A good news story about one of the biggest rural tool-sharing libraries in the US.
"The library is like the best neighbor you ever had. Imagine if the person at the end of your block had 1,500 tools and they’d show you how to use them"
A court in Islamabad has annulled the 10 year sentence of former Prime Minister Imran Khan and his close aide, former Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi, in a case related to the leaking of state secrets.
However, Khan and his wife Bushra Bibi were sentenced to seven years when a court in Rawalpindi declared that their marriage in 2018 violated Islamic law so he's still in prison.
Over 100 leading cultural figures in Britain, including Oscar and
BAFTA-winners, have called on Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer to commit to stop arming Israel if elected Prime Minister on 4 July.
Signatories to the letter include Oscar-winning actor Riz Ahmed and director Asif Kapadia, actors including BAFTA-winning Steve Coogan, Miriam Margolyes
OBE, Paapa Essiedu, Dame Harriet Walter, Juliet Stevenson, Lena Heady, and singer Paloma Faith.
When the election is between a Labour party trying to unseat a Conservative one after what it considers to be its own failed leftwing experiment, that tendency to strip politics of all values ...becomes even more pronounced. The result is that by hewing as close as possible to established economic and cultural norms as set by the Tories in order to win back voters, Labour disfranchises others and makes a calculation that they don’t matter"
Nesrine Malik
"Over the past few months, the people I have spoken to who said they will not vote for Labour all share one thing: not childish anger or silly idealism, but relief. After giving the party several chances and grappling with their choices, the decision not to vote gave them a sense of congruence. Their political choices finally aligned with their values, and gave them a sense of autonomy in a system that felt totally out of their control"
Nesrine Malik
"In a system without proportional representation, politics is indeed often the choice of the lesser of two evils. But as the space between the two shrinks, people might begin to feel that – as Ralph Nader once said – “if you always vote for the lesser of two evils, you will always have evil, and you will always have less”.
Nesrine Malik
Good news for environmentally aware chocoholics ( and the planet).
By mashing up the pulp and husk of a cocoa pod instead of just taking the beans, scientists have made a sweet and fibrous gel that could replace the sugar in chocolate, according to a report published in Nature Food.
This “whole food” approach makes a more nutritious product than conventional chocolate and uses less land and water, the scientists found – while still satisfying a sweet tooth.
"Fayiz Abu Ataya was born into war and knew nothing else. Over his first and only spring, in a town stalked by hunger, he wasted away to a shadow of a child, skin stretched painfully over jutting bones.
In seven months of life, he had little time to make a mark beyond the family who loved him. But when his death from malnutrition was reported last week, it sounded a warning around the world about a rapidly deepening crisis in central and southern Gaza."
"Saying no to Biden means saying yes to more futile, wholesale bloodshed, of Israeli soldiers &, more so, of Gaza's inhabitants; yes to the death of the last of the hostages in Hamas captivity; yes to genocide; yes to war in the north; yes to declaring Israel a pariah state... And someone affirming all of the above should be condemned as a war criminal by his own country, unless we are all war criminals"
Gideon Levy in Haaretz today
Leaflets dispersed on Saturday by the IDF in Beit Hanoun, calling on refugees who had returned to their destroyed homes to again evacuate them, are the true Israeli response to President Biden's plan to end the war. They also illustrate what the war will look like from now on: an endless cycle of death and destruction. After Rafah we go back to the beginning, to the northern Gaza Strip, like in a game of Monopoly, but with cruelty....
Gideon Levy
"I was asked to attend a sham 45-minute online meeting via email just hours before my deselection, with three members of the National Executive Committee–one of whom never put his camera on or said a word–and my fate was decided. More than four years’ work thrown in the bin. My connection to my community brushed aside. My deep and utter commitment dismissed. And the desires of thousands in my constituency disregarded"
Faiza Shaheen
"My fate was leaked to the press before I found out, and I knew I had to get my side of the story out quickly. One of my first thoughts when I realised this could be the end of my political career was: “Please don’t ruin my life. Don’t make it so I can never get another job again.”
They have made people like me and the political icon Diane Abbott beg and grovel. But I’ve been overwhelmed by support after my Newsnight interview"
Faiza Shaheen
"The US and its favourite client state give no sign of being willing to submit to international law. Like Samson, they would prefer to bring the house down than respect the long-established rules of war.
The initial victims are the people of Gaza. But in a world without laws, where might alone makes right, all of us will ultimately be the losers"
After this week, the mask is off. "Labour’s leaders are sending a clear signal that once they have secured No 10, they will behave with the same power-drunk arrogance and the same disregard for democratic norms that they are showing now towards their own MPs"
Owen Jones