Alex Bjarnason

Dad, husband, cat fan, Arsenal & England.

[Duncan Alexander @oilysailor]

oh you like Declan Rice's corners now?

[USMNT Only @usmntonly]

THIERRY HENRY'S REACTION 😭

[Jeff D. Lowe @JeffDLowe]

Alexi Lalas just called James Corden a “fucking wanker” on live TV and the reactions were incredible. Hero moment for him, IMO. #FIFAWorldCup

[World Cup HQ @WorldCup26HQ]

Alexi Lalas calling James Corden a “f*cking wanker.” live on TV.

[WeGotitBack 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁥󠁮󠁧󠁿🇬🇧🇺🇸 @NotFarLeftAtAll]

Jeremy Corbyn

Still today… hands down, the best heckle ever in the House of Commons.
“Who are you”?

Notice Andy Burnham?

[Lisa Mckenzie @redrumlisa]

200 years of skill and culture in our heartlands is now gone because of weak politicians who have rubbished our society over 40 years disrespected our society & our culture added high energy prices & cheap inferior foreign imports and industries. None of this progressive.

[gunnerblog @gunnerblog]

“Go out there, enjoy the moment, trust yourselves and make beautiful memories together.

We love you endlessly.”

On #UCL final day, letters to Arsenal’s stars from their families & friends.❤️

Free on @TheAthleticFC ⬇️

https://t.co/77Ey39J9xo

[Scotia80 @Scotia80]

“I wasn’t aware of the high end coffee machines because I’ve never been in the kitchen”

[S Sebag Montefiore @simonmontefiore]

This matters.
An obscure London event on the history of the ancient Jewish kingdoms in Judea and Israel is cancelled because of ‘security concerns’ and it turns out this was a reaction to a campaign to fill and then undermine the event by activist disrupters.
How strange! Why would a posse of aggressive activists be interested in the arcane details of bullae and steles and ostraca and inscriptions and numismatics in some small South Levantine kingdoms in the Iron Age?
Well, it is a little more than that which is why it is both disturbing and important. And it matters because at its least it is a threat to history in Britain’s - but also the world’s - greatest temple of History @britishmuseum - and its scholarly integrity.
The BM and its leadership are decent and well-meaning and have explained that they wished to save an event from disruption by bullying vandals but I am sure the BM realizes it is essential to announce a new event fast lest it give the impression that the permission of tiny cadres of aggressive bullies are required before it hold events. But the significance is wider than an event about the Moab and Tel Dan steles in a great museum.
British cultural life is the right and exercise of civic and cultural freedom – a privilege of our liberal democracy - that does not require the permission of gangs of ideological activists nor can it cancelled or postponed nor endured at their beck and sufferance nor permitted with a bend of the knee to their permissions or veto. But that is what this appears to be.
Across the cultural world in the West, though the bewildered middleaged managers of our institutions that are confronting and often submitting to a wave of self-righteous blackmail and mob threat, there is an increasingly thin – indeed ever more fragile and sometimes nigh invisible – line between ‘security concerns’ – and institutional pusillanimity.
Then there is the history itself.
This event concerns the study of the ancient kingdoms of Judah and Israel that existed between roughly 1100BC and 586BCin the Levant. It is not a coincidence that this was chosen for disruption. The history of the Judean kingdoms and the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem that stood for most of the time between 1000BC and 70ADetc is important and fascinating history in its own right, supported by complex and growing archaeological finds.
These small kingdoms and the subsequent Temple priestly mini-state (restored by the Persian kings Cyrus and Darius 539BC) and then the larger Judean kingdoms of the Hasmoneans and Herodians – between 167BC and 135AD chronicle the long indigenous history of Jews in the region – which the protesters are keen to erase. This is a political project of ideological erasure and malicious incitement of course concerned with the complex, brutal Israel-Palestine conflict that has now gone on for a hundred years and is unlikely to be solved in a small lecture theatre in the British Museum. But it also attempts to deny or erase Jewish history itself – and by implication the heritage of British Jews who live here in Britain, a small community that is now under cultural and sometimes physical threat.
Incidentally - but it is worth saying, this history does not deny anyone else’s history, nor the many other small realms in this region through ancient times nor the many names of the region and its entities and the historical origins of those names (Canaan, or Philistia or Peleset, Phoenicia, Aram Damascus or Moab or later Nabatea and the provinces of Palaestina Prime, Seconda and Tertia and the Ghassanid kingdoms and so on etc etc). The history of one can not be used to erase the history of the other and does not need to do so. The pursuit of knowledge which is one of the delights of human life and is the mission of the BM and indeed anyone who writes, reads or enjoys history, can celebrate and recognize all of these.
Yet this protest and the many like it deployed across Britain nowadays is the opposite of that - an attack on history using the methods of intimidation and vandalism. Much of this involves distorting or dismantling actual history or often lying to replace it with a fabricated ideological structure that nourishes no one and helps no one but degrades our culture and civic life not to speak of history itself. By the way, the frequent claims that these histories or names are ‘denied’ or ‘noone knows them’ is nonsense: anyone and everyone who is interested knows this history. (Much of it appears for example in my book Jerusalem a history of the Holy Land.)
And this is relevant not just to those of us who write study or enjoy the history of the region but also to those who believe that cultural life and civic society is a right that must not be submitted to the aggressions and plots of loud well-organized much-indulged ideologues who take advantage of the freedoms of our society to undermine its principles and the very freedoms they are designed to guard.
Just as vital is a rule of history itself that concerrns the rise and fall of civilizations: the society that ceases to allow to free discussion of ideas and stops respecting and recognizing the value of scientific and historical sources and facts is a society that will fail.

[Lorin Bell-Cross @lorintbc]

Just last week I reported on how Jewish communal organisations are willing to publicly criticise the mayor's "dismissive and inadequate" approach and "failure to condemn the repeated criminality seen at events presented as peaceful protests.”

https://t.co/sOX59gRDiQ

[Izabella Tabarovsky @IzaTabaro]

Antizionism is a lie about the Jewish people. It relies on rewriting Jewish history. Historical fabrication is central to its method.

Typically, we see the rewriting focusing on the 20th century. But because antizionism ultimately seeks to erase all evidence of Jewish indigeneity and presence in the region, it inevitably expands into a wholesale rewriting of history stretching all the way back into the ancient world.

Those who still naively insist that antizionism is merely “criticism of Israel” or opposition to the Netanyahu government should ask themselves:

What’s so intolerable about discussing ancient Jewish history that an academic lecture triggers security concerns at a public institution?

This notice and the explanation from the British Museum: is this the world you want to live in?

Do you really think the policing of history, the intimidation of public institutions, and this blatant encroachment on academic freedom and freedom of assembly are acceptable — and that it will end with Jews and Israel?

[Rachel Moiselle @RachelMoiselle]

How it started

How it’s going

[alex @alex_abads]

become ungovernable

[Call Yourself a Fan? @CYAFOfficial]

Patrick Vieira’s HILARIOUS reaction to being crunched by Steve Sidwell 🤣

[Ralphyy @RalphyyR6]

For those saying us UK lot complain too much about the heat, Romesh sums it up perfectly

[S Sebag Montefiore @simonmontefiore]

Dark times when a talk about Ancient Judah and Israel @britishmuseum is cancelled ‘for security concerns’?

[Arsenal @Arsenal]

LIFT IT UP ©️

[Football on TNT Sports @footballontnt]

The apprentice has become the master 🏆

[Alex Bjarnason @Alex_Bjarnason]

Amy Lawrenson writes about arsenal with obvious passion and no hyperbole https://t.co/Ch46oFXnHY

[Amy Lawrence @amylawrence71]

"External critics formed a caricature they choose not to see beyond. Arteta is not a manager they care to try to understand."

But he has got Arsenal, and Arsenal have got him.

Free to read - the roots of Arteta's passion for his club.

https://t.co/13X0KhEvzu via @NYTimes