Bewhiled

[Clive Lewis MP @labourlewis]

The Financial Conduct Authority's proof-of-concept deal with Palantir moves us in the wrong direction.

A company facing allegations of human rights abuses and associated with significant data privacy and national security concerns should not be gaining a greater foothold in our public sector.

I'm backing FCA employees' campaign to keep Palantir out of the regulator, and have written to the Chief Executive urging the FCA to end its use of Palantir systems.

The Government should be reducing its reliance on Palantir, not deepening it.

@unitetheunion

[Kia @xevekiah]

“I don’t understand why women don’t just report it if it really happened.”
When I was 19, I reported mine. I had bruises. Hospital photos. Text messages of him apologizing the next morning. My friends drove me to the station because I could barely stop shaking. I thought evidence would make it simple. I thought truth would be enough.
Months later, I was the one on trial. His lawyer printed my Instagram photos and held them up in court. Asked why I wore crop tops. Asked why I drank that night. Asked why I didn’t scream louder. He replayed my police interview and pointed out every time I hesitated, every time I cried, every time my timeline wasn’t perfectly linear. “If it was traumatic,” he said, “why can’t she remember clearly?”
Sitting there while strangers debated my pain like it was a group project felt like being stripped again. My messages were projected on a screen. My body was described in detail. My character was picked apart like that was the real crime.
He walked out on bail. I walked out with panic attacks.
That’s why some women don’t report. Because even with bruises. Even with screenshots. Even when you do everything “right.” You still have to survive the assault twice, once in private, and once in public, just to maybe be believed.

[Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani @NYCMayor]

This is now the official account of Mayor Zohran Mamdani. Welcome to a new era for NYC.

[Tom London @TomLondon6]

This is a very serious matter

When there was a near consensus among the world’s genocide experts and human rights NGOs and a finding of plausible genocide by ICJ, the BBC banned the very word

BBC was blatantly biased in favour of Israel

This is the REAL @BBCNews scandal

[Arnaud Bertrand @RnaudBertrand]

This is unreal. Italian journalist Gabriele Nunziati was just fired for asking EU officials this question: "You’ve been repeating several times that Russia should pay for the reconstruction of Ukraine. Do you believe that Israel should pay for the reconstruction of Gaza since they have destroyed almost all its civilian infrastructure?"

Nunziati's employer, Italy's Nova news agency, called the question "completely inappropriate and based on a mistaken premise."

I for one think it's a logical question that calls out obvious double standards 🤷‍♂️

But of course it's easier to do it the EU way: brand uncomfortable questions as heretical thought crimes, excommunicate the questioner, and preserve the faith. We've done that a few times in our history.

[Robert Inlakesh @falasteen47]

YouTube deleted all my coverage of Israeli soldiers shooting civilians, including children targeted on a live stream, along with my entire account.

No community guidelines violated & 3 separate excuses given to me. Then Google deleted my email & won’t respond to appeals.

[Samantha Smith @SamanthaTaghoy]

So doctors are legally obliged to reject a £15 box of chocolates from a patient as a “conflict of interest”…

…but the bloke in charge of the ENTIRE BRITISH MEDICAL SYSTEM can take ~£400K from “private health sources” since coming into office…

…and that’s totally okay???

[Zarah Sultana MP @zarahsultana]

Today I voted against Nigel Farage’s bill to pull the UK out of the European Convention of Human Rights.

Labour cowardly abstained.

From the Hillsborough families to the victims of John Worboys — the ECHR protects ordinary people from torture, discrimination and abuse of power.

Reform want to rip it up.

[Neena Jha @DrNeenaJha]

Since 2015, Wes Streeting has accepted £372,000 from private health care links!

This should be a illegal for a health secretary in charge of the NHS.

There’s a clear conflict of interest & raises concerns re: probity & integrity

Who is the health secretary really working for?

[Farrukh @implausibleblog]

Are Starmer and Mahood sowing division in society?

I would argue yes. Here's why, but I'm open to thoughts:

➡️Birmingham City Council's Safety Advisory Group took advice from senior West Midlands Police officers to ban Maccabi fans from a football match

➡️The same Maccabi fans who caused riots in the Netherlands last year, singing songs about the rape of Arab women, chanting f*ck Arabs, and celebrating empty schools in Gaza (because Israel bombed and murdered children)

➡️The decision was not based on whether Maccabi fans are Jewish or not, it was based on the social disruption they caused in Amsterdam and not wanting to have a repeat in Birmingham

But Keir Starmer jumping in and saying banning violent fans is antisemitic not only questions the integrity of the Safety Advisory Group, it does the opposite of what a Prime Minister is meant to do: support the independence of the police

Similarly, I'd say this example alone demontsrates how Shabana Mahmood is unfit to be Home Secretary, as the Daily Mail published that she was told a week prior of the ban but made no objection then, and her objection only came when the Prime Minister made his objection

Meaning, that while Mahmood accepted the police's initial verdict, she changed her mind and also jumped on the 'its antisemitic' bandwagon

The two people who are meant to diffuse difficult situations have turned out to two of the biggest voices sowing division in society

They've both interfered in the independence of the Safety Advisory Group assessment as well as the police's independence, and by openly calling for fans who sing songs about rape and dead Palestinian children, are not putting public safety first, instead they're putting ideology first

It's kind of like what Labour have done with Brexit, they know its bad, making us poorer, but they're going ahead with it anyway because they'll balance the books off the back of the poor, the disabled, the elderly, pretty much anyone who doesn't have a strong enough voice, or the ability to lobby them with donations

Starmer and Mahmood, two peas in a pod, exploiting the real injustice that is antisemitism - which along with Islamophobia should be addressed - both preferring ideology over what's better for the country

To think, after 14 years of Conservative chaos, we now face ideological flatulence, where public safety is put at risk because a Prime Minister and Home Secretary confuse banning bad behaviour on safety grounds with tackling the very real problem of antisemitism

If we as British people want safety for our fellow Jewish citizens, friends, and neighbours, we also need politicians who can distinguish between protecting public safety and addressing genuine antisemitism — not politicians engaging in political opportunism by crying antisemitism at every turn, devaluing and diminishing real concerns

Yesterday, en route to Big Penny Social for a chocolate festival, I saw Jewish men, young and old, and Jewish children on the streets of North London, many dressed in shiny, formal outfits as if they had just come from Shabbat services — including some with their large hats, and the children with long, curly sidelocks

Seeing them happily walking through our streets, free and safe, filled me with joy, as that's the multi faith, multi cultural society that celebrates the richness of our different communities

And I worry about the casual political opportunism of politicians such as Starmer and Mahmood who will use the antisemitic charge to further their careers, instead of working with the police and communities to bring people together by ensuring public safety for a football match

Jewish people should not be discriminated against — nor should Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Christians, atheists, or anyone else. Discrimination has no place in a democracy

An island of strangers? At almost every step, that is exactly what Labour under Starmer and Mahmood is delivering - especially when they put ideology ahead of public safety

I thought the Conservatives were bad, but Labour is proving to be just as disappointing. The next election can’t come soon enough. After all, that’s what we do in a democracy - vote out those who are not worthy of public office

Thoughts? Am I overthinking their chosen behaviour or is this a fair assessment?

And how do we get to a better place in society where a Prime Minister and Home Secretary don't behave in such a disgraceful way, and are instead the reason how communities come closer together?

[Mike Galsworthy @mikegalsworthy]

Why is the PM involving himself in a local policing issue?

It’s purely a policing issue designed to protect British residents from well-known hooligans who have been banned elsewhere in Europe.

This is wild. The PM is putting Israeli hooligans before Brits’ safety and the law.

[Ragıp Soylu @ragipsoylu]

Greta Thunberg: “Israeli soldiers hit, kicked, starved, and tortured me”

• They placed a flag next to me, and anytime the flag touched me, they kicked me

• Whenever I raised my head to look at Ben-Gvir, I was kicked

• She was filmed while stripped naked

• Prison was 40 degrees but no water was given to Greta and her friends for days

• People fell sick. Guards mocked them saying they would gas them, showing them cylinders

• She was kept in solitary confinement for hours with bugs

— Aftonbladet

[Caitlin Johnstone @caitoz]

Israel tortured and sexually humiliated Greta Thunberg.

Some excerpts from her interview with the Swedish paper Aftonblatet:

"They grab me, pull me to the ground, and throw an Israeli flag over me."

"They dragged me to the opposite side from where the others were sitting, and I had the flag around me the whole time. They hit and kicked me."

"They moved me very brutally to a corner that I was turned towards. ‘A special place for a special lady’, they said. And then they had learned ‘Lilla hora’ (Little whore) and ‘Hora Greta’ (Whore Greta) in Swedish, which they repeated all the time."

In the corner where Greta was sitting, the police placed a flag.
"The flag was placed so that it would touch me. When it fluttered and touched me, they shouted ‘Don’t touch the flag’ and kicked me in the side. After a while, my hands were tied with cable ties, very tightly. A bunch of guards lined up to take selfies with me while I was sitting like that."

"They were thrown to the ground and beaten. But I could only see it out of the corner of my eye, because every time I lifted my head from the ground, I was kicked by the guard standing next to me."

Greta was then taken into a building to be searched and undressed. "The guards have no empathy or humanity, and they keep taking selfies with me. There’s a lot I don’t remember. So much is happening at once. You’re in shock. You’re in pain, but you go into a state of trying to stay calm."

Outside, she was forced to take off her clothes again, she says. "It was mockery, rough handling, and everything was filmed. Everything they do is extremely violent."

"It was so hot, like 40 degrees. We begged the whole time: Can we have water? Can we have water? In the end, we screamed. The guards walked in front of the bars the whole time, laughing and holding up their water bottles. They threw the bottles with water in them into the trash cans in front of us."

"When people fainted, we banged on the cages and asked for a doctor. Then the guards came and said, ‘We’re going to gas you.’ It was standard for them to say that."

"This shows that if Israel, with the whole world watching, can treat a well-known, white person with a Swedish passport this way, just imagine what they do to Palestinians behind closed doors."

Thunberg says the Swedish government greatly downplayed the abuse she and her fellow Sumud Flotilla activists suffered, and wouldn't even bring them water.

"We were together and told them about the treatment we received. About the lack of food, water, about the abuse. The torture. We showed them the physical injuries we had – bruises and scratches. We gave them all our contact details – I gave them my father's number and the number of our contact in the organization. We were clear: everything we say now must be released to the media."

"They didn’t do anything, they just said: ’Our job is to listen to you. We are here and you are entitled to consular support.’"

"We said over and over again: we need water. And they saw that the guards had water bottles. The embassy staff said: ’We’ll make a note of that.’ One of us, Vincent, said: ’Next time we meet you, you must bring water.’

Then it took two days before the embassy staff showed up again.

"They didn't bring any water, except for a small bottle of their own that was half empty. Vincent, who was in the worst shape, got to drink it. We kept asking the guards, 'Can we have some water?' but they just walked around with their water bottles and didn't answer."

"I said, 'Are you going to leave us like this? If you leave now, they will beat us up.' But they just kept walking."

When Aftonbladet compares emails sent by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to relatives, with what the captives describe telling embassy staff, it becomes clear that the seriousness of the situation has been downplayed.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs describes the scene at the port, where Greta Thunberg was beaten for hours, as follows: “She told us about harsh treatment and that she had been sitting on a hard surface for a long time.”

On Saturday, several media outlets published testimonies that Greta had been subjected to torture.

Aftonbladet has spoken to three other members of the flotilla who largely confirm what Greta Thunberg says and who have all experienced various types of abuse and humiliation. We have also spoken to relatives. Everyone is highly critical of how the Swedish embassy staff acted.

[Ewan @jelly_pack]

We are very much deep into Thought Crime territory, where this magazine cover is perfectly legal to print, but the legality of actually possessing it depends on whether or not the government likes your political beliefs.

[Jonathan Cook @Jonathan_K_Cook]

1. The Starmer government has been repeatedly caught lying in claiming it has limited arms exports to Israel during the Gaza genocide. In fact, Ch4 finds there were record arms sales to Israel in June and September.

2. The only major group trying practically to stop arms exports – by targeting weapons factories in the UK – was Palestine Action. The Starmer government outlawed the group as a terrorist organisation in early July, just as the steep rise in arms sales was underway.

3. More than 2,000 people have been arrested so far on terrorism charges for peacefully protesting Palestine Action's proscription – as police forces repeatedly voice concern that resources are being overstretched to enforce the ban and normal policing is suffering.

4. The government has just announced further limitations on the right to protest, effectively letting the police decide which issues the public can protest. The police have already made clear that they want to stop protests against British government complicity in Israel's genocide, including on the matter of UK arms exports.

5. The bigger picture: All of this is being done to keep UK weapons flowing to Israel as it continues its annihilation of Gaza.

[Paolo Mossetti @paolomossetti]

💥 If you read one thing today, make it this story by Italian journalist Lorenzo D’Agostino — captured aboard the Global Sumud Flotilla: beaten, blindfolded, mocked with homophobic slurs, and held half-naked in freezing vans and scorching cells.

According to D’Agostino and multiple accounts, Israeli forces subjected Greta to severe cruelty, forcing her to crawl and kiss the Israeli flag. “They did exactly what the Nazis did,” said Ersin Çelik, a member of the Global Sumud Flotilla. They publicly humiliated her and targeted her specifically because she’s a well-known figure.

It appears that the Italian state, government, and parts of the Church tried to stop the Flotilla not to prevent an armed clash with Netanyahu, but to avoid the media exposure of a country increasingly radicalized and indefensible — except through repressive laws — and to suppress reports of egregious human rights violations.

"We were intercepted at 1:58 a.m. on Thursday. On my boat, the Hio, part of the Global Sumud Flotilla mission, five Israeli soldiers boarded with rifles pointed at us, lasers aimed. Exactly one month after our departure from Barcelona.

On board, the soldiers allowed us to go to the bathroom, eat, drink, and smoke. Then they redirected the boat toward the port of Ashdod. We stayed moored for a couple of hours. Before letting us disembark, one soldier wanted to speak to our captain: “My friend, my friend, listen to me, you’ll like this one: when dwarfs cast long shadows, it means the sun is low.” That was the last thing he said.

As we disembarked, someone from the other boats shouted, “The police will be worse.” As soon as I stepped onto land, an officer grabbed my arm, twisting it behind my back to cause maximum pain. They made us sit on the ground, on a concrete esplanade.

Greta Thunberg was wrapped in the Israeli flag like a war trophy. They sat her in a corner; officers surrounded her, taking selfies.

Then they turned on another girl, Hanan, forcing her to sit in front of the flag so she’d have to look at it. They kicked people, ordered us to lower our heads and look at the ground — anyone who looked up was forced to kneel. An older activist wet himself. Anything associated with Palestine was ripped away, thrown to the ground, and trampled. They tore bracelets off everyone’s wrists; one girl was dragged because hers wouldn’t break. It wasn’t even the Palestinian flag — it was Somali.

We stayed on the concrete for hours. They asked for Italian passports and took us through immigration control. There they opened our bags: anything linked to Palestine was thrown in the trash. When they found a copy of the Quran in my bag, they went berserk — convinced I was Muslim. For two hours, every officer passing by mocked me.

In my toiletry bag they found pink wet wipes and laughed, saying “you’re a woman.” They slapped each other’s backs, amused. After border control, they forced us to strip down to our underwear. We went through two interrogations — only one with a lawyer present. They asked if we wanted to be deported. Then came the announcement: we were going to jail.

That’s when Itamar Ben Gvir, Israel’s Minister of National Security, arrived. He came to Ashdod to make sure we were treated as terrorists. He screamed it at us — that we were terrorists. Right in front of him, the police wanted to show their zeal: they blindfolded us and tightened plastic handcuffs around our wrists until they cut into the skin.

They loaded us into an armored vehicle wearing only light shirts. The air conditioning was blasting; it was freezing. A Scottish boy managed to loosen his cuffs and, with help from an Italian named Marco, released the others. When we saw the others getting off, their hands were purple. Some had been tied since the interception — traveling to prison with their hands bound from 2 a.m. to 4 p.m.

(1/2)

[Caitlin Johnstone @caitoz]

Who would have imagined five years ago when we were seeing Greta Thunberg amplified by every mainstream western liberal institution that we would one day hear reports that she has been captured and tormented by the Israeli military for trying to bring formula to starving babies?

The Guardian reports the following:

“In an email sent by the Swedish foreign ministry to people close to Thunberg, and seen by the Guardian, an official who has visited the activist in prison said she claimed she was detained in a cell infested with bedbugs, with too little food and water.

“ ‘The embassy has been able to meet with Greta,’ reads the email. ‘She informed of dehydration. She has received insufficient amounts of both water and food. She also stated that she had developed rashes which she suspects were caused by bedbugs. She spoke of harsh treatment and said she had been sitting for long periods on hard surfaces.’

“ ‘Another detainee reportedly told another embassy that they had seen her [Thunberg] being forced to hold flags while pictures were taken. She wondered whether images of her had been distributed,’ the Swedish ministry’s official added.

“The allegation was corroborated by at least two other members of the flotilla who had been detained by Israeli forces and released on Saturday.

“ ‘They dragged little Greta [Thunberg] by her hair before our eyes, beat her, and forced her to kiss the Israeli flag. They did everything imaginable to her, as a warning to others,’ the Turkish activist Ersin Çelik, a participant in the Sumud flotilla, told Anadolu news agency.

“Lorenzo D’Agostino, a journalist and another flotilla participant, said after returning to Istanbul that Thunberg was ‘wrapped in the Israeli flag and paraded like a trophy’ — a scene described with disbelief and anger by those who witnessed it.”

These reports, as shocking as they are, also happen to more or less reflect exactly what the Israeli regime said it intended to do to Global Sumud Flotilla activists when they were captured.

Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir said last month that Sumud activists must be treated as terrorists in order to “create a clear deterrent” from future flotilla activism, declaring that “Anyone who chooses to collaborate with Hamas and support terrorism will meet a firm and unyielding response from Israel.”

“We will not allow individuals who support terrorism to live in comfort. They will face the full consequences of their actions,” Ben-Gvir said at the time.

After the flotilla activists were abducted by the IDF, Ben-Gvir filmed himself taunting them and calling them “terrorists”.

Israel, needless to say, has an extensively documented record of torturing and abusing individuals who’ve been given the “terrorist” label by the regime.

So it would appear that they singled out the most high-profile activist on the flotilla for abuse in order to send a message and deter future efforts to break the siege on Gaza.

This comes as CBS News publishes a report confirming what we’ve been saying since last month: that Israel launched multiple drone attacks against the Global Sumud Flotilla.

Citing two US intelligence officials, CBS reports that Benjamin Netanyahu personally authorized attacks in which drones were deployed from an Israeli submarine to drop incendiary devices onto the boats to set them on fire.

Israel has been documented using quadcopter drones to drop incendiary firebombs on tents and buildings in Gaza. Last month Trump’s middle east envoy Tom Barrack casually admitted during an interview that “Israel is attacking Tunisia,” which was where the boat carrying Greta Thunberg was docked during the first drone attack.

Like the reported mistreatment of Thunberg, these drone attacks would also fit in perfectly with the Israeli government’s depraved and cynical decision to treat the flotilla activists as terrorists.

After the initial claims of a drone attack on the flotilla, the information ecosystem was flooded with hasbarists claiming it was ridiculous to blame Israel for the attacks, and that the fire hadn’t come from a drone at all.

Odious genocide propagandist Eyal Yakoby got nearly ten million views on a tweet where he falsely claimed to have video evidence showing that the fire was actually the result of a misfired flare from one of the boat’s crew members. Anyone who’d actually watched the video would have seen that it showed nothing of the sort, but because Yakoby inserted a narrative above the video claiming it shows that, I had people in my Twitter notifications telling me for days that it had been conclusively proven the fire was started by a flare.

I encountered even some solid Palestine supporters expressing doubt about the drone attacks when the reports first emerged, because it seemed too heinous to be believed. But this just goes to show that there really is nothing you can put past these freaks.

Israel and its apologists lie about everything. Everything, everything, everything. We are far past the point where it is reasonable to give Israel the benefit of the doubt when we hear reports that it has done something evil. If you’ll launch drone attacks on activists trying to bring aid to starving civilians, there’s nothing you won’t do.

[Dr Rachel Clarke @doctor_oxford]

This is Trevor Fisher, an inpatient in @ArthurRankHouse in Cambridgeshire, speaking to @Channel4News this week.

I am a palliative care specialist and Trevor’s interview has devastated me.

His hospice has just found out that in 6 months, Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Trust will withdraw its £800k funding.

This means that 9 of the hospice’s 16 beds will close, denying patients like Trevor the precious end-of-life care they need.

In total, 200 people a year in Cambridgeshire will now be forced to die in an overcrowded hospital instead of the hospice environment they so longed for. Some will doubtless end up dying on trolleys in corridors - we witness this far too often, these days & I can tell you, it is barbaric.

@CUH_NHS says it has made this “very difficult decision” following a “value for money assessment” - confirming what I have long known as a doctor, that too often, patients with terminal illnesses are treated as second class citizens whose lives simply don’t matter as much as other people's.

Yet the real responsibility here lies not with the NHS trust but with the current government, who is forcing the NHS nationwide to cut clinical services in order to meet impossible “efficiency savings” (what weasel words those are).

These cuts were necessary, say @CUH_NHS, “in order to maintain core services within a reduced budget” - that is to say, the reduced budget they are now receiving from this government.

So this is on you, @wesstreeting, and on you @UKLabour. You've chosen to do this & now patients like Trevor must live - and die - with your choices.

I believe that the measure of a civilised country is how well it cares for its most vulnerable members. The difference between politicians and me is that I look the palliative care patients they are failing in the eye.

So I will put it to you directly, Mr Streeting.

We are still a rich country capable of affording decent, humane palliative care for all. Do you really care so little for dying people that you are happy to fail them on your watch?

Thank you @channel4news for covering this story.

#palliativecare
#hospicecare
#NHS

[Chris Littlewood @chrislittlewoo8]

🚨 The Digital ID fight is here

Over 2.7 million people signed a petition saying No to Digital ID.

The Government ignored them.

They basically told every person that signed that petition to F Off.

In its response it confirmed it will build a national Digital ID by the end of this Parliament on the foundations of One Login.

Here is One Login’s security record in 2025:

• 29 April still not compliant with government cyber standards for critical services

• 13 May lost its trust certification when a supplier let accreditation lapse

• March red team proved attackers could gain “privileged access” without detection, revealed mid May.

What a Red Team finding means:

A red team acts like real attackers.

Their job is to prove whether defenders would notice and stop them.

If they can reach privileged access without detection it means this:

Someone from outside could get the master keys to the system and the defenders would not know.

What privileged access allows:

Think of One Login as the building that holds the master locks for identity.

Privileged access is the master key or control panel.

It lets an attacker:

• Switch verification rules on or off

• Mark accounts valid or invalid in bulk

• Change entitlement flags for payments and services

• Read copy or export large identity datasets

• Create official accounts and roles

• Remove logs to hide activity

• Push software or change central configuration

The real world harms:

1Mass lockouts from essential services for work benefits and health.

2Payments and pensions paused or redirected.

3Identity theft and fraud at national scale.

4Weaponised exclusion by silently changing rules.

5Ransomware that freezes hiring welfare hospitals tax and more.

6Data copied then used for blackmail and scams for years.

7Deleted logs that delay recovery and erase accountability.

Why this is worse with One Login:

It is being positioned as the primary gate for right to work benefits pensions NHS access and tax.

That is a single point of failure.

One compromised identity backbone with undetected privileged access is a single strike that can freeze national life.

This is not modernisation.

It is national sabotage.

From a cyber security perspective it is one of the greatest acts of national self harm I have ever seen.

Not Safe, Not Secure

Not Now, Not Ever

#NoToDigitalID

[Chris Littlewood @chrislittlewoo8]

Watch this and learn the lesson.

India put a single state ID over rations, pensions and healthcare.

On 28 September 2017 an eleven year old girl in Jharkhand died after ration denial linked to Aadhaar checks.

On 26 September 2018 the Supreme Court cut the scheme back and warned that no one should suffer for lack of an Aadhaar.

And yes, it was breached.

On 4 January 2018 a reporter bought lookup access to Aadhaar details for five hundred rupees.

On 18 and 19 February 2019 a state gas company portal exposed Aadhaar linked customer records.

In October 2023 criminals advertised vast sets of Indian personal data that included Aadhaar IDs, while officials denied a core database hack.

Digital ID does not just verify you. It governs you.

It turns rights into permissions for food, pensions and healthcare.

Once built it will be used to reward and to punish.

Not here. Not ever.
#NoToDigitalID